Gambler's Daughter

by Ruth Owen

  Honestly, ‘tis like beating one’s head against a stone wall!

  “For the last time, I do not love Charles.”

  “But Cassie stumbled to it as well as I, and we could not both be mistaken. I saw it in your eyes—when you watched Charles bend over my brother in his sickbed.”

  Rina didn’t doubt that Amy had seen love in her eyes, but that emotion had been for the earl. Lord, this ball of twine was getting more tangled by the minute. “I cannot speak to what you saw,” she said carefully, “but I promise you on my dear mother’s grave that I never cared for Charles as anything more than a friend. And I am equally certain that he has never loved me.”

  For a long moment Amy say absolutely still. Then, in a kaleidoscope of motion, she bounced up, sat down, bounced up again, gave Rina a tremendous hug, then twirled around like a top. “Oh, this is wonderful! Wonder—no, this is disastrous,” she exclaimed, coming to a sudden stop. “Because of my misery I have been horrible to both him and you these past few days. How can he ever forgive me?”

  “I know he will, because I have forgiven you. I am sure Charles will understand completely when you tell him how you feel.”

  “But how can I tell him? What should I say? I do not even know if he loves me,” Amy cried as she dropped to the bench. “Cousin, you must help me think of a ploy—something to test his heart. My happiness depends on it.”

  Rina had already decided not to get involved in any more of the family’s personal affairs. The risk to her safety was too high. But the desperate look in Amy’s eyes broke her heart. And Rina knew all too well what it meant to suffer from a hopeless, helpless love.

  “All right,” she sighed. “Here is what you must do. First, get a good night’s sleep, to remove the tired shadows from under your eyes. Now, it is my understanding that Dr. Williams will be away until Monday purchasing medical supplies in Truro. But the moment he returns you must go to his infirmary and tell him exactly how you feel.”

  Amy blanched. “You mean, just tell him? But I cannot. What if he does not return my feelings? I would die, simply die.”

  “Better to die than to live not knowing the truth. You will not have to endure a life of wondering if he cares for you, aching to know his heart, torturing yourself over whether he can love you in spite of all the terrible things you have done—” Rina stopped abruptly, and cleared her throat. “Yes, well, you see the way of it. You must tell him the truth, or you shall never know the truth yourself. And, when you do tell him, know that all my prayers and hopes go with you.”

  “Yes, you are right,” Amy acknowledged. ” ‘Tis the only way. I must tell him the truth. And I must wear my prettiest dress. And ribbons—my periwinkle grosgrain, I think. And my ivory combs—he told me once that he admired them. And my—”

  Rina laughed. She almost felt sorry for the strait-laced doctor—Wellington himself would not have stood a chance against this beautiful dynamo. “I do not think Charles will care if you wear sackcloth and ashes. Ivory combs and ribbons are not what makes a man fall in love.”

  “No, but if he isn’t quite in love with me, it will not hurt to give him some encouragement.” She gave Rina a tremendous bear hug. “When I was younger, I used to wish that God had given me a sister. If he had given me one, you are exactly the person I would have wished for.”

  “And I you,” murmured Sabrina as she watched Amy dance off to plot her campaign. She loved her with all her heart, and hoped Charles would have the sense to see that Amy was the best thing that had ever happened to him. It would be nice to know that some romances could end happily ever after.

  Wearily, Sabrina rose to her feet. It had been quite an afternoon. In the space of a few hours she had managed to lie to Cassie, make an enemy of Fitzroy, and advise Amy to follow the bold course of her heart. And laced through it all was her love for Edward—the strange, invisible bond they shared that grew stronger with every heartbeat, but which would sever the instant he learned the truth about her.

  “Quite an afternoon,” she murmured as she walked through the arbor toward the steps that led up to the terrace. “Well, at least there is one certainty. Things cannot possibly get any more complicated than they already—”

  Her words faltered as her gaze fell on a slip of paper that was stuck in the lattice of the arbor. She glanced around, but no one was in sight, save two laborers who had just come out to wash the windows. They tipped their caps to her and she waved back, grateful that they were too far away to see her anxiety.

