Cassandra reached over her shoulder and slid three hundred back. “I am here to keep you from being reckless. Remember?”
Lydia made a face that only Mr. Lippincott could see.
He slid his fingertips along the fan of cards, back and forth, deciding on his draw. They came to rest on one of the convex cards. He flipped it to reveal the king of hearts.
“See?” Cassandra said. “This is a fool’s game, as I learned to my sorrow.”
Lydia plucked an unmarked card and turned it. Of course it showed a low card, a four of diamonds. Vexed, she collected the cards quickly and began shuffling them. “One more, if you are agreeable, sir.”
“If it would please you.”
“It would.”
“Lydia,” Cassandra’s voice warned in her ear.
“Oh, hush.” She handed the cards to Lippincott, who cut them, then fanned them on the table.
“Lydia.” The whisper hissed this time. “You have attracted attention.”
That was nothing new. She often did when she gambled. She never paid attention herself to those who watched her at the tables. They were only distractions. “A higher wager this time, I think. Can you meet all of my night’s winnings?”
Lippincott eyed her money. “You must have over two thousand there.”
“No more than three, however, I am sure.” She pushed it all forward.
Eager now, Lippincot agreed to meet the amount, and pushed at least half as much to meet hers, with the promise of a marker, for the rest to be delivered the next day, if he lost. She made a display of pondering the cards.
“Lydia.”
Cassandra had become a nuisance, and her whispers a troublesome buzzing near her ear. She shooed the bee away, and reached for a card that she had identified as the king of spades.
Just as her fingers lowered to the card, another hand got there first. Not Lippincott’s. This new hand possessed more strength than Lippincott’s, and long, masculine fingers.
She knew that hand.
She also recognized the presence that hovered at her left shoulder just like Cassandra pressed her right one.
“A simple draw again, Lady Lydia. You favor that wager. What do you risk this time?” Penthurst asked.
Go away, go away. “The night’s winnings and no more.”
“I am relieved to hear it. I would not like to think you wagered that which you have already lost.”
Her face warmed. She refused to look at him. One more draw and Lippincott would pay dearly for having cheated Cassandra, and she would have enough to silence Trilby for a long while.
She tugged at the card. Penthurst held it in place.
“Move your hand, please.”
“Who is this man?” He posed the question to Cassandra.
Cassandra stepped to the side of the table, distancing herself from the duke. “Allow me to introduce you to—”
“I requested no introduction. Only his name.”
Lippincott shrank back into his chair.
“Mr. Peter Lippincott.”
“Tell Mr. Lippincott that this particular pigeon will not be playing further tonight.”
Cassandra did not have to say a word. After a sweep of the table to collect his money, Lippincott departed.
Lydia almost wept with frustration. She had been so close. Ten more seconds and— She pushed back her chair, right into Penthurst. She stood and turned on him. “How dare you interfere.”
“I dare as your brother’s friend. He has larger concerns tonight than chasing after an errant sister.”
“Did my brother send you?”
“I chose not to worry him further with tales of your rebellion. I do not need his request to act in his stead.”
“Without it you have no authority here. However, you have done your duty as you saw it, and are well finished. Good evening to you, sir.”
Cassandra emitted a tiny gasp at the blunt dismissal. Lydia trusted it would be enough to get the duke to depart. She turned her mind to calculating how to win a great deal fast without the convenience of Mr. Lippincott.
Penthurst’s eyes narrowed. “You forget yourself, Lydia. No doubt it is the excitement of the games that accounts for your rudeness. Much like a lover thwarted while in the act of passion, the lack of completion of your wager appears to put you severely out of sorts.”
Another tiny gasp from Cassandra.
“What were you thinking, wagering so much?” He gestured to the money still on the table. “I thought Southwaite had tightened the reins on you, but if this week is any example, you disobey him with impunity.”
Exasperated, she looked at Cassandra, who had become annoyingly demure and quiet. “We were close. If someone had not ruined it, we would both be richer and satisfied.”
Cassandra opened her mouth to respond, but her gaze slid to the duke. Whatever she saw had her silent again. She grabbed Lydia’s reticule and stuffed the money into it.
Lydia took the bulging reticule and cast her gaze over the patrons still at Morgan’s tables. Two famous courtesans had been leading the hazard play when she arrived, but they had given up that post. She calculated how long it might take to turn her three thousand into ten if she were very lucky. Hours at Mrs. Burton’s, but Mrs. Burton had limits on the bids, the better to protect herself from too much luck. Morgan, on the other hand, had a taste for gambling himself. It was why even peers could be found sometimes in these very democratic chambers. There were no limits imposed by the house.
Hazard it would have to be. Unless—
She looked at Penthurst, standing tall and severe, his dark eyes full of the disapproval she knew so well.
She glanced down on the table. Mr. Lippincott’s cards still lay there.
She shouldn’t. That would be very wrong.
“Does Ambury know you are here?” Penthurst turned his displeasure on Cassandra.
Her dark lashes lowered over sparking eyes. “I really do not know. I did not ask my husband for his permission, if that is what you mean. But then, I never do.”
