The Double Wager

by Mary Balogh

  "Good afternoon, cousin," he called affably. I see that it is, as usual, well nigh impossible to get close enough to you to pay one's compliments."

  Henry smiled. "But you always seem to find a way, do you not, Mr. Cranshawe?" she cooed.

  "But, Henry," he continued, sending a sparkling smile in her direction, "you are not going to keep your husband's relative at such a distance, are you, and with a crick in his neck from gazing up at you? I should not refuse the offer of a turn in the park with you."

  Henry's animated expression hid the near desperation that she felt as she looked around the group to see if there was any other man not on horseback, with whom she could claim a prior agreement to drive. There was none.

  "I am afraid, sir, that I must return home soon," she said, returning her gaze to Cranshawe. "My husband and I have an early engagement this evening."

  "Then let me ride with you to the park gates,' he said. "I have something I must tell you."

  Henry bowed her head in unwilling acquiescence. While Cranshawe climbed into the high seat beside her, she laughingly engaged to dance with two of her eager admirers during the Spencer ball to be held on the evening of the following day.

  She expertly turned the grays in the crowded pathway and started them in the direction from which they had come. "To the gateway it is, then, Oliver," she said grimly, staring straight ahead.

  "Oh, come now, my dear," he said, "you need not be so stiff in my presence."

  "I am not your dear, Oliver," Henry replied firmly. "And I cannot imagine anyone in whose presence I more wish to appear stiff."

  He laughed softly. "Do you know, Henry," he said, when I first set out to befriend you, I thought it would be an utter bore. I was quite wrong. You are most delightful. I admire your spirit more than I can say. I look forward to unusual sport when you finally capitulate to me."

  "Unusual sport is right!" she spat out. "You would go away with a few cuts and bruises for your pains, Oliver Cranshawe, if you even tried to behave improperly with me.

  He chuckled again. "Soon now, Henry, you will have to admit that you have no choice," he said. "I offer you an easy way out, do I not? One night spent with me, and I shall give you a signed note to say that all your debt has been paid. You will be free, Henry."

  "Do you think I would let you so much as touch me?" she hissed. "If you imagine that I would ever give myself to you for even one minute, you must have windmills in your head, Oliver."

  He leaned closer to her and lowered his voice, though there was no one within hearing distance. "How do you know that you would not enjoy it, Henry?" he said. "I think your only experience so far has been with Marius, and I have good reason to believe that he would not make much effort to give you pleasure. I, on the other i hand, find that I have a genuine desire to find out what sort of passion you are capable of beneath the bedcovers."

  Henry jerked on the ribbons and the horses drew to a halt. She turned on her companion, fury sparking from her eyes. "How dare you speak to me so!" she cried. "I am not so much in your debt that I have to listen to such indignities."

  "Come away with me, Henry," he said, quite undeterred by her anger. "We will go to France and Italy, and I shall show you what life has to offer a woman of such vitality. "

  "You can go to the devil, Oliver Cranshawe," she said. Then an arrested look came over her face. "What did you mean," she asked "by saying that you have 'good reason' to believe that Marius is not really interested in me?"

  Cranshawe grinned. "I perceive that his opinion matters to you, Henry," he said, "What a shame, my dear. I have it on good authority that Marius married you only as a result of a rather sordid wager."

  "What do you mean?" she demanded, chin jutting forward.

  "It seems he was beginning to feel the need to find some female to breed," he said, flashing her his most brilliant smile, "to squash my hopes, of course. When he publicly announced that he despised all women and that it mattered not to him which female he chose, one of his cronies wagered that he would not, in fact, choose so carelessly. He was to choose himself a bride and marry her within some indecently short time. He won the wager, of course."

  "You are a liar!" Henry cried. "Where did you hear such a stupid story?"

  "Almost from the horse's mouth, my dear," Cranshawe replied. "Are you acquainted with Dick Hanley and his bride? They were sharing a box at the opera with Suzanne Broughton last evening. The wager was made at his bachelor party, it seems."

  "I do not believe one word of what you have said," Henry replied. "You merely wish to discredit Marius in my eyes so that I will more readily comply with your demands."

  Cranshawe laughed. "Henry, I do believe that you love the man, he said. "How very interesting, my dear. I see that we are close to the gates. I shall get down here. You will be hearing from me, Henry. I believe a few days will help you to see matters in a different light. I shall look forward to our eventual encounter. By the way, how do you like the grays?"

  Henry stared stonily at him.

  He smiled. "Marius did well out of the wager, did he not?" he said. "He had been trying for months to purchase them."

  Henry whipped the horses into a trot and turned from the park entrance into the street at a daring pace. I don't believe it, she thought, I won't believe it. But she found it impossible to believe her own denials.

  Philip was feeling rebellious. Manny was insisting that Pen and he stay in the schoolroom and do their lessons. The afternoon before she had refused to allow them to follow Henry when she had gone out alone in her phaeton. He had tried to convince her that his sister was in constant danger from the teeth and from the moneylender's spies, but Manny, for once, had remained firm.

