The Duke's Wager

by Edith Layton

  Regina blushed at the laughter the other two gave way to. It was true, however, that the morning had brought about her introduction to the three daughters of the local squire. They were pretty enough, in their fashion, she supposed, to have been given the nickname in the locality of “the Three Graces.” But the hours that she had spent in their company had been totally unnerving for her, it was as if she had been forced to spend the morning in the company of Hottentots, so complete was the lack of understanding between them.

  The oldest of the girls was engaged to a minor baronet, much to her family’s glee; the middle girl was due to be presented this season, when an attack of measles in the household had curtailed her plans; and the youngest was looking forward to her own season in a year’s time. They had arrived, in a veritable snowstorm of ribboned bonnets and lace and what Amelia had dubbed “fashionable folderols,” by pony cart, accompanied by their silent, timid governess.

  And, after being introduced to Regina, they had proceeded to fill the morning with an avalanche of small talk. They could, to Regina’s dumbstruck discovery, talk for hours on end about bonnets, skirt lengths, and slippers. They did, to Regina’s slow and vaguely horrified comprehension, sweetly and thoroughly demolish the reputation and pretensions of every female of their acquaintance, up to and including each other’s. For Miss Betty was heard to softly mention that her sister’s affianced was so delighted with the wedding arrangements that she vowed he had put on two stone just from sheer happiness. Miss Lottie had countered sweetly that Miss Betty was so overjoyed herself at the thought of the forthcoming event, that she had broken out in spots in anticipation of her sister’s forthcoming nuptials. And while Miss Betty’s graceful hands hastily fluttered up to her face to verify her smooth complexion, Miss Kitty had silenced both her sisters by observing, with a charming lisp, that she had indeed noticed how haggard both her elders had become with the excitement of having measles in the household. “I vow,” she had sweetly said, “that they both have lotht their lookth over the thircumthtanthes.”

  For Regina, the morning had been both educational and frightening. It accentuated the gap between herself and these young creatures of fashion. For while Amelia seemed quite able to keep up her end of the conversation, Regina had sat close-mouthed, unable to think of a blighting comment on one of their acquaintances, or a trenchant observation about the new fashions, either of which, she was sure, was the only acceptable contribution she could have made to the conversation. She had no way of knowing that her glowing good looks struck a terrible animosity in the hearts of the Three Graces, mitigated only by their desire to learn more about this mysterious visitor to Fairleigh. Already the most bizarre rumors as to her identity had begun to circulate in the vicinity. She had been guessed to be everything from an emigré countess from across the channel, to being that wicked St. John’s new mistress.

  When the three young ladies had become aware of the time that had passed, fruitlessly, for their twofold ambitions of discovering more about Lady Berry, or catching a glimpse of the headily handsome and eligible Master of the Household, they had taken their leave. But not before accomplishing the purported main reason for their visit.

  “Now that all ith well in our houth,” Miss Kitty had announced, “you mutht come to the ball that Father ith giving. It is thuppothed to mend our hearth for our abthenth from town thith theathon. And jutht everyone will be there. Even my thiththerth beau.”

  “You absolutely must come,” the other two had insisted.

  “Even though it may seem provincial to you,” Miss Betty had said to Regina, “it shall be quite the affair of the year for us.”

  St. John sat laughing at Amelia’s wicked descriptions of the visit and her uncanny imitation of Miss Kitty’s affected lisp, but his face became immobile when she mentioned the invitation to the ball.

  “So you see, Sinjin,” Amelia went on blithely, “we are to have a chance to show Regina some real country sport, after all, for I am sure she has never seen the likes of the ball that Squire Hadley is going to give.”

  “I have never attended a ball,” Regina said hastily, noting St. John’s suddenly cold demeanor, “for…there were not many of them in our locality,” she finished lamely. “And I do think it would be wiser if I did not go, after all, Amelia.”

  “Regina is right,” St. John said coldly, cutting across Amelia’s protestations. “She would feel out of place there, and it would be better if she did not attend.”

  “Stuff!” cried Amelia belligerently. “Sinjin, surely you and I could make her feel at ease, and it would be an opportunity she should not miss.”

