“I’ll teach you whatever you wish.” He laid his hand in the small of her back to guide her toward the kitchen. “As soon as we’re away from here.”
That seemed to remind her that this was neither the time nor the place for such a discussion. She remained mute as he led them past the kitchen staff, and held her tongue while his tiger brought round his cabriolet.
But once he took up the reins, and they headed out into the night, she slumped in her seat and said, “I hate her! That…that horrible, wicked woman practically admitted that she’d been Philip’s mistress!”
“I seriously doubt that Eleanor ever spent one second in your husband’s bed,” he said smoothly. “She was merely trying to provoke you.”
“Do you think so? Really?” The hope in her voice set his teeth on edge. Faithful to her or not, Haversham didn’t deserve her concern.
Not that Gavin cared how she felt about her late husband. He didn’t. Not in the least. “Come now, can you imagine Eleanor ever sharing the bed of a bad whist-player? And we both know Haversham couldn’t play whist to save his life.”
“But that Lieutenant Markham—”
“—plays almost as well as I do. When he isn’t seducing Eleanor.”
Shifting her gaze to the road ahead, Christabel chewed on her lower lip for a moment. Then she uttered a heartfelt sigh. “If it wasn’t Lady Jenner my husband took up with, then who was it?”
Ah, so that was the “other thing” she thought Haversham had come to London for. “Are you sure he took up with anybody?”
“Don’t pretend you didn’t know.”
“If Haversham had a mistress, I never met her.”
“He must have been discreet.”
“Then how do you know about it? It isn’t the sort of thing a man tells his wife.”
“I heard about it from…someone else.”
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter. The point is, I know that he had one.”
“Did you learn about it before Haversham died?”
She shook her head. “After.”
“Then you don’t know if it’s true. You can’t even ask him, and you only have that other person’s word for it.”
“What possible reason could the…person have for lying?”
“You’d be surprised by the reasons people have for lying.”
She sighed. “After tonight, I don’t think anything would surprise me.”
She was such an innocent, despite her marriage, despite her travels abroad, and despite her recent disillusionment about Haversham. She had no clue how dark a place the world could be.
She’d never seen a man gutted for not paying the blacklegs, or women whose love of gin so consumed them that they allowed their children to starve, or—
Bloody hell, what had brought all that to mind? He’d put those days well behind him. “I did warn you what to expect of Stokely’s friends.”
“I know.” She stared over at the newly rising half-moon. “And that’s more than I did for you.”
He made the turn onto her street. “What do you mean?”
“I should have warned you that I can’t…that I’m not…” She clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “I lied to you about being good at whist.”
“Did you?” he said dryly. “I hadn’t guessed.”
He heard her snort even over the horses’ hooves beating the cobblestones. “I couldn’t have played worse if I’d tried.”
“Ah, but you did try. Didn’t you hear Lady Hungate?”
A reluctant smile touched her lips. “I can’t believe she thought I was doing it on purpose. Your friends have very devious minds, all of them.”
“Yes, they do.” He didn’t bother to enlighten her about Lady Hungate’s true motives, especially since he wasn’t quite sure what they were.
A long silence fell. Finally, she said in a low voice, “The thing is…I’ll need money to gamble with, and as you probably know—”
“Haversham left you with little.”
“Exactly. He paid you with what he got from Lord Stokely, but he had so many other debts…” She trailed off with a sigh.
He clenched his jaw. The fact that she’d been left struggling because of her heedless husband’s gambling gnawed at him. “It was my idea to have you go as my partner, so I’ll take care of your part of the stakes.”
He could feel her eyes riveted on him. “What if I lose too much?” she asked. “I’m not the player that you are. Perhaps you shouldn’t partner me in whist after all. I could just pretend to be your mistress—”
“That might not ensure that Stokely invites you to his party. But if you’re my partner, he’ll almost certainly do so. So it’s best to hedge our bets and have you be both.” Drawing the cabriolet up in front of her town house, he brought it to a halt, then leaped down. “Besides, I thought you wanted to eviscerate Eleanor.”
A fierce light sparked in her eyes as he helped her down. “I do.”
“Then I’ll simply have to teach you to be an expert at whist.” He offered her his arm. “Beginning tonight.”
Her gaze shot to his. “But…but I thought you had to go to your club.”
“Not for a couple of hours. That’s plenty of time for a lesson.”
“Here?” she said uncertainly.
“Not on the street,” he quipped, “but your parlor would be suitable. Of course, it has been a long day for you, so if you don’t have the energy to play well into the night like Eleanor and the others—”
“No, no, I can do it.” The door at the top of the entrance stairs opened, and she let him lead her inside, where the footman took her pelisse and her bonnet. “Just let me get the cards from Philip’s old study.”
“Certainly,” he said, handing his overcoat and hat to the footman.
Trying not to grin, he headed for the parlor. So Eleanor and her silly taunts about Haversham had touched a sore spot, had they? He would make good use of the widow’s competitive streak.
Because one way or another, he meant to have Christabel. And every single one of her secrets.
Chapter Seven
Something as innocent as whist can be a
prelude to seduction.
