The Duke's Wager

by Edith Layton

  “Put your finger on it,” James muttered, looking around the almost deserted dining room, “That’s it exactly.”

  “A pen wiper?” laughed St. John.

  “Don’t play coy, you dog,” James whispered, sending out a heady breath of claret. “I need your advice…on a matter of some female.”

  “Really, James,” St. John said in annoyance, “when will you begin to acquire your own amusements? It seems, no more than seems, to me that you are forever acquiring my cast-offs. And losing them as quickly as you acquire them. What became of Annabelle? I thought it was all settled with you.”

  “Drank, my boy,” said James with ponderous import. “The woman drank constantly. Got sloppy about it. I had to give her a congé. But, Sinjin, you never told me about it,” he said with an accusing whisper so redolent of wine that it drove all thoughts of dessert from the Marquis’s mind.

  “James,” St. John said, drawing back from his friend’s reddened face, “I only introduced you. I do not think it my obligation, or occupation to provide you with feminine companionship. Why don’t you find your own divertisements?”

  “Look at me,” James said hopelessly, with wine-emboldened candor, spreading his plump hands wide. “Am I the sort to be able to dig up those dashing creatures you find with such ease? Don’t know the first thing about how to go about it.”

  “Your money alone is enough, James,” St. John said in a bored voice. “They are none of them in search of an Adonis. Merely an ample purse. Don’t tell me you’ve been lying in wait for me to come back to find you another female?”

  “But I have,” protested James. “I’ve tried. But I don’t want just any drab. The choice ones don’t even seem to see me. And I won’t settle for less. You’ve got a talent for it, my man. But look at me, I’m insignificant. Fattish, baldish, not tall or good looking. No, no, it don’t matter how much blunt I’ve got. I don’t attract the high fliers that you do. I count on you, my boy, to get me some worth for my money.”

  “James,” St. John said with a flash of annoyance, “you’re a married man now. Why don’t you just disport yourself with your wife?”

  James drew himself up to his full height, and a terrible look came into his eye.

  “I won’t have you insult my wife, Sinjin,” he said so loudly that the few others in the room turned to look at him. “I won’t have you saying such things about her.” St. John looked at his friend in alarm, and hastily put his hand upon his shoulder and said in a low voice,

  “No. Don’t fly into the boughs, James. I never thought to impugn the name of Lady Hoyland. Indeed, I did not. Whatever gave you such a thought?”

  “Well,” James said in a quietened voice, somewhat mollified, “you suggested that I seek…that I visit my baser desires upon her. I can’t have that, my man. No. I cannot countenance such talk. I know you’re unmarried St. John, and perhaps that explains it, but one doesn’t think of one’s wife in that fashion, no, one doesn’t,” he said, shaking his head ponderously.

  The Marquis looked at his friend in amazement.

  “What are you talking about, James?” he asked.

  “I suppose,” James began, with the somewhat heavy sentimentality that came easily to him in his condition, “that it’s because you never knew your father. But I was fortunate to have mine for some years, Sinjin. And he gave me excellent advice. Fatherly advice. As a father should. Which is what you missed, I suppose. So I shall impart it to you. ‘James,’ he said to me, ‘James, remember well when you marry, that your wife is a precious thing!’ He told me that, Sinjin,” James said mistily.

  “Of course,” Sinjin said, with a longing glance toward the door, “but I do have another engagement now, James, so if you will excuse me.…”

  “No, no,” James said insistently. “It’s only right that I should tell you what my father told me, seeing as you had no father to tell you, Sinjin. You don’t understand.”

  He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, and draped an arm over St. John’s shoulder as he edged closer and breathed:

  “Wives are not like other females, Sinjin. No female of our class is like those other women. They don’t like it, you see. Can’t blame them. They don’t feel a thing, you know, except a notion to please their husbands. They hate the whole nasty business. You’ve got to be quick and neat about it. Got to get yourself nerved up for it, and have a drink and go right to it with no fooling about. And all along they’ll just lie there and look upward, or aside at the bed curtains, and wait for you to be done with the whole nasty business.… Wait so patiently and with such fortitude for you to puff your way through the disgusting thing. They’re not bred to it. They don’t feel a thing. Aren’t meant to. My father told me so, and he was right. If it’s sport you want, there are those other women…not a wife. You try any of that sort of thing with a wife, and she’d die right there, Sinjin. Just expire from shame and shock. Can you imagine your mother or sister liking it? They don’t expect it…don’t want it. Can’t blame them. It’s base, Sinjin. Base.”

