The Duke's Wager

by Edith Layton

  “Half of them is too much, Jason,” she said sternly.

  “Send me early to bed, will you?” he smiled, looking at her now with that sweet smile that first won her when she had seen him all those years ago. There was such a melting power in that smile then, she thought, and even more now, no wonder he can go his way unchecked.

  “Too much, Jason,” she sorrowed. “I did not point you that direction.”

  “The bitch whelps true, Pickett,” he said with a fleeting expression almost like a snarl. “I am my mother’s child.”

  “And you court her end?” Pickett’s voice rang out.

  “Oh let be, my love. I live my life, I am well content, I harm no one but myself.” He rose and walked the length of the table, stopping only to inspect the centerpiece with unseeing eyes. The silence grew in the room, and he absently shaped the candlewax with a stroking finger. “At least as yet,” he whispered absently. “At least I think I have harmed no one else as yet. No, all were willing, all are willing to lead the merry Duke a merry dance for a pretty price. And if I prefer the dance, Pickett, what of it? I have been a wallflower. I have had connubial bliss. I am not suited to it, let me to my pleasures.”

  “And are they pleasures, Jason?” she asked, unrelenting.

  “You put me to the blush, my love. At least I find them so. And others have assured me of it. At least,” he qualified again, “as yet, they have.”

  “But not all?” she persisted. “Is there another person you are involved with now? You sound not as sure as a merry Duke should be. And this sudden visit to Grace Hall, this sudden concern for the child, is there a reason?”

  For a moment in the dimness of the room, the years fled away for both of them, the old, anxious woman perched upon her chair watching the slim, fair impeccable man. For a moment, he hesitated, as if to talk again, without artifice, without concealment, to another being. But then a log cracked in the fire and the moment passed. He straightened.

  “Another person?” he said quizzically. “Oh how full of tact you are my quaint Pickett. ‘Another person,’ so all the tales have reached you after all? But you hope that the ‘person’ is a female one, and a pure, honest, well-bred one at that, for somewhere in that reasonable breast lurks the unreasonable belief that your nursling will be saved by the love of a good woman.”

  She knew the moment had passed, and so she retorted, “Nonsense, arrant nonsense, Jason. The love of a good woman would roll off your back like water off a duck’s. I make no doubt you’ve enjoyed the love of a good many women and some of them good women at that, but that would not change you in the least.”

  “So glad,” he bowed, “to see you have not lost your senses, or have been spending your retirement wallowing through reams of bad romances.”

  “But,” she said succinctly as she rose to leave, “the love for a good woman…ah that, my lad, would make all the difference in the world.”

  “As ever,” he said half to her retreating back, half to the candle he had sculpted, “you have an acid tongue, and a way with words, my dear, a remarkable way with words.”

  * * *

  The moonlight drenched the room, and he lay there, on the great bed, silently. As well try to sleep in the glare of noon, he thought, but he did not rise to drape the windows, for he could never bear to sleep in pitch dark, never bear to lock out the moonlight. There will be dark enough in the tomb, he thought, no need to simulate it now. But he could not sleep, and blamed the moonlight, until he realized that while every muscle in his body yearned for sleep, no part of his brain would have any part of it. So he lay there, wide-eyed, seeing the shapes of the room, the edges of the great canopy, above him, much, he thought as it must have looked to his parents the night he was conceived, and to his grandfather the night his father was conceived. And doubtless, he thought wryly, so had his late wife studied the canopy intently the night that poor little wretch was conceived, in fact he remembered her unblinking gaze quite well.

  He had dismissed his valet early, and the only concession he had made to sleep was in having had his boots removed, for he lay there on the coverlet, fully clothed. It was as if he awaited his departure in the morning with such eagerness that he did not even wish to bother with the convention of undressing, preparing for sleep, rising and re-dressing, as if all of that was just an unnecessary delaying tactic. Not for the first time he wished he could be at a place just by the wishing of it, without the bother of everyday mechanics to convey him. This visit to my childhood, he thought wearily, has made me as a child again, with a child’s fancies.