  “Oh no,” Regina said hastily. “For one thing, I haven’t a ball gown, and for another…I don’t wish to shock you, Amelia, but I cannot dance. Not one step. I,” she went on, noting the horrified look on Amelia’s face, “well, that is to say, neither my governess nor my father seemed to ever think that was important.”

  “Sinjin,” Amelia protested, “surely you can practice with Regina. Within a day, I’m sure you can teach her enough to account herself creditably at the ball. And I can surely lend her a ball gown.”

  “No,” St. John said with a guarded look upon his face. “Not that it wouldn’t be a pleasure, Regina, but you seem to forget that Regina is, in effect, in hiding here. It would not do for her to attend a large ball. Surely her presence would be remarked upon, and just as surely, it would bring Torquay down upon us.”

  “But Sinjin,” Amelia went on, puzzled, “you yourself said that even he would not ‘dare to poach upon another gentleman’s property.’”

  “No,” he said with suppressed anger, “but let it be, Amelia. There is no reason to stir up the calm we have found here. There is no reason why some paltry local ball should precipitate events that might be disturbing to Regina. At any rate, she will soon be gone from here,” he concluded mysteriously.

  Amelia let the subject drop, but it was clear that she was displeased with the turn of events, and shortly after, suppressing what were surely huge mock yawns, she took herself off to bed.

  Regina rose to follow, but St. John stayed her with a light touch upon her arm. He stood before her, an unreadable expression in his smoky eyes, and said finally, flicking back a stray wisp of her hair with his forefinger, “Understand, Regina, that I do what is best for you.”

  “About the ball? Oh, but that makes no difference to me at all, surely you must know that,” Regina protested, a little nervous at the Marquis’s closer proximity and closer scrutiny. “But what you said later…is it true? Have you received any answer to my letter? Is there any word from Miss Bekins? For although it has been pleasant here, I confess I yearn to be on my way to my new position…before I become too unused to working, before I begin to actually think myself ‘Lady Berry.’”

  He smiled. This was a theme she constantly enlarged upon in his presence, her desire to be “her own woman,” to be less beholden to him and his “charity,” as she termed it. He looked down at her, and again was drawn to the clear green eyes, again felt the desire to kiss that small indentation to the left of her lips, again controlled himself against the impulse to hold her to himself and run his hands along the surprisingly ample curves that shaped the slender body. But as he took a step nearer, he could feel her corresponding retreat.

  “Not exactly,” he sighed. “But soon, very soon, I have the feeling, Regina, you will be away from here, you will be safe and taken care of, and so pleased with your new life, that you will not regret in the least the lack of your attendance at some trumpery local ball.”

  She looked at him in some doubt, for how could he be so sure of something she had not a hint of happening?

  “Do you mean,” she asked quietly, “that you have some idea of a different position suitable for me if I do not hear from Miss Bekins?”

  “Yes,” he said, his gray eyes darkening. “Oh yes, a much more suitable position…and soon, I think.”

  “Then I am again very grateful to you, Sinjin,
” she said, and aware again of the strange new tension in his position, she sketched a curtsy and withdrew.

  “Soon,” he said to the empty room. “Yes, very soon.” For the time was ripening, he thought. He sat back in a chair and studied the fire. Soon, he would achieve a twofold aim. He would have her under his very real protection, and have Torquay in an unenviable position.

  Torquay. He let his thoughts stray to the irritating subject. How very often that hoarse sweet voice had mocked him. How very often he had recoiled when he had heard their names coupled. It was true that he pursued much the same game as the Duke, but something in him rebelled at being dubbed the successor to the title of most debauched nobleman in town. And yet, the time he had gone around to Madame Sylvestre’s establishment when he was in his cups and had found Torquay there, in a gilded doorway, with a bright-eyed, salaciously smiling slender young female at his right side and an overblown garishly painted ageing trollop snuggled protectively on his left side—the Duke’s flushed face and glittering eye left no doubt as to his plans for the evening’s entertainment, and when St. John had allowed a faint derogatory smirk to touch his lips, Torquay had turned and whispered in that obscenely honeyed voice, “What? Distaste, Sinjin? But wait a few years, my dear boy, and you will find yourself pursuing the same sport. Unless you care to join me now? I’m sure Aggie,” and here he hugged the old bawd, “has room in her heart for both of us.”