  “I see,” St. John said, casting a pitying look at his friend and disengaging his outflung arm. “But I really do have to go now, James.”

  “Not before you give me a name,” James insisted. “I know it’s base, but that sort of woman expects it. Likes it. Got to give me a name. What about that Maria…whatshername? You done with her, Sinjin? Or any other. I’m…in need, Sinjin. But too much of a dull sort to search out my own. They don’t notice chaps like me, with all my blunt. I don’t do a thing for their reputations. Sinjin, please,” he said, reddened now with both wine and some internal struggle.

  “Maria Dunstable,” St. John said with asperity, eager to be away. “Seek her out. I think she will greet you with open arms, James, I really do.”

  “Sinjin,” James went on, driven now by some other forces and leaning his flushed face close to his friend, “only tell me, because I can’t ask her, you see, I simply can’t—I don’t want a slut to laugh at me—but, does she…does she…do the French?”

  St. John hesitated. There was a new, sick feeling in his stomach. He wished only to be away from James and his drunken pleading.

  “Does she do the French?” James insisted in a deep whisper.

  St. John thought briefly. “The French” that his friend was shamefacedly whispering might be any one of a dozen variations that he could think of off-hand, variations that here and now he would rather not think of in relation to James, but he thought, yes, Maria would be glad to do any one of them for a new protector, she would be desperate to.

  “Yes,” he said curtly, “yes and yes.” And rising abruptly, seeing his friend beginning to speak, said only, “She was at the Opera. You can ask after her whereabouts there. Good-bye, James. Good luck,” and turned from his friend coldly, to signify dismissal. James rose as well, and having the name he had sought, left hurriedly, muttering somewhat incoherent thanks.

  St. John stood, curiously shaken, in a window embrasure and watched James make his unsteady way out to the street. The confrontation with his friend was really only a repetition of similar scenes that they had played out together on other occasions, albeit, this one was less subtle, more out in the open, due to James’s condition. But he had never felt his own nerve endings as raw on the subject of his hidden life as they were now. Fleetingly, the unbidden thought of Regina came to him. The covetous, greedy look that he knew would be on James’s face when he saw her in her regal splendor. The calculating look that would appear on other faces when he was seen with her on his arm, their silent calculations as to how long it would last, how long before they would have an opportunity to have her; how expensive would she be. St. John felt strangely unhappy at the prospect. He wanted to keep her to himself, all knowledge of their intimacies to himself. He would, he promised, if it meant never taking her out in public.

  He looked up from these oddly unpleasant thoughts to see an intent face watching him from the depths of an armchair that faced the street. It was t
he last person he wanted to see, although only a few moments ago it was the very person he had wanted to gloat over. It was the blandly smiling Duke of Torquay.

  “I see you have heard,” he heard himself saying as he strolled over to a chair next to the Duke’s.

  “Heard what, Sinjin?” the Duke said in a rich whisper.

  “The outcome of our wager, of course.”

  “No,” Torquay said softly, his wide eyes losing nothing of their innocence, “I’ve heard nothing. Only when I heard of your posting to London with such haste, I too remembered some business in town. Country squires with eligible daughters can make the pleasantest holidays seem tedious, you know. Did you know, for example, Sinjin, that whereas the eldest was as beautiful as Athena, the youngest was as graceful as Terpsichore, and the middle one was so lovely that she brought tears to the eye? I confess I hadn’t noticed it, but the Squire is an honest man, so perhaps age had dimmed my eye. Had you noticed their magnificence, Sinjin? I had myself been in the habit of identifying one by a rather continuous giggle, another by an extremely tedious lisp, and the third by the portly young man she seemed to constantly wear, like a bracelet, upon her arm. It disturbs me that I might have missed such great beauty. Now, had you noticed their beauty, Sinjin? For it occurred to me, much to my chagrin, of course, that if the Squire could not net a Duke, he would be equally overcome by a Marquis.”