  While his body lay tense, yet inert, his mind ranged far. At least the child has Pickett now, he thought, and Pickett has another crusade to enliven her. Not the sheltering of a boy from a licentious mama, but the sheltering of a girl from a profligate papa. What cycles dear Pickett has seen, he thought, laughing lightly in the semidark. And so I have resolved all here, he thought, knowing that he had done very little, knowing once again that he had again only arranged things to his own comfort.

  Comfort, he thought lazily, ah that would be a good thing. The thing of it is that I am unused to celibacy. In fact, I cannot sleep without my strange comforts. It is that, of course, and the damned moonlight that keeps me lying here, stark staring awake while the rest of the household snores the roofbeams off. Some round, light, laughing thing here in my bed with me would ensure eventual sleep. But no, I am the model papa, as stern and pure and self-denying as a picture upon the wall, and thank God I will be off in the morning and about my pleasures once again.

  And when he thought of his present pleasures, and when the image of that pale, green-eyed face swung before him, and the image of that white neck, and the breath that caused the high breasts to rise and fall, and the remembrance of that light step, and the recollection of that breathless little nervous laugh she gave when he shocked her, came, he rose from the bed and roamed the room thinking that such thoughts did not serve him well when he lay sleepless in an empty sacrificial thankless bed. But not empty for long, he thought, for I will have her, and that is becoming more important to me with every empty night I spend. For somehow she had killed his desire for others. And, confused, he accepted his continence and, uncharacteristically, refused to analyze it. Unable to change it, he had decided it was a clever and conscious decision on his part. He applauded his decision not to settle for substitutes at this stage, deeming it rather like a man refusing to gorge on sweets before a gourmet dinner. He had no desire to take the edge off his appetite, he reasoned.

  Ah those appetites, he thought, holding his head in his hands as he sat on the edge of the bed. Appetites for shapes and textures of pleasures that seemed both never-ending in their sequences and curiously less satisfying with each encounter. But there was this aura about her, he insisted to himself, that did not seem only to spring from his habit of imbuing each new one with imagined attributes to whet his tastes. There was that in her which he would not have made up, that which he would not, left on his own, have imagined. That curious moral rectitude, that gallant and naive assumption that there was such a thing in her world as honor, as fair play. What had she said that curious night in the coach, she would not sell herself, would he?

  What a shock that had been. It was as unexpected to him as roaming through a pleasant field of flowers and gathering one with a wasp inside. It’s true he had gone too far. He knew that, but each time in the past when he had thought he’d gone too far, even he himself had thought so, Society had only clucked and shrugged and looked the other way. And what was the difference, he had thought, between this abduction and that other? That giggling little serving girl that he had accosted in the hall at a friend’s house that cold winter’s night. That…Emily, yes, Emily Ketchum, had been her name. The one with the provocative birthmark near her delightful lips. “Come live with me and be my love,” he had breathed in her ear, half flown with good wine, as she had helped him on with his cloak. And she had simpered and a calculating look had come into her e
ye and she had lain her little hands on his chest and pouted, “But how? Your Grace, oh the mistress would skin me, and my mother, oh she’d tan me if I up and went off with you.”

  “Shall I abduct you then, my heart?” he had suggested, tasting her earlobe and liking the flavor. “Oh yes, sir!” she had assented quickly. And he had laughed, and laughingly brought the coach to the back door, and stifled with laughter, doubled with laughter, carried her giggling, wrapped in his cloak, out into the night. And she had fared well when he grew tired of her, in comfortable keeping even now to an acquaintance of his.

