The Gamble

by Joan Wolf

  “She is such a beautiful girl,” Lord Henry Sloan said to me. “What a pity that such a thing should have happened to her.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It is something we have had to learn to live with, however. And she is really no trouble. She is like a perpetual four-year-old child, that is all.”

  He had come to ask me to drive out with him in Hyde Park that afternoon, and since he had seemed so sympathetic to Anna’s plight, I suggested that perhaps we might include her in our outing. I had been worrying that Anna was not getting enough fresh air.

  Lord Henry was not comfortable with my idea.

  “You know how people stop to talk to one another during that hour,” he said. “It will be impossible to keep your sister from being a topic of gossip if we take her driving through Hyde Park. Really, Miss Newbury, I do not think that it is a good idea.”

  He must have read the look on my face.

  “Besides,” he said hastily, “there is not room in my phaeton for three people.” He brightened as an idea struck him. “I suggest that your sister take her outing in the Winterdale town chaise. That way there will be plenty of room for her and she will be able to see the parade of the ton without feeling uncomfortable about having to talk to people.”

  “Perhaps that is a good idea,” I said expressionlessly. “Anna does not cope well with a lot of new people all at once.”

  “May I pick you up this afternoon at five, then?” he asked eagerly.

  “No,” I replied. “I rather believe that I will go with Anna.”

  At four-thirty in the afternoon, when I was entertaining Anna by playing spillikins with her in the upstairs yellow drawing room, Lord Winterdale came into the room wearing the drab coat with three tiers of pockets, huge pearl buttons, and blue waistcoat with yellow stripes that signified a member of the Four House Club.

  He looked at me in surprise. “It is a fine spring afternoon, Miss Newbury. I felt certain that you would be driving in the park.”

  “Lord Henry invited me, but I decided not to go,” I said coolly.

  He looked at me consideringly. I had a feeling that he guessed what had happened between Lord Henry and me earlier. However, all he said was, “Have you been indoors all day?”

  I repressed a sigh. “Yes, I am afraid that I have.” Lady Winterdale had taken the town chaise to make some visits with Catherine, and I had not desired to accompany them.

  “Well, if you will be ready in half an hour, I will engage to take you and your sister driving in the park,” he said pleasantly.

  Anna jumped to her feet. “May I drive your horses, my lord? Like I did this morning?”

  “Perhaps,” he replied. “But first you must change your dress.”

  “I’ll go find Nanny,” she said eagerly, and left the room in a hurry.

  I got to my feet, leaving the spillikins spread out across the baize-covered games table. I had been rethinking my earlier proposal to Lord Henry, and now I said, “I don’t know if it is such a good idea to take Anna to the park during the fashionable hour, my lord. I don’t want people staring at her.”

  He replied soberly, “The word about her affliction cannot yet have spread very far. People who notice her this afternoon will notice her because she is an extremely beautiful girl. And that is why I think it is important that she be seen, Miss Newbury. You do not want the misinformation to go around that she is some kind of deformed freak.”

  “Of course she isn’t a freak!” I said hotly.

  “It is important for people to see that. That is why I took her to Green Park this morning and that is why we are going to drive in Hyde Park this afternoon.”

  I was conscious of a stab of disappointment. I had been hoping that he had taken Anna to the park that morning out of kindness.

  “Very well, my lord,” I said quietly. “Perhaps you are right.”

  “Then go and change your dress, and I will have the carriage at the front door in half an hour.”

  We took the barouche to the park rather than the phaeton, as the phaeton seated only two and the barouche would seat four. Lord Winterdale drove instead of a coachman and Anna sat next to him and every once in a while he pretended to let her hold the reins. I sat opposite to the two of them, in a seat that had my back to the horses.

  As usual, the park was filled with a glittering array of horseflesh and humanity. Anna’s beautiful eyes grew huge as she took in the spectacle.

  “Look at that man with the little doggie!” she cried with delight, pointing to a dandyish man driving his phaeton with a poodle perched beside him.

