Valor's Reward

by Jean R. Ewing

  Jessica sat up, coughing and spluttering. Yet she quickly put on her shoes. Her drenched hair, the color of mahogany, streamed over her shoulders. She pushed long strands away from her face. Beneath the sprinkling of freckles, her cheeks flushed the palest pink—unutterably beautiful.

  Caroline hugged the puppy. It wriggled and licked at her face.

  Dover rode up to stand impassively awaiting his master with coat and boots as he held both horses by the reins.

  The crowd was streaming along the bank toward them.

  Michael thrust on his boots and began to wring water out of his indecently wet shirt.

  “Dover, a cabriolet, if you please!”

  The first of the onlookers arrived. At their head was his ward.

  Peter looked up at his guardian, then down at Jessica sitting damply on the grass.

  “Oh, God! Miss Whinburn! Deyncourt? What on earth happened?”

  “An accident. Miss Whinburn fell from the bank. If you will kindly keep back the crowd to allow the lady some air and some privacy?”

  “Oh, goodness!” Peter gave Jessica a besotted look. “You are too delicate for words, Miss Whinburn. Oh, hello, Caroline.”

  Caroline ignored him and matter-of-factly added her own shawl to Jessica’s shoulders, where the first was beginning to soak through. Jessica gave her friend a wink, but she had started to shiver.

  Michael took his dry coat and wrapped it, too, about her shoulders.

  Within a few moments the cab for hire pulled up. Michael handed the puppy to Dover, and Caroline slipped her arm through Peter’s. He glanced down at her damp dress and—with gratifying solicitation—ushered her away.

  Michael helped Jessica onto the seat next to the driver.

  “Now, sir,” he said. “This lady and I are likely to catch our deaths if we do not get to shelter quickly. You will allow me?”

  He took the reins from the hands of the astonished cabby, who was left standing on the grass as Michael climbed into the seat, whipped up the horse, and headed in the direction of Lady Emilia’s elegant house.

  “Will you allow that I am learning the rules?” Jessica asked as he swept around a corner at an extremely precipitate speed.

  “What? It was hardly the done thing to go for a swim in the Serpentine.”

  “Yes, but I allowed you to say that I had fainted and fallen in. Think how absurd that makes me appear.”

  The breeze blew her hair, whipping back the long strands. “It merely makes you interesting, Miss Whinburn, whereas to go for a deliberate swim makes you persona non grata.”

  She laughed. “Then I am indebted to you. For your elegance and perfection make everything you do acceptable, don’t they?”

  “I am not perfect,” Michael replied with sudden ferocity. “And not everything I do is acceptable. I am only trying to help your aunt to secure your future. If you disgrace yourself, she will never be able to do so.”

  “You are all consideration,” Jessica replied. “Everyone’s future at your command. What will you do with that puppy?”

  “Probably ask Dover to wring its neck.”

  “You will not! That would be a waste of both our gallant efforts, wouldn’t it? Fortunately for you, I know from your tone that you’re not serious.”

  He laughed suddenly. “Do you?”

  “Besides, it’s a sheep dog. We keep many like it on the Borders. Do you have sheep on your vast estates?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then have your shepherd take it.”

  “I would have thought, Miss Whinburn, that after risking your reputation over the mutt, you would have demanded it as a pet.”

  “Should I wallow in sentimentality to match your demands of the behavior suitable to a lady? That puppy would hardly make a lap dog. It’s a country creature and wants a life of honest work. I couldn’t bear to think of such an animal cooped up in town, where everything in life is ordered by absurd rules.”

  He grinned at her. “As you are?”

  “You think I belong with the dog? Of course, when my promised month is up, I shall pursue honest work. But I’m hopeless at herding sheep.”

  He choked back both his laughter and his burning awareness of her loveliness. Her damp dress clung to the curves of her thighs. Her eyes burned with a bright fire. His entire being craved that hot flame—as if it might yet thaw the ice-cold depths of his dread.

  “Where will you live, Miss Whinburn?”

  Wisps of drying hair blew about her cheeks. Michael resisted the impulse to smooth them away.

