Once Upon a Wager

by Julie LeMense

  “Estrella and Cousin Augustus,” she called out. “Could you stay for just a moment, please?” After hesitating, they turned, and she was perversely satisfied to see Estrella lose all semblance of color. Something bright and delicate hung from her wrist by a ribbon.

  “I see you’ve found your fan,” Annabelle said as the two came to a halt in front of her.

  “Indeed! Imagine my relief.”

  “It was not in the library, then,” she said, rather impressed that she hadn’t already snatched the thing, and snapped it in two.

  Estrella flushed an unbecoming shade. “No, it wasn’t there after all. I’d forgotten my son was holding it for me. Weren’t you, my dear?”

  “It was a happy surprise,” Augustus said, “to discover that it complemented my ensemble so well.” He was wearing a glittering cutaway jacket embroidered with a profusion of colored crystal beads, over tight gold trousers.

  “Rather like sparks complement an explosion, I should think,” Aunt Sophia said as she came up behind them, having sent Jane up to her rooms. “You look like the fireworks display at Vauxhall Gardens.”

  Augustus seemed absurdly pleased by the comparison, but his mother was more wary. Rightly so. “We should return to the hotel.”

  “No, please stay just a moment more, Estrella,” Annabelle said. “I want to know why you locked me in the library with Corporal Digby.”

  “Would you repeat that, my dear?” Alec’s voice was deceptively calm behind her as he placed a protective arm at her waist, suffusing her body with tingling awareness.

  “Happily,” she said, leaning back into the solid wall of him. “You did not know, perhaps, that this evening’s drama began when Estrella lured me into the library and trapped me there. I’ve just been asking for an explanation.”

  “I am eager to hear it,” Aunt Sophia added. “Especially since the Simpertons are my guests at their hotel here in London, wearing clothes they’ve charged to my accounts, along with any number of additional fripperies.”

  Being too large to move with any speed, Estrella seemed to realize that a hasty escape was not an option. Instead, she opened and closed her mouth for several moments, reminding Annabelle of a round fish caught on a lure. “Corporal Digby told me they were in love,” she said at last. “I have ever been one to further the cause of romance. I thought they’d make a fine match.”

  “In the same way Augustus would be a fine match for Princess Charlotte,” Aunt Sophia offered.

  “Precisely! I’m so glad that you see it, too.”

  “And because in handing Annabelle over to Digby, you’d have Astley Castle all to yourselves.”

  “Yes, indeed,” Estrella replied. “I mean, no. No, not at all! That was never our intent.”

  But Annabelle knew better. It had been their plan all along.

  Alec stepped around her. “I think you and your son should leave before I fully comprehend the depths of your deception.”

  “Right, then,” Estrella agreed. “We’ll be off straight away.”

  “I will give you until the morning to collect your things from the hotel,” he continued, “and then I want you gone from London.”

  “And from Nuneaton, as well,” Annabelle added. How satisfying it was to say it.

  “You can’t banish us from Astley Castle,” Estrella huffed, stiff with outrage. “It is Augustus’s birthright!”

  “It was my brother’s birthright before he was killed by Digby, the very man with whom you plotted to entrap me. I may not be able to keep your son from inheriting, but that doesn’t mean I will suffer your presence in my childhood home until then.”

  “We have no money,” Estrella cried, her hands shaking. “No place to go!”

  “The sale of your new clothes should net you something,” Aunt Sophia said. “And you hail from Manchester, do you not? Perhaps Augustus can find a position with a haberdasher there. He has that impressive flair for fashion.”

  • • •

  Once the Simpertons had been dispatched, Alec pulled Annabelle into a quiet corner, away from the last remaining guests. “Are you certain that you are all right?” he asked, his face grave with concern.

  “I am fine,” she said, even as a shiver ran through her, recalling Digby’s lies about Gareth and the race that day. The charges were so preposterous she would not repeat them. “To think that Digby meant to hurt you, or worse. And poor Gareth!” She wrapped her arms around him, hardly caring who saw, wanting only to revel in his warmth, to set aside her foolish fears, and pour out her feelings. For a glorious moment, he hugged her tightly against him, brushing the whisper of a kiss behind her ear. But then he pulled away.

