by Ayles, Abby
She did not see Cora or Lord Harrison among the crowd. But then, she might not have recognized them if she had. Lord Harrison she wouldn’t see until she entered the card room. Even then they must pretend to be strangers. No one could suspect that he had tutored her.
Cora she wouldn’t see until she grabbed her to change her dress. It wouldn’t do to be seen together either just in case someone noticed them both missing at the same time and made the connection between Regina and the mysterious red-haired woman in white.
It was appropriate, Regina thought, that she would be wearing that color. White was for spirits and the otherworldly. She would be like that to Lord Pettifer: a woman with no name and no title and no background. A woman that was there in front of him and yet did not exist.
It was rather poetic.
Remembering her bet with Lord Harrison, Regina made her way through dinner and the first few dances. She conversed with everyone that she could. At first she stuck close to her sisters but as time went on she drifted farther away from them.
Part of this was necessity. They couldn’t notice the moment that she vanished. Part of this was just how the ball was. It was large, and more people, scads of them, were arriving after the dinner. It was easy to get separated in a mob such as this.
But part of it was that Regina didn’t mind being separated from her sisters. She actually felt as though she could hold her own without them. She didn’t need them for a safety net.
It was a liberating and giddy feeling. She could do this, she thought. She was doing this. Never had she been so happy to lose a bet.
People spoke with her. Most of them obviously guessed who she was given their inquiries after the health of her family, ‘especially her elder sisters’. And yet none of them scorned her.
Her time with Lord Harrison and Cora, it seemed, had in fact emboldened her. She talked gaily and freely. There were times when she had to stop herself from making a misstep or when she found herself at a loss for words. And there were certainly times when she felt it was all too much and she had to retreat outside to get some fresh air and calm her nerves.
But people welcomed her. It was more than she could have anticipated. She was not the mouse that she had thought she was, and it seemed that once she knew it, everyone else knew it as well.
Society was a fickle thing. She had seen how it praised her mother on one side and then gossiped about her possible affair on the other. She had seen people express sympathy for her father and then turn around and take advantage of his addiction.
But in this, society’s fickleness was in her favor. She stood up boldly and all but announced that she should be taken seriously, that she did in fact know how to dance and to converse.
And once she did that, they believed her. It was as though she had never been timid or embarrassed in the first place.
After an hour or two had passed, she felt a hand on her elbow. She turned, and found herself staring into the face of a woman in a black dress.
Regina smiled. Only Lady Cora would dare to wear a black dress, even at a masquerade ball.
“And just what are you mourning?” Regina asked.
Lady Cora laughed. “The death of my sanity. Or perhaps the death of your former self, Miss Regina. You are quite changed since I first saw you. Now we see what the power of real friendship can do for a woman.”
She offered her arm to Regina. “Come. They have just begun to set up to play. We must get you ready.”
Regina took her arm and allowed herself to be led off from the main hall and up the steps to one of the bedrooms.
Inside sat a maid, ready to assist. Lady Cora threw off her mask so that she might see clearly and help Regina. “Turn around. We must make haste.”
Regina allowed herself to be quickly undressed, and then redressed in her second gown. The maid undid all of Bridget’s hard work on Regina’s hair and then did it up again in a different fashion. She even added small white pearls to it so that her hair seemed to have a nest of stars in it.
“Why on earth are there so many buttons,” Cora grumbled, doing up Regina’s dress.
“It is only to vex you, I am certain,” Regina replied teasingly.
Then the mask was settled upon her face and there was nothing else for it.
Cora stepped back. “You are a wonder,” she admitted. “I think you would quite steal the ball away from the other women if they saw you.”
“There will be time for that later,” Regina replied. “We have to go to the game.”
Cora nodded. She took Regina’s arm yet again and guided her out of the bedroom, down the hall, and around several times until Regina felt herself quite lost.
“They are in here,” Cora said, indicating a study on the ground floor which they had got to by the back way.
Cora turned and placed her hands on Regina’s shoulders. “Now, my dear, do not be afraid. They are merely men. You are more.”
Then she opened the door.
Regina took a deep breath.
And she entered.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The assembled men were talking quietly and amicably amongst themselves. They were scattered about the room, twenty of them, all dressed in their finest and wearing their masks.
All talk ceased the moment they saw her.
For a moment, all was still. The men stared at Regina. Regina stared back at them. She resolved to not be the first to break the silence.
Part of that might have been due to her not being able to breathe properly. She was here now. Here, with the men, with a mask on. She could still technically flee the room if she wished. There was still time for that.
But she couldn’t. She felt frozen still, pinned like a butterfly to that spot in the floor. Her heart fluttered in her chest, which felt oddly tight. She was breathing—she knew that she must be—yet it felt like she couldn’t draw enough air.
She had to calm down. Regina sucked in a great breath and forced herself to hold it. Then she slowly let it out. She did it again. The frozen, lightheaded feeling began to fade. It began to feel like she could breathe properly again.
