She said nothing. She didn’t jump away from her lover, or yank up the bodice he’d tugged down, or cross her arms modestly before her. Only her eyes, widened and showing an excess of white, betrayed her consciousness of exposure. And that, for only a second or two, though the interval was sufficient to make him feel like a thoroughgoing cad.
The bookshelf’s edge bit hard into his hand. He couldn’t seem to look away, let alone make an apologetic bow and hasten from the room. He stood, frozen, as she regained her composure and her face hardened into the unmistakable lines of defiance: Judge me if you dare. Then that expression too subsided and only her falcon-like blankness remained. She looked through him, and past him, and altogether away.
He’d ceased to merit her notice. Whether he watched, or not, was a matter of supremest indifference to her. Her hands came down from their place on the curtain—even now, with a dancer’s lissome grace—and settled on the oblivious biceps of Mr. Roanoke, who had continued at her shoulder and neck through the brief drama but was now commencing to haul up her skirts.
And finally Will let go his grip on the bookshelf. He didn’t want to see what followed. He’d probably see it in his dreams, and that would be torment enough.
Some impulse of obstinacy made him bow. She didn’t look his way, and neither did she or Prince Square-jaw glance up as he stole light-footed to the door, opened it just enough to accommodate his long-overdue exit, and soundlessly closed it behind him.
THEY DID not appear at supper. Will soldiered through three courses that did nothing to appease the foolhardy hunger scraping at his insides.
Nothing to the purpose. She wasn’t for him. She pleased his eye and engaged his imagination, yes, but that hardly made her unique among women. When the time came to share himself with a lady again, he would look for a few qualities more. He’d yet to even hear Miss Slaughter speak; for all he knew she might open her mouth and prove an empty-headed shrew.
Indeed he rather hoped she would. She’d be less of a distraction then.
Whatever had kept them so occupied as to forgo supper, they’d apparently had their fill of it by the time card play resumed. Roanoke took his seat at the vingt-et-un table and this time his mistress sat on his knee. Gone was the attentive poise with which she’d conducted herself at whist. She leaned back and rested her head on the man’s shoulder, watching the play idly from under half-lowered lashes, her entire aspect suggesting a lioness who’d just gorged herself on a kill and needn’t think of eating, or think of anything at all, for at least a week.
Will fixed his eyes elsewhere. He had a purpose here, a mission. He had a plan that required three thousand pounds and God knows the odds were enough against him with his wits entirely engaged.
Three o’clock came, and then four—he knew this from Cathcart’s jeweled pocket watch set down between them, the room being provided with no clocks—and he was nearly two hundred pounds to the good. Men were betting with sluggish brains; some men falling asleep outright and having to be prodded awake by a neighbor when their turns came. A fellow who kept his head might do quite well here, over time.
The viscount poked him with an elbow and, when he glanced up, nodded in the direction from which he’d rigorously kept his gaze. Roanoke’s head lolled on his left shoulder. His chest rose and fell with slumberous breaths. Still against his right shoulder was Miss Slaughter, who’d helped herself to his cards and was considering them with languid attention. Her hands, he could not help noticing, were still bare. Perhaps her gloves lay even now on that library floor. His skin prickled unhelpfully at the thought.
“Does she play?” No other lady had sat down to the table all evening.
“I’ve never seen it.” Cathcart had been coming here a good deal longer and would know. “But she looks as though she has it in mind, doesn’t she?”
And indeed, when the play passed to Roanoke she made no attempt to wake him. Without the smallest sign of unease she took fifty pounds from his stake and added it to his bet, eyeing the banker expectantly.
The card sailed in and she lifted its corner. “Stick,” she said. And Will’s whole body vibrated to the tone of her voice.
Even on an austere syllable with more than its share of clicking consonants, she put in texture, and rounded the corners somehow. A man could savor that sampling, a sweet small dose like a cordial in a dainty glass. A man could very well get drunk on a larger amount, and bathe in an abundance. She’d reserved a place already in his dreams; now he knew she would speak, unceasingly, while she was there.
