The Gamble

by Joan Wolf

  “Yes, well I just have, haven’t I?” Lord Winterdale replied. He began to walk toward the carved pine staircase that stood in the center of the great hall. He ran up stairs, calling Lord Marsh’s name in a voice that was dangerous enough to send an icy chill up and down my spine.

  He was gone for perhaps five minutes and when he came downstairs his face was absolutely bleak.

  “He’s not here,” he told me. “Nor is there any sign of Anna.”

  I felt all the color drain from my face, and my shivering became uncontrollable. I pressed my hands to my mouth.

  “Oh my God,” I said, “what are we going to do now?”

  He came over to me, took off his greatcoat, and draped it around my shoulders. Then he ran his fingers through his hair. “You must have been right,” he said. “He must have taken her to one of his other estates.”

  The dreadful pictures I had been trying to suppress came to my mind, and I clenched my eyes shut as if I could deny them access. I clutched Lord Winterdale’s coat around me. It was warm from his body but still I could not seem to stop shivering.

  “We will have some tea,” Lord Winterdale said to the butler. “And some food as well. The lady is frozen and needs some nourishment.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I protested. “I couldn’t eat a thing.”

  “You’re both hungry and exhausted,” he said. “Come into the dining room and we’ll have something to eat and see if we can come up with another plan.”

  I thought with despair that it was too late for another plan, but I let him steer me into the dining room and sat down across from him at the table, his heavy, caped coat still draped around my shoulders. The surly butler brought us a pot of hot tea and a plate of cold meat. I couldn’t eat the meat, but the hot tea tasted good and I drank two cups and was grateful for its warmth.

  We sat for an hour at the table, evaluating our options, which looked grimmer and grimmer the more we discussed them. It was already too late to return to London, even if Lord Winterdale’s horses had been fit to make the journey. He himself was looking grimmer and grimmer when we heard the sound of the knocker being pounded on the front door.

  Both Lord Winterdale and I jumped to our feet and moved out into the hall as once more the crabby butler made his way to answer the knocker’s summons. The door opened and there, on the doorstep, stood one of the Winderdale grooms.

  “Oh, my lord,” he said with enormous relief as he spied Lord Winterdale. “I am so glad that I have found you! I have brought you news that Miss Anna has been found.”

  I took a single step forward. “Found?” I asked. “Is she all right?”

  “Yes, my lady. Miss Catherine brought her home, and she is perfectly fine.”

  Black spots suddenly appeared before my eyes and a strange humming began to sound in my ears. I blinked and I blinked but the spots did not go away. I tried to take a deep breath, but it didn’t seem to help, and for the first time in my life, I fainted dead away.

  I awoke to find myself lying on a sofa with Lord Winterdale sitting beside me. He had my wrist in his hand and his fingers were on my pulse. I opened my eyes, stared up into his intensely blue eyes and said unsteadily, “What happened?”

  “You fainted. It’s nothing. Just remain where you are for a few more minutes, and you will be fine.”

  Then I remembered what had happened. “Is it true?” I asked, fearful that I had dreamed the whole thing. “Is Anna really all right?”

  “Yes, she is. Apparently all the while that we were chasing her into Hampshire, she has been safe and sound at Mansfield House in town.”

  I raised myself up a little from the pillow that had been propped under my head. “Then she wasn’t kidnapped at all?”

  “Oh yes, she was kidnapped all right. I have here a letter from Catherine. Would you like me to read it to you?”

  “Yes, please,” I said, and subsided back onto the sofa to listen. Lord Winterdale began to read:

  Dear Georgie and Philip, I hope this letter reaches you in time for you to turn around and return to London before night falls, but I want you to know that Anna is back home again, and she is perfectly all right.