Yes, it would be wrong. On the other hand, Penthurst now spoke to Cassandra in a tone that hardly encouraged virtue regarding those cards.
“No doubt because you know he would not approve of your coming here, let alone bringing Lady Lydia with you. Was it not sufficient to introduce her to Mrs. Burton’s?”
“I thought so. She did not. Ambury would not have wanted me to have her come here alone, that much I know. Do you think I should have?”
“I think you should have used your influence to dissuade her from coming at all.”
“May I point out she is a grown woman? She knows her own mind, just as I do, and just as I did prior to my marriage. We neither require nor desire men, even our brothers and husbands, to dictate our lives, just as you would not want that for yourselves.”
Lydia wanted to cheer. This was the Cassandra of old, the woman who had faced down society in order to live her life as she chose, the Cassandra Lydia had envied and, upon her marriage to Ambury, had mourned ever knowing again.
She looked again at the cards. Very wrong. However, he had become insufferable. He had just ruined her chances to take care of Mr. Trilby’s threat very neatly, so making him pay instead of Lippincott had delicious appeal. And, as she never forgot, Penthurst could use a little taking down much as Mr. Lippincott could, for much more egregious reasons.
“Penthurst, you appear determined to ruin my evening of fun,” she said.
“My only determination is to remove you from this place forthwith.”
“And if I refuse?”
“I will see that you do not.”
She grinned at Cassandra. “Do you think he will carry me out? I am half tempted to see.”
“Lydia—”
“To avoid such an undignified spectacle, I propose a compromise. Allow me to play one more game of choice, for five minutes only, and I will leave of my own free will.”
“I rarely compromise. However—five minutes. No more.
As for how much you wager, I will not interfere. Your brother has counted on your being rash enough to get badly burned. Some need double lessons, so may you have the second one now.”
Cassandra raised an eyebrow at the little speech. “I am sure Lydia is not so foolish as to wager everything in that reticule. Correct, Lydia?”
“If the wager is enticing enough, I may.” She made a display of surveying the chamber, choosing her game.
Cassandra took her arm. She pulled Lydia aside for a private word. “Enough now. We were found out and Lippincott is well gone.”
“I am not done. I intend to win much more. Off Penthurst.”
“Are you mad?”
“Admit you would not mind seeing it, after the way he just spoke to you. I will invite him to take Lippincott’s place, for the draw he interrupted. There is justice in that.”
Cassandra glanced behind at Penthurst, then whispered. “You cannot think to use that same deck of cards.”
“Why not? It isn’t as if I have done anything to the cards.”
Cassandra studied her. “You will not be cheating, then? Yet you expect to win.”
“I almost always win. As for what I expect—only good fortune.”
With that she walked back to Penthurst. “My game of choice is a wager with you. I will put up the contents of my purse, and you put up half as much, plus whatever you have won in the last week. If you scold so freely about the sin of gaming, you probably have no winnings to risk at all.”
“As it happens, my winnings this week were handsome enough. Not, however, three thousand, such as you have to offer. Eight hundred.”
“It is a tempting wager, then?”
“No.”
What an impossible man. Cassandra looked relieved.
“However,” he said, “I would be tempted if you promised to double what I have won in the last week, should you lose. The amount was small enough that you will be able to keep much of what is in your purse.”
That was generous, if one ignored that he had also won her along with the “almost nothing.”
Seeing her way out of that conundrum, and also a path for adding to her funds to put off Trilby, she sat down at the table. He took Mr. Lippincott’s seat. She gathered up the cards. “Cassandra, perhaps you will mix them and lay them out.”
Cassandra sat to her right and mixed the cards.
“One moment,” Penthurst said. “Are those Lippincott’s cards?”
“I think so.”
“The man is suspected of being a sharper. The deck may be marked. I can’t have you accusing me of cheating.” He twisted, caught the eye of a servant, and called for another deck.
Her heart sank to her stomach. Normally she would assume luck would favor her, but—
Penthurst smoothly mixed the cards, his handsome hands appearing quite expert. He handed them to Cassandra to cut and fan. Cassandra did so, but her gaze locked on Lydia’s and her eyes communicated her offer of retreat again.
“Why do you hesitate, Lydia? The wager favors you financially in all ways,” Penthurst said. “I will add one more thing. If you win, I will never tell your brother about tonight.”
Did Cassandra notice the way the duke looked right now? How golden lights flickered in his dark eyes, and how his vaguely amused expression made one’s breath catch. He managed to appear predatory, but in a most attractive way. She could not ignore how her nervousness quickened her pulse. His attention created an almost appealing excitement.
It was all there in his eyes—what she really wagered, and what she now owed. He regarded her like a woman he expected to possess. The money was the least of it. Double or nothing on her carnal debt had become the real wager, right here under the unsuspecting Cassandra’s nose.
Yet was it really double? One only loses one’s innocence once. After that, it would be a different sort of loss, and much smaller. Indeed, one might say that after that there was nothing much left to lose at all. And if she won, she would be free of that debt, and up another sixteen hundred.
She did not have a choice, anyway. Not really.
• • •
Penthurst waited. Lydia watched him, her complexion slightly flushed. Despite her impassive expression, she did not appear so confident now.