—Anonymous, Memoirs of a Mistress
Christabel fetched the cards and headed back to the parlor, then froze just outside the door. Dear Lord, perhaps letting Byrne into her home so late at night was a mistake. He’d clearly been aroused by her sitting on his lap earlier. What if he tried to act on it?
She mustn’t let him stay. She would tell him she’d changed her mind.
But when she entered the parlor to find that he’d already pulled the card table out from the wall and set chairs before it, she faltered. He did have a point about hedging their bets. She did need to learn how to play better if she was to partner him. And they didn’t have much time before the house party…
“You found the cards?” He seemed oblivious to the intimacy of the small room where earlier he’d seen her half-dressed.
Surely if he were bent on seduction, he wouldn’t be sitting down at her card table. And it wasn’t as if he could stay the night—he had his club to hurry off to.
“Yes.” She set the deck on the table. Still nervous, she stood there uncertainly. “Would you like some refreshment? Wine? Brandy?”
“No. And none for you either.”
She blinked. “Why not?”
He shuffled the cards, then pushed them toward her for her to cut. “I’ll let you in on a secret. Half of winning at cards consists of staying sober when no one else is. It gained me many a trick when my cards were against me. I learned that from General Scott. He won two hundred thousand pounds at whist primarily by abstaining from drink at the tables at White’s.”
“Oh.” She sat down. If Byrne were so bent on winning that he would eschew strong drink, then he clearly wasn’t thinking about seduction. She cut the cards, then handed them back to him, intrigued when he began to deal two piles. “How can we do this when we
don’t have four people?”
“We’ll play two-handed whist. The strategy is different, but it will teach you how to use your trumps more effectively. That was your weak area tonight.”
“I see.” She squelched a niggling disappointment at his focus on the cards. She didn’t want him to try seducing her, for pity’s sake. Not at all.
“For the first few hands we won’t keep score, and after each trick, I’ll tell you how you might have improved your play. Once you’ve grasped the rules, we’ll play a real game with real stakes.”
She nodded. He finished dealing them each thirteen cards, then set the other half of the deck aside and turned up the top card.
“Now, the thing about two-handed whist is…”
For the next hour, Byrne’s entire attention was on the cards. And on beating her. She caught on to the rules fairly quickly, but couldn’t figure out how to beat him. Every time she thought she had him, he tossed onto the table a card she’d forgotten to account for. Nor did it help that he could predict, almost to a card, which cards she held. It was uncanny.
It was infuriating. Losing to Lady Jenner had been bad enough; losing to him was maddening. And she couldn’t even claim that her surroundings distracted her. Byrne allowed no jokes, no pointed questions, nothing but his matter-of-fact explanations of where she’d gone wrong in her play.
After losing four rounds to him, she was eager to wipe that calm expression off his face. Well into the fifth round, she examined her cards, then played the ace of spades with a flourish.
“I told you never to lead with the ace,” he said.
She tipped up her chin. “Unless I had the king, too.”
“Are you strong in trumps?”
Blast, she’d forgotten about that rule. “No.”
He trumped her ace with a two and took the trick. “How you handle your trumps is everything in whist, Christabel. Tell me how many trumps you think I have left in my hand.”
“Two,” she snapped, without stopping to think.
He raised that maddening eyebrow of his. “You’re angry.”
“Of course I’m angry. I’m losing. Again.”
“You can’t let losing make you angry.”
“Why not?” she said belligerently.
“Because anger impairs judgment, and impaired judgment makes one play badly. Whether ten pounds or ten thousand ride on your hand, you must leave emotion out of it. Take no greater risks if you’re losing than if you’re winning. Play to the cards you have. Always. The only thing that matters is the cards.”
How could he be so blasted sensible about all this? It was unnerving. “You should write a book,” she complained. “Rules of Card Play According to Mr. Byrne. No drinking, no emotion…no fun.”
“I didn’t get where I am by playing for fun.” He rearranged his cards. “Nor did any of Stokely’s set. They’re very serious about their whist. So you must be serious, too, especially if you mean to take on Lady Jenner.”
Suitably chastened, she mumbled, “All right.”
“I find that taking deep breaths helps to calm violent emotions. Try it.”
Feeling rather silly, she took one breath, then another and another, surprised to find that it did banish any lingering vestiges of bad temper.
“Good,” he said. “Now concentrate. Think about the cards that have been played and the ones you saw me take from the pile.”
“Very well.” She forced herself to work back through the hand.
“How many trumps do I have left?”
She hesitated, then said, “Five?”
“Six. But that’s good.” He held up his eight remaining cards, then took one and threw it on the table. It wasn’t a trump. “I gained three from the stock in the first half, one of which I played earlier, which leaves two that you know about—”
“Enough.” She reexamined her cards in light of his comments and the card he’d played. “How in blazes do you remember every card?”
“One must if one is to win at whist.”
“No doubt you also excelled at mathematics in school,” she muttered.
He kept his gaze fixed on his cards. “I’ve never been to school.”
The edge of bitterness in his tone tugged at her heart. “Never? Not even before your mother—”
“Lost the annuity Prinny gave her? Not even then.”
