The Gamble

by Joan Wolf

  “Don’t cry,” Lord Winterdale said in a tense, angry voice. A muscle twitched in the corner of his jaw. “I shall dislike it intensely if you cry.”

  I struggled to hold back my tears, trying to substitute indignation instead. Really, I thought, I had had an extremely frightening experience. I thought I was entitled to a few tears. It wouldn’t have hurt him to spare a compassionate word for me. It wouldn’t have hurt him to give me a comforting hug.

  He did neither of these things, however. Instead he sat there, looking at me out of unsympathetic blue eyes and waiting for me to compose myself. There was a white line around his nostrils.

  When I was breathing more evenly, he said, “I gather that you have no idea who this person was who pushed you?”

  I shook my head. “It was very crowded around the menagerie, and there were a lot of people behind me. At first, when someone bumped me, I thought it was an accident. I grabbed for the rail, and I would have been able to right myself, but then someone put his hand on my back and pushed me right over the fence. It was quite deliberate, my lord. I have no doubt of that.”

  He swore softly.

  I said in a very small voice, “Do you think it might have been one of those men whom Papa was blackmailing?”

  “I think it is very likely,” he returned. “Unless you have enemies of your own you have not told me about, Miss Newbury?”

  I shook my head.

  He stared at me, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. He looked very tense.

  “What is to be done?” I asked in the same small voice as before.

  “Get you married off as quickly as possible so that you are under the protection of your husband,” he replied instantly. “Until that desirable goal is accomplished, however, I suppose that I had better keep an eye on you. God knows what you have stirred up with those stupid letters of yours.”

  A surge of healthy anger washed through me. I could feel my cheeks grow pink. “I thought I was behaving honorably,” I said. “But then, to you all honorable behavior probably seems stupid.”

  “Shall we get this straight once and for all, Miss Newbury?” he replied. “It is you who are blackmailing me, not the other way around.”

  I replied grandly, “I am not blackmailing you, Lord Winterdale, and well you know it. It is you who are blackmailing your aunt.” I stood up before he could. “And I’ll have you know that I don’t need your solicitude. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself!”

  On this truly stupid note, I swept out of the room.

  * * *

  We stayed home on Sunday night so I did not have to worry about someone trying to harm me. Lady Winterdale and Anna and I spent the evening listening to Catherine play the piano. The Duchess of Faircastle had quite taken Catherine up, and even Lady Winterdale felt that she could hardly snub a duchess by refusing to allow her daughter to attend her afternoon musicales.

  I kept asking Catherine if any interesting young men appeared at these musical afternoons, but she always shook her head and said that the only men present were the duchess’s sons. As I knew Lord Henry was there only because his mother demanded it, I didn’t harbor any false hopes about Catherine’s finding a possible husband at the Faircastles’.

  Anna loved listening to Catherine play. I had never before realized that my sister would enjoy music, and it was a great pleasure to watch her lovely face as she listened to the beautiful notes of Mozart come pouring out from beneath Catherine’s talented fingers.

  My mother had been musical, I remembered. Anna must have inherited her love of music from Mama.

  Lord Winterdale did eat Sunday dinner with us, but he did not participate in much of the conversation. Then, after drinking a glass of port in solitary splendor in the dining room after we ladies had gone upstairs to the drawing room, he disappeared.

  Back to Brooks’s no doubt, to drink and gamble some more.

  Monday night was the night of the Wrenham ball, the ball where Lord Winterdale had said I was likely to meet the Earl of Marsh. To my great relief, Lord Winterdale appeared at dinner dressed in full evening regalia and announced to his aunt that he would be accompanying us that evening to the Wrenhams’.

  Lady Winterdale pronounced herself to be amazed.

  “How is this, Philip? You are like a shadow in your own house for weeks on end, and then you appear out of nowhere to escort us to a ball! I am stunned.”

  “To succeed in stunning you is a feat indeed, Aunt Agatha,” Lord Winterdale said sarcastically. “You usually are so certain of everything.”