  St. John made a motion of a man brushing away a fly.

  “It’s too bad you didn’t linger there longer, Torquay, or you would have heard. I’ve won. I really have won, you know. I’m here only to make arrangements for her. She’s chosen me, after all.”

  He hadn’t really expected the Duke’s reaction. It was as sudden and as unexpected as a bright light blowing out. The man recoiled as though he had been slapped. The smiling eyes glazed over as if with a frost, the smile was gone, leaving the face white and bereft of expression. “Ah,” said the Duke with a sigh as if he had been wounded in battle, “ah then. “Where is she now?” he asked, almost involuntarily, with none of the customary lilt to his voice.

  “At Fairleigh, awaiting my message. Awaiting my discretion,” St. John replied carelessly, watching the other man’s expression.

  But in that moment, the Duke had recovered himself, and a new, strangely sad smile was posed unconvincingly upon the ashen face.

  “Then I wish you well. I must confess that I am strangely disappointed. In more ways than I can explain. In more than simply losing a wager. But then you know, Sinjin, I was ever a poor loser. How did you do it, I wonder? Prose on about the poetry of her instep and her eyelashes? But I thought her impervious to flattery. Offer her a goodly sum? But I thought her…unimaginative about money. Make love to her? But I thought her unacquainted with the art. I do grow old, Sinjin.”

  He paused and glanced down at his long white hands, which had gripped the arms of his chair till they were white-knuckled. He relaxed and flexed the fingers and then said softly, “But I comfort myself with the expectation of watching the younger ones come to take my place. Perhaps I will then follow your ascendance with as much envy as any of the other novices to our arts. Perhaps I will become like poor James, and wait for your discard before I add her to my pack. Perhaps…. But I do go on. One of the disadvantages of age, Sinjin, this rambling on. I congratulate you, in any event. No,” he said rising, “I more than congratulate you, you know. From the pinnacle of my five and thirty years, I salute you. I am lost in admiration.” And, sweeping an elaborate bow that was a mockery, dredged up from some other lost generation of cavaliers, he made as if to go.

  Some last vestige of vengefulness made St. John stop him.

  “But what about the amount of our wager, Torquay?”

  The Duke wheeled around, an ugly expression momentarily upon his face, before he said, sweetly, “But how remiss of us. We never named it. Name it then, Sinjin. The game is yours, so the forfeit must be yours to decide. Name it.”

  St. John stood thinking for a moment. The Duke waited, standing rigidly still, then signaled for his coat.

  When the footman came up to him, he bore both the long cape and a slip of paper on a silver salver. As he was assisted into the garment, the Duke rapidly scanned the message. His body stiffened for a moment, but then he crumpled the message into a tight ball in his fist and thrust his hand deep into his pocket. When he turned to St. John again, there was a sparkling light in his eyes, a dancing joy ill-contained in an otherwise impassive countenance.

  “Name it,” he said again, but St. John could scent his impatience, his newly fortified almost vaunting delight.

  Some niggling fear at this rapid turnabout in the midst of what he had thought was total victory made him say, although even as he said it he was vaguely ashamed of it:

  “Oh nothing for me. But perhaps Regina would like some trinket. Some bracelet, some token to remember you by. For surely, it was you that brought us together, after all.”

  “Done,” said Torquay, with a disturbing sidewise look at St. John. “Pardon my leaving with such unseemly haste,” he said over his shoulder as he walked to the door, “but remember, I did admit that I was a poor loser. A trinket, then.” He laughed. “A token to remember me by. Oh certainly,” he promised, and with one more strangely illuminated look, he left.