  The garden party at Staine House was a terrible bore and I told Mother that I wanted to leave early because I had a headache. Our carriage was coming out of the local road that leads from Staine House onto the main highway to London when a barouche came racing by us, going at what I can only describe as a dangerous rate of speed. Mother and I were inside the chaise and so we could not see the occupants of the barouche of course, but Williams, who was driving, was certain that he spied Anna pressed up against the back of the covered part of the carriage. You know how she likes to wear her hair loose like a child, and there are very few girls who have that beautiful spun gold hair of hers.

  Mama was furious that we had almost had an accident because of the barouche and she opened the window to give Williams a piece of her mind. That was when Williams said that he had seen Anna in the carriage.

  I rolled down the window on my side and told Williams to go after the barouche.

  Needless to say, Mama was furious, but I had a bad feeling in my stomach, Georgie. I thought that if we were wrong, and it wasn’t Anna, we could just apologize and no harm would be done. But if it was, and someone was trying to kidnap her to make Philip pay a ransom to get her back, then I would never forgive myself if I had let her go.

  Williams, bless him, listened to me and not to Mama and we took off after the barouche. We might not have caught up to it if it hadn’t got stuck behind a haywagon on the road. Lord Marsh (for it was he who was the driver!) tried to pass the wagon, but there was not enough room and he overturned the barouche into a ditch at the side of the road. Anna was stunned and bewildered when we came up with her, but otherwise she is unharmed.

  So that is the situation here at home. Nanny is taking care of Anna and Mama is having fits that you are out driving around the countryside with Philip unchaperoned. Please come home as quickly as you can.

  “Thank God,” I said. “Oh, thank God.”

  He nodded and stood up. I wished he would have stayed where he was. I tried to sit up and realized for the first time that his coat was draped over me like a blanket. I said unsteadily, “I have never fainted before in my entire life.”

  He ignored that comment. “My Aunt Agatha is right, Miss Newbury,” he said. “It is imperative that we return to London as soon as possible. Your reputation would be wrecked should it be known that you spent a night with me unchaperoned.”

  I looked at him doubtfully. “Isn’t it a little late to start out for London now, my lord?”

  “Unfortunately, it is.” Distractedly, he ran his fingers through his hair, disordering it so that one black lock fell over his forehead.

  He said, “I think our best choice is to remain here at Marsh Hall for the night and to start back to London early tomorrow morning. Marsh is hardly going to say anything about this little adventure, and if we are back in Grosvenor Square before ten, there is no reason for anyone to know that we have been gone for the night.”

  “Before ten.” I counted back on my fingers. “That means we have to leave here by five?”

  “Four would be better. My grays will be tired after the effort of yesterday and we won’t be able to make the time we made today.”

  “Four o’clock. How delightful,” I said faintly.

  “You can sleep the day away once we’re home,” he said unfeelingly. “The important thing now is to get you home before anyone knows that you have been away.”

  * * *

  Even though I was exhausted, I didn’t sleep very well that night. When Lord Winterdale knocked on my door at four in the morning, I struggled out of bed in the cold bedroom whose paltry fire had long since gone out. Dressing was easy. Since I had slept in my dress, all I had to do was put on my shoes. I went down the pine staircase, with its intricately carved designs of all different kinds of fruits, and found Lord Winterdale in the dini
ng room having coffee and more of the cold beef we had been served last evening.

  “Eat something,” he commanded me. “I don’t want you fainting on me again.”

  I struggled to get some of the roast beef down, but I have never been one to eat meat for breakfast. I watched Lord Winterdale spread horseradish liberally over his beef and repressed a shudder.

  By four o’clock we were back in the phaeton and heading for the highway. The sun had not yet come up and the early-morning air was cold. Lord Winterdale had commandeered a blanket for me from Lord Marsh’s butler, and I wrapped it around my shoulders like an old peasant woman. I knew I looked awful. My eyes had circles under them, my braids had long strands of hair sliding out of them, and my dress was wrinkled beyond repair.

  “If Mr. Stanhope could see me now, he’d break our engagement for certain,” I said glumly as we drove along in the cold gray morning air. “I look like a hag.”