  “You have been so brave, Annabelle,” Alec said with a gentle caress of his fingers along her cheek. “Can you be brave just a little while longer? I can’t shake the feeling that there is still unfinished business tonight.” He looked up and motioned to Lord Marworth, who was beside them in several long strides.

  “I’ll be shocked if Digby doesn’t try to make a run for it tonight,” Alec said. “Can you station a few men outside of his lodgings in Marylebone? I have some favors I need to call in at the War Office. Afterward, I will meet you there.”

  Here was the man so many soldiers had followed in battle, all brisk, military efficiency.

  After Marworth departed, he turned again toward her. “I know you have questions about all that has transpired, but will you wait for me? I have things I must say, and I want to say them without distractions.”

  The inflection in his tone felt like silk rubbing along her skin. “I’ll always wait for you, Alec.”

  His eyes flared as he treated her with one of his beautiful smiles, and then he bent down, kissing her firmly on the lips, in full view of the last remaining guests. “There goes my reputation for restraint,” he whispered in her ear. Then he turned toward the door, walking out into the night.

  • • •

  After checking on Jane, Annabelle made her way to her father’s chambers. She was surprised to find the door slightly ajar. When she knocked quietly and pushed it open, he was not inside. She’d been certain he would be sleeping, exhausted by the demands of the evening.

  She wandered back downstairs, looking into the drawing room, the library, each of the front parlors, even the kitchen below, where the staff was enjoying the remnants of the evening’s grand feast. She was happy to see Mary among them, and with a heartfelt smile, Annabelle thanked everyone for their efforts before returning to the second floor to peek into the ballroom. Several housemaids were extinguishing the chandeliers, while footmen removed the dozens of tables set out for the dinner. So much effort had gone into her come-out ball, and it had come so close to disaster. Even now, she might have been at the mercy of Damien Digby.

  Annabelle continued her search of the public rooms, increasingly worried. It wasn’t like her father to venture out at night alone. Perhaps he’d spotted an unusual moth from the window of his suite? Determined to find him, she rushed back to her own rooms to change. A ball gown was ill-suited to searching the grounds. With the door to her chambers wide open, she hurried past her sitting area to the bedroom beyond.

  What she saw paralyzed her with shock. Her father was sitting on the edge of her bed, his eyes lit with a wildness she’d never before seen. In one hand, he held a mounted butterfly encased in glass. There was a cocked pistol in the other. After glancing at her, he returned his dazed focus to the doorway. “Father,” she whispered. “You must put the gun away. You are going to hurt yourself.”

  “But he’s come back. And the gun will keep us safe.”

  “Who has come back? All the guests have left.”

  “His voice ... I heard it rising up from the hallway. It’s been beating about my head.”

  “Whose voice, Father?”

  “I imagined you were already here,” he said, gesturing with the hand that held the encased butterfly. “See how much you look alike? The gold and the blue? So pretty and perfect.”
<
br />   She could feel tears welling up inside of her. Had he finally given into madness?

  “But I have mixed up things in my head again,” he said. “Come stand behind me. He will walk in at any moment.”

  “Father, please,” she begged. “Who will walk in?”

  “Digby, of course!” His eyes never wavered from the door. “The Death's-head hawk moth. He steals from the hive of the honeybee. Even the guardian bees cannot harm him. He’s immune to their poison … but not this pistol.”

  “Father, you are not making any sense, but I know you sometimes have problems forming your words and making yourself understood. Digby was here, but he has gone. He’s going to be brought up on charges of slander, and perhaps murder.” She paused, not sure if what she’d learned tonight would unsettle him all the more. “Please put the gun away. We are both safe. I have so much to tell you.”

  His eyes were still haunted, but some of the tension seemed to leave his body. “I tried to keep you safe, Annabelle. Even when I did wrong, I tried to keep you whole.”

