“Please, do the honours on my behalf, Miss Cathie.”
Charity glanced about her, raised her hand and obediently threw the dice. For what could she do?
A small silence preceded the scattering of the cubes which rolled across the green baize table top. The first landed cleanly upon a five while the second dice rolled slowly towards the edge. The whispering of a couple of gentlemen to her left stirred the curls at her temples and sent a shiver through her.
When a cry of surprise rang out, Charity had only just steeled herself for the jubilation of the man for whom she’d evidently won a good deal at the expense of the northerner.
She began to turn away, more than ready to be swallowed up by the crowd. Mr Adams’ die had been loaded, surely?
But then Emily was pushing her back to the table, whispering in her ear, “That one was luck, truly it was, Charity, for his opponent supplied the dice.”
And then Mr Adams was swinging her into the crook of his arm as he cried, “Gentlemen, my lucky charm! Did I not say she’d win for me?”
But Charity was not going to allow herself to become a plaything with no object other than lining Mr Adams’ pockets when Rosetta had a clearer plan in place for later that evening.
Firmly she pushed herself free of his grasp before another opponent had stepped up to the table ready to take on Hugh’s gambling cousin who was, it seemed, more ready for another game of Hazard than following Charity through the throng.
Charity disappeared back into the crowd, her skin still crawling from Mr Adams’ touch. She’d utilised every bit of willpower to hide her revulsion for the man who’d actively sought to destroy her beloved Hugo; a man who, furthermore, wanted to rub salt in the wound by pursuing Charity. Only the fact that he did not know her identity had given her the strength to keep her strong. That, and the fact that Charity knew she had to push herself to do, and be, more than she ever had before. She had to help Hugo as much as she could. Not just to save what they had, as a couple, but to prevent him from leaving on a dangerous journey to a land he had no wish to visit, doing work that was anathema to him. Hugo was a poet and an artist, not an adventurer.
He was not in a position to reverse his ill-fortune but maybe, just maybe, Charity could.
“The Devil’s own luck,” Rosetta congratulated her when she was safely in the company of her friends and sipping champagne partly concealed by a tasselled velvet curtain beside a tall sash window that looked onto the street.
“Yes, but I don’t know how it’s going to do me much good,” said Charity, dolefully.
“That’s because you haven’t the slippery instinct for getting ahead that we have, my dear.” Emily’s eyes danced as she raised her glass to her lips and drank deeply. “We are going to win big at Mr Adams’ expense. The fact that you really did throw what he wanted gives us an enormous advantage.”
“How? We have no money to gamble with?”
Emily raised one eyebrow and bit her lip as if withholding a great secret. “I’ve entered into an arrangement with a special friend who knows exactly what we’re about. Someone who has his own concerns regarding Mr Adams. A score to settle, if you will.”
Charity’s mood plummeted even further. “And I am to be the means by which he will settle his score? No, I can’t.”
She might have rolled the dice and achieved a successful outcome but she was terrified at the thought of what else she might be required to do.
Emily and Rosetta shared a meaningful glance before Emily said, “My friend, who’s here tonight, just spoke to me. He saw the interest our not-very-esteemed Mr Cyril Adams has in you. He thinks you may be able to address his concerns when you go back to his townhouse tonight.”
“I can’t!” Charity gripped her champagne flute against her chest so hurriedly that the front of her gown suffered from the spillage, causing Emily to lean forward and whisper, as she dabbed at the damp spot, “We’ve discussed this, Charity, and I’ve also heard it said just now — by no less an authority than Mr Adams’ last valet who was summarily dismissed just last week and who has vengeance in his heart to equal yours — that Mr Adams curates a detailed account book of the various misdemeanours occasioned by various society personages. A blackmail diary if you will. My friend is very anxious to know if he features in that book.”
“How can I possibly get access to that book if Mr Adams is…with me the whole time?” Charity straightened with sudden determination. “I can’t do it! I won’t do it! I won’t go back to his house and prostitute myself to…to this man. No! I can’t do this to Hugo!”
