My Once and Future Duke (The Wagers of Sin #1)

by Caroline Linden

  That still didn’t explain everything. Jack hadn’t kept close track of how much he lost to her at Vega’s, but it had been a substantial sum, more than enough to keep a widowed lady in comfort for a year. She said she lost on occasion, but Jack was willing to bet she won significantly more often. Even now, with no money at stake, an intent focus had come over her face. She wanted to win, always.

  Debts? Perhaps her husband had left her badly off. Who had her husband been, anyway? Why hadn’t he left her better provided for? She must have married as a girl to be widowed so young. Perhaps she frittered money away and had no sense for keeping it. He frowned slightly at that thought; it didn’t fit, somehow. She was too aware of everything. What would she be like, he wondered, if she ever let down her guard completely?

  It was his distraction that saved him. Too busy thinking of why she needed money, and how he might get around her defenses to learn the reason, he declined another card when he meant to accept it. Smiling slightly, she flipped it over into her own hand—­only to blink at it in patent surprise. The six of clubs had put her over twenty-­one, ruining her hand.

  Jack looked at his own hand, a fourteen, and let out a shout of triumph.

  “How—­” She turned over the last few cards in the deck. Every one was a four or smaller, and all would have beaten his hand if she’d drawn them. She mustered a smile. She had made a mistake. “Well played, sir.”

  “It should have been your hand,” he said, feeling magnanimous in his unexpected victory.

  She smiled as she gathered the cards. “No, no! Absent cheating, any win is fair.”

  He believed that. This woman played to win, but she lost with dignity and grace.

  “I suppose I shall have to take credit for being an excellent teacher, to have been bested within an hour. Shall I play for you now, or later?” She set the cards aside and faced him, smiling as easily as if they were old friends.

  Jack had the most terrible desire to kiss her. In a housemaid’s dress, dealing cards like a seasoned gambler, she still managed to sparkle. He hadn’t had such a pleasurable morning in years, even with the questions battering at the back of his brain. She was a riddle, a delicious, beautiful mystery, and he was shocked by how mesmerizing he found her. He could easily spend the rest of the day—­the rest of the week—­trying to puzzle out her secrets, especially the secret of how to make her smile at him in truth.

  He doubted kissing her now would help him in that pursuit.

  “I would like my song now,” he said. “Please.”

  They went back through the house to the music room. Mrs. Campbell slowed in the doorway. “Oh my.”

  Jack continued walking. The servants had been in while they played cards in the library, uncovering furniture and dusting. They would be swarming over the house all day, bringing every room to perfect readiness. Normally it was done before he arrived, but this time they’d had no chance. He opened the lid of the pianoforte and waited.

  She recovered her aplomb, taking the seat. “Have they tuned it, as well?” she asked pertly.

  “I doubt it.”

  She ran her fingers over the keys familiarly. “Then this may be a dreadful assault on your ears.”

  Jack grinned. “My ears are not so attuned as yours, so I doubt I’ll notice the difference.”

  She muttered something like, “Be careful what you ask for,” and began to play. At first her fingers stumbled a few times, and there were a few notes that twanged, but gradually her confidence took over. He took a seat where he could watch her face, which lost some of its guardedness as she got into the piece.

  Jack had learned years ago that it was best to own up to his weakness honestly, at least to himself. Mrs. Campbell was rapidly becoming a significant weakness of his—­no, strike that. He was thoroughly bewitched by her. He wanted to know more about her, from what made her laugh to what she looked like without any clothes on. He knew either of those desires, let alone both of them, could only lead to trouble.

  But by God, right now he didn’t care.

  She played the first piece, something he vaguely guessed was Mozart. Absorbed in watching her, Jack said nothing when she finished. Instead of rising from the seat, though, she stayed where she was. Her expression changed, becoming almost wistful. A slight smile curved her lips as she played a few trills, and then she began to play again.

