The Gamble

by Laura Parker

  She had taken up gambling in order to occupy her lonely nights and, as usual, she had been losing badly tonight. When the evening’s losses were tallied, hers were the heaviest, to Jemmy Branston. Lingering after the others he had repeated an idle bit of gossip that certain London ladies had been sighted on the town dressed up in their husbands’ clothing! He then proposed to cancel her debt if she enacted a similar masquerade. The risk had seemed slight compared to what Ran’s reaction was likely to be when he learned the extent of her gaming debts.

  Lotte sighed as she bit into the almond paste confection. Of all her husband’s faults, and as his wife she could attest to the fact that he possessed many, she found his righteous indignation the most galling. She could but agree with Viscount Darlington. The gentleman had only a few nights earlier pronounced her husband’s manner, “a trifle high in the instep for an earl.”

  If only Jack had not appeared so unexpectedly at the tavern on the Thames, Jemmy might have kept his head to a better degree. But Branston was like most young men, in awe of the brashly confident viscount. Oh, but he had behaved magnificently at the tavern in turning the tables on those besotted fellows! If Darlington had been with her this evening things would have ended much differently.

  Lotte’s mouth softened as if in expectation of a kiss. Bitingly witty and sinfully attractive, though icily disdainful at times, Lord Darlington was the only man other than Ran who made her heart beat a little faster. Of course, she loved Ran. Yet no lady liked to be neglected and she was certain she had detected a glimmer of interest in the viscount’s silvery gaze.

  Once Ran had been her most ardent swain. During their courtship Ran had on one occasion slept in her father’s garden below her window because he said he could not bear to be parted from her even for a night. Once wed, he had pleasured her in ways that she had never even known to dream of. But his ardor had cooled during the eleven months of their marriage, solidifying lately into a very millstone of husbandry. Now some carrot-topped doxy was receiving his ardent attentions.

  “A pox on wedded bliss!” she muttered darkly.

  “I greet you with equal felicitations, sweet wife.”

  The familiar baritone voiced from the doorway brought Lotte into a sitting position. There stood her husband, looking as splendid as ever in a masculine habit of deep green satin and dripping French lace at neck and cuffs, a fashion he preferred over the more austere English style. His wig was queued back with a black ribbon, the new English vanity.

  Yet it was the man himself, not the trappings of an aristocrat, who had held her in thrall from the first. He was tall and lean, which made him appear even taller. Harshly handsome with bold nose and firm mouth, here was the only the man she had ever invited into her full embrace.

  Struck by the heat that had always enveloped her whenever he entered a room, Lotte leaned back, allowing her wrapper to slide open on a provocative length of gartered thigh. “Oh, ’tis only you.”

  His gaze narrowed in speculation upon her immodest display. “Whom else were you expecting, Lotte love?”

  Lotte sent him a wary look from beneath seductively lowered lids. Whenever he called her “Lotte love,” they were certain to have a nasty row. Dear lord, had he heard?

  “No one unless, perhaps, my maid,” she managed to say without a tremor.

  He took a step inside the room into which she had pointedly not invited him, his gaze lingering long enough in the room’s deepest shadows to enrage her. Did he really think she had a secret admirer tucked away in a corner?

  Gathering her courage, she decided to sling the first stone. After all, what had she to lose? “If you’ve come home to scold me, you may save your breath. Your disaffection with me is legend. You need not refine upon it tonight.”

  Lord Randolph Lovelace’s plum brown gaze returned to his wife. Lounging in her bed with her red-gold hair undressed and tumbling about her lovely shoulders, her skin gleaming enticingly in the candlelight, she looked both innocent and sluttish all at once. Swept by a sudden familiar sense of longing and rage, he could not decide whether to rush over and embrace or throttle her. Instead, he retreated into the role of mocking husband.

  “If I am disaffected with you, Lotte, then it is by your doing. You will insist upon surrounding yourself with companions who are beneath you. Without exception they are either idle, dissolute, incorrigible gamblers, or all three into the bargain.”

