“Thank you,” Wraxall said politely, “but was I truly so unexpected?”
“A little,” Talby said ruefully and poured out two glasses from the decanter on the sideboard. He crossed and handed Wraxall a glass, but did not sit back down. “I heard the rumour only this afternoon that you had been seen. Yes, there is a rumour circulating. It originated in Bath, I believe, and it reports that you were seen in company with a companion.”
“Yes, Keithley,” Wraxall replied casually.
Talby’s mind was effectively diverted. “Keithley! How does he go on?”
“Very well, but Robbie can give you a more detailed report when next you see him, for Keithley is at the moment bearing him company.”
Talby sat back down, his composure momentarily shaken. “I see that I am entirely at your disposal, then. Do not hesitate to state the nature of your business,” he said evenly, “for I do not think you have come all this way to enquire after the state of my health.”
“I have just stated the nature of my business,” Wraxall said, taking a sip of the brandy he himself laid down some ten years earlier. “Excellent stuff! Is this the Martelet ’75?”
Talby refreshed himself with a sip. “Why, yes! But I fear that I am unwontedly dull this evening. I have not apprehended the purpose of your visit.”
Wraxall was wearing a most pleasant expression. “I have asked you the name of my father.”
“Your father, fond cousin? We have been over that tedious ground before. But if you insist—dear me, it seems that I am not carrying my snuffbox on my person. How improvident of me! I am unable to offer you any.”
“It is not a habit I cultivate.”
“No? I find it quite delightful. Most satisfactory, and I feel at a loss without it now.”
“Do you? You will remember to take it when next you dress for dinner. However, for my part, I prefer to blow a cloud on occasion.” At Talby’s expression of delicate distaste, he added, “It is just as pleasurable, I have found, and so much more reliable.”
“Ah, yes! I was forgetting that anyone who wins as consistently as you must be constantly wary of offerings from strange boxes.”
“A gamester’s life is most hazardous, and I have noticed that perfumed snuff is often fatal to one’s constitution. But I do not flatter myself that you would have repined, had I died by another’s hand.”
Talby assumed an offended posture. “You wrong me, cousin! The state of your health has always been a prime concern of mine.”
“Your solicitude overwhelms me, but I might interpret that to mean your mind would have been at peace if, since the poison could not dispatch me, the banditti would.”
“Poor Richard! Were you set upon?”
“More than once!” Wraxall replied cheerfully. “You have undoubtedly heard tell of the more stirring set-tos.”
“Do you accuse me of having set them on you? No, no, I am not one to be tempted to guide the hand of Fate.”
“Are you not? I acquit you of wanting to kill me, at any rate. You only wanted to cheat me. And that brings me again to my question.”
“It is rather your mother who cheated you,” Talby said at his gentlest.
“With whom?”
“Giles Ormsby, of course. It’s all in your mother’s diary, dear cousin. I thought we had established that upon your departure years ago. I am profoundly sorry that it troubles you so.”
“Not as much as how the diary came into your hands, and so many years after Mother’s death.”
“Must I repeat that I am an avid family historian? And I am unable to account for your rather, how shall I say, morbid interest in digging up past scandals. But I am an obliging host and will remind you that the diary came into my hands quite by chance about seven years ago. The details are unimportant, but I think it ended up in a box of family letters. I found it as I was going through them and, indiscreet though it was, I began to read it! I soon came to the most interesting passages about your conception, and of course, when your mother wrote that she had every intention of confronting the Fifth Duke with the truth and of demanding a divorce from him so that she could marry her lover, I became quite fascinated!”
Talby stopped. He had rehearsed this story so many times that, as he spoke it, it tasted of truth. “Then, of course, her lover died tragically, and your mother sought to cover her tracks. First, she had to suppress the original birth certificate she had filed in the church with a vicar who, alas, died over fifteen years ago. Then she had to produce a new one that named the Fifth Duke as your father so that you could, in the natural course of things, inherit his estate. With a little searching, I came up with the original birth certificate, which was to secure her divorce and then, as you know, I came straight away to you, knowing how proud you were of the name Wraxall. It did not seem fair to make the material public without at least trying for a graceful resolution.”
