by KJ Charles
“You don’t imagine she will. Do you?”
“I hope I have brought her up better than that but...” Edwina smiled without any happiness at all. “I married a handsome face when I was old enough to know better. And Alice is very young, and Loxleigh is very handsome.”
Hart rubbed the bridge of his nose. Edwina sighed. “Or perhaps she will be terribly sensible and cry in her bedroom. Either way, it is my responsibility. What I need from you now is calm. Don’t talk to her about it—unless she wishes you to, of course—and do not confront Loxleigh, especially not in public. Leave it all to me.”
Hart was boiling with fury as he left the house, at his sister’s misery and the prospect of Alice’s. Loxleigh’s calculating perfidy was disgusting, and the fact he’d targeted Alice’s innocence and vulnerability made Hart want to pummel his handsome face to a ruin.
He went to Lady Wintour’s hell that evening for lack of anything better to do. Perhaps Evangeline might have some further thoughts on Loxleigh. Perhaps he could work his way through his anger via a few glasses of brandy.
The hell was bustling and Evangeline was busy presiding over the hazard table in an extremely low-cut dress. Hart exchanged a few words with a couple of people, found a game of whist to join, and ordered a bottle.
He played for about an hour and a half, losing himself in the game, the smells of wax candles and tobacco, male sweat and scent, the riffle of pasteboard and the taste of brandy that wasn’t worth what Evangeline charged for it. He’d lost thirty pounds or so when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
He looked round and up into a large amount of bare bosom.
“Hart, my dear,” Evangeline said. “How lovely to see you. We are blessed with our visitors tonight.”
Her eyes flicked sideways, meaningfully. Hart looked past her and to another table. He wouldn’t have recognised the back presented to him, but by God he recognised the dark honey hair.
“Thank you,” he said.
She leaned down with a flirtatious smile and murmured in his ear, “He’s losing. If you want to join the game, I’ll arrange it. We’ll keep an eye on his hand.”
Did he want to? Edwina had told him not to confront Loxleigh, but that was about his wretched scheming. This was an entirely different matter. If he could prove Loxleigh was a cheat, perhaps he could use the threat of exposure to make the man stay away.
He needed a weapon. It had occurred to him, not pleasantly, that the conversation by the fishpond might well have betrayed a chink in his armour to Loxleigh, a place where pressure could be applied, and he did not like to consider that someone so manipulative might hold that knowledge against him. Not that there was anything for him to cite, and Hart hadn’t indulged his desires in a year or more, but even a baseless accusation was a frightening prospect. The thought of being named, humiliated, publicly shamed was enough to make him feel hot and sick even before considering the savage penalties of the law.
Loxleigh was a threat and he had to act. He would play. And he would win, or catch the man cheating. Either would suffice.
“Please do,” he told Evangeline, and she smiled back.
She arranged matters with a swift and ruthless efficiency. Within a very few minutes, he was seated opposite Loxleigh. The fellow looked a little strained—no doubt because he had ended his game over a hundred pounds down—but wore a little quizzical smile, almost a smirk, all the same. It faded as he took in Hart’s expression.
“You look grim, Sir John.”
“I’m here to play. I think it’s time you and I took each other on directly. Don’t you?”
Loxleigh’s brows flickered—surprise, amusement, something else that tightened Hart’s groin. “An excellent idea. I should very much like to take you on.” His lips curved. “Shall we start with whist?”
He wasn’t sure what this was—Loxleigh toying with him?—but it did not bode well. Or perhaps it did. Perhaps if Loxleigh thought they were playing a different game, it might give Hart an edge.
Not whist, though. He was at best an indifferent player, which was doubtless why Loxleigh had suggested it. “How about piquet?”
“If you prefer.”
“Five shillings a point, to begin?”
Piquet was a fiendishly complicated game, requiring a good memory and endless calculation of odds. They started slowly, taking the measure of one another as players. Loxleigh was obviously good, discarding with skill, playing with an appearance of smiling carelessness that Hart didn’t trust for a second. He took his own time, considering discards longer than he needed, made a couple of defensive moves when he could have been bolder, and saw Loxleigh notice.
