Gambled Away: A Historical Romance Anthology

by Rose Lerner

  Simon laughed with everyone else as she pulled Maggie to the edge of the chair.

  Maggie watched Miss O’Leary’s head dip between her thighs, sucking in a breath as her mouth touched her.

  Simon pressed the damper pedal, allowing the last notes to linger a few extra seconds for her sake as he took his hands from the keyboard. Maggie let her skirts fall, flushed and laughing.

  “All right, Miss da Silva, out of the room,” Darling ordered good-naturedly. “It’s your turn.”

  “I think it just was my turn,” she said. “I’d like Mr. Radcliffe-Gould to set my task, if you don’t mind.” And she disappeared out the door.

  Heat swept over Simon.

  “Well?” Clement said.

  He couldn’t think of anything he had any particular desire to see. But he supposed that wasn’t the point. She wanted to know he had commanded her to do whatever it was she was doing.

  “Perhaps she might sit in Palliser’s lap for half a minute,” he suggested.

  “I’ve certainly no objection,” Palliser said.

  Maggie found her target easily. But she could not sort out what she was supposed to do with him. Simon played quieter and quieter, watching Palliser’s smug excitement grow. After standing puzzled a moment, she threw up her hands and straddled him, looking to Simon in exasperation.

  “Allow me to take pity on you, madam.” Palliser turned her hips with his hands, settling her in his lap. “You must keep the position half a minute, now.” Pulling her arse snug against his cock, he reached into his own breeches to place his cock where he wanted it. Her lips parted, startled, and her eyes fixed on Simon’s.

  Every stroke of Simon’s fingers on the keys gave his consent to Maggie’s degradation as Palliser rubbed himself against her arse, his hands wandering. Simon silently counted to thirty—and then dragged it out a few more seconds, because he was enjoying himself.

  She stood, biting her lip. “Perhaps we ought to begin making the tasks longer before we all expire of frustration.” Behind her, Palliser’s arousal was visible to everyone in the room.

  Simon had had his fill of frustration. He stood. “Actually, I will be taking Miss da Silva out on the balcony before I expire of frustration.”

  “No need to go so far,” Clement said. “You may take her on the sofa if you like.”

  God help him, he wanted to. He wanted everyone to crowd around, touching themselves, perhaps touching him.

  You don’t know most of these people, he reminded himself. You don’t trust them. Clement might think it means something. Tomorrow you’ll wish you hadn’t. He had gone far enough tonight. He wanted to learn to chart a middle course between all and nothing.

  “The balcony will suit us admirably.” He dragged her outside, pulling the curtains and French doors shut behind them. “Get on your hands and knees. And keep quiet. I don’t want them to hear us.”

  He knelt between her legs on the hard stone, throwing up her skirts to display, dimly, the pale globes of her arse. A hand between her legs revealed her wetness. She cried out at once, squirming.

  He toyed with her until he could bear it no longer, and then he pushed his pantaloons down and drove into her. Oh, God. She was wet and tight and unbelievably hot. He put his hand to the back of her neck, holding her roughly down while he fucked her. She writhed helplessly against him. “Take it,” he said between his teeth, plowing into her until his ballocks slapped against her tender flesh.

  “Yes,” she sobbed softly. “Anything. Anything, just don’t stop.”

  He bent lower, reaching between her thighs. He could not get over how much he loved this. Her pleasure was his; she could not deny it him. When he pinched her clitoris between his fingertips, her thighs trembled. Wonder and hot triumph mingled in his chest as he felt her pleasure.

  “I wonder how many men would have to fuck you, one after the other, before you begged them to stop.” He barely knew what he was saying anymore, but she’d loved the idea of going down naked to dinner. “Could you take everyone here? We’ll tie your legs open in the drawing room as a public convenience.”

  She cried out and spent. He fucked her through it, feverish with exultation, then sank down on the ground. Ow. His knees ached. “Come here.” She turned, crawling toward him on unsteady legs. He took her by the hair and pushed her down on his cock.