  “I shall rent a room.”

  “Do you have any idea what a respectable room costs in London? How will you pay the deposit and live until your first wages are paid?”

  “These are my problems, aren’t they?” she said.

  They entered Lady Emilia’s house under the astonished eyes of the butler. Jessica, trailing water, swept away up the stairs to her room, leaving him to make explanations to her aunt.

  “Good Lord,” the old lady said. “Thank goodness you were able to rescue the situation. At least, after this Jessica can hardly do anything worse. Yet you are wet through, Deyncourt. Qquite indecent, Deyncourt! You had better go home and change..”

  Michael glanced down at himself his wet clothes and laughed, though he felt no mirth at all. He, too, was wet through.

  * * *

  Jessica had known it for some time. If she was to win independence, she must have funds. The pin money that Lady Emilia gave her was nowhere near enough to rent secure her own establishment, not even a single room. If she had arrived alone in London in her donkey cart, God knows what she would have done. That Deyncourt was right about that, of course, made the problem all the more infuriating.

  The answer when it came was so splendidly simple and so audacious that Jessica had no hesitation in pursuing it. There was to be a private party where the gaming would be very deep. The guests would be masked and in costume. The location was only one street away from Aunt Emilia’s home, and the stables of the two houses fronted each other across a narrow alley.

  Jessica learned all this from the upstairs maid, who was courting the footman from the house in question. For the maid it was only idle gossip. For Jessica it seemed a heaven-sent opportunity. Cards were one of her only skills. She would win the money she needed.

  Lady Emilia’s attics proved to be a treasure trove. Jessica found not only a costume and mask, but also a splendid, white-powdered wig. With her maid’s help, she would appear in the court dress of the previous century,, with a large hooped skirt and boned bodice.

  When she dressed on the night of the gaming party, Jessica knew that no one could possibly recognize her. Her red hair was entirely hidden by the wig, her features by the mask. The dress was a little too revealing, but never mind. She was about to secure her future.

  Thanks to the upstairs maid’s influence with her sweetheart, Jessica’s entrance to the house was not questioned. She took a seat at a table in a candlelit upstairs chamber without anyone giving her a second glance. The guests had no interest in each other, only in the cards and the dice.

  Jessica knew that her first game was critical. She must win right away, for all she had to begin with was the small stake of pin money she had saved. She need not have worried. It took nerve, concentration, and a certain amount of luck, but an hour later she had won two hundred pounds. If she could double it, she would leave.

  As the cards were being shuffled again, she quietly surveyed the room. Oh, dear Lord! That man leaning over the lady in the blue domino two tables away was surely Sir Gordon Cranby? She could not mistake the snide twist of his lips.

  The lady bent her head as he Cranby whispered something in her ear. Her lovely mouth twisted into a grimace beneath her mask, but she shrugged, said something to her gaming companions, and stood up.

  As she they hurried together from the roomwith Cranby, candlelight glittered on the lady’sher blond hair. Jessica knew with certainty that the woman in the blue dom
ino was Lady Honoria Melton.

  In the next moment, Jessica realized why they had left so precipitately, for the door to the room opened again, and a gentleman and lady stepped inside. The lady was very lovely and she was dressed as Cleopatra. Her heavily ringed hand was laylaid possessively on her companion’s sleeve. She was blusheding a little beneath her mask as he leaned down to whisper to her. The couple seemed amused, flirtatious, and intimate.

  The gentleman wore neither mask, nor costume. It was Michael Dechardon Grey, Earl of Deyncourt.

  “Why, what a splendid Cleopatra our former Lady Nest makes,” someone said at Jessica’s table. “But having married Caesar, she is still bedding Mark Anthony?”

  Another player looked up and laughed. “She is still enamored, alas, in spite of her recent nuptials. And Deyncourt, damn his eyes, may bed where he will.”

  “But her new husband has a notorious temper,” someone else responded. “So you are wrong. Caesar’s wife has shed her lovers with her previous name and her widowed state. I have it on the best authority: Mark Anthony has given her up.”

  “Then someone ought to tell that to the lady,” the first speaker replied.