  And St. John thought of his involuntary shudder as he turned away without a word.

  He thought of the many times he had professed interest in a new female only to find that days later, she had become the property of the Duke. He remembered how often Torquay had sidled up to him when he was at the height of enjoyment at some of the more disreputable parties and had stripped him of all pleasure by a well-placed word, by an accented innuendo. He winced at the way the Duke, almost intuitively, always knew just how to disconcert him at any occasion. He thought of the immense fortune the Duke controlled and could not seem to dissipate. In all, he thought, if he were to be honest, he both envied and feared the man. Envied his possessions and the skill with which he led his dissolute life. For with all his excesses, he still had entree into all but the most conservative of fashionable circles. But he feared the reputation the Duke held, and the slow, sure way it was beginning to settle upon his own shoulders.

  Damn the man, St. John thought. And I shall. For this is one time he has made a wager he shall lose. And I shall win.

  IX

  The clouds were scudding by overhead, but with no real mean intent, so Regina, having dressed warmly, ventured to take a long walk alone across the wide and various grounds of Fairleigh. She had felt an overwhelming need to be by herself, to walk until her feet numbed, to think, and to finally plan again her own future.

  For no, it would not do, she thought, shaking her head as the skirts of her long coat brushed against the long grasses on the meadow track she paced, for her to let herself drift any longer. Things were becoming uncomfortable at the house, and there was a great deal to think about. Amelia was still angry this morning at St. John’s command that Regina was not to attend the ball, and that there was to be no further discussion of the idea. Amelia had tried to cajole Regina into reasoning with the Marquis and impressing upon him what a snub it would be to the Squire if she did not attend, and further, that her noncompliance with the invitation would surely spike more gossip about the mysterious lady at Fairleigh than ever her attendance would. But Regina had remained adamant. After all, she reasoned, she was here only on St. John’s charity, which was a thing that Amelia did not know, and it would not do for her to impose.

  But impose she had, she sighed, for here she had already caused a breach between Lady Amelia and the Marquis. This morning, at breakfast, they had hardly spoken to each other, and the conversation, such as it was, was carried solely by Lady Mary’s meanderings about “breakfasts she had known.”

  And then there was St. John’s veiled comments about her own future. Could it be that he had discovered that Miss Bekins was indeed in bad financial straits and could not employ her? Was he even now disturbing himself as to what sort of position he could find her in its place? And honestly, she mused, his attitude lately, his increasingly familiar attitude, the easy endearments that slipped from his lips, the unavoidable admiring glances she had intercepted, these might all be part of the effect of any eligible nobleman, but they disturbed her and made her feel unsure of herself. For while she liked him well enough, and trusted him completely, she knew very well that there was no point in entertaining any warmer thoughts about his intentions. For when all was said and done…he was a titled nobleman of great wealth. She was an impecunious commoner, with no standing in any social world that she had yet encountered. And he was beloved to Amelia. While she was, in truth, only an imposter, landed on him by her uncle. No, she insisted to herself, it was time she moved on. But to where?

  She was brooding on possibilities she might consider, ways in which she could win free without insulting his honor or hospitality, when she became aware of the fact that she was no longer alone in the wintry meadow. She looked up from the path she had been staring down at as she walked and saw a figure ahead of her, leaning negligently against a half fallen stile.

  Oddly enough, her first thought was not one of fear, or horror, or panic, but rather one of amused annoyance. Must he always, the thought came unbidden, be capable of such dramatic appearances? For as if the frozen day itself were in league with him, at the moment she discovered him, a weak ray of sunshine broke through and illuminated him, in all his casual splendor, making an unlikely halo around the fair wind-touseled hair.

  He leaned back, at ease, clad in dun-colored skin-tight buckskins, a scarf knotted carelessly about his neck, his dark gold coat accenting the fair complexion, his mobile lips drawn back to reveal even white teeth, and his lucent blue eyes now lit with real enjoyment.