Regina took a moment to have a proper look about the room. She could not recognize most of the men with their masks on but she did recognize Lord Harrison. It had been foolish of her, she thought, to suppose that she would not know him. Something as simple as a paper mask could not hide him from her.
She knew his bearing. She knew his hair color. She knew the shape of his jaw and the bow of his lips. She knew his preferred style of dress. And she knew his eyes, blue and warm and piercing, staring at her like he could read her soul.
He was over to the side, talking to a shorter man. Regina thought that the other man might be Mr. Denny but she could not be certain.
She also knew Lord Pettifer.
He was seated at the card table of course. But it was his smile that she remembered. It was the same awful, predatory smile he had shown when he had bested her father. It was the smile of a predator who had has just eaten until it cannot even move and then licks the blood off its maw.
Regina’s anger flared up. She wished to smack him.
“How can I help you, Miss?”
It was Lord Morrison. Regina recognized his voice. And of course, as the host, he must come forward.
For a moment she completely forgot what to say or how to say it. She almost let out a kind of squeak. Then she remembered herself.
“I am here to play,” Regina said. Her voice carried the accent that Lord Quentin had taught her.
All the men glanced at one another. It was plain to see that they did not know what to do with her.
“She can’t,” one man said.
“And why not?” Someone else added. “It’s the masquerade. Anything goes, and all of that, wasn’t that what you said earlier Daniels?”
Some of the men nodded, looking at one another with a gleam in their eyes that their masks could not hide. Regina drew herself up. She would not be seen as an easy target by them.
; Not all of the men seemed convinced by their compatriot’s argument, however. They looked at Regina suspiciously. Regina could see the fingers twitching on one or two of them. She wondered if they were going to stride forward and yank off her mask, exposing her, sending her away for being a foolish, rebellious girl.
“I say that we let her play as well,” Lord Pettifer said. He was smirking. He thought that he had found easy prey.
The other men shuffled their feet and looked at one another. Regina could read the nervousness in their twitching mouths and their stiff limbs. None of them wanted to contradict Lord Pettifer, it seemed. Regina wondered how many of them owed Lord Pettifer in some way, same as her father did.
When no one contradicted Lord Pettifer, his smirk broadened. He looked at Regina with a gleam in his eyes. Already he was overconfident. That was good.
Regina focused on her anger in order to keep the smile off of her face. Yes. She would play. And she would destroy him.
Lord Morrison seemed torn for a moment. It was still his house and ultimately still his word on what was allowed and what was not. He looked at her, and for a moment, Regina thought he might recognize her. The Morrisons had been great friends of her family for years. If she could recognize Lord Harrison even with his mask, surely it was not impossible for Lord Morrison to recognize the girl whose family he had been entertaining for so many years.
Regina felt that lightheaded feeling returning. Lord Morrison looked her up and down. Would he know her? Would he turn her away if he did? Escort her out? Expose her?
Regina forced herself to look him in the eye. She met his gaze and did not flinch when he looked directly into her face. He looked a little resigned but not angry or surprised.
Then, with a sigh, he stepped back. “If someone would bring a chair for the lady?”
Regina had to remind herself to stay upright and proper and not to slump down in relief. He had not recognized her. She could play.
She sat down in the proferred chair and settled herself. She could feel that everyone was watching her now. She actually wanted them to. She wanted everyone to bear witness to what was about to happen.
For a wild moment, then, panic seized her. It was like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water on her head. What was she doing? How could she possibly pull this off? She was about to disgrace herself beyond reason and lose everything.
Then she got a hold of herself. This was no way to act. She had to win this and she was not going to let the fear have its way with her. She remembered what Cora had said. These were just men, really. Just men.
Lord Pettifer was the dealer to start with. Regina did not recognize any of the other men. Had their faces been exposed, Lord Harrison had told her, he should have warned her how each man played. But with her unable to recognize them, she would have to rely upon her ability to read them while they played.
There were eight of them to start out with: Regina, Lord Pettifer, and then six others. It was a good number for playing a game of loo with large stakes. For ruining Lord Pettifer, not so much. Regina would have to find a way to get the others out of the card game while keeping Lord Pettifer in and not losing it all herself.
Lord Pettifer shuffled the cards and dealt them out. Regina looked at her cards and breathed slowly.
She looked around at the card players. She would play it safe this first hand so that she could get a feel for how they all operated and then she would start to get more aggressive.
Regina focused on her breathing as they began to play. She could do this. She could do this. She could do this.
And then she found out—she could.
In the first round she played it safe. She watched the others as they played—that one gentleman, two to the left from Lord Pettifer, would tap his middle finger nervously when he had a bad hand.
The player directly on her left, he was raising immediately, putting too much money into the pot. She could see the strain around his eyes—he was bluffing.
None of these men, Regina thought, were as good as Lord Harrison. They weren’t even as good as Cora. All right then.