  With a shaking hand she extracted the note from the arbor. It was not signed, but she recognized the hand instantly. Quinn’s.

  Midnight. The stables.

  She’d been wrong. Suddenly things had become a good deal more complicated.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The heavy stable door swung open with a faint creak of protest. Sabrina cast a swift look behind her, then pushed back her unbound hair and pulled her cloak closer around her night-shift.

  The place seemed deserted. Her bare feet made hardly a whisper on the floor. The air was filled with the smells of damp hay and warm horses, and the sounds of soft whinnies and restless hooves pawing straw. A sharp jangle drew her gaze to a large nearby stall, where the earl’s black stallion Brutus shook his head, demanding attention. Grinning, she walked over to the big horse and patted his velvet nose. “There, there,” she cooed softly. “You’re as proud as your master—and just as handsome.”

  Childhood memories flooded back to her, of a night when her father had taken her with him to his stables to tend a sick horse. She could still remember the soft knickers of pleasure when she scratched the mare’s ears, and the huge, brown eyes that looked up at her with such faith and trust. Her father had marveled at the way she gentled the nervous creatures with a single touch. You’ve a bonny gift for healing, Rina-lass, he’d told her. And I’m that proud of you for it.

  “It took ya long enough,” a voice behind her quipped.

  She spun around. Quinn sat astride an old saddle that had been thrown over a sawhorse, with his back leaning against the iron stall railing behind it, a shaft of moonlight knifing across him.

  Rina hurried to her friend. “I came as soon as I could. I had to wait until everyone was asleep.”

  “Aye, and it’s the second time you’ve left me cooling me heels for the better part of an hour.”

  Without waiting for a response he slid off the saddle and lit a single tallow candle. The flame flickered in a faint draft, throwing eerie shadows on the walls. “Well, at least you’re here now. I—mercy, gel, are you wearing your night-shift?”

  Sabrina blushed as she glanced down at the fringe of linen that peeped out from under the hem of her cloak. “I did not want to risk a maidservant coming by my room and finding me dressed. ‘Twould have looked suspicious.”

  Quinn rubbed his chin. “That it would. That’s quick thinkin’, lass. You may have a future in larceny after all.”

  Rina profoundly hoped not, but she kept the thought to herself. “I found your note, Quinn, you took a terrible risk leaving it in such a public place.”

  “I slipped it in just before you started talkin’ with that chatterbox girl. ‘Twas risky, I know, but it was a chance I had to take. You had to know: Your cover’s been queered.”

  Sabrina went numb. She’d known this had to happen someday. Quinn’s background story of Prudence’s former life was never intended to last forever. But there was a part of her that had hoped, that had dreamed, that this day would never come.

  Quinn saw her distress, and apparently misread it. He took her hand and patted it gently. “Now, don’t blame yourself. It weren’t you—just some clerk in Dublin let out more than he should in his cups. I knew I should’ve paid for his boss. Well, it’s all water under the bridge and that’s a fact. We’ve got ten days before the tale unravels—a fortnight if we’re lucky. So we’ve got to pinch the Dutchman before the week’s out.”

  “But how? The dowager keeps it locked in a safe hi
dden in her rooms. Unless Lady Penelope takes the necklace out herself and hands it to me, I cannot get at it.”

  “Darlin’, that’s why they call me the Jack o’ Diamonds,” he bragged. “Trevelyan’s men ain’t the only ones who can buy a pint to loosen a tongue. This past week I hunted down a former footman from Ravenshold. Heard he might know somethin’ to our advantage—and that he had no love for the Trevelyans. Well, I pulled an ace from the deck to be sure. Seems they offed him sudden-like for weeing in the prize roses, even though it probably did ‘em good. Anyway, the bloke can’t hold his liquor worth a damn so I got ‘im talking. And what he told me was worth every drop I bought ‘im.”