  She moaned weakly when he hit the back of her throat. God, she liked that too.

  Time blurred. How long had he been fucking her mouth? Just as he began dimly to fear he would really tire her too far, she took his cock in one hand and his ballocks in the other, working him swiftly to his peak.

  He half-sat, half-lay on the stone balcony, the night air cold against his sweaty skin. “Good Christ,” he said dazedly.

  “Let’s go to bed,” she said. “And let’s take some wine with us.”

  * * *

  Faintly, somewhere in the house, a clock chimed three. Maggie had been asleep for an hour. Simon couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking of his letter to his mother, waiting in the entrance hall below.

  Marry her? Was he crazy? He’d known her a week. He’d known her a week and he loved her already and when the letter came back from his mother saying she would never be received at the Rectory, Maggie would show him the door.

  He shouldn’t rush this, anyway. She’d agreed to see him when they went back to London. That was enough for now. He’d only frighten her off if he was too eager.

  And what if he told his mother, and then Maggie turned him down? He’d have to tell Mrs. Radcliffe-Gould, and she would be relieved, and he would be so angry.

  How could he trust himself to marry anyone, anyway? Five years ago, he’d have married Clement if he could have, and now he’d be miserable. What had he been thinking of, writing that letter? He had to get it back before the footman posted it in the morning.

  At last Simon rose, put on his dressing gown and slippers, and crept downstairs. He dug through the letters in the dark. Which one was his? In the end he gathered them all up and felt his way to the library door.

  But when he opened it, the dark library wasn’t empty. A lamp illuminated a small circle around one of the tables. Clement sat in its glow, reading letters with his glasses perched on his nose. He was too vain to wear them where anyone could see. Simon had been the one exception to that rule, once; it had felt like such a gift.

  “Simon?” Clement peered at him. “Did you want a book?”

  He stepped forward into the light. “I wanted to add an enclosure to my letter to my mother,” he said, knowing how stupid it sounded. “What are you doing?”

  Clement laughed, a little sheepishly, taking his glasses off. “Oh, you know. I suppose I should be in the study, but it still feels like Father’s. One of the tenants has got himself up before the justice of the peace for sheep-stealing, and I’m trying to save his neck.”

  Clement was up late handling estate business? But then, it made sense. He probably wouldn’t want any of his guests to know, any more than he’d want them to see his glasses. “Do you think he’s innocent?”

  “Oh, I’m quite sure he isn’t. I’m going to have to charm the JP somehow and ask him to sort it out as a personal favor. I’ll invite him over to shoot next week. I suppose I’ll have to talk to the man who owned the sheep, too...”

  “You hate shooting.”

  Clement smiled mischievously. “Hopefully my incompetence will give him a comfortable sense of superiority, and then he’ll be as clay in the hands of the potter. I’m reading his correspondence with Father to prepare myself.”

  And just like that, Simon loved him again. Longed for him, wanted to throw himself into his arms.

  He wanted this to be over, to be behind him—and yet the idea terrified him. If he could stop loving Clement, then maybe one day he’d look at Maggie and feel nothing too. He fumbled through the morning’s post, looking for his.

  “What’s really in the letter?” Clement asked.

  Simon hesitat
ed. “Can I talk to you about Maggie? I want to, but not if it will hurt you.”

  “Please,” Clement said at once. “I’m dying to know what’s going on.”

  “I told my mother about her in the letter. I said—I said I was thinking about asking her to marry me.”

  Clement looked blank.

  “But it’s too soon,” Simon hurried on. Should he have lied? Clement had said he wanted to know. “It’s mad. I can’t send a letter like that. Mother’s bound to write back that she and my sisters wouldn’t receive her. I’d have to tell her, because it would be dreadful not to, but what kind of thing is that to drop on someone after only a few weeks? ‘Stick with me, and you’ll get insults instead of a family’?”

  Clement’s eyebrows rose to the ceiling. “And here I thought you left me because I was too scandalous.”

  “You thought—?” He felt awful. Clement thought he’d broken it off because he was ashamed of him? Because he wanted to be respectable? “But I told you why I left.”