She knew this. She understood what was going on. She could read the players by their nervous ticks and the way their eyes moved and the expressions on their faces. She understood the cards and the different hands and possibilities and how to bet.
The one thing she wasn’t sure that she knew was if she could bluff.
It was something that Lord Harrison had often told her she needed to work on. Cora had noted it as well. Regina was not good at lying. If she had a bad hand at the end and she was up against Lord Pettifer…
No, she would not think about that. If she thought about how she failed, she reminded herself, then she would fail. She had to fake her confidence, Cora had often instructed her. If she acted confident, then others would believe it, and eventually it would become true.
She played, and played, and played. One gentleman, she saw, was playing it too safe. She would have to draw him out by increasing the pot to the point where he could no longer safely bet. Another was chewing his lip when he had a good hand—he was nervous the tide would turn against him. It was an odd tick, as most men showed their nerves when they had a bad hand, but Regina was able to figure it out.
Regina affected a nervous habit of her own. She stroked the back of her cards when she had a good hand. When she had a bad one, she rolled her shoulders, just slightly.
It might not be enough to throw off the less experienced players. But then, she would throw those players off herself. It was the better players who would notice and throw themselves on the pyre by ministerpreting her.
The other men began dropping out. It was Loo, but with an unlimited pot. Regina could hardly believe the amount of money exchanging hands. It was flowing back and forth like a river that kept changing course. Regina had cash, given to her by Lord Harrison, that she used to play with. It would all be returned to him at the end of the night of course—provided that she was able to win it all back.
She could practically hear his voice in her head, telling her what to do. Her back was to him but she could feel his eyes upon her as surely as if his gaze were the touch of his hand. It made her feel safe, to know that he was there and silently encouraging her.
As the pot grew, some men became reckless. They bet when they should have folded. They continued on when they should have walked away. For the first time Regina could see firsthand the fever of gambling upon them.
It was terrifying in a way. It was almost as if these men were seized by some spirit that took a hold of them and made them play. They were men possessed.
Regina just tried to focus on her own cards and on her end goal. Some men, she noticed, were just doing this for the thrill of the gamble. They didn’t care about the cards, not really, and they didn’t care about playing well. But others were good. They wanted to win and they enjoyed the skill of the game, such as it was, although there was always a fair bit of luck involved in a game such as Loo.
Was this what her father had been like when he had played? She could see the tightness in the lines of the men’s faces—what of their faces she could see, anyway. There was a wild look in their eyes.
It made her want to get out of the way, like she was standing in the path of a runaway horse. Instead, she kept playing.
If she could just keep her head while everyone else was losing theirs, she’d be fine. But it was harder than she had anticipated not to get caught up in the fervor of it.
Everyone was so intense in a way that Lord Harrison and Cora simply could not replicate. Regina could all but taste the desperation in the air. It was a struggle to stay calm when everyone around her seemed to be the opposite.
The men standing around and watching didn’t help. They were constantly muttering to one another and making whispered observations. Their enthusiasm in watching and their predictions only added to the intensity and risk of the game.
Focus, Regina reminded herself. None of them matter. Only Lord Petti
fer.
She squared her shoulders and imagined there was a book balanced on her head, the way that Cora had made her practice nearly all of one afternoon. She was confident. She knew what she was doing. If she said it, if she believed it, these men around her would as well.
Time seemed to both drag on and to have no meaning at all. There didn’t appear to be any clocks in the room and if there were she couldn’t see them from where she was sitting. She didn’t even really bother to look up. All of her attention was on the men around her and the cards in front of her.
Mostly it was on Lord Pettifer.
It was clear that he thought her an amusement at best. He didn’t consider her a very serious competitor. At least, not at first.
Then she started winning.
There were three men left besides herself and Lord Pettifer when she looked down at her cards—and then had to keep herself from alarmingly looking over at Lord Harrison out of habit.
She had a good hand. In fact, going by everyone’s tells, she had the best hand.
When she played her cards and raked in her part of the pot for that round, she had to keep herself from screaming. Whether it was in fear or delight, she couldn’t tell. She had the most out of all of them, she was—she was winning.
Regina had to hold in her gasp as she realized that she was actually doing better than all of the other men. She wasn’t just doing better than some of them. She was the current best player, at least going by the pot.
She felt torn between yelling with triumph and running out the door to hide for a few hours. Days. Weeks. But she certainly couldn’t do anything like that.
Now that she was winning, she had to use it to bait Lord Pettifer. She had to finish eliminating the other men and then get Lord Pettifer to overextend himself.
To her surprise, it actually took a while for the men to notice that she was winning. They hadn’t thought for even a moment that she could be a serious threat to them. When she started to take their money they actually didn’t seem to even really see it. It just… went over their heads, almost.
But they couldn’t avoid the truth forever, no matter how uncomfortable of a truth it was for them. Eventually, they saw. They saw that they were getting thoroughly beaten by a young and mysterious woman whose name they didn’t even know.