They played out the first partie cautiously. Hart won three hands, but not showily, never declaring more than a septieme. He lost the partie by a reasonable margin while still scoring over a hundred points, which kept his losses minimal. In the second partie, he played just a little better, and Loxleigh played a little worse, leaving Hart the victor. The third went to eight hands and was a draw.
“We seem evenly matched,” Loxleigh said, a smile on his inviting mouth. “Perhaps we should raise the stakes?”
Hart had expected that, much as he expected Loxleigh’s play to improve steadily in the next parties. “Certainly. A pound a point?”
The smile fell off his opponent’s face, as well it might. That was high play: if either of them failed to score a hundred on a partie, he might find himself owing several hundred pounds.
“That’s going it,” Loxleigh said lightly.
“I thought you liked to take chances.” Hart let his voice drop just a little.
Loxleigh’s eyes snapped to his, wary, alert, alive. Hart clenched his hand under the table against the tension in the air. “A pound a point, then.”
The man had reason to be confident: he was a good player. One would be a fool to take him on at those stakes unless one had an unlimited budget. Or a secret weapon.
Hart had taken charge of Alice aged eleven for three months, as Edwina dealt with her second widowhood while approaching what proved to be a difficult confinement. He’d been twenty-five, awkward, and utterly baffled as to what he should do with a sad-eyed, shy child. With no idea what to talk about in the evenings, he’d taught her piquet, thinking it might pass the time. It was his first inkling of her capabilities: she had mastered the game in a couple of days, and was trouncing him nightly within a week.
There was only so much of that a man could take at the hands of an eleven-year-old girl, and he had set himself to sharpen his skills. Piquet had consumed their every night for months and brought them to a strong mutual affection without the difficulty of conversation; they still played vicious tournaments, which Alice almost always won. It was a shame she was no dashing young matron who could play without reproach: she’d clean out the hells.
Hart wasn’t Alice, but he was prepared to back himself against anyone else in London, and very much against Loxleigh now.
Loxleigh was good, no question, and he was lucky too. The cards ran his way in the earlier hands, but Hart had the advantage of funds. He could afford to lose, so he didn’t have fear undermining his decisions, and that allowed him to push on till the current of play turned. He declared a septieme, a huitieme, put together a quatorze of aces that made Loxleigh hiss. He played with a single-minded savageness that felt like obsession, each loss spurring him on, each win a triumph, watching the running total of points on each side. Watching, too, the way Loxleigh’s face and posture changed from relaxed amusement to something paler, tenser.
He knew he’d been trapped. He knew it, and his nostrils flared, and Evangeline drifted over to stand behind him, watching the game, while Ned stood casually behind Hart.
Now cheat, you little bastard. Just try.
They weren’t talking any more, except the terse exchanges of gamesters. “Not good.” “Carte blanche.” “Hand of four.” No more flirtatious looks or knowing smiles. This was a duel: Loxleigh was fighting for his life, and panicking wi
th it. His tongue darted out to lick his full lips more than once, and Hart didn’t even find it distracting. He was occupied.
“Repique and capot,” he said at last. “Your ninety-eight points to my hundred and sixty.”
“Oh, well played,” Evangeline murmured.
“Three hundred and forty pounds.” Loxleigh smiled, or at least made his lips move over his set teeth. “I fear I must call a halt. This is too deep for me.”
“Of course. Let’s see.” Hart scanned the scrawled list. “Four thousand, two hundred and twenty pounds, fourteen shillings, I make it.”
“I’m sure you’re right.” Loxleigh’s skin had a clammy, unpleasant look. “I shall call on you tomorrow, if I may.”
Hart gave him the direction. “I shall see you then.”
“Uh—the evening,” Loxleigh added. “I am engaged in the morning. I hope that will be satisfactory.”
“Of course.”