  “He will have far more cause to break your engagement than your looks if this little adventure ever becomes known to him,” Lord Winterdale returned coolly.

  I sighed and scrubbed my eyes with my fingers.

  “What are we going to do about Lord Marsh?” I asked.

  “I have been thinking about that,” came the very grim reply.

  “You can’t call him out,” I said. “If you do, people will think that I am the one involved, not Anna, and that will certainly put off Mr. Stanhope.”

  “That thought has crossed my mind.”

  I looked at him, and said earnestly, “Anna’s welfare has to be paramount. You do see that, don’t you, my lord?”

  The sun was just beginning to rise above the horizon now, streaking the sky with bands of rose and gold.

  I think it was because I was so tired and so emotionally wrung out, that I found myself talking to him in a way that I had never talked to anyone before.

  “It is so hard to be a woman,” I said. “One never has control of one’s own life. I look around me at the parties I have been going to all Season long, and I see all these young girls, most of whom are loved and spoiled and lapped in luxury, and I see that one man, a husband, stands between them and homelessness. It is utterly terrifying.”

  His glance was a flash of blue in the growing light. “Surely homelessness is too strong a word,” he said.

  The sun was brighter now, and the hedgerows along the side of the road were beginning to cast shadows on the roadway.

  “Perhaps,” I said. “But it is not too strong a word for me and Anna.”

  He was silent. The grays trotted steadily on. They were not being pushed to canter today.

  “What would you have done if you didn’t have Anna to look after?” he asked after a while. “Would you have married the squire’s son?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I tried to laugh, but all I managed to produce was a watery chuckle. “Perhaps I would have run away and become a circus equestrienne.”

  “I doubt that,” he replied drily.

  I sighed. “You are probably right.” I sat up straighter. “To return to my original question, my lord. What can we do about Lord Marsh? Obviously we must do something to keep him from repeating his kidnapping attempt, but at the same time we don’t want any scandal.”

  He said with a bitterness that shocked me, “This everlasting concern about scandal. The only good thing I can say about my upbringing was that my father was never concerned about scandal.” He paused, as if trying to get his emotions under control. “Much as I would like to call that bastard Marsh out and put a bullet through him, you are right. We can’t afford the scandal. Instead, I shall call upon him and threaten him with exposure should he ever try to lay hands upon Anna again. As it is now, his acceptance in polite society hangs by the merest thread. If there is any more scandal about him, that thread will be cut. He doesn’t want that.”

  I digested what he had said. “Are you sure you can really assure Anna’s safety that way?”

  “I am sure. I only wish I could assure the safety of all the other children upon whom he preys.” His voice was very harsh as he added, “I agree with you, Miss Newbury, that in some ways it is very hard to be a woman.”

  CHAPTER

  fourteen

  WE REACHED LONDON BY TEN AND WERE INSIDE Mansfield House by ten-fifteen. Anna threw herself into my arms, weeping hysterically, and I took her upstairs, leaving Lord Winterdale to make explanations to his aunt. After I had got Anna calmed down, I left her with Nanny and went next door to my own room. I desperately wanted a bath and a hair wash and, as the tub was being brought to my room, Catherine came in the door.

  She said, “I won’t stay more than a minute, but are you all right, Georgie?”

  I ran to give her a huge hug. “Thanks to you, Catherine, darling, I am fine, and Anna is, too. Thank you, thank you, thank you! If you had not been there when Lord Marsh’s carriage went by, or if you had not decided to follow it . . .”

  I could not control the shudder that went through me at this thought.

  Catherine hugged me back tightly. “You must thank Williams as well, Georgie. He was the one who saw Anna in the first place.”

  “I will be certain to do that,” I said fervently.

  The tub had been set up in front of the fireplace and Betty came in the door now with two maids trailing behind her carrying cans of hot water, which they proceeded to empty into the tub. When the three of them had left to return to the kitchen to fetch more water, I said to Catherine, “I slept in my clothes last night, and I don’t believe I have ever felt more grimy in all my life.”