She would not, however, play vingt-et-un. Sadly she proved to be no proficient. She chewed at her lower lip while studying her cards, and wagered erratically, and went bust in three of the five hands she played before fortune finally took pity on her with an ace and a ten, and the deal. Meticulously she gathered in the cards, staggering them together to break apart the turned-up hands even before shuffling, as though by thorough discharge of this new duty she could somehow compensate for her lack of tactical skill. She shuffled, had her neighbor cut the deck, and dealt.
And Will began to lose. He drew on a hand of twelve, and a king put him over. He stuck at nineteen, and she proved to have twenty. Even when he worked his pulse-pounding way to twenty-one, eight-seven-two-four, she turned up an ace and two fives to tie—to win, rather, the banker always having that advantage. Five straight times she dealt, beating him every time, until a grizzled-looking fellow hit twenty-one in two cards and mercifully took over the deal.
Ruin tasted like this. Like a mouthful of ashes, or the sweepings from a carpenter’s floor. In less than half an hour his winnings had shrunk from two hundred pounds to twenty. “Bad luck, Blackshear,” muttered the viscount, who had lost a mere fifty. Will didn’t bother to reply.
Miss Slaughter was looking at him. Without any particular expression, to be sure, but her eyes rested steady on his. She picked up Roanoke’s winnings and averted her attention to count out some bills before looking up again. Without counting along he knew—in his bones he knew—that she’d peeled off one hundred eighty pounds, precisely.
She dropped the large remainder in with the rest of Roanoke’s stake. Still watching him, she folded the amount of his losses, and folded it again, and tucked it calmly into the bodice of her gown. Then she turned to the more compelling business of examining her new hand.
Chapter Two
EDWARD WAS disposed to talk. Curse him to Hades. Why couldn’t he roll over and drop off to sleep, as men were supposed to do? But of course he’d slept abundantly at the card table. She might have skimmed double from his winnings, and he would probably never have noticed.
“What do you think of a house party at Chiswell?” He lay on his back, one hand lifted above him that he might study his fingernails in the candlelight.
“In March?” The bed smelled of carnal abandon. Every inhalation brought a forceful reminder of her senseless appetites, her want of restraint. Five minutes ago she’d been ravenous for him, half out of her mind with need. Now she felt glutted and vaguely regretful, as though she’d shoveled down a pound or two of sugary blancmange. She would remember this disagreeable sensation, and next time she would know better.
No, she wouldn’t. She’d had six months to know better, and she hadn’t managed it yet.
“Next month, I thought. At the Easter holiday. Parliament will be out, and people in need of some amusement. Suitable weather, too, in April, or at least I should hope it will be. Deuced cold winter it’s been. Long winter too. Damnably long. And cold.”
If only he would not speak! When she looked at him, at his clear hazel eyes and the elegant geometry of his cheeks and chin, she could easily imagine him to be a man of information. Thoughtful, inquisitive, a sparkling conversationalist, his brain always churning away beneath that modish Caesar haircut.
When he spoke, he was like the leftover dregs of her blancmange orgy, a shameful, ravaged souvenir that she wished to her soul some servant would come and clear away.
“I expect it will.” The first set of nails apparently having passed muster, he was now examining those on his other hand. “Only I suppose I shall have to be ready with some indoor amusements if this weather keeps on.”
“Indeed. Shall I put out the candle?”
“No need. I’ll do it presently.” He would not take a hint. She had no hope of sleep until he was gone from her bed, hours and minutes hence. No hope of rest, even, until he closed his eyes and went unconscious. “What provisions do you think I ought to make for the ladies?” He lowered his hand and turned his face toward her. “As to amusements, I mean? What things are fashionable now?”