Wraxall listened to this with no change of expression. “A most diverting fairy tale, Talby! And so convincing all those years ago when you had the documentation to support you. Yet, at the risk of being an unpleasant visitor, I must take issue with several points, the most crucial being the identity of my father. You and I both know that I am the legitimate heir to Clare.” Wraxall paused. “I have come to demand satisfaction of you.”
The challenge, pleasantly issued, caused Talby to press his lips together in a thin line. Then he was smiling again. “You are wrong, you know. The documents are in my favour, and I think you will agree that a damp morning with twenty yards of cold turf between us will not settle the issue. Duelling is not my style, fond cousin.”
“I do agree, Talby!” Wraxall said promptly. “I am a peaceable man, like yourself, and I do not have the least desire to put a bullet through your heart. But I have some documents of my own, and I propose to gamble with you for them.”
Was Wraxall bluffing? Talby wondered. “Gamble with you, dear Richard?”
“Any game of your choosing,” the challenger offered generously. “You do not really place so much store in my abilities.”
“Au contraire! I understand that one would be a fool to engage in piquet with Mr. Darcy,” Talby said smoothly.
“It is to be a game of your choosing,” Wraxall repeated.
“May I suggest, then, Lansquenet or Vingt-et-un?”
“You astonish me, Talby! A game of pure chance? Do you feel so confident this evening?”
In truth, he did not. Talby sensed a trap, but where and how it was set, he could not fathom. “I am not prepared for a banking game such as Faro,” he said reflectively, and then glanced over at the younger man. “I wonder if you would be averse to Hazard?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WRAXALL FELT LIKE a hungry man who has just sat down before an attractive, well-prepared meal. He showed nothing of it, of course, and simply smiled his gambler’s smile. “I am not opposed to Hazard,” he said noncommittally. He kept his eyes on Talby as the older man rose and went in search of a dice case in a drawer of the writing table.
“Yes,” Talby said, “I thought it might appeal to you. Hazard recommends itself with a nice blend of finesse and luck, yet under the circumstances, I cannot help but feel that there will be a certain awkwardness with the betting and that some of the piquancy of the game may be lost in the absence of any spectators’ side interests.”
Wraxall laughed softly. “Lay your fears to rest, Talby! I do not imagine that you are carrying your notecase on your person, so we shan’t be placing our wagers on the table. If you are agreeable, then, we may play for points, and to add the stimulation that you so aptly observe might otherwise be absent, I suggest that we play for a thousand pounds the point.”
Talby drained the glass in his hand. It shook slightly, and he did not immediately respond.
Wraxall was enjoying himself. “Come, Talby! I know both what my resources are and what yours are, and I think you could play to five hundred points without having to divest yourself of anything but your liquid assets. Of
course, I deeply appreciate the fact that you did not covet my estate in order to run through my wealth, and I certainly do not begrudge you the luxuries that have been appropriate to your station in the past years. I am even inclined to compliment you on some of the improvements that you have overseen on my lands. But do not think to convince me that you cannot afford to play with me.”
“No, of course not,” Talby replied, withdrawing the dice case from the drawer and lingering there a moment. He was infinitely sorry he had never thought also to stow a pistol in one of the desk drawers. “But I am unaccustomed—not being a gambler of your experience, you understand—to play for such stakes. In fact,” he said, tapping one polished fingernail on the cap of the case, which was embellished with a gilded key crossed by an oar tooled in Florentine leather, “I cannot think why I should play for such stakes at all.”
“Because if I lose,” Wraxall said, “I intend to hand over the documents I have in my possession that will disprove your claim to my title and property.”
“Ah! But I am entirely satisfied with the authenticity of the documents upholding my claims. It does occur to me that you are bluffing.”