  "The dear duke put his trust in me at a time when I had been dismissed," she had said. "I feel it my responsibility to keep watch over you, dear children, and to make sure that you learn your lessons."

  "But, Manny," Penelope had complained, "we can catch up with all that horrid work once we know that Henry is safe."

  "She will be safe, never fear," Miss Manford had replied firmly. "Philip talked to Mr. Giles this morning and I talked to Mr. Ridley. He assured me that the duke himself is concerned and is doing his best to protect the dear duchess."

  "But, Manny-"

  "That will be all, dear boy," his governess had interrupted. "For the next hour we will converse only in French."

  Penelope had groaned.

  Philip, remembering a conversation with Eversleigh and a narrowly averted thrashing, had decided that it would be ungentlemanly to argue further.

  "Blood and thunder!" had commented Oscar from the floor of his cage.

  Now this morning Philip had escaped for a few minutes on the excuse that he would go to the kitchen for a tray of milk and cakes. He dawdled about the errand, wheedling the cook into letting him sample some jam tarts fresh from the oven, and watching an undergroom polishing the duke's riding boots. It was quite by accident that he arrived in the main hallway with his tray just when a messenger was delivering a small package to the butler and directing that it be placed in the hands of the Duchess of Eversleigh.

  By the time Philip arrived in the schoolroom one minute later, milk from three glasses had been sloshed onto the tray and one cake was looking unappetizingly soggy.

  "Henry is receiving a secret message again," he announced excitedly almost before he could close the door behind him.

  "What is it and who sent it?" Penelope demanded.

  "I don't know, but I mean to try to find out," Philip replied.

  "I bet Mr. Cranshawe is sending her gifts and trying to charm her," Penelope said.

  "More likely that moneylender making demands already, Philip replied.

  "It is probably merely some ribbons that she has had delivered," said Miss Manford, "or some small piece of jewelry she has bought."

  "Well, when she goes out later today," Philip said firmly, "Pen and I are going to go into her room again and see if we can find what it is." />
  "Oh, bless my soul," Miss Manford added, hands waving ineffectually in the air, "do you really think you ought, dear boy?"

  Henry was out riding when the package arrived. She was in a very black mood. She knew that she ran the risk of meeting Oliver Cranshawe, but she did not care. If she saw him, she would gallop away from him. If he persisted in following her, she would ignore him or use her riding crop on him if she had to. But she had had to get out.

  She had made Marius bring her home early from a dinner party the evening -before, pleading a headache. And, indeed, it had not been just an excuse. She had ridden home in the carriage beside her husband in unaccustomed silence. He, too, had made no effort to sustain a conversation. But she had had a feeling, as she gazed out of the window into the darkness, that he watched her from beneath half-closed eyelids. He had accompanied her to the door of her bedchamer and kissed her hand as he said goodnight, with something she might have called tenderness had she not known differently. She had not slept before dawn but had tossed and turned in her bed, in a fever of jumbled thoughts.

  Cranshawe was not in the park. A couple of young men who were- occasionally part of her court looked as if they were about to join her, but she smiled and waved vaguely at them and spurred jet into a canter, and they did not follow.

  Henry felt wretched in the extreme. Until her conversation with Oliver the day before, she had not known just how deeply in love with Marius she was. The knowledge that he had married her so cynically, with no feeling for her at all, except perhaps contempt, hurt like a knife being slowly turned in her chest. For a while she had tried to convince herself that Cranshawe had been lying, but she did not credit him with enough imagination to invent such an ingenious story. It was undoubtedly true.

  It hurt terribly to know that the conditions of her marriage must be widely known. She must be the laughingstock-the little green country girl who had been picked at random because she was young and likely to be a good breeder. He would have chosen a horse, or even a cow, with more care.

  She could not quite understand why, if he had married her only for her reproductive functions, he had not asserted his rights on their wedding night and continually ever since. Probably he had made that wager on impulse and had found himself repulsed when faced with the physical fact of a wife for whom he had no feelings. He had finally taken her, goaded on by anger at her clandestine meeting with his heir. But he had obviously found the experience unpleasant. He seemed to find it preferable to be without an heir of his own issue than to have normal marital relations with his wife.

  Henry wanted to hate him. She did hate him! But she could not stop herself from caring. She had grown to enjoy his companionship, to need his attention and approval. She had come to love him and want his caresses. She had given herself to him completely on that one night they bad had together, and had believed that for him it had been as earth-shattering an experience as it had been for her. It was painful and humiliating to know that it was anger merely that had provoked him and that all he had been feeling was contempt, or at best only a momentary lust. Henry had never wanted a man, had never wanted caresses or tenderness. She had certainly never wanted the dependency of love. Her fall was, therefore, all the harder. She had no defense against the pain of an emotion that she had never experienced before and that she did not understand.

  She did not know what she was going to do. She could not stay with Marius. She would not live with him day by day, aching for every kind word or chance touch. She would not be thus shamed in her own eyes. But what choice had she? She was her husband's property, totally dependent on him for the necessities of life. He had once told her that he would apply for an annulment if she truly wanted one, if she loved Oliver Cranshawe. Would he still be willing? Not an annulment, of course. It was too late for that. But a divorce? It was almost unthinkable. There were only a few instances of divorce in living memory, and the divorced woman was ostracized from society for the rest of her life. Not that that would bother her, Henry thought. But where would she go? What would she do? She had had very little money of her own to start with." That little had all become her husband's when she married.