  Lord Winterdale looked disgusted at the precious sight but he made no comment as Anna craned her neck to follow the man and the dog as he passed beside and then behind us.

  “Nanny made me leave my dog back at Weldon,” Anna said sadly as she turned to face forward once again. “I hope that man isn’t mean to him.”

  “You can be sure that Harris will take good care of Snowball,” I assured her.

  Harris was our butler and had been at Weldon forever.

  Lord Winterdale said, “Do you see the carriage coming toward us, Miss Newbury? That is Sir Henry Farringdon and his wife.”

  I turned my head and stared at the gaudy yellow equipage that was approaching our barouche. The tall man who was driving was elegantly dressed in a blue coat, fawn trousers, and Hessian boots. The woman seated beside him was short and plump, and she wore a carriage dress with far too many frog fastenings down the front. The feather in her hat was too long and too curly and too blue.

  This was the fifth man whom Papa had been blackmailing besides Lord Winterdale, Mr. Asherton, Mr. Howard, and the Earl of Marsh. Sir Henry was the only one of the lot whom Papa had not caught cheating at cards; he was the one who had been caught cheating on his wife.

  When Sir Henry caught sight of Lord Winterdale he slowed his carriage. My head was still turned in his direction and I could feel Sir Henry’s eyes burn into my own. He looked back to Lord Winterdale and signaled to him to stop. Lord Winterdale drew up his horses.

  “Hallo, Farringdon,” he said. “I haven’t seen you in a while.” He nodded to the plump, overdressed little woman who sat beside her husband. “Lady Farringdon. May I introduce my wards, Miss Newbury and her sister, Miss Anna Newbury.”

  I nodded and produced the required smile. Anna was staring at Lady Farringdon’s feather in utter fascination.

  Nature had not been kind to Lady Farringdon and unfortunately she had done nothing to help along the good points that she had been blessed with. Her peacock blue carriage dress was truly dreadful.

  Sir Henry was looking at me with an extremely strained expression on his face. I sighed to myself. Here was another one who was obviously worried about what I might be able to hold over his head.

  I gave him a reassuring smile.

  His eyes looked even more strained than before.

  Lord Winterdale said abruptly, “I don’t like to keep my horses standing for more than a minute. Good day to you, Farringdon, Lady Farringdon.”

  “So nice to meet you,” I said.

  “I like her feather, Georgie,” Anna said as we drove off. “Do you think I could have a feather like that one?”

  “You can have a feather to play with, not to wear,” I said.

  Anna turned to Lord Winterdale. “That lady’s dress was the exact same color blue as your eyes, my lord,” she said. “It was pretty. Too bad she was so fat.”

  “Anna,” I said despairingly, “how many times have I told you that it is not polite to talk about the way people look.”

  “I didn’t say it in front of her, Georgie,” Anna said indignantly. “I said it to you and Lord Winterdale.”

  Lord Winterdale said, “We are coming to a nice straight stretch of the path now, Anna. Would you like to drive the horses again?”

  “Oh yes!”

  He handed her the ends of the reins while he himself kept ahold of them farther up. Anna slapped the ends and clicked her tongue and looke
d extremely happy.

  I smiled. “What a good driver you are, darling,” I said. “You make me quite jealous.”

  We returned home in time to change for dinner. Lady Winterdale had tried to get Anna banned from the dinner table as well as from the downstairs drawing room, but once again Lord Winterdale had overruled his aunt. As there was nothing wrong with Anna’s table manners, Lady Winterdale had found nothing concrete to complain of to her nephew. This annoyed her excessively.

  After the unusually domestic morning and afternoon he had passed, I had been hoping that Lord Winterdale would join us for dinner. Unfortunately, this was not to be the case. His place at the end of the table was empty as usual.

  After dinner Lady Winterdale, Catherine, and I went to an unusually boring rout at some friend of Lady Winterdale’s. We were home and in bed by midnight.

  On Friday night we went to a ball at the Castletons’. As usual, my dance card was filled, but Lord Winterdale’s strictures had made an unwelcome impression on me and as I evaluated the men I danced with as potential husbands and protectors for Anna, I began to have serious doubts as to their suitability.