  “And to Deyncourt,” the second said, and there was general laughter.

  Jessica’s concentration was shattered. She lost one hundred pounds in the next five minutes.

  Perhaps he would leave.

  Yet Lord Deyncourt did not leave. He lingered to talk with friends, then left his old lover with a shared joke, and strolled across to Jessica’s table.

  She glared haughtily up at him through the mask. With a quick nod to her and the other players, he the earl pulled out a chair and entered their game. He began steadily to rob the table of their winnings.

  Jessica sat opposite him and watched him do it in an impotent fury. He couldn’t possibly know who she was, and they were very evenly matched. Yet if he ever seemed to make a mistake, it was only in her favor. Thus she couldn’t combat his strategy without putting herself out of the game and losing what she had won—and she was making a great deal of money. One by one the other players bowed out and left.

  “Well, madam,” he said, giving her an intimate smile. “You play very high.”

  “Is there any point in gaming unless something is at stake, sir?” she replied.

  He fanned the cards between his hands. “Indeed, the room is filled with the ecstasy of uncertainty: whether the erotic elation of winning a fortune or the unutterable despair of complete loss. The beau monde is prepared to risk all for that moment of pure and unsullied emotion. Which do you prefer?”

  “To win, of course,” Jessica said, her heart hammering.

  “Then you desire erotic elation? I will wager you my entire purse against an hour of your time.”

  He poured a pile of gold coin onto the table, then added his diamond cravat pin and jewel-encrusted watch—worth a king’s ransom.

  “You wager me the naked power of your wealth against my virtue, sir?”

  The blue eyes looked straight into hers. “Do you possess virtue, madam? Perhaps I offer you a wager where you are a winner either way. You may gain a fortune, or an hour of my time. For if I triumph, of course, you win me.”

  “But you won’t win, sir. I shall.”

  It was absurd. Only chance would determine the outcome of one more hand. But Jessica’s anger and distress drowned out any other voices. She pushed all of her winnings back onto the table.

  “If you win, you may have this, too,” she said, shaking. “I stake everything I have.”

  “And so do I,” the earl replied. “Now, let’s play.”

  Jessica watched the cards dealt as if in a dream. Dear God! This was how her father had lost Whinburn—after losing everything else he possessed. Piece by piece, over the years, everything had been risked and gambled away. And she, out of some kind of dumb, blind, furious pride, was prepared to do the same?

  Deyncourt’s elegant hands turned up the top card for trump. Jessica realized she had none of that suit. She traded in three cards in the draw and found three worse ones dealt in exchange.

  Finally she watched as he laid out his hand, with the aces and jacks, and knew she had lost.

  Jessica sat pinned to her chair as he scooped up all of her money along with his own, then replaced his watch and cravat pin.

  “Come, madam,” he said, taking her hand and seductively kissing her fingers. “Let us spend our hour together in private.”

  * * *

  Chapter 10

  Cranby hustled Honoria away from the gaming and into his carriage. Soon they were bowling back to her elegant town house.

  “Good God!” he exclaimed and gave an unpleasant laugh. “That was close. Devil help us if Deyncourt finds you at a place like that!”

  The Incomparable Melton pouted. “But I left several hundred guineas down, Cranby.”

  “Deyncourt will mend your purse after your wedding, my dear. But he will only marry you if he thinks you as pure as the driven snow. When the devil are you going to make him propose? It’s damned tiresome that he seems to spend all his time these days with that red-haired chit.”

  Honoria laughed. “But I have discovered something which will banish her from town and leave her to scrub floors for a living. She is ruined, Cranby. Listen to this!”

  Cranby leaned back in his seat and surveyed her through his quizzing glass as Honoria told the tale.

  “How absolutely delicious,” he said unpleasantly when she had finished. “Are you completely sure?”

  “Cicely Pratchett saw them kissing in the corridor. She spent the night in his room. What more do you want?”

  “For you to keep this under your hat, my dear cousin.”

  “Cranby! You cannot mean it.”

  He handed Honoria from the carriage and followed her up the stairs to her room.