How the devil would I know? My last house party was a lifetime ago. She swallowed and the words went down. “I think a play is always popular. Archery, if the weather turns fair. Perhaps some of those games with blindfolds and kissing and so forth.” How novel, how thrilling such games had seemed to her once. She’d first let Arthur touch her in the darkness of his father’s orangery, every breath heady with the scents of citrus and damp potted earth, every delicate negotiation of hands and lips and clothing conducted in silence, that they might not betray their location in a game of hide-and-seek.
She could probably fix the beginning of her fall to that exact occasion, if she cared to squander one minute contemplating the trajectory of her fall, and if she cared to spare a single thought for Arthur.
“Of course it must depend on the company. Kissing games might seem quaint to the ladies who were at Beecham’s tonight, for example. But perhaps you mean to invite more respectable ladies?”
“Gad, no.” He laughed as though she’d said something very rich. “I’m six and twenty, Lydia. I needn’t think of respectable ladies for years yet.”
Five years, perhaps. But he’d tire of her before that time came. And if she had not put aside money enough to secure her future, she must cast about for a new protector. Or perhaps go back to the brothel.
She could bear that, if she had to. Hadn’t she borne it for eighteen months, before Edward took a whim to keep her? Indeed she’d first gone there with a will, with a plan to extinguish herself from the inside out.
She had other plans now. “I played your hand for a bit tonight while you napped.” Better he should hear it from her than from someone else.
“Did you? Clever girl. Have any luck?”
Luck. Good Lord. Who could be so complacent as to leave these things to luck? “I think so. I think I may have won you some money.” Four hundred eighty pounds, all told. Three hundred of it in one of his coat-pockets even now.
“Well done.” He threaded his fingers together and stretched his arms straight up. “The other fellows may say what they like. I know your merits.”
So do they, now. You saw to that. With all the insolence she swallowed, it was a wonder her corsets still laced. Retort after rejoinder after sharp-edged remark: Why do you address me? What can I possibly have to say to a man who would split a pair of fives? Be quiet. Go to sleep. Go away. Come back when you have another erection.
Sleep finally did overcome him, and after four minutes of listening to his even breaths, Lydia slid from the bed. Silently—silent as that coxcomb of a lurker in the library—she took her dressing gown from a nearby chair, pulled it on, and padded across the carpet to the candle Edward had not, after all, put out. Sheltering the flame with her free hand, she took it to the dressing room and closed the door behind her.
By the window were a chair and table. On the back of the chair was a shawl that had seen her through many such long chilly nights. And in a drawer, alongside the hundred eighty pounds she’d deftly extracted from her corset, sat four decks of playing cards, sans jokers. She took out two decks and sat down with her candle.
He might be trouble, that coxcomb. She probably oughtn’t to have baited him. He played with the air of a man who didn’t lose lightly and he might, after all, prove smarter than he looked. Though men so seldom did.
One by one the cards flashed by, numbers combining and recombining in all their immaculate beauty. King. Three. Five. Seven. Ace, most beautiful of all. In stacks of rank she sorted them, low to high, left to right.
Hang him, anyway. Hang him and his Waterloo heroics. A man found himself in the right campaign and his life thereafter was one long parade all embellished with fireworks and illuminations, regardless how he actually performed on the day. A man found himself in the wrong one and he perished of the ague, with no one but a desolate sister to remember that he ever lived at all.
She pulled her shawl closer against the chill. Somewhere beyond the ever-present fog, the stars were fading and the first pale traces of morning were streaking the sky. Jane would rise soon and light the fires. There would be coffee, too, to warm her and keep her brain awake.
Now then. Twelve players at the table, two decks in play, cards newly shuffled. Two cards to every player, face down. Player number five would turn up an immediate twenty-one, good for him but bad for the composition of the remaining deck. First player would buy two more cards, which meant he must hold at least three low ones. Second player would go bust. Six, six, and queen, let us say. Giving the deck a high-cards-to-low-cards ratio of approximately twenty-three to twenty-one, or one and ninety-five thousandths.
