“I’ve lost it.” No point in letting her go farther. “I’ve lost the count.”
She nodded, lips pressed together. She’d expected this. “It’s twenty-six and twelve. Keeping a tally takes practice. You’re doing respectably, for a first try.”
“I confess I’m not grasping why I must organize them so. Tens and non-tens.”
“Do you ever go into gaming hells, Mr. Blackshear?” Ten, ace, queen. Twenty-six, nine.
“I haven’t. I fear ruin.”
“One hears of it, to be sure.” Six. Knave. Ace. Seven. “But one hears also of certain intriguing variations such establishments apply to the rules of vingt-et-un.”
“Oh?” Twenty-four, seven. Three and … something.
“For example, I’ve heard that in some hells, the banker is not permitted to stick below a total of seventeen. And that he must stick once he reaches that total. Do you see how those facts might change the game?”
“Of course. A player would never stick on fifteen or sixteen, for example, unless he knew there was a good chance of the banker’s going bust.” Ah. “Unless, let us say, he knew there was a high ratio of tens to non-tens remaining in the deck. And I’m afraid I’ve lost the count again.”
“It’s nineteen and six. Three and one sixth. Not at all favorable.” Abruptly she set down the cards. “I’ve been told I’m no longer welcome to play at the gentlemen’s table here. It’s unseemly, I’m informed.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.” He’d be sorry indeed not to watch her deal anymore, knowing he alone was privy to her witchcraft. “Are you—do you mean to try your luck in the hells?” One heard of some clubs where ladies played alongside the men.
“I don’t mean to try my luck anywhere. Good Lord.” What an ill, ill man he was, to enjoy her scolding so. “I’ve told you already I spare no thought for luck. I have a plan.”
Of course she did. And it almost certainly meant he’d see her here less often. He sat forward and gathered the cards, to engage himself with something other than the sudden dull weight of disappointment. “Prince Square-jaw has no objection, then, to spending his evenings in such venues?” And taking his woman there, too. You’d think the man would have a bit more pride.
“Prince Square-jaw has nothing to do with it. Haven’t you been paying attention, Blackshear?” She clasped her hands before her and looked him dead in the eye. “I’m going to do this with you.”
Chapter Nine
HE DIDN’T altogether like that. The sharp vertical line between his brows told her so.
Maybe she ought to have softened him up with more flirtation. Maybe she ought to have worn the purple gown. Nothing for it now. She leaned forward.
“Neither of us plays for amusement. Other people are depending on you, you once said, and I am depending upon myself. I need to win a certain amount of money, quickly.”
“I as well.” He was turning the cards over one by one, that crease still present between his brows. He glanced up. “Are you in some trouble?”
“No more than any lady is who depends on a gentleman’s whims for her security. I’d like to free myself from that state, and I calculate I can do that with two thousand pounds.”
“Won’t Mr. Roanoke provide for you?” He addressed these words to the cards, with a frown. “I thought that was the custom, when these things had run their course. I thought you worked out a settlement right at the start.”
“Generally it’s done that way.” She cleared her throat. “But as you may recall hearing, I was employed in a disorderly house at the time Mr. Roanoke decided to engage me. I knew nothing of settlements or negotiation.”
“He did, though.” A muscle tightened at the corner of his mouth. “He ought to have told you what was customary.”
“He paid a generous sum to Mrs. Parrish to procure me, and for all I know he may yet settle money on me. But in the absence of a contract, I cannot count on that.” She sat straighter. He was taking her off course. He’d be trying to ask more questions about her past, soon, if she wasn’t careful. “I have four hundred and ten pounds at present. Obviously, I need fifteen hundred and ninety more. Now that I cannot play here, I think the hells may be my best and only chance.”