“What annuity?”
He stiffened. “I thought Regina and Katherine had told—” He broke off. “Clearly not. Never mind.”
“Tell me. I want to know. I thought your mother was just the prince’s—”
“Whore?” he snapped.
“No, of course not.” He wasn’t so calm now, was he? “But…well…from the gossip I heard, they had a brief affair, and that’s all. She wasn’t even really his mistress.”
“That’s what he says. It makes it easier for him to justify his treatment of her. She’s just a whoring actress, right? A little tart he can take at his leisure, then discard without a thought. At least I don’t leave my mistresses destitute.”
She played a card. “Because you only choose married women as mistresses,” she said dryly.
“Exactly. Their husbands will support them and claim any children I inadvertently sire. But I’m not leaving some bastard of mine to struggle and starve and—” Breaking off with a curse, he tossed a card down. “Play.”
She didn’t. “Tell me about the annuity, Byrne.”
“Fine.” He lifted his glittering gaze to her. “You want to know the truth about your friend, the prince? Prinny promised my mother an annuity if she would publicly declare that I wasn’t his son. She agreed, poor naïve fool, thinking that the money would do me more good than any claim to royalty.”
He laughed bitterly. “The money didn’t last, of course. Once Prinny decided to ‘marry’ Mrs. Fitzherbert illegally, she demanded he put his mistresses aside.”
“You can’t blame her,” Christabel said stoutly. She’d met Mrs. Fitzherbert only once as a child, but that meeting remained branded in her memory. The woman was the noblest she’d ever known.
“I don’t blame her—I blame him. Putting his mistresses aside did not mean he had to leave them destitute. Yet he conveniently waited until Mother’s claim that I wasn’t his had spread, then cut off her annuity.”
A muscle worked in his jaw. “After that, it was just a matter of a word here and a nasty statement there, until he had everyone believing I was some product of my mother’s many supposed customers. She lost her job as an actress, and he didn’t even care. Bastard.”
She said nothing, her heart in her throat. No wonder he’d had to run with the blacklegs at eight.
Was that why the prince had suggested that she turn to Byrne, of all people, for help? Did His Highness now feel guilty for what he’d done? Perhaps he’d thought to make amends by offering Byrne an easy chance at a barony.
But that was also why the prince had made it clear that Byrne should only be asked to get her the invitation, nothing more. Because involving him further in her mission was dangerous. He was dangerous.
Panic gripped her. She’d brought him into the thick of it by suggesting she pretend to be his mistress and even his partner! Yes, she’d had no choice, but still…Oh Lord, what had she done? If Byrne found out what was in the letters, he wouldn’t hesitate to use them against His Highness. Never mind that he would cost the prince his throne in the process. And destroy her and her family.
Well then, she must never let him know what was in them. Never.
“So that’s why I never went to school,” he went on. “We couldn’t afford it. I’m what is popularly termed self-taught. Although Mother taught me to read, I learned the rest on my own.” He flashed her a ghost of a smile. “And luckily I inherited my actress mother’s gift for mimicry. It has served me well.”
Of course. That’s why he used such overly precise and formal language. He’d had to work at it, had to learn proper speech and manners and behavior by watching his betters, s
o he was more conscious of it than those born to it.
Hiding the pity that she knew he’d loathe, she said lightly, “Consider yourself fortunate to miss school. I hated it, particularly mathematics.”
“I’m surprised you were even taught it.” He eyed her over his hand. “Isn’t that unusual for a woman?”
She shrugged. “Papa wanted a son. Mama died before he could have one, so he pinned his hopes on me. He taught me how to shoot and ride and hunt…and solve equations. That’s why I’m completely inept in the feminine arts.”
“Not completely inept,” he said with a faint smile. “You kiss very well.”
Absurdly, that pleased her. “Do I?”
He chuckled. “Play, damn you, play.”
She sloughed off a low card in another suit to save her trumps, knowing it would lose her the trick but hoping it might win her the next few.
“You should have trumped while you had the opportunity,” he murmured, then proceeded to lead her out of her trumps, thus winning the rest of the tricks.
As he gathered up the cards, she fidgeted in her chair. “Give me another chance. I’ll try harder this time.”
“Bloody right you will.” He shuffled the cards. “This time we’re playing a real game. With real stakes. You’re never going to make an effort unless you have something tangible to lose.”
She scowled. “Like what? You know I have little money.”
“I’m not talking about money.”
When her gaze shot to him, he wore that hooded look that would turn any woman’s heart to mush. Even hers. Her pulse began to race. “Then what are you talking about?”
He rose and went to the door, which he closed and locked, sending a frisson of alarm down her spine. “Risking the clothes on your back.” Coming up behind her, he bent to set the deck on the table before her. Then he pressed his mouth to her ear, and added in a heated whisper, “I’m talking about Whist for the Wicked.” Her heart thundered madly when he sat down, his eyes gleaming. “I can’t think of a better way to motivate you to improve your playing.”
“I am not going to—I would never—”
“Why? Afraid you’ll lose?”
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