  Henry's thoughts were interrupted at that point when she noticed that jet's coat was beginning to lather. She realized with guilty dismay, that she had been constantly spurring him on, refusing to walk him for even a short distance. It was as if she had been trying to outdistance her own thoughts.

  She rode her horse to the stables and satisfied herself that the head groom himself would immediately rub down poor jet. She walked to the main doors and into the hall, where she paused to remove her riding hat and leather gloves.

  "I have instructions to deliver this package into your hands at the earliest possible moment, your Grace," the butler said, bowing stiffly from the waist and holding the parcel out to her on a salver.

  Henry took it with a murmured thanks. Drat the man, she thought. Could he not leave her alone even for a day? What now? She went straight to her room and shut the door firmly behind her.

  A couple of minutes later she sat on her bed, feeling the blood draining from her head. She believed she was about to faint. In one cold palm, shining accusingly up at her, lay her sapphire ring. In the other hand she clutched the short note that had accompanied it, written apparently in a disguised hand. Another sheet of paper lay in her lap.

  Henry closed her eyes and let her head hang downward until she felt the blood pounding through her temples again and knew that she would not faint. She put the note down on the bed beside her for a moment and pushed the ring back onto the third finger of her right band. She had never thought that she would be dismayed to see it again so soon. She picked up the paper from her lap. Yes, it was the contract she had signed and left with the moneylender. She really was free of that debt, then. She laughed shakily, but the sound came out very like a sob.

  Henry picked up the note and read it again.

  Your Grace [it said],

  Your debt has been paid in full and your ring

  redeemed. Please do not be afraid. All will be well.

  [There was no signature.]

  Henry closed her eyes again and crumpled the note into a tight wad. It fell to the floor unheeded, to be found later by Philip and Penelope. How had he found out? She had not given him any indication about where she had got the money. And even if he had suspected, how did he know which moneylender? And why had he paid off the debt and sent her the ring and the contract? Did he delight so much in tormenting her?

  One thing was clear, at least. If she had not been entirely in Cranshawe's power before, she most certainly was now. She was more in his debt than ever. The money' he had paid to redeem her loan amounted to much more than the original three thousand pounds. And, in addition to the money she owed him, he now held even more of her secrets. He could expose, not only Giles' secret and her own indiscretion in turning to him for help instead of to her husband, but also the fact that she had dabbled in the underworld of moneylenders. Her reputation would be ruined beyond repair. Marius would never believe in her essential innocence. Not that his good opinion mattered any longer, of course.

  And so Henry's resolve to leave, to disappear somewhere far away from this life that she had ruined so thoroughly, was hardened. If she left Marius, her social standing would be ruined, anyway. Cranshawe would no longer have the power to hurt her. She supposed that he could still hunt her down in order to demand repayment of her debt. It was even conceivable that she would end up in debtors' prison for failure to do so. But she did not believe that he would go that far. He was comfortably rich in his own right, she knew, and she did not think that the money would be an issue with him. It was her ruin and the humiliation of his cousin that were his chief objects. Well- he would have accomplished his goal. She believed that he would leave well enough alone once she had disappeared.

  As for Marius, she did not think he would really care if she disappeared. His pride would be hurt, but his consequence was so great tha
t he would live down the scandal with ease. He would probably be relieved to be out of a marriage that he had entered so impetuously. He would be free to return more openly to his mistress.

  Henry's only really big problem was the twins and Miss Manford. She did not suppose that Marius would keep them on after she left. It would be quite unreasonable to expect him to do so. The twins, of course, would go back to Peter. They would hate it, and she did not blame them, but at least he was their brother. They would not be turned away. They would not lack for anything, except perhaps for the tolerant understanding and yet firm guidance that Marius had given them. But they would survive. They were tough, as she was.

  Manny was not so easily dismissed from her conscience. Henry knew that Peter would not allow her to return to his household. She would have to trust to the compassion of her husband, who had always treated the governess with gentlemanly courtesy. Surely he would help her find another post, or at least provide her with a good reference.

  All that needed to be decided now, Henry thought, was where she was to go and what she was to do. It was not an easy problem to solve. What did a destitute ex-duchess do to provide herself with the necessities of life? She supposed that she would have to try to get herself a position as a governess, though she recalled with dismay her lack of accomplishments. The only other possibility was to try to find some old lady or invalid who wanted a companion. She could not quite picture herself wheeling a crotchety old dear around Bath to take the waters, but beggars cannot be choosers, she decided philosophically.

  In the meantime, while she was waiting around for a suitable position with which to fill the remainder of her life, Henry decided that she would go to Roedean. No one need know. The staff there had known her all her life. They would certainly not turn her away, and if she asked them particularly, they would keep her presence there secret from Peter. It would just be a temporary arrangement, anyway.