His mouth twisted. He picked up the seven of spades and turned it in cartwheel fashion, his fingertips touching one corner after another. “I need a bit more than you. Three thousand, all told, and I need it by the end of next month. At present I have four hundred I’ve won here, and another eight hundred left from the sale of my commission, though I depend on having some of that to pay my rent and expenses while I wait for the three thousand to do its job.” His eyes strayed from the card to her face. “The hells have not been anywhere in my plan.”
“I know you fear to lose money.” She inclined forward, just a few degrees. “But once you’ve learned to keep count of tens, and to wager accordingly, you’ll be better off in a hell than at Beecham’s because of the different rules. I promise.”
A tiny spasm crossed his face. Clearly her promises weren’t worth much.
Speak of something else. Lull him. “What plans do you have for your three thousand? I expect it’s something more stirring than the five percents.”
The seven of spades went through several more rotations. He was unaccustomed, obviously, to discussing such matters with a slight acquaintance—a woman at that—but there seemed something else at work in him too. The subject was even more delicate than it ought to be. “I have an acquaintance who imports timber,” he said at last. The card cartwheeled on. “He’d like to add a second ship, and needs capital for the purpose. I’d be a part owner, with a good share of the profits.”
“Good enough to provide for you and someone else as well.”
“Indeed.” The card turned faster. His brow sank, and he watched his fingers.
“Is it a lady?” Good God. This wasn’t her business.
“I beg your pardon?” The card halted, pinched between two fingertips. He raised stricken eyes to hers.
“I don’t—Only I thought …” Unaccustomed heat flooded her cheeks. Suddenly she couldn’t meet his gaze, and must turn hers to the row of candles burning at her left. “That day I met you on the street, when you’d been to Camden Town. You wore fine clothes and I …” What in God’s name was she doing? “Clothes such as one might wear to call on a lady.”
“I was. I did.” Terse, minimal replies, as though he couldn’t trust his voice to stay steady if he spoke at length.
“Only I wondered. It doesn’t matter.” She was too near to the candles and the smoke hurt her eyes. Brilliant. He’d fancy her brought to tears by the knowledge of this other lady. “At all events I hope you’ll consider my plan, or at the very least consider helping me to discover which clubs permit ladies and which of those utilize the rules I’ve mentioned. Would you happen to know the time?” Regardless the hour, they’d been in here too long.
He felt about, somewhere on his person below the table’s edge, and brought out a watch. She touched a knuckle quickly to both eyes as he flicked it open. “A quarter after midnight. We can stop the lesson here. I have the hang of it; I’ll just need practice now.” He regarded her for a moment, watch still open in his hand, looking as though there were something he wished he could say. Then he smiled. “A great deal of practice if I’m to keep up with you in the hells.”
He’d assented. Relief flowed through her in warm torrents and took out the connection between judgment and her tongue—or maybe it was the smile alone that undid her. “You ought to practice soon. Build on your skill before it can begin to slip away.” She held the next words like potatoes hot from the hearth, shifting them from hand to hand and half inclined to drop them altogether. “You might call at my house. My days are my own after three o’clock or so. I spend most afternoons occupied with this sort of thing anyway.”
She’d bent her head to gather back the cards, so she could only imagine the effect upon his face of this speech. “I’m sorry.” His watch sn
apped closed, its crisp percussion muffled in his palm. “But given all the circumstances, I think that would be prodigiously unwise.”
He was right. That was the worst of it. She knew better than he did how ill it might go if Edward found out another man had called. And to burden Jane with keeping such a secret would be unjust. “As you think best.” She pushed the cards across the tabletop and fumbled for her gloves. Enough time spent on fitting her fingers just so, and she needn’t raise her eyes again before he was gone from the room.
His chair creaked as he pushed it back over the carpet and his black-coated form rose up into her peripheral view. Perhaps he would bow. She’d be too busy with her gloves to see. She tugged the right glove up over her wrist and wiggled her fingers to work them in. Vaguely she saw him pocket the deck and move out of her field of vision. One, two, three, four steps across the carpet to the door. That was that.