  Lady Winterdale glared at him down the width of the dining-room table. The chandelier glinted on her gold turban, which she was wearing to match the gold embroidery in her purple silk gown, “You are not as witty as you think you are, Philip,” she said.

  He looked up from his chicken, a look of blatant surprise on his face. “I’m not?”

  I looked at his flying black eyebrows and glinting blue eyes, and the first inkling of a very unwelcome knowledge began to insinuate itself into my mind and my heart.

  I pushed it away.

  “Anna, darling,” I said, “would you care for some of these delicious green beans?”

  “Oh yes, thank you, Georgie,” Anna said, and one of the footmen hurried to bring the side dish to her.

  The servants loved Anna. How could they not, I thought, resolutely keeping my mind on my sister. She was the sweetest child who ever lived.

  * * *

  Wrenham House was in Hanover Square and, like most of the town houses in London, it was too narrow to have a ballroom so Lady Wrenham had had the rug taken up in her upstairs drawing room and the dance was held there.

  I came into the room with Lady Winterdale, Catherine, and Lord Winterdale, and looked around me.

  The same faces that I had seen at every ball since I had come to London looked back.

  I sighed.

  “Bored already, Miss Newbury?” Lord Winterdale murmured in my ear.

  “Not bored precisely,” I returned in a low voice. “It is just that one keeps seeing the same people over and over again.”

  “Well, here comes someone who does not appear bored to see you,” Lord Winterdale said, and I saw Lord Borrow lumbering his bearlike way across the dance floor in my direction.

  He bowed in front of me, made a civil acknowledgment of my guardian, and asked me to dance. I accepted, of course, and he led me out to the floor for the opening quadrille.

  The ball proceeded as most balls had proceeded since I came to London, with the big difference that this time Lord Winterdale was there, and I could feel him watching me. I never once caught him doing it, but I could feel it, and for some reason that made my blood run faster and my nerve endings tingle.

  About halfway through the evening a couple I had never before seen came into the drawing room. I saw Lady Wrenham rush to the wide double doors, and she stood in conversation with the newly arrived woman for a few moments while the man stood silently beside them, his eyes roving over the scene in front of him.

  We were between dances, and I was standing in front of the crimson-draped windows with Mr. George Stanhope, waiting for the music to start up again. “Who are those people who just came in?” I asked him, trying to sound as if I were merely casually interested.

  “That is Marsh,” Mr. Stanhope replied. There was a very cold look in his green eyes and a very disapproving expression on his face. “My advice to you is to stay away from him, Miss Newbury,” he warned me. “He is not a nice man.”

  Lord Marsh appeared to have a universally delightful reputation.

  “He doesn’t look like a bad man,” I said, and this was true. I had rather expected the Earl of Marsh to be a forbidding-looking fellow, with a swarthy and dissipated face. This man was very fair, and even from my position across the room I could see that his eyes were light.

  Mr. Stanhope muttered something about looks not being everything, and I agreed.

  It took Lord Marsh precisely
fifteen minutes to seek me out. My hostess, Lady Wrenham, presented him to me as an old friend of my father’s, and when he asked me to dance I could scarcely refuse.

  It was a waltz.

  We went out onto the dance floor, and he put his hand on my waist and took my hand in his and looked down into my face. He was about as tall as Lord Winterdale, and up close I could see the threads of gray that had dimmed the bright gold of his hair. His eyes were almost colorless, a pale gray-green, and there was something about them that did not look right.

  I looked around for Lord Winterdale and didn’t see him.

  Damn, I thought crossly. Where was he when I needed him?

  “And how are you enjoying your Season, Miss Newbury?” Lord Marsh said to me.

  “Very well, my lord,” I replied tersely, once more searching the room for Lord Winterdale.

  “It was so kind of Lady Winterdale to sponsor your come out, was it not?” he said. “And so strange. One does not usually think of Lady Winterdale as being kind.”

  He was smiling a little, the look on his face that of a cat who is playing with a mouse.

  I said, “Lord Winterdale is my guardian, Lord Marsh, and Lady Winterdale is sponsoring me to oblige him.”