  “Yes, but it didn’t make any sense.” Clement began to tap his glasses agitatedly against his stack of correspondence. “You said we wouldn’t make each other happy, but we were happy. You were happy. Much happier than you are now.”

  Simon blinked. Had he been? No. No, of course not. The truth hit him: Clement only saw him when he was around Clement, and he hadn’t been happy much around Clement in a long time. He was afraid to be, these days, for fear Clement would think it was an invitation. “I wasn’t. I’m sorry, but—”

  “Never mind,” Clement interrupted. “Never mind, I don’t want to hear about her after all. It’s too painful. It’s too painful just to be here with you and know I can’t ever have you again. Maybe—maybe we just shouldn’t see each other anymore. We could still correspond, but...”

  Simon could not quite breathe. “Not see each other anymore? Ever?”

  Clement straightened the stack of papers in front of him with trembling hands. “I don’t know. Maybe not.”

  He couldn’t seem to collect his thoughts. Never seeing Clement again? The last twelve years of his life, gone without a trace? “How can you say that to me? I thought—I thought we were friends! And just because I won’t fuck you anymore you don’t want to see me?”

  Was it his imagination, or did Clement look pleased to have got a reaction? “We’re both very tired. Let’s talk about it in the morning, when we’re calmer.”

  Simon, stiff with fear and fury, didn’t trust himself to answer. He might say something that really couldn’t be patched up. Instead he stormed out, promptly stubbing his toe on the stairs and spending several moments cursing violently under his breath.

  Once back in his room, he stood in the dark for long minutes, afraid that if he got into bed his pounding heart would wake Maggie.

  He became aware that the letter was still clutched in his hand. He shoved it to the bottom of his trunk to deal with in the morning.

  “Simon?” Maggie said sleepily. “What are you doing?”

  “I—I forgot something downstairs. And then I had a quarrel with Clement.”

  He could hear her roll over. “Why was Clement even downstairs at this hour? Is the party still going on?”

  He crawled into bed. “No, he was working.” He couldn’t bring himself to tell her what Clement had said. It would make it real, and anyway she didn’t like Clement and wouldn’t understand why it was so terrible.

  “I’m sorry. Come here.” She slung her arm over his waist and curled up against him, her nose poking his spine. He put his hand over hers, and to his complete surprise, felt much less like a smashed egg.

  Simon rose early the next morning. He burned the letter in the breakfast-room fire, afraid all the time that Maggie would walk in, before sitting down to toast and chocolate. Clement poked his head in soon after, took two cups, and filled them both with coffee.

  They didn’t discuss what had happened. In fact, Clement talked about the radical demonstrations in the north as if nothing had happened. Simon told himself they had just both been angry, and went along with it.

  * * *

  Another week passed like a dream for Maggie. She felt continually drunk with delight. Simon took her to bed three or four times a day, and in between, they continued to find hours of things to say to one another. One afternoon she read a novel start to finish while he sketched with a straight ruler and compass; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so happy.

  She was on her way to breakfast one morning, hoping to catch Simon still there, when a footman brought the letter. It was from Meyer, who had sealed it with a truly enormous lump of wax to keep it safe for its long journey. Maggie repaired to the library for a letter-opener.

  It was the longest letter she’d ever got from him, taking up the entire page with the last few lines crammed into minuscule print and the signature curling up the right margin. But there didn’t seem to be anything in it of note. She skimmed a description of his Aunt Roosje’s gefilte fish, an account of a quarrel between his uncles over his late father’s best suit, and sighed in relief when she saw, I sail for home Thursday sennight. Then she read the next sentence.

  I don’t know quite how to tell you this, Magdele, but I’m bringing a wife with me.

  Maggie felt as if she’d swallowed a rock. The page blurred before her eyes, and it was several seconds before she could keep reading.

  I don’t think it will change things much. Gittel’s a broad-minded young woman who wants to come to England and not have to cover her elbows and fuss about Saturday. I’ve been honest. She’s excited to meet you and wants to play the piano at Number Eighteen and bake for our guests. Her money should buy the pianoforte and get us through the summer.