Emily patted Charity on the shoulder. “It would be the noblest sacrifice for Hugo,” she said gently. “Of course, you’d do everything you could to avoid sleeping with him but if that’s what you had to do to — ”
“No! Never! I’d rather starve in a gutter. Don’t you see? It wouldn’t be noble at all!” Charity stared at her two friends. “It would be the greatest disloyalty to Hugo if I slept with the very man who sought to destroy him.”
“Well, you’d try not to, obviously, but Hugo would think you the bravest, noblest person in the whole world that you’d take such risks on his behalf,” Rosetta said energetically. “Oh, my Lord!” Her tone changed as a look of shock crossed her features.
“What is it?” Charity and Emily cried in unison, craning their heads to see what had discomposed her.
“It’s Hugo. I just saw him in the light of the streetlamp below, about to enter the club. He’s on his way now.” Rosetta glanced about the crowded room, her face ashen even in this light. “He could ruin everything.”
Charity took a step away. “I must leave now,” she said, wanting desperately to throw herself into Hugo’s arms at the same time as wishing desperately she was as far away as possible from the dangerous, detestable Cyril Adams.
“No, no, I’ll waylay him and explain why you’re here,” Emily said hurriedly, grabbing her wrist to stop her as she communicated something quickly with Rosetta. “He’ll know it’s in nobody’s interests for you to be revealed as his mistress.”
Charity wished her friends wouldn’t use such language. She didn’t see herself as Hugo’s mistress and nor did he. It was so much more than that. And if not for Cyril Adams…
Her fear hardened to anger and grew. She turned back from the door to look at her beloved’s cousin. Son of Satan, that’s what he was. Like Hugo, he was descended from the same enterprising steel merchant but he was as different from Hugo as it was possible to be.
Cyril was cut from the same cloth, it seemed, as both his father and his uncle who wanted their cake and to eat it. They wanted to be richer than anyone else, they didn’t mind what they did to achieve this — and yet they wanted to be accepted by society.
Well, it wasn’t so easy. Charity knew that very well.
Casting a last look at the gaming table where Cyril’s floppy dark hair obscured his sneer of concentration, Charity drew back into the crowd. No matter how much she desperately wanted to see Hugo, she must keep away from him. Charity needed to be a much finer actress than she was if she were to hide her dangerously transparent feelings for him from the world.
From Mr Cyril Adams.
“Hurry, Charity! This way!” Rosetta steered her through a knot of guests congregated by the supper table but a tall, sandy-haired gentleman reached out his hand to grip her by the wrist and draw her within the circle of his discussion, saying, “My dear little friend, meet my associate, Mr Daniel Roberts — ”
And in that moment, the double doors from the lobby were thrown open and Hugo stood upon the threshold, staring in their direction as if he had a sixth sense telling him exactly where to look for the woman he sought.
Charity couldn’t move without making a scene for she was trapped between Rosetta and an elderly gentleman who looked about to speak to her in a very warm fashion as she turned in the hopes of side-stepping Hugo’s piercing glance.
But he’d sighted her and was advancing with speed and determi
nation.
“Excuse me, but I must — ” She ended on a whisper, turning only enough to extricate herself from the immediate group before Hugo was pressing against her, albeit briefly as he contoured her waist before plunging his hand into her pocket and whispering, “Someone will call an eight and you must produce these. At least, you must try, my love.” And then, as he stepped back, saying a touch more loudly for the benefit of the two gentlemen who’d flicked their glances in his direction, “Excuse me, madam, I trust I didn’t step on your foot,” before he’d disappeared into the crowd.
“Miss Cathie!”
Still caught up in the horror of what Hugo had unwittingly done, Charity turned at the familiar tone. Rough yet cultured, demanding yet steeped in cloying civility, she looked up to see Mr Cyril Adams beckoning to her from across the room.
“Where’s my Lady Luck, eh? Ah, there she is! Come this way, please. To the table, yes!”