  He could tell this music meant something to her. The first piece she had played with more spirit than technical skill, but this one moved her. She swayed with the music, and at times her head dipped slightly, and the notes would pause. He could swear she was listening to some accompaniment only she could hear.

  “I don’t know that piece,” he said when the last note had faded into a suddenly melancholy silence.

  “It was my mother’s favorite,” she said softly, her eyes shadowed and focused somewhere far away.

  “Did you learn to play it for her?”

  She didn’t answer. Reverently she ran her fingertips across the keys, so lightly they made no sound. “It’s a beautiful instrument, Your Grace,” she said at last. “You should have it tuned properly.” A fine shudder went through her, and he realized with a small shock that she was on the brink of tears.

  Damn. Of course—­she’d referred to her mother in the past tense. Jack knew what it was like to lose a beloved parent, and she was even younger than he’d been when his father died.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said quietly. “That you’ve lost her.”

  Without looking at him she gently closed the lid on the keys and rose from the bench. “If you’ll excuse me, sir, I feel in need of some rest.” She swept that ridiculously ornate but graceful curtsy again and then walked from the room.

  Jack followed her, driven by a nebulous desire to comfort her but held back by the fact that he’d been the one to make her sad. She never looked back, and when she reached the stairs she broke into a run. Jack stopped dead and listened to her footsteps echo in the hall above him, feeling like an utter cretin.

  Chapter 9

  Sophie avoided the duke until dinnertime. By then she’d got her feelings under control, and resolved not to play any more music. She didn’t know what had caused her to play “The Soldier tir’d” from Arne’s Artaxerxes. It had been Mama’s favorite piece to perform, and the one that won her modest fame across Europe. It must have been the pianoforte, a truly beautiful instrument even if some notes were out of tune. How Papa would have loved to play it, and how Mama would have loved singing in that splendid music room, with the wonderful acoustics.

  But she should not have given in to those memories and thoughts. If her parents were here now, they would be shocked by what she’d got herself into. She had always told herself they would understand why she’d made the choices she had in life, but this . . . predicament . . . was foolish and needn’t have happened at all, if she had been able to keep control of her temper. And the only way to rescue herself from it was to keep her wits sharp and collected.

  When she went down the stairs, Mrs. Gibbon was waiting for her. “His Grace is outside,” she told Sophie.

  She blinked. “What, in the rain?”

  The housekeeper smiled. “No, ma’am, under the portico.” She led the way through the entrance hall, past the gallery, to a pair of wide doors that stood open. With a murmured thanks, Sophie stepped out onto a flagstone terrace, lit by a quartet of large brass lanterns hanging from the roof of the portico.

  The rain had become a thick mist. One could see it falling in bands, almost like clouds billowing down to the ground. The sky had lightened to a shade somewhere between gold and gray, as if the clouds had thinned under the force of the sunset. The formal garden visible from the Blue Room lay off to the right, while directly in front of them stretched a sweep of manicured lawn, dotted with tulip trees in the distance. A stone path wound through the landscape toward a lake, dimly visible
in the distance only because of the woods that edged the far banks.

  “A beautiful view,” she said to the man gazing out at it.

  He turned. His gaze moved from her face down to her feet, sending that unwanted shiver of awareness through her again. “Yes.” He turned back to the landscape as she came to stand beside him. “The lake is a dammed stream that goes well into the woods. That’s where Philip and I used to go as boys. We kept a punt or two tied beneath the bridge and would row ourselves out of sight of the house to swim and fish.”

  “How delightful.”

  “It was.” He hesitated. “I must apologize for earlier.”

  She knew what he meant, but she instinctively flashed a bright smile. “For kidnapping me from London?”

  He smiled wryly. No, she knew he wasn’t sorry for that. “For earlier, when I asked you to play.”

  “Oh! I did warn you the pianoforte was out of tune . . .” She tried to make light of it, but he looked at her with knowing compassion in his eyes, and she fell silent.

  “It brought up sad memories for you, which was not my intent at all. I apologize.”