  Lotte pretended to be absorbed in the exact twist of the curl she fingered. “I can’t think who you might mean. They were friends of yours first, Ran.”

  “Not Darlington.”

  “No, Darlington is a particular friend of mine,” she answered smugly. “But certainly Millpost was counted among your acquaintances. I vow I am as afraid of the baronet’s vicious tongue as anyone is. Half the Beau Monde goes in fear of that most accomplished gossip. The other half entertains him shamelessly in hopes of learning the fearful secrets of the first half.” She cast a coquettish glance her spouse’s way. “I prefer to be among the second half.”

  “Millpost is a malicious talebearer. Do you think any word you slip in his ear is not privy to all of London within the hour?”

  Lotte reached for the lace handkerchief tucked into her decolletage, relief tugging the corners of her mouth into a smile. If Ran could make conversation about Millpost, he had not yet heard of her little escapade. “You are too harsh. Perhaps he does tattle, but what of it?” She glanced up at him with the first flirtatious curl in her smile. “Admit, he tells delightful stories. So droll, don’t you know.”

  Her husband eyed her coldly. “I’ve informed Geoffrey that Millpost is no longer to be given entry into my house during my absence.” Even as she went stiff in rage he continued in his most haughty voice. “Added to that list shall be any person who has been in regular attendance at your salon parties.”

  “You cannot do that!” Lotte rose up on her knees, her wrapper sliding open from the knot in the belt in an inverted V that revealed all but the apex of her thighs. “You’ve no right!”

  “As your husband I have every right.” He offered her the first smile of the evening and it made her shiver. He was angrier than she had first supposed. To judge by the set of his jaw and glint in his dark eyes he was furious, a judgement she had been able to render with ever more frequency these last months. “I may do anything I wish, dear wife. This is my house.”

  Lotte tossed her head and retreated into an ordinary wifely compliant. “I do believe you are foxed. Yes, that would explain your boorish attitude. You will drink until your manners are drowned.” She sniffed deliberately. “I put to you, my lord, that your own acquaintances are a poor influence upon you.”

  His smile widened and she knew at once her error. She had handed him exactly what he most wished for, an opening to discuss her own habits. “It is equally obvious that your acquaintances are a dreadful influence upon you.”

  He came forward slowly, the suspense made all the more terrible until by the time he reached the bed Lotte was visibly trembling. She saw him slip a hand into his coat pocket and then withdraw several bits of paper. With a gesture that was an insult all its own, he sent the papers flying across the distance to land on the coverlet between her spread knees.

  “Gambling debts!” he said between his teeth. “Did you think I would not learn of them so soon? Or were you foolish enough to hope I would not learn of them at all?”

  Lotte did not reply as she picked up the slips, for they both knew that she would have preferred the latter choice.

  “Compliments of Branston,” he confirmed for her startled gaze. “Met him in the street an hour ago. Babbled something about a mere dustup and then he said to consider them paid. Would you care to explain?”

  Lotte raised shock-widened eyes to her husband’s and saw confirmed in his expression that he knew everything, had known everything before he entered her room.

  “My wife,” he continued in a deceptively soft tone. �
�My bride, abroad in London’s dark dangerous streets, dressed in the breeches of a man and the silly notions of a peagoose.

  “Lotte!” The exasperation of the word flared full in his scorching gaze. “Have you no better sense or understanding? Or is one year in London enough to totally corrupt your character?”

  Lotte’s eyes narrowed like a cat whose mouse had just escaped. “You dare call into question my character when ’tis yours the public makes free with these days?”

  To her amazement, Ran blushed. “I have seen the latest gazettes. Caricatures are a politicians’ bane.”

  “Do you think I give a fig for what the gazettes make of your politics? I do not. If that were all!”

  “All?” he questioned carefully. “Is there some new scandal to which I am not yet privy? Pray speak plainly.”