A pathway was immediately made for her. Charity turned back in panic to Rosetta and Emily who halted their conversation with their admiring male contingent and nodded encouragingly at her before Rosetta slipped into her wake. “Don’t worry, Charity. I’m here. The dice are in your pocket. You — or someone else — will find a way to use them.”
Charity opened her mouth to explain the disaster but her friend gave her a gentle push towards Cyril, saying, “You’ll play it just right. Don’t you worry.”
Don’t worry? How could she not when they were all doomed? What had Hugo done?
Rosetta and Emily blithely imagined everything was set up for success. Hugo had such hopes, too, as she took her place, once again beside the most hated man in the room.
But everything was ruined and Charity was a jelly of fear. Now what would happen? How could she possibly save Hugo from the terrible fate that awaited him in India? He was about to sink himself even further.
Mr Adams tipped her chin and pinched her cheek as if she were a plaything, smiling at her in such a fashion that suggested she should be grateful for his attention.
She swallowed and tried to respond as she knew she ought. How could one as inexperienced as she summon up bravado she didn’t have for the ‘right’ kind of smile? The new girls at Madame Chambon’s were all instructed in the ‘right’ way to do all manner of things for the gentleman but because of Charity’s special status, she’d been spared from anything more than verbal information.
“Please don’t ask me to throw, sir,” she pleaded. “It’s not beginner’s luck anymore. I’ll throw badly…not what you want…and then you’ll be cross.”
“Cross?” His voice sounded too loud. Too indulgent, as if he were decades older and she just a child. Indeed, he stroked her cheek as if she were one and as his hand lingered to stroke the corner of her mouth, Charity caught a flash of hurt and anger as Hugo stepped into view.
Please don’t say anything that will implicate we’re together, Charity begged him with her eyes before she turned a weak smile upon Cyril. Surely Hugo would not be so stupid?
“How could I be cross with an angel?” Mr Adams asked to the sound of corroborating murmurs. It was as if the gentlemen surrounding them were united in their paternalism. “Now! I want another nine!”
Charity glanced at the faces ranged about her. There was the northerner, glowering, down on his luck, apparently, hoping for the dice to turn against his cocky opponent. Beside him, the third player — the pale sandy-haired gentleman who’d drawn her into his orbit earlier — looked warily at Charity. Communicating with her?
She looked down at the table, at her shaking free hand, then up again at the speculation on the faces of the other gentlemen. Everyone here knew Cyril was a cheat. It was whispered by more than just those who had fallen foul of him.
Rosetta had indicated that someone was about to call him out on it.
Please, let it not be Hugo.
Now she was required to throw the dice that Cyril had pressed into her hand.
A nine!
Cyril crowed his triumph amidst soft murmurings as the two cubes rolled gently across the table top.
Of course, she’d thrown a nine. He’d supplied the dice.
Cyril had one more throw. Charity could barely attend to what was happening yet she must. Her mind was a muddle. Just as the dice in her pocket were. Unwittingly, Hugo had mixed the dice — though how could she remove them from her pocket in front of such a crowd? It never would have worked.
“I call on Lady Luck to throw me another nine.”
Cyril stood with his chest puffed out, no doubt in anticipation that the game was his. Beside him, the sandy-haired gentleman exchanged a quick look with Rosetta and opened his mouth to speak.
To demand a change of dice, Charity assumed. The dice that Rosetta had slipped into Charity’s pocket.
A voice from the crowd cut in. “I challenge you to throw with dice not supplied by you, Mr Adams!”
Hugo!
There was a shocked silence. A few more gentlemen joined those at the table, flanking the northerner and the pale gentleman who was playing Cyril and who, Charity saw, sent a distinctly panicked look at Rosetta now standing at Charity’s left shoulder.
“Are you calling me a cheat?”
Charity gasped and raised her head to see Cyril’s eyes narrowed with anger.
“My own cousin? Who owes me such a grand sum?” His nostrils flared. “Why, of course, you’d say it, wouldn’t you?” He made a noise of disgust, turning to the rest of the company as if expecting them to refute such a claim.