Methodically Lydia laid out the cards, tabulating as she went. Edward wouldn’t wake for hours yet. She’d have time to count her way through both decks, and then to play a few hands, watching for those places where she could take advantage of her tally to wager boldly.
And night by night, through means fair or otherwise, with the help of Lieutenant Coxcomb and other men who made the mistake of estimating her lightly, she would tuck bills into her corset, and hide them away at home, and draw ever closer to the day she could buy her independence.
THE DISRESPECTABLE life was not without its consolations. A high style of living, of course. The central duty itself, where one had a skilled and agreeable partner. Entrée into places, exotic and fascinating places, that no respectable lady would ever see. And acquaintance with people who wouldn’t half turn up in any sedate Lancashire supper party.
“I only mean to say I don’t think you should allow him to speak of you that way.” Maria crisply turned a page in her Ackermann’s Repository. “Tell him he has a choice: to enjoy your favors, or to enjoy discussing them in public. He cannot do both.”
Well might Maria issue that ultimatum to a gentleman, and expect to be heeded. Such a confection of femininity—willowy figure, ivory skin, eyes the color of a midday summer sky—was surely wasted in this world. She ought to be perched on the summit of a glass hill somewhere, smiling sadly at the princes who lost their footing halfway up, or perhaps combing her spun-gold hair on some ocean-lashed rock. Not sitting in a Bond Street dressmaker’s shop, deciding how best to spend the money with which she was kept.
They weren’t at all what a sheltered country girl imagined, the mistresses of London men. She’d expected, when brought into Edward’s social circle, to encounter better-dressed versions of the women she’d known at Mrs. Parrish’s—coarse, uneducated, with a bovine resignation to the shabby hand life had dealt them.
Instead she’d found Maria and dark rakish Eliza, both of better birth than she, both with a genteel education, and both generous enough to overlook her brothel background and address her as an equal.
Lydia shrugged, flipping a page in her own fashion-book. “I’d wager all the gentlemen speak so, when we’re not about. I don’t see what would be gained by asking him to pretend otherwise.”
“Civility would be gained.” Maria turned two pages, reviewing and dismissing their offerings with poised efficiency. “We’re not livestock, to have our merits cried up at auction.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” On the other side of the table Eliza abandoned her Ackermann’s to lean forward, arms
folded on the tabletop. “Who is to say but Lydia won’t get a better position out of such advertising? That Waterloo fellow was certainly taking note. He lost no time in finding out your name.”
“That Waterloo fellow would have done well to mind his own business.” A fine indifferent tone of voice, betraying no sentiment beyond mild irritation at the memory. “And it’s not as though he sought my name from some indelicate motive. He only wanted to make a grand show of what he supposed to be his superior manners.”
“I shouldn’t be sorry if he sought my name from any motive. Did you mark those shoulders?” Eliza appealed to both ladies opposite. “Broad as a full-grown oak. Broad as a draft horse. I shouldn’t mind a closer acquaintance with those.”
“His speaking up so did him credit, I thought.” Maria turned a reproving frown Lydia’s way. “And I’ll grant him to have a pleasing appearance. Strong about the mouth; that is in his favor. Fine dark eyes as well.”
“Smoldering eyes, I should say. Eyes like a pair of live coals.”
Oh, for Heaven’s sake. “Live coals glow orange. The gentleman’s eyes are brown.” But even as she corrected Eliza, she knew what the lady meant. Dim as the library had been, she’d seen the heat in his gaze. She’d opened her eyes to find herself watched by eyes that looked as if they might bore twin holes straight through her. And for an instant she’d felt naked, more naked than she’d ever felt with any paying man.
Only for an instant, though. And he’d paid for that after all. He might have bought her favors for much less, if she were of a mind to sell.
She sighed, and shoved her book to the middle of the table. “Someone else choose for me. I can’t see that any of these gowns will become me better than any other.” If Edward had asked, she should have told him not to waste his money on gowns, none of which would make her beautiful and none of which played any part in his essential congress with her.
A Gentleman Undone Page 3