  So why had this been different? She’d had no real prospects, no connections, no family. She was of common birth, with only that mushroom of an aunt and that simpleton cousin. He had expected her to turn to him, there in the coach, eyes sparkling, and accept his terms with pleasure. What better could she have done with herself? Why had she gone, so desirable, available, and unchaperoned to that blasted Opera, if she had not been looking for such an accommodation? And if she had lost courage then, had he not made it that much easier for her? She had responded to his kisses, he knew. She must know of his fortune, where was the impediment? What woman had he known in the last decade who would not settle for money and pleasure? But no, she had turned on him. She had repulsed him and had given him a stern little lecture on morality instead. Almost as if she were Pickett, transformed, young and lovely.

  She disturbed him. She fit no pattern. He had not meant to speak to her again until the game was up, but had gone to meet her there then, in that freezing meadow, out of a desire to understand where the impediment lay. And she had been a delight. They had talked the afternoon away. There were times in that strange, cold afternoon when he had forgotten he was conversing with a woman, so far did her interests range, so quick was her clever tongue. And so each time, when he had refocused upon her appearance, her loveliness had come to him with breath-catching shock. And still she had prosed on about honor, and friendship, and morality, as if she were some sort of odd, seductive little deacon. Yet he swore her eyes had hinted at less pious delights. And almost she had him convinced of that impossible innocence when she had risen to go back. Back to St. John, and his protection. And what sort of innocence would lie undisturbed in St. John’s house, in his very bed? Did she believe he would continue his exemplary behavior once beyond his sister’s and Lady Burden’s watchful eyes? That, indeed, would be innocence to boggle the mind.

  He did not know why he disliked the Marquis with such violence. It was, after all, rare for him to dislike anyone with like intensity, for to dislike someone was to indulge in some form of passion, and he had thought that he had used up his passion in mere passion long since.

  Perhaps it was because that strong, tall, socially impeccable young man nightly wallowed in his same sewer, and daily walked the road of righteousness, raising his eyebrows in distaste at tales of the Black Duke’s misadventures. Perhaps, he admitted, it was that in St. John’s eyes he saw reflected his own past, and his own sure future. Or perhaps, he thought, with the clarity that only solitary, exhausted late-night thought delivers, it was that St. John so often, as if by reason of some malevolent fate, had seen him at his worst, had seen him in situations that he himself shrank from remembering in the cold daylight.

  That night, for example, that he only allowed himself to remember on nights such as these. The night when he had gone around to Madame Sylvestre’s select establishment for an evening’s diversion, and had discovered what his world’s estimate of himself was. In recent years he did not care to patronize such establishments. He much preferred to have some light creature in his own keeping, some female who would, at least, pretend to look up at him with some semblance of recognition and delight when he opened the door. But at that time, for some reason he could not remember even now, he was by way of being a frequent customer there.

  He had been greeted graciously and, taking his cloak, they had led him to a gilded room. Entering, he had found a lovely young woman within. She had taken his coat and prattled softly, laughed deliciously, and given him glimpses of the delights that lay in store for him. She had looked to be exquisite, a prime, healthy young creature, and after a few embraces he had been sure of a pleasant evening. But first he had had to order and partake of a quantity of wine, a thing he often had to do in such arrangements, to deaden a certain relentlessly critical portion of his mind, to free another segment of his brain to unhesitatingly appreciate such a treat.

  But some time during the preliminary tangle, in the wine-soaked explorations and preparations, the door had opened and another female had come in. He had been, in that moment, amused at the proprietress’s estimate of his needs. But then, even though fully fogged with wine, the appearance of the second female had stopped the play and he drew back with difficulty and gaped. She was not the sort of woman one expected to find at an establishment such as Madame Sylvestre’s. She looked like Covent Garden gutter ware. Ageing, overblown, overpainted, not overly clean, with impossibly hennaed hair, she simpered and began to remover her tawdry finery.

  “C’mon lovey,” she had cajoled, reaching for him and revealing a gap-toothed smile. “It’ll be lovely, it will. The two of us for the one of you. There’s a lot I know.”