  It was some time before St. John recovered himself enough to leave. He had sat, lost in thought, for hours after Torquay had left. He suspected his rival’s ambitions, but after all, he was, despite everything, a gentleman. No, he would not sink so low as to abduct Regina now that she was spoken for. Now that the wager was won. If he did, he would never be able to show his face in any of their circles again. No, he was not so lost in dishonor as to bring that fate down upon his head. No matter what the impetus. He was too conversant with the proprieties. And there was no doubt that he had been badly stricken by his loss of the wager. So that could not be in his mind. Still, something in his affect had disturbed St. John.

  But more than that had disturbed him. He sat in the chair for long hours. Till it was too late to pay a polite call upon the Wellsleys. Indeed, he felt he would defer his visit to the Wellsleys. The girl would keep. Perhaps it would be better to be settled with Regina before he set up another establishment with Melissa Wellsley. After all, a man could only do so much at one time. He sat and rationalized, and thought, and was profoundly disturbed. So that finally, when evening fell, he went around to Madame Felice’s, but found to his absolute dismay that even the earnest blandishments of her newest recruit, a rosy-cheeked young simpleton from Sussex, could not inspire him to anything remotely resembling lust. He paid her anyway, and walked, lost in thought, all the way home.

  But even in his own wide clean bed, the voices persisted. James’s hoarsely imperative question, “Does she do the French?” whirled in his head, along with Maria’s shrill screams about his lack of prowess as a lover. Torquay’s maddening smile drifted over Maria’s tear-stained face, and the dumbly questioning look of failure on the girl’s face this night. He heard James repeat again and again his matrimonial advice, and heard Melissa’s little brittle, “Oh la, Your Grace,’ and throughout it all, always, in the background, was the sound of a soft, cultured voice, and the sight of two clear green questioning eyes. And lying sleepless, in the small hours, he wondered how it was that in winning, he felt such an abysmal sense of loss.

  He thought of her then, living in that snug little house with the discreet address that he had been preparing for her. He saw her standing there, looking around her with incomprehension. He saw her on his arm, looking up at him in confusion, as all the others ogled and whispered about her. He saw then, as if for the first time, although he could have sworn he had never seen it, that briefly seen and suppressed look of hatred that she had flashed at him.

  He felt her cool hand in his again, her lips against his, her laughter meeting his as it sometimes had when the same ridiculous thought had occurred to them both at the same time. He remembered why it was that she was s
uch a poor player at cards, and why she had been so grateful to him for his role that he had played in her life. He saw what his motives had been, and were, and for the first time, saw clearly what they would eventually lead her to.

  Until slowly, and with maddening certainty, he came to realize that in winning, he had indeed lost. Lost something of unclear, but inestimable value to himself. And rising from his bed and pacing, he began to put all the bits and pieces together, until he stopped short in the middle of the room and reached a startling conclusion. And though he felt at last a little light-headed, and certainly a little mad, he also felt almost as a schoolboy in his glee and relief.

  And then he began to plan his way clear to winning. Winning all, finally and with sureness, and with a sense of honor.

  XV

  The attic bedroom was shabby, the furniture in it well used, and the gabled ceiling was too full of chinks to completely keep out the sharp wind, but still Regina was as grateful for the room as if it were a palatial chamber. She sat in a small chair that seemed to long to tilt sideways and collapse under the accumulated weight of its years, and in the dim morning light the little window permitted, counted and recounted the small hoard of coins of her purse.

  “Walking about money,” Uncle George had termed it when he had pressed it into her hands while she had laughingly protested his gesture. But now, she thought wryly, that was exactly what it was turning out to be. For if she did not husband it carefully, she would, indeed, have to walk the rest of the way along her journey.

  There had only been enough to take her for a little way along the coach route, that was, if she expected to both eat and sleep along the way. She had been lucky enough to encounter a farm family on their way to town on the previous morning when she had let herself out of the house at sunrise. If they had been curious about her, they had soon forgotten all their questions when she had begun to admire the youngest of their towheaded brood, and for the rest of the ride in their wagon, she had been treated to stories about the virtues and escapades of their entire family. And since they rejoiced in a family of nine children, there had been enough conversation to last until they had finally let her off at the posting house.