  She watched as he lowered the hand holding the gun, settling it upon his thigh, pointing it at no direction in particular. “Will you hand the pistol to me, Father?” she asked carefully, terrified he would set it off inadvertently and harm himself. “Can I secure it for you, so that I can keep you safe?” The tone of her voice seemed to settle him. He slowly uncocked the pistol and shifted it toward her. Annabelle lifted it from his lap, and moved purposefully to the fireplace mantel. Placing it there put it clearly out of his reach.

  “Digby is the Devil’s own,” he said. “I knew it when he came to Astley Castle once upon a time, with a wager to offer.”

  “Do you mean the night of Gareth’s party?”

  “He’d been to Astley before,” he replied, increasingly cogent now. “He offered your brother a quick profit on a bet, and we needed money. Gareth vouched for him.”

  Father had known Digby before that night? “Did you bet with him, as well?”

  He hunched his shoulders. “At first, we made money, and I was happy. I’ve never had a head for figures, as you know. But then we started to lose, and rapidly. The worst of it was the Sherford-Chetwiggin race. We couldn’t recover from the debt.”

  Sherford-Chetwiggin.

  The name stirred a memory, but Annabelle couldn’t assign it to a time or place. “How much did you lose, Father?”

  “Together, we lost 8,000 pounds.”

  Eight thousand pounds!

  A disquieting numbness came over her. The number was strangely, horribly familiar. “Surely Gareth didn’t risk so much on a carriage race in the country,” she said. “Alec would have argued against such lunacy.”

  Father looked up at her from his vantage point on the bed, eyes wide and sad, his voice cracking with emotion. “Digby had seen you. He wanted you. He told Gareth he was willing to forget all of our debts for you.”

  Rather than the crushing grief she should have felt, Annabelle felt the strongest rush of anger she had ever known. “You and Gareth were going to barter me for Astley Castle?” Digby had said as much, but she’d refused to believe him.

  “No! I would never have let him have you. Gareth was drunk when Digby suggested the wager. He wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  “That is not an excuse!” To think the brother she’d mourned had planned to trade her for the price of his debts.

  I am the worst of brothers. I am so sorry.

  “Dear God,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around her waist. Why was she suddenly seeing bits and pieces of a day she no longer wanted to remember?

  “Gareth came to me before dawn and told me about the race. I insisted it be canceled, but he believed Digby would do anything to have you. I told him to take you and steal away. He was going to go first to Arbury Hall, and then vanish from there.”

  “I’ve brought you a quick change of clothes, an old set of mine.”

  “After you were safe, I was going to give Digby the note to Astley Castle, and sell my collection to cover the rest. But the race began before it was meant to.” His voice was tortured. “Digby must have suspected something.”

  “Such a surprise, to see you out and about so early, Gareth. Are you making an escape?”

  “I was too late to save your brother,” he moaned. “And you were like a beautiful doll that had been ripped in two.”

  She did not want to ask it. She was terrified of the answer. “Did Mother know?”

  He looked up, his face contorted with grief. “That night, I told her about the debts we’d incurred. About the race and Gareth’s wager. I think she went mad with the knowledge.”

  The pressure building in her head was nearly unbearable. All this time, so much had been kept from her. “Why have you never told me any of this? Didn’t I have a right to know?”

  “I wanted to keep you safe with me. Nobody knew how well you’d recovered. Digby had forgotten your existence.”

  “But you still owed him money. There was every chance he would return.”

  “If he came back, I had proof of his perfidy! I’d found the linchpin. I could protect you.”

  “But Alec found the linchpin. He confronted Digby with it this evening.”

  “I told him where it could be found,” he said, tears gathering in his eyes. “I kept it in the locked case on my desk, along with all the things I hide from myself. I am a coward, you see.”

  She tensed, as if preparing to absorb a body blow. There had been something in the sound of his voice. “What other things have you been hiding, Father?”