  At first, he had been amused, and for one mad moment had wondered at how it might be, a night of textures, an opportunity to explore textures and differences and shapes. But then, even in his castaway state, he had recoiled.

  “Awww Aggie,” the younger woman had laughed. “You’ve gone and lost your golden guinea. I told you to wait a bit, but you rushed in too soon. You see,” she explained anxiously, unsure of his reaction as he sat staring, “Lord Barrymore, he’s outside, and he payed Madame a sum, and he brought Aggie here and promised her even more to entertain you. He’s wagered a sum, he said, with another gentleman. He wagered that you’d throw no female creature out of your bed, so long as she’s willing. Ah, but look you, Aggie, he wants no part of you.”

  Nervously, the older woman backed away, holding her wrapper closed around her ample breasts. “You’re not mad at poor old Aggie, now are you, sir?” she cringed, whining. “I only did it cause they told me as to how you’d like it. I’d like it fine,” she said encouragingly. “And they all said as how you’d think it a rare jest and go along.”

  Of course, it has come to this, he remembered thinking as he rose to pour himself more wine with a shaking hand. It is, after all, only a natural progression. And in some strange fashion, he’d felt a small satisfaction at his own aghast reaction. Why should they not think it, haven’t you worked diligently toward this? They believe there is nothing you are not capable of. Even attempting a poxy Billingsgate whore. And what shall you do now? What a comedy it would be for the blackest of them all to go raging out of here crying his discretion, his taste, his honor. All, everything, except this, then? You dare ask them to believe that? Then let them believe what they will, he swore, for no matter what the protest, they will.

  “No Aggie,” he had finally said when he could control his voice. “No, I’m not angry. And you shall have your golden guinea, for you may tell Lord Barrymore anything you like. But,” he said smiling, holding up his hands in mock horror, “there’s an extra coin in it for both of you if you swear not to tell a soul that I have imbibed so much this night that I truly fear I cannot please either one of you and am best off retiring like a monk to my own cell.”

  And after fending off their concerned attempts to reassure him as to his capabilities, he gave them both some silver and led them to the door, an arm about each of them. And then, there in the doorway he saw St. John, the lofty Marquis of Bessacarr, regarding him with loathing. And in the throes of his own strange exultant humiliation, his own soul wincing, he had whispered fiercely to the Marquis, “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 has room in her heart for both of us.”

  And late
r, standing alone, his hands stretched out stiffly against the table to forbid them from trembling, and staring down at the bottle of wine he scarcely believed that he had drunk, so sober was he now, he had thought, yes soon, at this rate it would not be long. Soon there will undoubtedly come the day when I will no longer care. And all will be lost in the endless search for textures and pleasures.

  All what? What was there left to lose, he thought now in fury. What was that last vestige he feared losing? That remnant he guarded as jealously as that green-eyed wench protected her virginity? Her favorite word, Honor?

  Honor, he thought wearily, as dawn bleached the sky, no matter, soon she will come to me, on my terms, and without honor, and I will take her without honor, and whatever honor there will be in it, will be that I was right again. And there will be the end of it.

  And knowing that sleep was gone, for he had often spent similar nights, being used to uneasiness in his own company, he rose and pulled on his boots, and dashed some water against his face, and swirled some in his mouth to take the taste of the bitter night away.

  He opened the door that led out into the hall and soundlessly began to pad toward the stairs when he saw a small shape outlined against the tall windows at the head of the stairs. Knowing that he moved silently, he brushed against the wall to warn her so that he would not startle her too much.

  “Really, Pickett,” he said softly, “if you are going to wander at this ungodly hour, allow us to provide you with some chains to rattle so that your perambulations do not go to waste. The house needs a spectacular ghost to give it some pretensions.”

  “It is not an ungodly hour of the night,” she countered. “It is, rather, an extremely godly hour of the morning. Old bones do not care for long rest, knowing that a longer one awaits. But you are up early, Jason. Are you so eager to attend matins?”