  He laughed.

  It was a soundless laugh, and it didn’t reach his eyes. I have to admit that it was frightening. He was indeed an excessively unpleasant man.

  He was mercifully silent for the remainder of the dance, however, and as soon as it ended I turned away from him to flee to the shelter of Lady Winterdale’s chaperonage. But Lord Marsh’s fingers closed around my bare arm beneath the puffed sleeve of my pale pink evening frock and held me next to him.

  “I wish to speak to you, Miss Newbury,” he said. “Come along with me to a place where we can be private.”

  “No!” I said in panic, and tried to pull away. Once more I looked vainly around the room for Lord Winterdale.

  Lord Marsh’s fingers bit into the flesh of my arm with cruel pressure. “Don’t cause a scene, you stupid little bitch,” he said in a low and vicious voice. What made his words even more frightening was the fact that he was smiling when he said them.

  He urged me forward and I went with him, thinking that he was right, that I did not wish to cause a scene, and that the other drawing room on the floor had been set up as a supper room and so I would surely be protected by the presence of other people.

  We didn’t go into the supper room, however. Lord Marsh went directly across the hall, pushed open a closed door, and pulled me into the small anteroom that was disclosed. He shut the door behind him and said in a voice that sent shivers up and down my spine, “Now, then, let us talk about that evidence.”

  I thought of that hand pushing me into the lion’s den and my heart began to pound with terror.

  Lord Winterdale’s voice said from the darkness of the anteroom’s far corner, “Let us do that, Marsh. And take your hands off my ward.”

  Lord Marsh dropped his hands, swung around to face Lord Winterdale, and cursed.

  I took the opportunity of being free to run across the room to Lord Winterdale’s side.

  A little silence fell as the two men sized each other up. Then Lord Marsh said, “Was Weldon blackmailing you, too, Philip?”

  I must confess that his use of Lord Winterdale’s Christian name stunned me.

  “Not me, my uncle,” Lord Winterdale replied briefly.

  “The saintly Winterdale?” Lord Marsh asked incredulously.

  “It appears so. At any rate, our innocent Miss Newbury here found all the blackmailing evidence after her father died. Instead of returning the evidence to the victims, however, she stupidly burned it, thinking she was doing a good deed to all concerned.”

  “Or she says she burned it,” Lord Marsh replied in a harsh voice.

  “Oh, I don’t think there is any doubt that she burned it, Richard,” Lord Winterdale said amiably. “She wouldn’t have sent those notes out if she hadn’t. She would just have put the screws on you, like her father did.”

  Richard. I felt another jolt as I realized that these men were on far closer terms than Lord Winterdale had ever let on to me.

  “She must have put the screws to you,” Lord Marsh was pointing out. “I cannot imagine any other reason for you to be taking up an insipid little schoolroom miss. She is scarcely your type, Philip, you must admit.”

  I could feel my hackles go up. Insipid little schoolroom miss, indeed!

  “I am doing it to get back at my aunt, of course,” Lord Winterdale replied pleasantly. “You cannot imagine how much pleasure I have derived this Season from watching her squirm as Catherine is continually passed over in favor of my ward.”

  Lord Marsh looked skeptical. “If she is not blackmailing you, then how did Miss Newbury come to your attention in the first place?” he demanded.

  “Oh, I went to see her,” Lord Winterdale said easily. “My uncle’s books showed a record of payments to Lord Weldon, you see, and I wondered about them. So I sought Miss Newbury out myself and she told me about what she had found among her father’s papers.”

  I was enormously impressed by this clever account of how we had come to meet.

  “And you decided to present her in order to annoy your aunt?” Lord Marsh said.

  “That is right,” Lord Winterdale replied.

  Lord Marsh said silkily, “Do you know, Philip, I have known you for a long time, and I find that I do not believe you?”

  Lord Winterdale shrugged. “Believe me or not, it is the truth.” He took a step forward, closer to Lord Marsh. “And believe this also, Richard,” he said. “If you pose any danger at all to Miss Newbury, you will have to deal with me.”