“Thank you. Thank you for a pleasant evening, Lady Wintour.” He made his way out, walking straight-backed.
Evangeline took his abandoned chair and swung it round close to Hart’s. “That was brutal. Never play like that against my house.”
“I intended to ruin him. I’m sorry he called a halt.”
“I’m surprised he went on so long. Think he’ll pay?”
“I doubt he has the funds.”
“Think he’ll run?”
“And embarrass his sister in front of Tachbrook? I doubt it.”
“Then he’ll ask you for time to pay,” Evangeline said. “What will you respond?”
Hart’s face felt flushed. He realised he had a headache, and his hands were trembling a little. He knocked back a mouthful of brandy. It tasted sour. “I’ll let him make me an offer.”
Chapter Ten
Robin managed to get a good twenty yards from Lady Wintour’s hell and round a corner before he vomited.
He doubled over, retching uncontrollably until he’d puked up the night’s brandy, and at least some of the stewed horror that had coagulated in his stomach. Christ, he was doomed. Marianne would kill him. And if she didn’t, Hartlebury would ruin him, and if he didn’t...
Robin ran through his litany of enemies. Then he threw up again.
He would have walked the streets alone in the darkness as a ruined man should, hoping to be knocked on the head by a bravo and shanghaied for foreign climes or perhaps just thrown in the Thames, but it was too bloody cold for that, so he went home. It was only one o’clock in the morning and Marianne wasn’t back.
He stared at himself in the spotty glass. Through a glass, darkly, he thought, and This is what a condemned man looks like. He had an idea he ought to drink an entire bottle of brandy in rakish fashion, but he would probably be sick again and anyway they only had gin. He went to bed instead, so that he could pretend to be asleep when Marianne finally came home.
He told her about it the next morning.
“How much?”
“Four thousand, two hundred and twenty.”
“And we have set aside...”
“Nearly three hundred pounds.” That had seemed a good sum yesterday.
“Christ Jesus fuck,” Marianne said. “And you lost it to Hartlebury. Was he cheating?”
“No. He’s just bloody good.”
“Were you cheating?”
“I couldn’t. That bitch Lady Wintour and her brute stood over me to ‘watch’ the game once I was in deep.”
“Why didn’t you just stop?” She waved a hand almost before she’d finished speaking. “I know, I know. But what now?”
“I don’t know. I told him I’d call on him to settle up today.”
“We have to think of something, Rob. Tachbrook has assured me he does not require a portion in his bride, but there’s a wide gap between no portion and a brother with four thousand in gambling debts.”
“We could go,” Robin said. “Vanish. We have three hundred pounds. We could go to, uh—”
“No, do go on. List all the wonderful places we could go. Manchester? Oh, no, that might be a problem, mightn’t it. Salisbury, can you think of any reason we shouldn’t go there?”
That was hitting below the belt. Robin returned the favour. “We could go somewhere new. To Paris.”
Yearning flared in her eyes, but she shook her head. “Don’t be stupid. We don’t speak French.”
“We could learn. It can’t be that hard. Children can speak French.”
“French children.”
“Are they cleverer than English children?”
“Shut up. And we’re not going to Paris.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am this close to eighteen thousand a year and a title,” Marianne said savagely. “We’ve earned this, Christ knows we’ve worked for it, and I will not give it up now. We are going to be rich and safe, Rob. We swore it and I’m not running away when the prize is finally in my grasp. We will fix this. You will fix it.”
Robin knew that note in her voice: it conveyed non-negotiable decisions that other people would be unhappy about. He poured himself a third cup of tea. “I suppose we have to assume Hartlebury did it deliberately.”
“Because of Alice?”
Because of Alice, and that quivering moment by the pond, and the fact that Robin—idiot, idiot—had thought he’d meant something quite different when he sat down to play. He’d thought—well, be honest, he hadn’t thought at all. He’d just reacted in the belief that Hartlebury was approaching him.