  The chance to wound him was too much for her to resist. Lotte subsided onto her haunches with a melodramatic sigh, her head drooping as she applied her handkerchief to the corners of her eyes. “Very well, if you must have it baldly put to you, if you must see me shamed, if you must—”

  “Lotte,” he said with a familiar edge to his voice, “I’ve no patience for soliloquy this night.”

  “Very well.” She looked up at him over the edge of her handkerchief. “ ’Tis well known, ’tis nothing less than tittered about in the streets that—that, oh! That you have taken a mistress!”

  The entire sentence, hiccuped sobs and all, played back through Ran’s thoughts before his lips twitched. “Is that all?”

  Her head jerked up, her dispirited maiden pose forgotten. “You mean ’tis true? How dare you stand here in your wife’s bedchamber and admit that you have taken a mistress!”

  Ran sighed, abashed at last. “You are right, of course. Indelicate of me to acknowledge her. But, Lotte, see reason—”

  “Reason?” Her voice rising higher in the end of each word, she sprang forward, her generous bosom straining against the open neckline of her wrapper. “You dare! Dare stand before me, unrepentant? And expect me to be reasonable?”

  Ran winced at the shriek of the last word. He had never much cared for his wife’s shrill tone when angered. He liked it less and less with every minute. But what shook him more was the slowly mounting realization that he had, perhaps, made the biggest mistake of his life in marrying her. He had suppressed the feeling again and again these last weeks, but he could no longer deny it; his marriage was a disaster and he was at a loss to understand how it had come about.

  A man fully conversant in the ways between men and women, he had not known he could feel such depths of tender passion for any living creature until he met Charlotte Samuelson on a spring afternoon riding through the parklands of Somerset. She was beautiful and tall with the vivid coloring that turned all heads. She moved with a sylph’s grace and the voluptuous languor of a woman meant to be loved, and often. Yet it was her gaiety and goodness of spirit that had invoked within him the desire to possess her over every other consideration. And there were many.

  His family had reminded him that the Samuelsons, once mere squires raised recently to the rank of baron, were not his equals in wealth or rank. His political allies had cautioned him against allying himself with a woman whose family peerage was not important enough for a man with his political aspirations. More candid friends suggested that perhaps a country girl would not be clever or sophisticated enough to hold her own among his London set. They, at least, had been proven correct.

  Lotte’s indifference to his political dealings, her dislike of his professional associates, and her disdain of his many social duties had seemed merely a matter of adjustment. His professional life could be every bit as tedious as she claimed, yet he had expected she would perform her obligations for the sake of his career. When she refused, after the miscarriage of their child, to any longer accompany him on his nightly outings, choosing instead the company of acquaintances he would rather she snub, he had consoled himself with the thought that she was clever enough to avoid entanglements which would reflect badly upon herself. Now it seemed he was wrong.

  She entertained frivolous people. Worst of all, she had become a gambler—a very bad gambler. Her debts had raised the brows of his solicitor. To make matters worse, she had begun denying him access to her bed from time to time. Her actions at first surprised, then hurt, and finally angered him. The bride he had chosen in love to be the mother of his children now looked no more warmly upon his embrace than any loveless alliance he might have chosen.

  Yet looking at her now, with her glorious hair undone and her bright eyes full of tears of self-pity, he felt ever more strongly the wild desire to rush to her side. He ached to press her down on the bed, to embrace her naked body and make her weep and moan with equal desire, and then when they were both satisfied he longed to cry, “For God’s sake, Lotte, let us stop this madness! Let us forgive one another and promise not to quarrel ever again!” The paradox held him immobile.

  Lotte saw reflected in his handsome face the struggle taking place within him but could not fathom the reason behind it. The more he stared harshly at her the more convinced she became that her rash actions this night had evaporated whatever love had remained between them. The thought truly frightened her and she struck out against it.