No one did.
“Have the girl pick her own dice,” came a voice from somewhere and she twisted her head and saw it was the sandy-haired gentleman. He sent her an encouraging nod. He’d no doubt assumed the dice Rosetta had supplied were still in her pocket.
But then someone from the crowd was handing her two cubes and voices were calling across the table, “Throw it, young lady! Throw it! See if he gets his nine.”
What choice did she have?
So, she tossed and the dice rolled over the green baize table top with agonising slowness. A five…
Luck would not favour a four. It couldn’t. Only the Devil’s own luck.
But with a cry of triumph that’s what it appeared Cyril had for a collective gasp rang out as the second die raised a triumphant four to the sky.
For a split-second, Cyril seemed as disbelieving as the rest of them, before he crowed with laughter. “By God, if you won’t rue the day you slandered me, Hugo!” he said before deferring to the northerner adding, “Unless you’d like to cut your losses or, default to mine own beloved cousin. Come Hugo, I dare you to reverse my colleague’s losing streak. Take on his losses and turn them around to victory, I dare you. Everything on this throw, eh?”
Charity was so focussed on the exchange that she hardly realised the fact that Rosetta was insinuating into her palm the dice she’d retrieved from Charity’s pocket. The dice she’d put there ready for the moment when her partner in crime, called his number. Who knew what number he’d call but Rosetta believed the dice she’d retrieved would answer.
But unbelievably Hugo was stepping forward. It was the moment he’d engineered. The moment he’d intended Charity to work with him.
“Accepted,” said Hugo with a surprising degree of confidence after the briefest conferring with the man whom Cyril was beating soundly. “I call eight.”
Charity tried to shake her head. Tried to warn him with her eyes. She had no idea what the dice would roll. But Hugo must have seen her thrust her hand into her skirt pocket; he must have thought confidently that she had the means to restore his fortunes. Their fortunes.
But the dice Emily had put there had been joined by Hugo’s. She had no way of knowing which were which and now Hugo was confidently calling an eight. An eight to counteract his cheating cousin because he’d been pushed to the brink and cheating — yes, cheating! — was the only way he thought he could redress matters.
She could barely bring herself to
watch. Hugo was about to compound the worst mistake of his life and Charity could only stand by and stare, helplessly.
“And now my lady luck will roll for you, cousin.” With a shrug, Cyril draped his arm about Charity just as a pair of dice were pushed into her hands. The dice from her pocket? From the table?
It seemed Hugo hadn’t moved but his gaze was fixed on the cubes in Charity’s palm. Now she was about a play and if she threw anything other than an eight, she’d effectively wipe away another fortune that rightfully belonged to Hugo. No, not a fortune. He’d be plunging him into debt from which it would take years to extricate himself.
“Five and four certainly does not make eight!” Cyril crowed. “I declare myself the winner. Hugo, are you ready to settle up?” He dropped a careless kiss upon Charity’s cheek. It was like an oily rag to a flame.
With a cry of rage, Hugo threw himself across the table scattering people, coins, and banknotes in his wake before he was restrained by a couple of burly fellows who’d appeared seemingly from the woodwork.
Chapter 7
Cyril had summoned them. Charity had seen the muted command from the corner of her eye though her horrified focus had been on Hugo. He’d wanted to salvage their terrible situation. He’d wanted mostly to do it for Charity. And yet together they had made everything so much worse.
Now what could Charity do? She was frozen to the spot, Cyril’s hand caressing the inside of her arm while Hugo was being dragged backwards like an animal, his protests that Cyril had cheated drowned out by Cyril’s triumphant response that he’d had no part in the rolling of the dice and why didn’t he take it up with Lady Luck.
And just as Hugo was borne out of the double doors, Charity was swung round in Cyril’s arms, his delight at his success over his cousin prompting him to kiss her soundly on the mouth before he pushed a drink into her hand and bade her celebrate his success.
She choked on the fizzing liquid, her eyes watering, and her nose twitching which evinced a roar of delight from Cyril.
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