“You would be the fool I do not think you if that possibility had not occurred to you.”
“Then I repeat, why should I play for such stakes with you?” Talby said.
“Because I have flung down the gauntlet,” Wraxall replied, “you have chosen the weapon, and I refuse to play for anything else.”
“Yes, the challenge! But think, dear cousin! If you possess such documents as you tell me, why do you propose to gamble them away? You have only to produce them to gain your ends, so I should think! No, no, I protest. You are trifling with me.”
Wraxall bit off a short, chilling laugh. “Examine your own motives, Talby, and perhaps you may come to an understanding of mine.”
Talby idly split the dice on a nearby table. The roll came up seven. He looked down at the small cubes whose seven eyes looked blankly back at him and said, as if to himself, “I have thrown a Main. Shall I take that as a portent of success?” Then he looked up and across the room. “I perceive that you have become a hardened gamester.”
“Just so! And, Talby,” the hardened gamester remarked conversationally, “I can detect a loaded set of Hazard ivories merely by holding them.”
Talby regarded his opponent with somewhat exaggerated admiration. “What skills you have acquired!”
Wraxall saw that Talby was determined to be difficult. He needed to bait his hook just a little more. “There is no end to the degree of refinement one attains when one travels in gambling circles comprised of thieves and indigent commedianti,” he said, and was satisfied that he had at last commanded all of Talby’s interest. He continued smoothly, “Cheating has become so prevalent that one must despair that all honourable play is in jeopardy. This is unhappily the case particularly in Italy. But I do not wish to drone on about the disheartening decadence that reigns in foreign capitals. Not while I am in England, where honour still flourishes! It is refreshing to be once again amongst the most sporting race of men! And this is what is so puzzling about your behaviour. Once having accepted a challenge, I find it singular that you balk at the stakes, and I am afraid I do not understand your attempt—for I perceive it as such—to cry off! But perhaps I have misinterpreted your desire to, er, discuss the issue and thereby misjudge your sense of sportsmanship, which I do not doubt is above reproach. If so, I make you my most abject apologies.”
Talby was impervious to this slight to his honour. He had never valued gentlemanly sportmanship, and it was patent that Wraxall’s object was to ruin him. However, Wraxall had uttered the magic word commedianti, and Talby found that he could not draw back.
“You have wronged me!” Talby exclaimed gently.
“Pray, absolve me,” Wraxall replied with an ironic bow of his head.
“I do, and readily! By your own admission, the gambling ethic of the coterie you have lately frequented is not of the highest calibre. I could not help but hesitate to be drawn into, shall we say, unclear waters.”
Wraxall felt no pique at the insult and knew how to turn it to good account. “How dull of me, to be sure! It should have occurred to me that my scruples would be called into question after so many years amongst foreigners, and right you are to do so! As a measure of good faith, I shall advance the stipulation that the caster may not refuse a bet.”
Talby’s brows raised. He had a notion that he was stepping deeper into the trap. “But that stipulation works both ways, dear Richard,” he pointed out.
“We find our safeguards where we may,” was Wraxall’s philosophy. “As I have said, I have much experience with mechanics and cheaters. Shall we play?”
Talby was obliged to let that comment pass. “By all means. Do you roll for caster?”
Wraxall gestured in a grand manner. “I concede to you the honour. Shall we determine the points to be counted as the sum of the Main and the Chance? That is, of course, the custom in the most elevated play but, then, I am sure that you are aware of that.”
Talby was not, but he had no grounds on which to cavil. The play began. He soon cast a Main Point of five and fortunately did not lose while rolling for the Chance Point, which turned up seven. The odds in the caster’s favour were good. Wraxall faded him modestly. Despite the odds, Talby passed the dice to his opponent when he eventually lost by reproducing the five.
Wraxall took the dice and cast them against the raised lip of the table. “Quatre-trey,” he said, after discarding successive rolls of twelve and three. Then, some moments later, “Cinque-ace.” Talby faded him accordingly, though somewhat indecisively, and gained little when Wraxall eventually reproduced the seven. The little win encouraged Talby to nourish hope about the ultimate outcome of the game.