  “Of course I mean it. I have spent the best part of the last six months getting Steal into my power. The young fool has been gaming very deep. He is heavily in debt to me and shall sink ever deeper. I intend to have him lose everything. Tresham has always rather appealed to me, but I shouldn’t want to win it without some extra blunt. That problem evaporates when he marries Caroline Brandon. Then Deyncourt’s guardianship ends, and hHer fortune also will falls into my hands. Now you tell me that Steal spent the night with Miss Jessica Whinburn at an inn called the Blue Boar. If this scandal gets out, Deyncourt will force Steal his ward to marry Miss WhinburnMiss Whinburn instead of Miss Brandon. Steal will thus be penniless and my efforts in vain. I cannot allow that to happen.”

  Honoria pouted and flung her reticule across the room. “And what about me?”

  “How can it affect you, Honoria dear? Surely our rufous Miss Whinburn is no rival for the Incomparable Melton? Besides, once Lord Steal is safely wed to Miss Brandon, and all is mine, you may shout it from the rooftops for all I care.”

  “Why should I care to help you?”

  “Because if you don’t, sweet Honoria,” Sir Gordon Cranby said, pulling his cousin into his arms, “there are secrets of my own I might tell.”

  * * *

  Michael took Jessica’s elbow and hustled her from the room. Another flight of stairs led to the bedrooms above, but instead he drew her down a corridor and into a small, disused study. He thrust her onto the couch that sat before the cold fireplace, stalked to the door, and turned the key in the lock.

  In a considerable rage, hHe strode back to face her.

  “This is not a game, Miss Whinburn,” he said. “What the hell did you mean by coming here like this? And what the devil would you have done if you had lost such a wager to someone else?”

  “You recognized me?”

  “Immediately.”

  The wig and the mask should have made it impossiblewould have fooled everyone else, but he knew the very turn of her shoulder and each of the freckles that dappled her nose.

  To his complete astonishment, she burst out laughing.

  “Cantabit vacuus co
ram latrone viator, Lord Deyncourt! In front of the highwayman the penniless sing. What did I have to lose? No one knew me, and I was in need of funds. If you hadn’t interfered, as usual, I’d have been the richer by four hundred pounds. But quite obviously, I wouldn’t have taken that last wager from anyone else. Some other rake might have demanded I go through with it. Whereas with you I always have my aunt to protect me.”

  Dear God, she might be foolhardy and obstinate, but she was brave!

  He sat down on a sofa opposite hers and stretched both arms along the upholstered back.

  “Miss Whinburn, for God’s sake! Are you determined on ruin? What if I had not recognized you, and had first taken you into a darkened room?”

  “You would have forced me?” she asked with sarcasm. “Since I’m dressed as Marie Antoinette, I thought it was my own head to lose. But this place is not ruin to Cleopatra?”

  “Who?”

  “Your companion when you arrived. Before you joined us at my table, it was a source of great amusement to speculate whether she was still being faithful to her husband Caesar, since she entered clinging to the arm of Mark Anthony.”

  “Aut Caesar, aut nullus. To be honest I have no idea, and it’s none of my business.”

  “Even if Mark Anthony decides to risk all for her at a new Actium?”

  “It will not involve me. For God’s sake, these aren’t topics suitable for the ears of a young lady who is making her come out under the beneficence of Lady Emilia Shay. The Caesar in question is Cleopatra’s second husband. The rules that apply to you do not apply to her. Nor do they apply to me.”

  “Since you are bloodless and above it all, like Gabriel?”

  He poured cold disdain into his voice. “Because if you were discovered alone with a man in a place such as this, you would be ruined. You may not care for your reputation, Miss Whinburn, but unless your pastit is spotless, no gentleman will consider you, making any decent future imimpossible.. So wSo wiill you please allow me to take you home?”

  “Oh, fiddlesticks,” Jessica said, color flooding her cheeks, her eyes bright beneath the mask. “The high and mighty Earl of Deyncourt speaks, and mere mortals must obey. Like Io, couldn’t I just be changed into a cow for once to escape the attentions of Jupiter?”