  And then he’d run out of space and signed his name. She couldn’t help thinking that he’d filled up the whole page with inconsequentialities on purpose, to have an excuse to stop writing. Coward.

  But why was she so angry? If she had been bored at Number Eighteen, and eager to make another connection, why shouldn’t he do the same? What did it matter that Mrs. Hennipzeel approved of this Dutch girl whose morals sounded no stricter than Maggie’s own, while she still didn’t know Maggie existed?

  Would she and Meyer still be best friends? Or would his wife come by insensible degrees to hold that place? And Maggie couldn’t share a room with a married couple. She’d have to sleep in the club-room, and knock before she went into her own room for breakfast or a shawl.

  Could she live with Simon? But their connection was still so young. She wanted to let it open like a rose, at its own pace, not cram herself into his lodgings out of necessity.

  She wanted to talk to Simon, and have him reassure her, but it would be rude to tell him how sad she felt, when he was already jealous of Meyer. She went looking for him anyway.

  * * *

  Simon was just pouring himself some chocolate when Clement came into the breakfast room. It struck him suddenly that Clement always seemed to walk in just as he was sitting down to breakfast. He tried to believe it was a coincidence, and that Clement hadn’t asked a footman to alert him when Simon appeared downstairs.

  At least today he didn’t look as if he’d just dragged himself out of bed. He smiled when Simon wished him good morning, but a worried frown lingered on his brow. “Do you know anything about cows?”

  “Not a thing.”

  Clement sighed. “Neither do I. My steward just talked to me about them for half an hour, and...” He gave an appealing look. “Simon, do you promise not to be angry if I tell you something?”

  He’d never liked Clement’s habit of saying that. Until today, though, he’d always promised, since he never let himself be angry with Clement anyway. “You know I can’t anticipate what my feelings will be. I’ll try not to shout.”

  “I can’t afford the folly,” Clement said in a rush.

  Simon set down his toast, his stomach starting to roil. “Pardon?”

  “I can’t afford the folly. I should
n’t have commissioned it in the first place, but I thought I could find the money and I wanted to see you. It’s so strange being here without Father, and you never visit me unless I bribe you.”

  Simon felt guilty, and resented it. He rose from his chair, demanding, “So now it’s my fault you wasted my time?”

  Clement’s cheeks flushed. “I wasted your time? That’s rich. You’ve enjoyed yourself, haven’t you, at my expense? Where else would you have taken Miss da Silva? To your closet in London? To visit your parents, maybe?”

  “I only brought her in the first place to keep you at arm’s length!” Simon paused, shocked at himself, but too angry to stop. “Because you can’t seem to understand that you aren’t entitled to my company will-I-nill-I. If I don’t wish to visit you, then you ought to do without me, instead of lying to get me here when I could have been working on a paying commission. I’ve got less than twenty pounds in the bank, for God’s sake! I need the money.”

  Clement drew back in shock. “I didn’t realize. Of course you can stay here until you’ve found another patron—”

  “Are you joking?”

  “Mona, I didn’t lie. I thought I could find the money. I missed you.”

  “I didn’t miss you.” Simon should leave the dining room and slam the door behind him. There was nothing left to say. But he wanted there to be. He wanted to achieve catharsis: to feel purged and purified, a weight lifted. But he was only here, hot and trembling and as angry and unhappy as he’d been before.

  Clement turned abruptly and hurried out of the door he’d come through. Simon did feel light, now. Too light, sickeningly so, as if the person he’d been for the last dozen years had vanished, and left very little behind.

  They’d have to leave Throckmorton at once. What would Maggie think of his rooms in London? How would he be able to sleep without her in the bed next to him? He sensed that empty-eggshell loneliness waiting to hollow him out.

  How was he to get another commission now everyone had left town for the summer?

  He needed to have a drink, talk to Maggie, and pack his trunk, in that order. He couldn’t think about what would come after that.