The hope flared up, flickered a while, and then was extinguished altogether. The hope was born when Talby discovered that Wraxall was no more able to control the points produced by the roll of the dice than any other mortal. Talby chided himself for having endowed his cousin with some special gift that made him invincible. His dice fell this way and that, and were as subject to the whims of Dame Fortune as Talby’s own casts. However, as the play progressed, Talby discovered, as had every other man who had come up against the cool Mr. Darcy, that as little as the gamester controlled Blind Luck, neither was he her slave, and that the winner of an encounter was rarely determined by the toss of the dice or the turn of the cards.
Hardly the week before, Wraxall had claimed his game to be Hazard, not because he had a mastery of it, but because it held an incalculable element that fascinated him. He knew that the secret of Hazard was in the betting, and it had not taken him more than five minutes to rate Talby’s abilities and to dismiss them as average. Wraxall felt in particularly good form this evening, for he had hit his gambler’s stride. As the candles burned down slowly to their sockets and the ivory cubes rattled ceaselessly on polished wood, Wraxall saw, rather than calculated, the most advantageous wager based on the two points. He left nothing to chance, he was winning steadily, and he was conscious as well of the tightening of Talby’s nerves.
However, Wraxall was no longer playing against Talby. He had now pitted himself against the odds. Although his calm remained imperturbable, little was left of the poised and polished gamester well known in Italian gambling hells. From the beginning, he diced, declared and dominated with an intensity that allowed no room for the pleasantness that usually characterized his play. He was aware that those who knew him as Mr. Darcy would have been shocked, and perhaps horrified, to have witnessed the brutal beating he was dealing his opponent; and if his opponent had begged for mercy, he would have refused it. This Richard Wraxall was certainly not the same carefree man whom Talby had packed off to the Continent six-and-a-half years previous. Wraxall had said that to regain his position he would stop short of murder, but he knew that he was dealing Talby a form of death now, while he felt himself coming back to life.
> Eventually Talby cast first a seven and then, after several ineligible attempts, a four.
Wraxall had been waiting some time for such odds. He turned to Talby. “I offer you double or nothing,” he said without emotion, “on a bet of seven.”
Talby licked dry lips and met Wraxall’s cold gaze. He could not refuse the fader’s challenge. “Do you intend to break me, dear Richard?” he managed with far less than his usual grace.
“You must have known my intentions from the moment you saw me in this room.”
“Ah! But I may win this bet, and then where will you be?”
“You may. Shall I tell you the odds against it?”
“Pray do not, I beg of you, dear cousin! What are the odds on any given throw of the dice? It is like a fifty-percent chance of rain on the morrow. If it does not rain, the chances dwindle to zero percent, while if it does rain, the chances increase to one hundred.”
Wraxall did not reply.
Talby cast the dice. It was over with no suspense. The coup de grâce came swiftly, neatly, bloodlessly. He had rolled a seven.
“I am done up,” Talby said simply, with his weary smile, for the mask had not yet dropped.
“Yes,” Wraxall agreed, feeling neither triumph nor relief but simply the end of a strange, exciting, lonely, glamorous episode of his life.
Talby contemplated his fate at length. “I suppose,” he said grimly, “you have put me through this as a dramatic prelude to the presentation of your lawful birth certificate.”
“Do you imply that the one stating my mother’s lover as my father is not the lawful one?”
Talby looked up suddenly. He did not attempt to hide the viciousness that sprang from behind his mask of suavity. “You do not intend to show me the documents you claimed were in your possession?”
“I intend nothing of the kind,” Wraxall informed him.
“Then how do I know they exist?”
“You are better able to answer that than I.”
“Then we are back where we started, dear cousin,” Talby said in a steely voice coated with sugar. “It is all an elaborate bluff.”
Julie Tetel Andresen Page 21