Had she intended to cheat him? She claimed on Mrs. Burton’s terrace that Trilby had been showing her his sleight-of-hands tricks. She may have learned how to misuse that, along with other sharper tricks like marking the cards.
Someone had marked those other cards. Surely not her. All the same he could not deny that her hesitation seemed odd for a woman who had made the challenge to begin with.
She averted her eyes, and looked at the table, her color higher now. Perhaps she had seen more than he intended. As he teased her about the last wager, and dared her to double it, some vivid pictures of collecting his winnings had entered his mind. Lydia probably had no idea how often such thoughts occupied men, even when the woman was not an appropriate object of desire.
She looked rather pretty now, wide-eyed and indecisive, fighting to keep her aloof reserve in place. Not nearly so bold. He almost felt sorry for her.
Her back straightened and her tapered, slender fingers stretched toward the fan of cards. He could practically see her calling forth the goddess of fortune, and willing her fingers to land on a high card.
She abruptly pulled one and turned it over. The ten of hearts.
“You have a better than even chance of winning, Lydia. That was well done,” Cassandra said.
He looked at the cards, deciding. Suddenly it did not seem so much a game, or even a way to teach Lydia a lesson. Instead, while he waited for his own luck to more than even the odds, he found himself giving a damn which way it went. That was his vanity at work. And his pride. And, he had to admit, the dark side of his soul that had fantasized too often this week about making Lydia pay up.
He plucked a card and flipped it.
Cassandra sighed. Lydia stared.
“It does not appear to be your night,” he said, gently tapping his queen of hearts. “Again.”
Her gaze turned up to him. Luminous. Alert. Curious. Astonished. Then the life left her eyes and they turned opaque, as she donned her sphinx mask again.
“Let us go now, Cassandra.” She plucked at her reticule’s strings. “I owe you sixteen hundred, Penthurst.”
“It is not necessary to count it out now. I know you are good for all that you wager. I will write to you and make arrangements for the settlement.” He stood and offered his hand to her, then Cassandra. “Did you have your carriage wait for you, Lady Ambury?”
“A footman waits. He will procure a hired carriage for us.”
“I assume you bribed him well, so he would not gossip in the household about this adventure.”
“To no avail, since you have witnessed all.”
“While I might have a friend’s obligation to report your doings to Ambury in some cases, this is not one of them. Unless he asks me directly, my discretion is yours if you want it. Rather than wait while a carriage is procured, allow me to deliver you and Lady Lydia home.”
• • •
His coach stopped at Cassandra’s house first. Along the way he and she chatted. Cassandra’s mood turned merry. Perhaps she forgot how this man had scolded her. Or maybe relief that he promised discretion prompted her good humor.
Lydia thought it very careless of Cassandra to alight from the coach with nary a pause to consider that she would be leaving Lydia alone with the duke. Cassandra said her good-byes, and took her footman’s escort to her door. The coach rolled along toward the other side of the square.
Lydia gazed out into the night. She examined her gloves. She took inventory of the coach’s embellishments. She did everything she could not to look at Penthurst sitting across from her. Even so she saw him, especially whenever they passed a street lamp and a sudden flash of golden light came in the window. Each time he turned from a dark form into a man under sharp light that found
angles and shadows and details. So she saw his eyes, watching her. And his hands, settled by his sides on the cushion.
More than that, however, she felt him. He filled the coach. Not only his size cramped her. The rest of him—that presence that had caused her discomfort since she was a girl—did too.
“I will be discreet regarding your visit to that hell too, even though you lost the wager,” he said.
She should thank him, she supposed. Only she did not want to admit life would be more pleasant if Southwaite did not know. The notion of accepting favors from him did not sit well with her either.
“If you employ discretion, do so for him, not me. He would worry far more than he needs to.”
“You do not care if he knows?”
“Not at all. You will spare me some tiresome lectures, that is true. However, my brother is enlightened enough to know that a women of my age cannot be chaperoned like a young girl.”
A flash of golden light sliced across his face, showing the lower half and revealing his vague smile. “He only accepts that because he does not know what you are doing. He sees that blank stare you turn on the world, and he wonders if there is any mind behind it, let alone a clever, scheming one.”
“Clever? Scheming? Do you intend compliments or insults?”
“Only the truth as I see it.”
She felt his attention boring into her through the dark.
“You were going to cheat me tonight, weren’t you? Those cards were marked. I saw and felt enough of it as I handed them off to Morgan’s servant.”
“They were not my cards.” She put her face to the window to judge how much farther they had. One could almost throw a stone from Cassandra’s house to hers, yet this ride never ended.
“One does not set aside honor because circumstances not of one’s making present the opportunity.”
Pique turned to hot anger in a blink. “How dare you lecture me on good character. It is laughable for you, of all men, to do so. I might as easily say to you that one does not use honor as an excuse to kill a friend, just because circumstances present the opportunity.”
Silence. A heavy atmosphere settled between them, one so thick that it might rain blood. They passed another lamp. This time the slice of illumination showed his eyes. His expression made her breath catch. She doubted she had ever been the object of such direct anger and—something else, something poignant that she could not name.
The Accidental Duchess Page 8