  Very few of them inspired me with any confidence in their steadiness or in their concern for more than themselves and their own amusement.

  I also began to wonder how many of them were interested in me beyond my being an entertaining and pretty girl to dance with at a ball. As Lord Winterdale had so tellingly pointed out, I was scarcely the most desirable prize on the marriage mart.

  Lord Winterdale was not present at the Castleton ball.

  On Saturday night we went to a ball at the Pomfrets’. I danced with many of the same men as I had the night before, as well as Mr. Asherton, the first one of Papa’s victims who had sought me out.

  Mr. Asherton asked me directly about Anna, so word was evidently getting out.

  “I am not going to blackmail you so that I can take care of my sister, Mr. Asherton,” I said fiercely as we swung around the room in a waltz to the tune of his creaking corset. “You must believe me. I do not have any evidence!”

  His chubby face looked grim, and I deduced that he didn’t believe a word that I was saying. It was very frustrating.

  Lord Winterdale did not attend the Pomfret ball either.

  Really, I thought with annoyance, what did the man do with himself? Surely he couldn’t spend every evening at Brooks’s drinking and gambling.

  Sunday afternoon I decided to take Anna to see the Royal Menagerie at the Tower of London. Nanny came with us, and Lord Winterdale, whom I actually caught for a moment in the hall as he was on his way out, recommended that we use his curricle for the trip across London.

  The day was fine and as we walked across the landing where in the past so many famous prisoners had been brought in by boat, my first impression of the Tower was not that of a gloomy and doom-ridden place but of a picnic grounds filled with a holiday gathering.

  It appeared that half of London with its young had decided to spend a delightful Sunday afternoon visiting the Tower of London. The grounds inside the grim stone walls were packed with people, most of them respectable-looking, middle-class citizens dressed in their Sunday finest.

  I was disappointed. I had been expecting an atmosphere more appropriate to a place that had seen so much suffering and death.

  However, as we toured the different areas of the famous prison that were open to the public, my imagination was able to supersede the pleasant reality of the present and call up what it must have been like several hundred years ago, when the only human presences in this grim place were prisoners and their guards. I could almost see Sir Walter Raleigh, that captive panther of a man, pacing restlessly back and forth along the wall that had been the only place allotted him for exercise during all the many years he had been kept in prison here.

  The panther simile immediately brought to my mind the picture of another lithe, dark man, an image which I instantly tried to banish from my thoughts. Instead I dragged Anna and Nanny over to the group of people that were crowded around the small area in front of the chapel where two of Henry VIII’s wives had been beheaded.

  Anna was not interested in Henry’s unfortunate wives, however, and she tugged at my hand to indicate that she wanted to move on to look at the menagerie, and this is where we went next.

  It was not very impressive. The animals were housed in a deep pit, which must once have been part of a protective ditch for the Tower when it was a royal residence, and the total menagerie consisted of one mangy-looking lion, an elephant, and two grizzly bears.

  Truth to tell, I felt sorry for them, they looked so ill kempt and listless.

  Even Anna was uncertain. “They don’t look very happy, do they, Georgie?” she asked me.

  “No, they don’t,” I said. There was a large crowd of people around the pit, and I edged closer to the low wooden fence that surrounded it and looked down. It was pitiful, really, I thought. I didn’t know what I had expected, but it hadn’t been this.

  I was standing above the lion’s part of the pit and all of a sudden he looked up from his melancholy stare into space.

  “Hello there, fellow,” I called to it in a friendly voice. “How are you?”

  I thought his eyes moved to find me and I leaned out farther. “What a handsome boy you are,” I crooned, although he was not handsome at all, poor thing. He looked as if he had some sort of skin disease.

  There was a good-sized crowd behind me as I was leaning over the low wooden rail, and suddenly someone knocked into me. Hard. I lost my balance and began to tip forward. I grabbed for the railing to right myself, and I would have been all right were it not for the hand on the small of my back that shoved me beyond recall. Then I was tumbling down the steep rocky side of the pit in what seemed to be an endless fall. I landed on the bottom, bruised, shaken, and ten feet from the lion.