  “Ah,” said Lord Marsh. He contemplated Lord Winterdale for a moment in silence. Then, “Is that a warning?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Lord Winterdale grimly, “it is.”

  I moved infinitesimally closer to him.

  Lord Marsh gave his chilling, mirthless smile. “I will remember that,” he said. “And now, I believe I must return to the ballroom. My wife will be wondering where I am.”

  “A very good idea,” Lord Winterdale said pleasantly, and we stood in silence as Lord Marsh opened the door and left the anteroom, closing the door behind him once more.

  The only sound in the room after Lord Marsh had departed was my own accelerated breathing. “He didn’t believe you, my lord,” I said at last.

  “Perhaps not, but I gave him something to think about,” Lord Winterdale returned grimly.

  I said tentatively, “It sounded as if you know each other well.”

  He shrugged. “I did not frequent the most salubrious places in my boyhood, Miss Newbury. I know a lot of men like Lord Marsh.”

  I thought of what Catherine had told me of Lord Winterdale’s youth and felt ineffably sad.

  We stood in silence for a minute, wrapped in our own thoughts, and absently I began to rub my arm where Lord Marsh had gripped it.

  “What is wrong with your arm?” Lord Winterdale asked sharply.

  I glanced down at my skin below my puffed pink sleeve. The anteroom was only lit by a few wall sconces, but even so Lord Marsh’s fingerprints were quite clear on my white flesh. Doubtless they would turn to ugly dark bruises the following day.

  “Lord Marsh grabbed me and made me come with him,” I said. “His fingers dug into my arm.”

  Lord Winterdale lifted his hand and lightly touched the bruises with his right forefinger. It was as if a bolt of lightning shot through me at his touch.

  He dropped his hand, stepped away from me, and said with an attempt at lightness, “You will be a mass of bruises if you don’t take care, Miss Newbury.”

  I gave him a wobbly smile. “Thank you, my lord, for being here. I don’t know what would have happened had he managed to catch me alone.”

  He nodded. “Speaking of being alone, we had better return to the ballroom before people begin to notice we are missing. I’ll go first and get
Catherine to come and accompany you back. It won’t do for people to think that we have been together.”

  I must confess, I found it discouraging the way he was so determined to keep his distance from me. Once again, he hadn’t even asked me to dance.

  I swallowed my pride, and said, “You dance with Catherine, Lord Winterdale. Why don’t you dance with me?”

  “I told you the answer to that before,” he returned impatiently. “You are supposed to be my ward. Any hint of a romantic entanglement between us would be extremely detrimental to your reputation. It is wisest for us to keep apart.”

  “I can’t imagine how one dance could lead people to imagine that we are romantically involved,” I said spiritedly.

  “You have plenty of beaux to dance with, Miss Newbury,” he replied with finality. “You don’t need to dance with me.”

  The rest of the ball was discouragingly tedious. The only good thing was that my regular partners, Lord Henry Sloan, Lord Borrow, and Mr. George Stanhope, were all very attentive and did not seem to be put off by their discovery of the existence of Anna. In fact, they all made a point of telling me that they were sorry they had reacted so badly to her appearance at Mansfield House, and they attributed their behavior to surprise.

  I supposed I should be happy that it looked as if Anna was not going to prove an obstacle to my chances of bringing one of my beaux up to scratch as a husband.

  I had no idea why I should be feeling so depressed.

  In an unusual move, Lord Winterdale saw us home from the Wrenham ball. Then, once he knew we were safely in the house, he got back into the coach and left. On his way to Brooks’s, no doubt, to gamble and to drink.

  The more I saw of him, the more I realized how disreputable he really was. Tonight had only compounded matters when I had discovered that he was on first-name terms with one of the most notorious rogues in England.

  I went to sleep and dreamed about him, which annoyed me no end. Lord Winterdale was nothing to me, I thought, as I awoke in the morning. I needed to concentrate on the men who were likely to marry me and provide a home for Anna.