The Duke's Wager

by Edith Layton

  But at this point a sense of such outrage gripped Regina that she scarcely saw the harsh look that had flitted across the usually pleasant face before her. A sense of outrage at her present situation, a sense of fury at the suggestions he was making, a sense of the preposterousness of the present confrontation. That this seemingly angelic man lounging against the stile before her should have forced her into the straits she found herself in, magnified by the humane and polite treatment she had received these past weeks, overwhelmed her sense of proportion. She spoke in fury, she railed against him:

  “No! No, all you say is dirtied by your own false perceptions of the world around you. You are to be pitied, My Lord Duke, in that you see your world through eyes that cannot discern good from bad, through a philosophy that has nothing to do with the way real people live their real lives. You are like a man mad for a taste of wine. He does not see the scenery around him, he does not see the people going about their lives, he sees only opportunities to drink, his eye picks out only those places, those establishments, those people, who can provide him with his need. You do not see with any clarity at all, you are so drunk with the need for debauching, for degradation of yourself and others.”

  “No,” she went on, shaking her head, “I do not think Lady Burden would despise me. No, I know Lady Mary would not. And I don’t think Sinjin would allow you to merely…come along and destroy my life. I know he would not. He and I…we have no plans for any such arrangement that you speak of. I applied to him for help because my late uncle instructed me to, should I ever need help. And with no self-serving thought, he has assisted me. You are certainly mad. And no,” she said, holding up her head, “no, I do not fear you so much as I pity you from the bottom of my heart.”

  “You may well be right to,” he mused, watching her closely, “I do not argue that. But it is ‘Sinjin’ now, is it? Ah well, he is more clever than I thought. So George Berryman was incautious enough to mention the great Marquis to you”

  “You knew my uncle?” Regina gasped.

  “Yes, of course,” smiled the Duke. “Who among us who ventured into business did not? Only I did not deal exclusively with him, as some others did. An honest man, your uncle, according to his lights, that is, for whoever deals overmuch in business cannot afford to be too honest. As your father soon found out. Ah yes, I know all about you, Regina Analise. I do not wager on dark horses. I make it my business to know all the odds in whatever game I choose to play.”

  “Why, for once, without dissimulation, why? Will you tell me why you choose to play this particular game?” Regina demanded, still raging at the slight figure before her. Seeing his closed expression, she softened her voice and almost pleaded with him, “Since there is so much that you know about me, can you tell me something about yourself? Some true thing?” she asked, watching him, realizing that she knew nothing of the actual man that hid beneath the blandly smiling, smooth exterior he presented.

  “Some true thing?” He laughed. “Oh my dear, there is no true thing about me at all. But come, sit here beside me and I will tell you all you wish to know about me. There has never breathed a man who would not be pleased to tell all about himself, ad nauseum, to a young and beautiful woman who looks at him as you now look at me. Come and sit with me, Regina love, and I will tell you stories about myself, Oh I will sing you songs of me till darkness falls, and beyond, if that is what you wish. We will talk as old friends, or as new friends, for however long you like. But remember, I am most certainly mad. And placating me, and talking with me, and trying to understand me, will not alter that. I will still keep you to our game. I will still oversee you to make sure you keep to all the rules. But yes,” and he grinned, the expression, the sunlight, the wind-touseled hair making him seem suddenly younger, less threatening, more human than she had ever envisioned him.

  She knew then as he waited, smiling, for her answer to his outstretched hand, that she could not turn and walk away from him, as every instinct cautioned her to. She could not, as a proper lady should, run trembling back to the warm security of Fairleigh. She must, she felt, confront him. Meet with him, so that she could reason with him, perhaps even appeal to him. Perhaps she could beguile him into betrayal of his true motives. For she could still not accept that he did all he did out of sheer perverse amusement. Certainly she could, she thought, know him. And all that she had been raised to believe told her that no creature she could know, could still remain an enemy to her. It was against all the sweet logic that Miss Bekins and her father had inculcated her with. Yes, she decided, she would speak with him.

  She accepted his assistance, and perched herself up upon the stile beside him. And with the chill wind whipping around them, they talked.

  Afterward, she could never reconstruct the conversation of that strange afternoon. They had stayed, talking, no she amended, gossiping like two old cronies, while the sun sank slowly over the horizon. She had asked him questions, he had answered with wit and style. But although he spoke of himself, she could not learn anything about his motivations. He told her about his education, his travels. He regaled her with stories about the society he traveled in, till tears stood in her eyes and she gasped with laughter. He entertained her with anecdotes, he charmed her with rumors, he quoted poetry, and when she capped his verse with the next line, he capped her quotation once again. He showed her a glittering treasurehouse of a mind, but he showed her not one glimpse of the shadows within.

  Every so often the oddity of the situation, the strangeness of their meeting was borne in upon her, and almost as if he could read her mind, he would lure her away from her thoughts with whimsy or humor. Ah, she thought, recovering from a wave of laughter he had submerged her in, how likeable he is! But then, suddenly, as if a cloud had passed over his mind as it had over the weakening sun, he spoke slowly to her, “You see then, Regina, that it will not be so terrible, after all, your fate to be with me.”