  “My Aporia Crataegi specimen. It was so like your mother, you see. And a lock of your brother’s hair. I clipped it before he was buried. It was dry and lifeless in my hands, just like my poor boy.” He shuddered, tears slipping down his cheeks. “And your letters. I kept those hidden too.”

  Her heart was pounding, ringing in her ears. “Which letters?”

  “The ones you sent to Alec Carstairs,” he whispered.

  A white hot flash of loss almost drove her to her knees. She nearly groaned with the pain of it, certain she would crumple under the weight of her anguish. All those years, she’d felt so unwanted and alone. Did he understand what he’d done? His mind had a strange way of viewing reality, and of responding to it. But at this moment, she could only feel a deep sense of betrayal.

  “You say you wanted to protect me. In truth, you were only protecting yourself.”

  “No, Annabelle!” he sobbed. “I know now that I was wrong, but I only wanted to keep you close. I wanted to keep you safe.”

  She didn’t reply. Instead, she went over to the mantel and removed the bullets from her father’s gun. Then she walked out of the room, shutting the door behind her. Canby, having closed up the house for the night, was making the last of his rounds in the hall. It took every bit of her composure to speak calmly. “Would you please have a carriage brought around for me? I need to speak with Lord Dorset.”

  He couldn’t mask his surprise. “It is rather late, my lady. Are you sure that’s wise?”

  “Probably not. But with or without a carriage, I am going to find him.”

  “Shall I send a maid for Lady Marchmain?” he asked, his distress obvious. “I feel certain she would not wish you to travel about unescorted.”

  “Please, Canby. This is something I prefer to do by myself.” She needed to leave now, before she shattered into pieces.

  He seemed to sense that, because after a searching glance, he offered her a respectful bow. “I will see to it right away.”

  • • •

  It was almost dawn when Alec turned Mars onto Welbeck Street in Marylebone. It was a respectable address, home to well-heeled tradesmen, writers, and professional men. Yet a murderer lived in their midst.

  Several uniformed men were clustered outside of the Digby’s rented lodgings, Marworth waiting nearby. Alec pulled up alongside him. “Any movement yet?”

  “Not yet, but I have a feeling you’re just in time f
or the fun. If he waits much longer, he’ll lose the cover of darkness.”

  “I say we don't bother waiting.” He slipped from his horse and threw the reins to one of the other men. “I say we go in after him. The two approached the door of Digby’s modest building. “Let's smash it open … ” Alec said, no longer interested in leashing his anger.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Marworth said with a brief smile, as he pulled a ring with several brass keys from his pocket. “His landlady was more than accommodating.”

  After a nearly noiseless entry, they passed into a narrow hallway, two doors opposite each other at the bottom of the stairs, two more at the top. Digby’s was the second to the left, bathed in a slant of moonlight from a small window.

  Slipping up the stairs, they stopped outside his door, Marworth ready to reach for another key, when the door suddenly swung open, and a dark figure rushed out, barreling toward them He crashed into Alec with a satisfying thump before crumbling to the floor at his feet. Too bad Digby hadn’t bothered to watch where he was going.

  “May we assume that you’re going out?” he asked as the bastard struggled to force air back into his lungs. He was dressed in undistinguished clothing, a bag and its contents splayed beside him. “What are you doing here?” Digby wheezed as he tried to regain his footing. “You have no right to accost me in my home.”

  “I’m not sure it’s yours anymore,” Marworth said. “It seems your rent is in arrears.” Together, they pushed him back into a dingy parlor and closed the door behind them.

  “I’m free to go if I please,” Digby insisted. “I’ve not been charged with a crime.”

  “Please,” Marworth drawled. “We all know several charges are forthcoming. Even as we speak, you’ve busied detectives from Bow Street to the Peninsula.”

  “What of it? You can’t hold me here.”

  “Go ahead, then. Try to push past,” Alec said. “I’d welcome the opportunity to wring your neck.” In fact, nothing would give him greater pleasure. His hands fairly itched to encircle the man's throat, and squeeze just so.

  “You have a habit of trying to separate my head from my body,” Digby sneered.