“Lydia.” His voice was like a long arm reaching all the way back to catch her by the chin and make her turn. He himself had not turned. “Damnation. Do I need to say it aloud?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what you mean.” Her pulse hammered in her throat.
He heaved a sigh that elevated his shoulders and dropped them again. His face angled a few degrees to the left, not even far enough to show his profile. He kept his hand on the doorknob. “I want—very badly—to take you to bed.”
“You said you wouldn’t.” Parched and panicked, she sounded. Like a lady who’d woken to find her bedcurtains on fire.
“And I won’t. There are more reasons against it than just Mr. Roanoke.” His hand turned and took another hold on the doorknob. “We flirt for sport here, and we can continue to do so. You needn’t fear I’ll …” He trailed off and she was left to imagine all the things she needn’t fear he’d do. “But don’t mistake me. I want you. I’ve wanted you since that first night when you fleeced me.”
His voice had got lower, half made up of shadow, half made up of the same rich chocolate that colored his eyes.
“And if I were in your house, with your bed but a closed door away, I fear I would forget your best interest and my own as well. And I cannot—” His voice broke off, suddenly, and he tilted his head to gaze upward, near the top of the door. “I’ve made mistakes enough, believe me. I don’t need to add this one.” A second of heavy silence. Then he inclined his head and was gone, closing the door behind him without waiting for a reply.
Just as well. Between the tempest in her brainpan and the stoppage in her throat, he should have had a very long wait.
DO YOU never mean to wear this gown?” Jane stood at the clothespress, lifting the tissue-thin purple outer layer between thumb and forefinger. “You’ve had it a week and a half now and I vow Mr. Roanoke hasn’t seen it once.”
“I’m saving it for a suitable occasion.” With her pencil hand Lydia pushed a stray lock of hair back behind her ear. “And Mr. Roanoke likes the gown I have on very well.”
The girl made a small sound in her throat, considering. “Is this sarcenet? The black part?”
“I don’t know. Knit silk of some sort. And is it black? I had thought it a very dark purple.” Her pencil was growing blunt. Twice already she’d pared it to a better point, and she’d need to take up the penknife again soon.
Three essential problems confronted the serious player of vingt-et-un. First, how to play a given hand. Second, how to wager on that hand. Third, how to manage one’s stake over the long term. Because proper strategy relied on the power of odds, and the longer a time one gave odds to work, the likelier they were to I want very badly to take you to bed.
She screwed her eyes shut. No. Opened them. Fixed them on her paper, with its numbers and letters and braces and square-root signs, none of which had yet added up to an ideal strategy. Her deft, easy hold on the pencil had turned into a rigid gripping fist.
This was ridiculous. She was no blushing virgin. And Mr. Blackshear had flirted with her enough by now that she might have deduced he wouldn’t mind a tumble. He was a man, for Heaven’s sake. Men liked bedsport wherever they could get it. Why the devil should his plain statement of the fact make her insides race and wheel about like a frantic flock of swallows?
A soft throat-clearing sound brought her attention back to where her maid stood by the clothespress, her hands now folded before her. “Do you plan to wait up for him very much longer?”
She swiveled to squint at the clock on her candlelit dressing table. It was past midnight. Edward had said he’d call at ten. She put down her pencil and rose. “I have a good bit of work to do yet. But I can do it just as well in nightclothes. I suppose Mr. Roanoke must have changed his plans.” This happened from time to time. Jane dressed her and did up her hair in some style suitable for an evening out, only to take it down again when Edward found some more compelling way to spend the night.
It made a poor impression for a young lady. Proper men aren’t like this, she ought to say. A man with true regard for you will keep his promises. But how could she say so? Arthur’s regard had been true, and still his promises had given way like rotted-out floorboards under the weight of his parents’ disapproval.