  She opened her eyes as if awakening from a dream, and looked at him. “No,” she said, “this is so absurd, Your Grace, indeed you know it is. For we have spent the afternoon like friends. We have shared our thoughts, you cannot still be…serious about this ridiculous wager.”

  “Oh, but I am,” he said seriously. “You see, you do not know me after all. How well you look in sunlight, Regina. Not many of my female acquaintances could say the same, but it suits you well, almost as well as candlelight. No,” he said, taking his hand and turning her chin up, “perhaps even more than candlelight.”

  She pulled herself away from him and, trying to keep up a light note, said, “But it suits you too.”

  “Only because this afternoon is aware of the signal honor I have given it. I do not go abroad too much by day, see how the sun has tried so valiantly to flatter me, to convince me of its good offices? If it were better acquainted with me, if it knew it had my favor constantly, it would turn and slink behind a cloud. It is only those we hope to win that we put ourselves out for; those we have already added to our list of conquests, we can afford to ignore. When favor is won, it is foolish to go on courting, is it not? But shine as it will, it knows full well that this is not my time of day, I still prefer to be burnt by its sister moon, and bask in her cold silvery rays for my health’s sake.”

  “Yes, surely,” Regina said, “once we have won a friend, we do not go on ‘courting’ his friendship, because we know ourselves secure in it. Still, once we have a friend, we do not ignore him, rather we are at ease. There is comfort in not having always to be on one’s best behavior.”

  “What lovely friends you must have, my dear,” he said. “Perhaps if I too were poor and defenseless, and beautiful, I would have such friends. But then, I have found that it is very easy to befriend someone who has less than I. Someone who looks to me for favors. They are so easy to please. They are so willing to accommodate. They are so eager for friendship.”

  She recoiled from him. “No,” she denied, “that is not friendship, that is patronage.”

  “Ah,” he
said, “you’ve put your little white finger on it. For I have found that when a man has wealth, influence, and position, he is hard put to tell the difference between friendship and patronage.” He spread his hands in a gesture of dismay. “How is a man to know what is asked in friendship, and what is requested as patronage?”

  “Friendship,” Regina said, feeling foolishly like a governess explaining a moral lesson to a stubborn small charge, “is freely given, without expectation of recompense, of anything—except for the hopes of a return friendship.”

  “Then I think,” he smiled, “that on the whole I prefer patronage. At least I can well afford that. It costs me really very little, whereas any freely given trust and concern would well bankrupt the little resources I have of those remarkable feelings. That could well cost me more than I care to lose. Don’t look so outraged, my love, you will find that there are a great many men like me in this world. A great many who prefer those sorts of well-defined relationships, such as employer and employee, debtor and benefactor, king and subject. For example, my lovely little headmistress, do you honestly think Sinjin offers you free use of his house, his resources, and, I am sure, his heart out of friendship?”

  “No,” she admitted, for even she could not claim to be the Marquis’s friend. “But,” she said, “he offers me comforts—not out of patronage, either, rather out of a debt of honor to my family.”

  “Oh, Regina,” sighed the Duke, his face strangely gentle in the fading light, “you are such a fool.”

  “You know,” he said, more briskly, “that I will eventually hurt you, perhaps only a little physically, but I certainly will hurt your pride, your sense of decency, your image of yourself. I will show you a Regina Analise that you never dreamed existed. I, likely, by the time I am done, will have you despising yourself, as much as, or more than you will come to despise me. For I will show you what a traitorous body you are locked into. I will pit the demands of that body against all the high reasonings of that well-furnished mind. And I will win. But with all that I will do,” he went on, ignoring the horror that had come into her eyes, “I will not break your heart. No. Never that. For I will never ask you for that. That I will leave to your own self. But you are too generous with that poor organ, Regina. You are almost promiscuous with it. And never doubt, it will be broken. For you will give it where you should not. Take care with it, Regina. I will have you, no matter what. But I should rather have you intact, in all ways. I should prefer it. But you are such a little fool.”

  She stood and shook out her skirts, tears welling in her eyes. She did not understand him. She had spent the whole of the afternoon with him, she had thought she had come to some easy ground of acquaintance with him, and now that evening had almost fallen, the slight, elegant man beside her was as much of a stranger, as much of a threat, as ever. She would not speak; she only turned to return to the house.

  He stayed her with one arm; the strength of it held her still, she neither struggled after his first touch, nor moved a pace to escape. He pulled her to him so that they stood close enough to be mistaken for one figure in the empty meadow. She felt the warmth and strength of him held in check, and irrationally, was content to stand there for those moments, so close as to almost touch, so far as to only stare into each other’s eyes. What she saw flaring in his, and what she suddenly did not wish him to discover in hers, forced her to drop her gaze to her shoetops. Only then he stirred, and recollected himself, and released her, only holding her lightly with a touch upon her hand.

  “I will see you at the Squire’s ball,” he said, looking down into her lowered eyes.