  “He told you where the safe is?”

  “Better’n that. He told me the bleedin’ combination! Once he helped her nibs open the safe when the door got stuck, and read the numbers over her shoulder. Not that the secret did him much good—the dowager’s rooms got more maids hovering around them than a hive has bees. Anyone who isn’t supposed to be there would be spotted in a snap. That’s where you come in, lass. You can slip up to get her some do-da or such she forgot. Then you could nick the sparklers and be out the door before a bloke can say ‘jacks over kings.’ ”

  Quinn took a slip of paper from his waistcoat and slipped it into her cloak pocket. “Here’s the combination. It’ll work, by glory. I can feel it in my bones!”

  It would work. Rina’s instincts told her the scheme was a winner. But she didn’t share her partner’s enthusiasm. The thought of betraying the people she loved brought a lump to her throat. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a choice.

  She picked up a bit of brittle straw and twirled it between her fingers. “So when do I steal it?”

  “Saturday. I know that’s cuttin’ things a might fine since it’s only a few days away, but it’s the day when most of the servants is off. Ravenshold will be as deserted as it’s ever going to get. We’ll make our moves then. A red queen to trump a bloody black king.”

  Sabrina had never heard him sound so cold, so completely soulless. Suddenly she realized how very little she really knew about her father’s old mate. “Quinn, I know you want the necklace for its price, but there is more to it than that. You want revenge. Why do you hate the earl so much?”

  At first she wasn’t sure if he’d heard her. He stared at the candle, his expression so icy that the reflection of the flickering light in his eyes seemed to be the only warmth in him. “Because there’s blood on his family’s hands, my girl. Her blood. The Black Earl of Trevelyan caused the death of the only woman I ever loved.”

  For a long moment Sabrina could only stare, too stunned to move, almost too stunned to breathe. Edward, a murderer? And the victim Quinn’s love? She shook her head in confusion, trying to take in both pieces of information. “I know what it is to lose someone you love, and I know there’s no clean healing for it. But you’re wrong to blame the earl. He could not kill anyone—”

  “His blood caused her death as surely as he’d stuck the blade through her heart with his own hands. My sweet, shy, trusting Lottie—” He fell silent as the crushing wave of loss washed over him. “I should have told you from the first. I meant to. But I was afeard you wouldn’t play your part so well if you knew. Lottie—her full name were Charlotte Winthrope. She’s mother to the bairn whose place you took.”

  Rina clutched the locket she always wore around her neck. She’d always wondered how Quinn had come by the locket, and how he knew so many of the details of Prudence’s early life. Still, she’d never suspected that he actually knew the girl—or that he’d been part of the story rather than just a man who’d stumbled upon a tragic tale and turned it to his advantage. “But Prudence and her parents died when their house caught fire. You told me so yourself.”

  “That were a lie, girl. Jesus, I’ve told so many of ‘em, it’s hard to ken the truth anymore. But I did love Lottie, and the Trevelyans did cause her death.” He suddenly looked much older than his forty-odd years. “I expect I’d better start at the beginning.”

  The tale spooled out, slow and sad as an Irish ballad. After Quinn had split with Rina’s father he’d kicked around the continent for a few more years, running games when he could and doing odd jobs when he couldn’t. he had ended up in Venice, as a valet for a gentleman in the diplomatic service, Sir Anthony Winthrope. His employer proved to be a vulgar brute, given to lewd acts and drunken fits. “He valued no one and nothing save his own sordid pleasures,” Quinn bit out, his voice carrying a disgust that the years had not diminished. “I would have left the sod a dozen times over. But I couldn’t. see, sometimes in his cups he’d take out his rages on his young wife, and I was the only who dared get between ‘em.”

  Sabrina knew what some men were capable of, and her heart went out to the poor young woman who had been married to one of them. “Why didn’t Charlotte leave him?”