No: Hartlebury had approached him. Or, at least, had very much let him think that was what he was doing. Had responded, even. Robin had seen the look in his eyes.
He snarled into his tea. “Because he’s a bullying swine. Right. I’m taking Alice for a walk in the park today.”
“It’s raining.”
“It would be. I’m taking her anyway.”
“Are you going to propose?”
“I’ll have to. If I marry her, he can hardly dun me for debt.”
“If you marry her quickly enough, you can pay him with her money.” Marianne’s lovely mouth twisted on the words, as if they were spoiled and sour. “Confess all before he does it for you. Play the wronged and noble youth.”
“There’s not much else I can do.”
“We’re nearly there, Rob. Tachbrook has asked me to visit his mother.”
“Marnie!”
“Don’t call me that. Yes, I know. Triumph. I just have to charm the old hag and we’ll have our eighteen thousand a year, if you don’t bitch it up now.”
“You’ll make a lovely marchioness. I won’t spoil it for you, I swear. I’ll fix this.”
I know you will.” She frowned. “I don’t suppose we can get the money anywhere else?”
“Such as?”
“Can we borrow from anyone? If you could win it back—”
“I can’t play if nobody thinks I’ll pay. And Lady Wintour was watching for me to fuzz the cards. She might tell the other hells.”
“No. Ugh. I can’t ask Tachbrook, Rob, it’s too risky.”
“Lord, don’t do that. I’ll make it work with Alice.”
“Be kind to her,” Marianne said. “Oh, damn it. I wish—”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you not want me to do it?”
She grimaced. “What’s the alternative? It’s this or throw yourself on Hartlebury’s mercy without a single bargaining chip.”
“In other words, no choice at all. I’d better shave.”
THE RAIN HAD SLOWED to a faint prickle of damp in the air by eleven. Robin strode along to Mrs. Blaine’s house, where he was startled to see Alice hovering outside the railings, muffled in a huge coat and hat, with an unhappy-looking maid at her heels.
“Miss Fenwick?”
“Thank goodness. Do hurry.” Alice slipped her arm through his and tugged him along. “I didn’t want you to come in. Can we speak? Oh, I’m doing this backwards. Good morning.”
“Good morning,” Robin said warily. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes and no. Can we go somewhere we can talk, like the Pavilion in the park?”
Robin took her there, wondering what could possibly be going on. The Pavilion was empty on this grey and dismal day, with very few walkers to watch them. They seated themselves, shaking the rain off hats and shoulders, while the maid huddled under a tree.
“You wanted to talk,” Robin said. “And I have something—two things, indeed—to say to you.”
“I dare say, and I think I know what one of them is, and I think you ought to let me go first. It might be embarrassing otherwise. Well, it might be embarrassing anyway but I will try not to make it worse.”
She was bright red, but ploughing ahead with determination. Robin wondered what the devil this was. Surely, if he was to be given his marching orders, she wouldn’t have made him walk so far, so damply. “As you think best.”
“All right,” Alice said. “The thing is, my mother told me yesterday that—well. That you had investigated my financial situation and ascertained I have a fortune of my own before you ever spoke to me. That probably you were making up to me for my money. I do understand, you know. I didn’t really believe you liked me for myself.”
“I do like you.” Robin’s face felt stiff. “Miss Fenwick—Alice—I care for you enormously—”
“Yes, never mind that, but you are a fortune hunter, aren’t you? Please don’t mind me mentioning it: I assure you I don’t object. But I do need to be certain, otherwise this won’t work.”
Robin attempted to parse that speech a few times. The words all made sense individually: it was just the meaning that escaped him. “What won’t work?”
“Are—you—a—fortune—hunter?” Alice repeated, with the sort of enunciation used by kind-hearted people to deaf uncles. “Because the thing is, if you are hoping to win my fortune, we might be able to come to an agreement.”
Robin’s jaw was hanging open. He shut it so hard his teeth clicked. “I... uh... Yes. Yes, I am, since you ask. Sorry. Agreement about what?”