  “Philip told Mama that you both spent the night at Marsh Hall,” Catherine said.

  I nodded. “I froze all night long in an icy-cold bedroom, and then we left at four in the morning so that we could be back in London before anyone could suspect that we had been gone.”

  “What a dreadful experience,” she said feelingly.

  “Not as dreadful as it would have been if Marsh had got his hands on Anna,” I assured her.

  “Well, that is certainly true.” It was her turn to shudder. “Poor child, did you know that she had been half-drugged to keep her quiet?”

  At that point, the parade of maids with the water cans came once more in my door and Catherine left, saying that she would see me later, after my bath.

  The hot water and hair wash revived me somewhat, and I spent the rest of the morning by the fire in my bedroom, letting my hair dry and reading a book. Catherine came upstairs and reported that Lord Winterdale had gone out to show himself around town, which I supposed was a good idea even though I was certain that we were safe.

  After all, how was anyone to know that we had been gone together overnight? Under the circumstances, Lord Marsh was scarcely likely to say anything!

  There was a ball at the Richwoods’ that night, and Lady Winterdale felt that it was imperative for me to attend. I had managed to catch a nap during the course of the afternoon, so I was not as exhausted as I thought I might be as we alighted from the chaise and made our way into Richwood House in Portland Square.

  It was halfway through the evening that I noticed that something was wrong. People were looking at me, and one or two men who always asked me to dance did not. In fact, I actually found myself sitting out two dances, something which had never happened to me before.

  By the time we left, Lady Winterdale was looking like thunder.

  “What has happened, ma’am?” I asked as we rode through the quiet streets on our way home. “Something is obviously wrong.”

  “Three separate people told me that they have heard a rumor that you and Philip spent the night together,” Lady Winterdale said. “I did my best to quell the story, but apparently the two of you were seen returning to London.” Her clothes rustled as she turned to glare at me. “This is a most distressing turn of events, Georgiana. I am seriously displeased.”

  “Good heavens,” I said faintly. “But who could have seen us?” It was too late for the late-night
carousers to be coming home and too early for those who were paying morning visits to be out and about.”

  “Apparently Mr. Tunby is in the habit of going for a walk in the morning for his health, and he was walking down Park Lane when you and Philip came driving by. You must admit, Georgiana, that you certainly looked as if you had been out all night.” We passed under a streetlamp, and it illuminated a solitary gentleman walking along the pavement in the direction of St. James’s Street, where all of the men’s clubs were located. Lady Winterdale continued, “I was horrified when I saw the state of your clothes and your hair when you walked into the house this morning.”

  Catherine reached over and squeezed my hand, which was lying loosely in my lap.

  “I cannot imagine what Mr. Stanhope will do when he hears this rumor,” Lady Winterdale said with dire foreboding. “No gentleman wishes to marry a woman about whom scandal clings.”

  “He can’t cry off,” Catherine said loyally. “No gentleman would.”

  “The engagement is unofficial; nothing has been put in the papers,” Lady Winterdale said, an ominous note in her voice. “He most certainly can cry off.” She paused. “Unfortunately.”

  “I will, of course, explain the entire situation to him,” I said quietly. “Surely he will see that I had no choice but to chase after Anna.”

  “For your sake, Georgiana, I hope that he does,” Lady Winterdale said in a tone of voice that indicated she thought this hope was unlikely to be fulfilled. “A marriage announcement at this particular moment would go far toward saving your reputation. If Mr. Stanhope backs off, however, then I fear that your chances of catching another husband will be quite ruined.”

  Lady Winterdale did not sound as if this result would cause her to shed many tears.

  I usually did not pay a great deal of attention to Lady Winterdale’s comments, but the fact that Lord Henry Sloan did not pay his usual visit the following morning sent off a warning note to me that perhaps this time her prediction of disaster might not be wrong.