  “She was afeared to. For all his vices her husband was a powerful man, and he’d threatened to keep the child if she left him. She had no friends in the foreign town, and no blood kin save the Trevelyans, what she hadn’t seen in years. She was that alone in the world until I showed up. I never touched her, and nothin’ passed between us that we couldn’t stand before the Almighty and confess with a clear conscience. But I loved that sweet girl with everything in me. And I could no more watch him squeeze the life out of her gentle, decent soul than I could sprout wings and fly.

  “It were risky for both of us—her husband had eyes everywhere. But we made our plans, and one night I spirited her and her daughter away and put ‘em on a ship bound for England. On the dock, she gave me the locket with Pru’s picture, as a keepsake, like. Then she kissed me bold as brass, and said that when all this was past, she meant for us to wed. I told her she was daft—I was a gambler and no bloody good.” A sweet, crooked smile crossed his face as he recalled the memory. “But my Lottie, she said I were the bravest man she’d ever known. Me—a no-account con with half a crown in me pocket. As the ship cast off she and Pru stood on the deck, smiling and waving, and here was me standin’ on the docks blubberin’ like a moon calf. It was the grandest moment of my life.”

  Rina reached out and gave his hand a quick squeeze. “She loved you, Quinn.”

  “That she did, for all the good it did her. Cer’ain, it would’ve been better if I’d tied a millstone round her neck and tossed her down a well than put her on that ship. Gave us hope, it did. We didn’t know the game was already lost.”

  He leaned against the saddle he’d been sitting on, his shoulders bent as if under an immeasurable weight. “You know most of the rest. She stayed at Ravenshold some six weeks. I worked the coast towns, making scratch fast as I could, so’s I could make a home for her and Prudence when the time came. She wrote me regular, telling me about the kindness of her cousins and grandmother, and especially the earl—the da of the one you know. I thought the dice was finally rolling our way. Then her letters stopped. I knew she wouldn’t ‘a quit on her own, so I hightailed it back to Venice. Got there at midnight and stormed into Sir Anthony’s house, but I was too bloody late.”

  “I am so sorry, Quinn. You don’t have to go on.”

  “I do. For her…and for you. He’d gone after both of them in a drunken rage, but my brave girl had used the last of her strength to shove a blade through his evil heart. The little girl was gone, but Lottie had a flicker of life left in her. I held her close, and with her last breath she told me how the old earl had betrayed her to her husband. She’d told him she meant to marry a commoner. Made him furious. Said he wouldn’t let her disgrace the noble Trevelyan name, as if her pig of a husband weren’t a far worse disgrace. After she was gone I set a torch to the house, so that her sweet name wouldn’t be fouled by scandal. I could give her that, at least.”

  Quinn’s tale was at an end, but in Rina’s heart she knew that the story would never truly be over for him. Or for her. Stepping into Prudence’s life had given her a strange kinship to the long-dead girl, and to find o
ut that she’d died so suddenly, and so very tragically—well, in an odd way Rina almost felt as if a part of herself had died. “You gave her more than you know, Quinn. You loved her, and that is the greatest gift any man can give to a woman. You can cherish that memory forever.”

  “I don’t want a memory. I want her. I want her sittin’ by the fire mending socks, and me smoking a pipe, and young Prudence playing with her dolls on the hearthrug. I want all the days of all the years that her bastard husband and the bloody earl robbed from us. And I mean to take every minute of those years out of Trevelyan’s hide!”

  Sabrina understood his anger. She also saw that it was misplaced. “You are right to hate Sir Anthony, and the Trevelyan earl who betrayed your Charlotte. ‘Tis monstrous what they did. But the current lord is nothing like his father.”

  Quinn cut her a sharp look. “Don’t be daft, girl. They’re aristos, all of ‘em cut from the same cloth. They care for nothin’ but their own soddin’ kind.”

  Rina shook her head. “The Trevelyans are not like that. The earl is a good and honorable man.”