  “No,” she said, “I shall not go.”

  “Oh, don’t be foolish,” he said. “Once again, we will meet on neutral ground there. Even I do not seduce women at a country squire’s ball. Especially not when mine host, the Squire himself, has plans for me becoming his son-in-law. You must come to see at least how many ‘friends’ I do have. How well received I am in society.”

  “The Marquis has said that I must not,” she said, childishly even to her own ears.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “So that you would not discover me,” she answered.

  “Ah, but I have, so now you may come.”

  “I cannot dance,” she said, despising herself for her weak answer. “I have not the right gowns.”

  “All that is nothing,” he laughed. “Surely you have more spirit that that, Regina. You will not cower beneath the bed, while I caper at the ball?”

  “No,” she cried, her eyes flashing. “No, I shall be there. But I swear, it is the last you will see of me. For after that, I will be gone. Gone on to decide my own future. As you stipulated. And then you can find some other poor creature to torment for your pleasure. But not me, I swear it.” And she tore herself from him and ran back to the comforting lights that began to appear in the windows of house beyond them. She felt anger at herself for her undignified haste to be away from him, and for her complete capitulation in the matter of the ball. Surely he must be laughing now, she thought disgustedly, at the success at which he had manipulated her response.

  But the Duke of Torquay, leaning back against the stile where she had left him, was not laughing. The look in his wide blue eyes was rather the look of a dreamer, but his tightly clenched fists surely did not signify a pleasant dream.

  *

  “But where have you been?” Amelia greeted her. “Sinjin and I were becoming worried. We thought you were in your room, but as the darkness came we….

  “We almost organized a search,” Sinjin said, coming toward her and taking her hands in his. “But you’re frozen! What were you doing out so late?” he demanded, almost in the tones of an angry father, Regina thought.

  “I was talking with the Duke of Torquay,” Regina said, with a shadow of a smile.

  When they had bundled her off to the study and bade Lady Mary to take dinner without them, both Amelia and St. John turned their full attention to Regina. She sat huddled in a large chair by the fire, fortified by St. John’s perennial cure for the chill, a glass of brandy, feeling very much like a truant schoolgirl. Amelia’s face showed worry and concern, but St. John, standing by the fire, seemed to her to be gripped by some inner tension, so abrupt and cold was his manner.

  “No,” she explained again, “no, I did not think to run back to you. Because,” she said, appealing to St. John’s grim countenance, “I thought, I really thought, that if I could speak with him…reason with him, I could solve the whole of it.”

  “And did you?” St. John asked coldly.

  “No,” she sighed sadly. “For all we talked, for all I said, for all he heard…he is unchanged. I cannot understand….” she trailed off.

  “Of course you cannot, that is the whole point. You have no experience with such a creature,” St. John said. “And you were a fool to try to reason with him.”

  “That is much the same as he said,” Regina murmured softly.

  Amelia spoke. “And how did you leave it with him, Regina? Did he threaten you? Did he make any…advances?”

  “We only spoke. And he said that he was looking forward to seeing me at the ball. When I told him I was not going, he taunted me for my cowardice. I’m afraid I lost my temper. I told him that I was not afraid, that I was going.”

  St. John made a muffled exclamation and Regina said hurriedly, “But you needn’t worry about that. For I have thought the whole thing out, and I, of course, shall not go. For I shall not be here at all. It is time, it is past time,” she said imploringly to St. John, “that I was gone from here. I have already stayed too long. This flight of mine has gone on too long.”

  “Yes,” St. John agreed.

  “Sinjin!” cried Amelia in shock. “How can you say so? How can you countenance Regina’s leaving us when you have not yet heard from her relatives? It would be like casting her to the wolves.”

  “I said nothing about her leaving,” he said. “She shall stay, and stay with the full accordance
of all of us. But she shall no longer hide. No more futile flight. You will come with us, Regina, to the Squire’s ball. You will come in full sight of Torquay, and he will be made to see that he cannot frighten you. And that he cannot have you.”

  But seeing Amelia’s quick look toward him, he smiled. “Have you, that is to say, in any construction of the word.”

  “I don’t want to go,” Regina said stubbornly. “I don’t desire to go. I don’t wish to go. I only want to leave here.”

  “You are understandably overwrought,” St. John said. “There is only one thing. For other reasons,” he explained to Amelia, not looking at her, “it would be better if she remains…incognito. If she remains silent as to her visit here.”

  Amelia gave him a long look and rose from her chair.

  “Of course,” she said stiffly. “But now, perhaps these dramatics have taken away your appetites, but I assure you, they have only whetted mine. I will join Mary at dinner.”

  St. John stood looking into the outer distance until Regina said quietly, “I really do not want to go to this affair, you know. And I really don’t understand why you insist on my staying here. And I don’t understand why I am still to play the role of ‘Lady Berry.’”

  St. John came over to her and raised her from her chair.

  “I know you do not, little one,” he said caressingly, his expression softening. “But do you not trust me now? Did your uncle not give you to my care? Do you doubt me now? Have I ever done any wrong toward you?”