  She had to swallow a sudden lump in her throat. “Not at all. You couldn’t have known. In truth, I ought not to have played that piece. It’s been so long since I sat at a pianoforte . . .”

  “You must have lost her as a child,” he guessed.

  Sophie forced another smile. “Yes. I was twelve.”

  “How tragic. I’m very sorry,” he said with honest sympathy. “Was she musical?”

  Her smile turned real. “Yes,” she said warmly. “Very. When I was cross or rude, she would sing her scoldings at me. Our house was always filled with music. That was her favorite piece, one I heard her sing many times . . .” Before Mama lost her clear, high soprano. Sophie blocked it from her mind. “I believe it was a cruel disappointment when everyone realized I had no voice and only modest talent on the pianoforte, no matter how much I practiced. And then at school—­”

  “Did they not have a music master at school?” asked the duke when she broke off, on the brink of terrible memories again.

  “No, they did. But it was not the same,” she murmured. No music lessons at Mrs. Upton’s could match watching her mother sing for the czar, or spending her evenings fetching ale for the tympanists in the orchestra in Milan. No teacher could give the same feel to music as Papa did, a life and emotion that no one ever learned at a school for young ladies. He could have wrung a performance from that out-­of-­tune pianoforte that would have left tears in the eyes of every listener, and no one would have heard a single sour note.

  “My father encouraged me to draw,” said the duke. Sophie glanced at him in astonishment, but his gaze was fixed on the distant lake. “He himself sketched, although his was a more architectural bent. He drew the buildings, I drew the people who lived in them.” He raised one hand and pointed to the right. “There, past the corner of the house, is the bathing house he designed.”

  “Do you still draw?” she asked softly.

  His hand fell back to his side. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  A gust of wind blew a spray of rain at them. Sophie couldn’t resist the urge to turn her face into it, breathing deeply of the soft, moist air. She would never admit it aloud, but it was a magnificent evening. In London she would have made a grimace at the rain for the damage it would do to her slippers on her way around town. Tonight she could simply stand here and savor the quiet, beautiful landscape.

  When she opened her eyes, the duke was watching her as if mesmerized. There was a focused intensity in his face, nothing reserved or cold about it. Their eyes met for one charged second, then he turned back to face the rain. “For the same reasons you stopped playing, I expect. Other things claimed my time and attention.”

  For a while they watched the rain in silence. “This house has always been my escape,” said the duke at length. “Even as a boy when I had lessons to do, there was a lake and the woods to explore when lessons were done. Now that it’s mine, it’s mine alone—­my mother dislikes it, and Philip prefers other entertainments. I am loath to fill this one place of refuge with unpleasantness and anger.” He turned to her. “I should not have coerced you into coming here. I was furious at Philip but—­well. It’s done now, and the rain is beyond my control. Can you accept my apology?” He held out his hand.

  Slowly she put her hand in his. He wore no gloves, and she had none. “Yes, Your Grace.”

  One corner of his mouth crooked up. “Might we dispense with that? Ware will do.”

  “Very well. Ware.” Her smile this time was tentative but real. He still held her hand, and his fingers tightened a fraction before he released her. Sophie hid her hand behind her skirt and wiggled her fingers to erase the warmth of his skin against hers.

  “I thought to dine in the breakfast room. The dining room is . . .”

  “Much too magnificent for an ordinary supper?” she finished when he hesitated.

  “I was searching for a word other than oppressive,” he replied, one of those true grins lighting his face.

  In spite of herself she smiled back. “Too large for two people?”

  He laughed. Sophie started in spite of herself. He had a wonderful laugh; it was a pity he didn’t do it more often. “Far too large.” He offered his arm.

  Gingerly she took it. Handsome, attracted to her, and now becoming charming. She would have to be very, very careful to avoid making a fool of herself.

  Chapter 10

  Jack was at breakfast when Wilson brought the first bit of bad news the following morning. “Your Grace, Mr. Percy is here.”