Too many men shouldering their way into this small room. Edward. Arthur. Mr. Blackshear and his bold declarations. “Are you familiar with the martingale system of wagering, Jane?” She crossed to the dressing table and sat. She would force her mind back to business.
“I don’t think so. I’ve only ever played for pennies.” Jane undid the circlet of pearls she’d pinned into her hair some hours since.
“The principle is simple: each time you lose, you double your next bet.” This was better. Already she was feeling more herself. “Let us say you bet a penny, and you lose it. You follow by betting two pennies. If you win, you’ve gained back the penny you lost plus a penny of profit.”
The girl nodded, rather dutifully, as she straightened the pearls and set them on a lacquered tray.
“Of course you might lose as well, and then you’d be down threepence. But if you bet four pennies on the next hand, and won, you’d have back all three plus one more in profit.” She closed her eyes and tipped her head forward to have the hairpins drawn out. “The principle and outcome are the same no matter how many times you must double your bet: eventually you win a hand, and recover the amount of your losses plus one penny profit. However the martingale system has several obvious flaws.” She opened her eyes again to address her maid’s reflection. “Perhaps you perceive them?”
“Only it seems a deal of trouble for a profit of only one penny.” Jane dropped a handful of hairpins into a dish and took up the hairbrush.
“The betting unit needn’t be a penny. It’s more likely to be ten pounds, fifty pounds, one hundred. Martingale, in theory, recovers your losses and returns one betting unit besides, no matter what the unit might be.” A disloyal thought flitted through: Mr. Blackshear wouldn’t have needed this explained.
Then a worse thought: He might have liked to discuss it, though. Naked, with his head on a pillow.
This was Edward’s fault. Leaving her alone here to fill her idle imagination with other men. “The system’s chief flaw is that it depends on an unlimited stake.” She put up her arms, that Jane could undo the latticed cords of her gown. “A long run of losses is improbable but not impossible. If you went into a gaming establishment with one thousand pounds, then even if you began with a wager of only one pound, nine straight losses would be enough to do you in. You’d be down five hundred and eleven pounds, only four hundred eighty-nine pounds remaining, and no way to put up the five hundred twelve that must come next in the martingale sequence.”
“I’ve never known such a lady for reckoning numbers as you. Stand now, if you please.”
Indigo silk—or “dark blue,” as some called it—shut out the world for several seconds, imposing a break in her lecture. Two full-length petticoats followed. Then there she was in the mirror, down to her corset and chemise and rattling on once more. “
The more pertinent shortcoming however, in regard to my present efforts, is that martingale presumes the same odds on every wager. An astute player of vingt-et-un recognizes varying odds from wager to wager. You must make larger bets when the deck is favorable, and smaller bets when it isn’t. The last thing you want to do is double your wager in an unfavorable situation.”
“I see.” Jane had learned to say this at suitable intervals, whether she saw or not. “I don’t doubt you’ll invent something better, then.” She gathered Lydia’s hair and laid it forward of her shoulders on either side before starting on the corset-strings.
“If I do I shall certainly teach you.” Lydia let her head fall forward again. “You’ll rob your friends of all their pennies.”
She made a vaguely feral sight in the mirror, peering up from under her lashes and out between twin curtains of unbound hair. This would be a man’s view of her, if he should wish to undress her with his own hands before taking her to bed.
A whiplash of impatience cracked through her and she forced her gaze away from the reflection. Bed. That was quaint. As though they couldn’t make do with that faded carpet on the upstairs room’s floor. For that matter he could just bend her over the card table and toss up her skirts, or back her up against the door on tiptoe.
No. Even tiptoe wouldn’t bring her high enough. He should have to crouch in that ungainly way taller men did when they took it into their heads to couple upright. She might prevent that, though, by scaling his body as if she were climbing a tree, one leg hooked over his hip and the other wound high across his back. No niceties would be possible in that position. No lingering. They’d satisfy their curiosity with ruthless, unsentimental efficiency, and be done.
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