  She wrapped her robe tightly about herself, her voice dripping with sarcasm as she said, “If you have said all you wish to say, certainly there must be some bill, some matter that would better occupy your thoughts than your wife.”

  “Lotte, I—” He broke off, looking distracted. “Yes, you are right. I was to meet Lord Darlington at Lincoln’s Inn Field.”

  “Jack?” Lotte said with some malicious twinkle in her gaze. “I don’t doubt you will find his company preferable. I certainly would find his preferable to yours.”

  Something in her tone brought him up short. He had heard there were rumors circulating about the address Darlington was paying his wife but had never given them credence. Anywhere Darlington went, dark rumor sprung up in his path like poison mushrooms. Yet now, he was forced to put a new interpretation to Darlington’s attentions to Lotte. Perhaps she was encouraging them.

  But no, surely his lovely, silly bride would not be so remiss in her duty to him to provide first an heir? Or would she? That would explain why she sometimes spurned his advances when once she had welcomed his embrace at all times.

  A lover! The ugly suspicion took root instantly in his mind and grew with the rapidity of a morning glory vine.

  Fury shook him, uncalculated, unreasoned, irrational. He took a step back from the bed and then another, afraid for her in his rage. “Until you have come to your senses, you are confined to this house. And hear me, Lotte. You will obey me! Or else!”

  “Or else? Ran?” But she was too late.

  He did not hesitate in his step as he strode across the room to the door that connected their bedchambers, unlocked it, and then slammed it behind him with such fury that the chandelier a floor below could be heard tinkling in the sudden silence.

  Lotte collapsed in hysterics that lasted a full half hour. At the end of that time she felt much better, so good in fact that she rose and rang the bell for her maid.

  The lassitude of an hour earlier evaporated with her rising fury. When she arrived, Lotte ordered the sleepy maid to pack her for a long journey and then began impatiently prowling her room.

  She would not remain beneath the roof of a man who was so unfeeling and cruel! She would not allow Ran to treat her like an errant child or shut her up like a broken bit of crockery he no longer wished to look at. She would not simply subside into the role of neglected wife. She loved him too passionately for that. She would run away! Yes, that was what she would do!

  Feeling the packing was progressing much too slowly, she began jerking items of clothing from her armoire and casting them about the room as she plotted her escape. She had heard the spa town of Bath was a pleasant place in the off-season and that gambling there
was free and easy. If she remembered correctly, the Lovelace family even kept a house there. She would wile away her time until her husband came to his senses. That would require that he leave his precious House of Lords to come to collect her—if he still wished to have a wife.

  “Now we shall see what is most important to you!” she said as she tossed a shoe at their connecting door.

  Chapter Three

  From the pit to the servants’ upper galleries, the theater at Lincoln’s Inn Field was filled with customers who had come to watch the pantomime of Orpheus in the Lower Regions. It was the most talked about production of the season, rumored to have cost Mr. Rich, the director of the theater, more than 4,000 pounds sterling.

  Certainly the enormous serpent slithering from the wings, accompanied by startled male gasps and feminine shrieks from the audience, appeared to be worth a hefty sum. Covered in shiny gold and green scales with brilliant crimson spots, it boasted fire-bright eyes, lethal-looking fangs, and a hiss of unnerving realism. The clockwork machinery required to automate the beast was first-rate. It crossed the stage with a sinuous grace not unlike its natural counterpart, a fact that did not go unappreciated by the spellbound audience.

  Yet in the velvet-hung boxes of the theater, where a profusion of high-backed gilded chairs offered luxurious seating for noblemen and women who were not their wives, the topic of interest was of a decidedly different nature. All along those expensively adorned tiers the scintillating whispers circulating behind lifted hands and discreetly spread fans concerned one of their own. According to the latest on dit, the subject of that conversation had proved himself just that very morning to be every bit as deadly as the serpent occupying the stage.

  The murmur of voices grew in volume as the ears of those distracted from the production pricked up at snatches of conversation here and there.