  Percy ought to have been working diligently in the Ware mansion in Mayfair at this very moment. Percy knew his place, which meant there was only one explanation for the man’s presence at Alwyn. Jack closed the newspaper—­Wilson must have sent someone on horseback for it at dawn—­and stood.

  “Where?”

  “The morning room, Your Grace.”

  Jack glanced at the door. Mrs. Campbell had not yet appeared. He was looking forward to seeing her far too much. “Has Mrs. Campbell awoken yet?”

  “I believe so. Mrs. Gibbon has located some garments for the lady, but mentioned they would need some alteration.”

  Of course; she had no clothes of her own. Jack breathed a bit easier, only now realizing he’d grown tense as the minutes ticked away and she didn’t appear. “Very good.” The butler nodded, throwing open the door as Jack strode out of the room and went to see his secretary.

  Richard Percy stood in the morning room. He had obviously ridden from town, judging from the mud on his boots and his wet and bedraggled clothing. “Your Grace,” he said, bowing at Jack’s appearance. “I do beg your pardon for this ­intrusion—­”

  “But Her Grace my mother is going out of her mind with worry,” Jack finished in a dry tone. “Is that it?”

  “Yes, sir.” Percy’s expression eased.

  Jack knew his mother’s worry didn’t spring from fears for his safety. In fact, it probably wasn’t worry at all, but anger. Since the moment he inherited, she had drummed it into him that he must be above reproach, morally, financially, and socially. Getting into a very scandalous, public wager with a woman at a gaming club would be just the thing to outrage her notions of propriety, and abruptly decamping for Alwyn House with that same woman would send her into a paroxysm of alarm.

  For a moment he wondered what Philip had told their mother. Philip never could resist telling a good story, and the scene in Vega’s was unquestionably the most shocking thing Jack had done in the last several years. Of course, telling her would have required that Philip confess he was already playing at Vega’s again, explicitly breaking the promise he’d made in exchange for Jack paying his debt to Bagwell. Philip was not fond of confession.

  Well. No doubt that would have been ove
rshadowed by the duchess’s horror at Jack’s actions. It had never been much of a secret that the duchess preferred her second son, the one who took after her, while Jack—­the heir—­might as well have been solely his father’s son.

  “You may assure Her Grace I am perfectly well, and will return to town when it suits me.”

  “Will it be a long stay, Your Grace?” Percy backed up a step at Jack’s cool stare. “I ask only for my own knowledge, sir.”

  “No,” he said curtly. “A few days only.”

  “Of course.” Percy wet his lips, then took a sealed letter from his coat pocket and offered it. “Her Grace bid me deliver this.”

  Jack took it without looking at it. “Wilson will have sent someone to prepare a room. Go get dry. You can return to London as soon as your mount is cared for. I trust you will be able to carry on in my absence for a few days.”

  His secretary bowed and left. Jack cursed aloud in the empty room. His mother’s letter was like an anvil in his hand. He knew what it would say. Since the day he inherited his title, her constant refrain had been one of duty: he must remember his position as duke and moderate his behavior accordingly to honor his father and all the dukes who came before him.

  He broke the seal and skimmed the letter. It was as expected, indignant and dismayed, concluding with a stern scolding that he had completely undermined his role as head of the family by engaging in the precise sort of behavior Philip must be persuaded to avoid. His brother, the duchess wrote, was humiliated and stunned by this reversal, and she hinted he would be impossible to govern from now on.

  Jack’s mouth flattened at that charge. Philip was already impossible to govern, and it had nothing to do with Jack’s actions.

  Worst, though, was the last paragraph. Not only was it most shocking that you would do such a thing, but you have left me open to acute embarrassment. I was counting on you to accompany me to the Benthams’ ball tonight; I presume from your absence you have forgotten and left me to send my regrets at an unpardonably late moment. Lady Stowe and her daughter will be in attendance, and both were anticipating your company. I had not thought you would abandon them so carelessly or hastily; your father would not be pleased . . .