  “What?” he said in his distinctive whisper, “the maiden spies the dragon and she does not give a piercing shriek? Or take to her heels? Or swoon, with considerable grace, to the floor? Come, Regina, you disappoint me. Rather than losing your head with terror, you are looking absurdly put out. Petulant, I might say. But the look suits you. As indeed, what does not? You have grown, if possible, even fairer, here in the wilds of the countryside. The winds have not been unkind to you. Your nose does not show a red tip, your eyes do not water—what an extraordinary beauty it is that even the cold enhances. This inclement weather has only brought a rosy glow to your alabaster cheek, only shined your eyes till they sparkle like the sea on a turbulent day.”

  She walked up to him, after that first moment of surprise, and said, almost before she was aware of it herself, “Can you not speak straight out? Must everything be couched in that sinister poetry you affect?”

  He seemed, for one second, taken aback, and then he let out a genuine laugh, oddly pure in contrast to his hoarse voice. His eyes lit up to the shade of a summer’s day.

  “Oh, you are not afraid of me any more! Here’s a new turn. You are so cosseted, so protected, so sure of yourself, that at last you are no longer afraid of me.” His eyes grew grave and he added, “But you should be, Regina, indeed you should be.”

  She recognized that what he had said was true; no, she did not fear him here, and now. It was as if she had in some small, hidden part of herself been waiting for him to reappear. The thought of him had so often alternately both chilled and warmed her during the nights when she could not sleep, turning her stomach to ice but also changing her heartbeats to drumbeats. Somewhere here, in the reality of the dappled light of a cold country day, in a meadow, so close to her friends and protectors, she no longer feared him at all. Rather, she looked forward to their encounter.

  “No, you are right. I don’t fear you here. For what can you do to me here?”

  He laughed luxuriously.

  “Oh my dear,” he said, “countless things, I assure you. I could signal to my henchman,
who might be hiding in the brush, and toss you into my carriage, which might be secreted down the lane. For I have no honor, or very little, and I do not care for Sinjin’s opinion at all, and whatever Sinjin might say about me would quickly be discounted in the circles we two are best known in. Or,” he went on, after a quick glance under his long lashes at her face, “I might become impatient and toss you to the ground right here, and have my way with you. Only, you are right, it would be very cold, and very uncomfortable, and not at all in my usual style or the way I plan to end the matter. Still, no one would be concerned with your fate at all, ‘Lady Berry,’ once it became known that ‘Lady Berry’ is not quite the titled lady it has been hinted she is. In fact,” he mused, “yours is a very false position, and it has given you a false sense of security. For I’m sure even Lady Burden and His Lordship’s sister would be most put out if they discovered they had been entertaining a fraud—a common chit thrown out of her own family home for her indiscrete carryings-on with a hardened rake. Oh, I would weather it, it would be only, after all, another black mark on a long list. And Sinjin would be winked at, as he and I are cut from the same cloth. But the ladies…ah, I think they would be devastated, betrayed, and uncommonly angry at the little cheat they had taken to their bosoms. For they would not be angry at Sinjin, love, his sister dotes upon him, and Amelia, well…she is not as unaffected by His Lordship as she would like to be thought to be. No, the onus would all be upon you, my love.” And, seeing her arrested expression, he went on, “No, it is a cruel world, Regina, you ought to have thought of that yourself. You ought not to have been cozened into a false sense of security.”

  She stood silent, watching the sun play upon his hair.

  “Yet, in a sense,” he said softly, “but only in a sense, you are right. Here, and now, you have no real reason to be afraid of me. I did, after all, make a pact with you, and the game is not yet played out, although it draws to a close. But here, and now, yes, you are safe. But as for tomorrow?” He shrugged, and an ugly expression crossed his face. “And tomorrow might come very quickly, love. For although I know you are not yet Sinjin’s mistress, he is, after all, living too close to his sister and her good friend at the moment. I wonder at how soon you two plan on consummating the event? You will not, you know.”