  I scrambled to my feet, my breath coming hard.

  From what seemed to be a long way away I could hear screaming, and in a dim part of my mind I recognized that the screams belonged to Anna. But the main part of my mind was focused on the animal in front of me, who appeared to have awakened from his listless stupor now that someone had come to join him in his captivity.

  I stopped breathing.

  I can’t let him sense how terrified I am, I thought. Once animals sense fear they attack. Oh God, oh God, oh God. Be calm, Georgie. Be calm.

  Anna kept screaming.

  The lion opened its mouth and roared. The stench of its breath nearly knocked me down.

  I must have courage, I told myself. I was shaking all over.

  The lion took a few steps in my direction.

  “All right, Miss,” I heard a voice saying. “I’m going to throw him a bit of meat, and then we’ll put the ladder down into the pit. Can you climb up it on your own?”

  I nodded. I could have climbed the Matterhorn if it meant getting out of that cage.

  A few seconds later a huge haunch of meat came flying down into the pit, in the corner farthest away from me. The lion turned immediately and went to get his meal.

  The keeper lowered a long wooden ladder down into the pit and my foot was on the first rung before the lion had taken his first bite of meat. I hiked my skirts up past my ankles and climbed that ladder as if all the devils in hell were after me. When I reached the top, a weeping Anna threw herself into my arms.

  Nanny was right behind her. “God Almighty, Miss Georgiana,” she kept saying, “God Almighty.”

  The lion’s keeper was extremely annoyed at my stupidity in falling into the pit. “You mighta been kilt, and then what woulda happened to me?” he said. “And what woulda happened to poor Leo?”

  I apologized as coherently as I could and managed to get myself, Nanny and a still semihysterical Anna into the barouche. Fortunately it was an open carriage, because I smelt most dreadfully of the lion’s pit.

  The carriage deposited us on the doorstep of Grosvenor Square and we went in the front door. The fir
st person I saw as I came into the hall was Lord Winterdale, who appeared to be on his way to the library. He turned when he saw us.

  “How was your outing to the Tower?” he asked courteously.

  “Oh, Lord Winterdale,” Anna cried, “Georgie fell into the lion’s cage and was almost eaten up!”

  That certainly got his attention.

  “It’s true,” I said. “Fortunately I was rescued by an intelligent keeper. He threw the beast some meat to distract him while I climbed up the ladder to safety.”

  “I think you had better come along to the library with me and tell me all about this,” he said a little grimly.

  I gave him a smile that was not quite steady. “I rather think I had better have a wash first and change my clothes.”

  He looked me up and down, taking in the stains on my new green pelisse. His blue eyes darkened noticeably.

  “All right,” he said tersely. “Come along when you are ready. I will be waiting for you.”

  I went upstairs with Nanny and Anna, relieved to know that there was one person at least with whom I could share the whole truth of how I came to be pushed into that cage of death.

  CHAPTER

  eleven

  I HAD BETTY FILL THE TUB AND SCRUBBED MYSELF IN front of the fire until my skin was red. Then I dressed in a pale blue afternoon dress and went down to the library to confront Lord Winterdale.

  He was seated at his library desk, going over a ledger book. It occurred to me that he appeared to spend a great deal of time on business matters.

  He did not stand up when I came into the room, a usual sign of his rudeness, but folded his hands on his papers and gestured me to my usual chair.

  “Now,” he said, “tell me precisely what happened.”

  “Somebody pushed me,” I said. “I was standing on the edge of the lion’s pit, and perhaps I was leaning out a bit too far, but somebody definitely bumped into me. Then they put a hand on the small of my back and pushed, sending me over the rail and down into the lion’s pit.”

  For the first time I felt tears filling my eyes. “I have bruises all over my shoulder and my back,” I said, with a quiver in my voice. “Then the lion roared at me.” The quiver got even more pronounced. “His breath smelled horrible.”