by M C Beaton
Amanda was wearing a smart blue velvet riding habit which she felt became her. It gave her confidence to sound out Mr. Carruthers on the subject of marriage. She felt it was time the young man showed signs of popping the question. So far he had been about as loverlike towards her as her brother, Richard.
“I confess I am dreading the Season,” said Amanda, watching the spring sun burn through the mist which snaked around the boles of the old trees in Hyde Park. Daffodils grew in the tussocky grass, and the young leaves were fairy green. Shafts of sunlight, diffused and broadened by the mist, turned the Park into a pantomime transformation scene.
Any moment, the gauze would rise, the trees would melt away, and there they would be in Prince Charming’s palace, and Prince Charming would be wearing her—it was always a woman—glittering uniform of tinsel and silver epaulettes, the sort of thing poor Prinny used to wear before his mentor, Mr. Brummell, persuaded him it was vulgar.
“Nothing to fear about the Season,” said Peter Carruthers.
“It is different for a man,” replied Amanda, slowing her horse to an ambling pace.
“How so?”
“Gentlemen do not need to get married,” pointed out Amanda.
He frowned deeply, as if faced by a mathematical problem of great complexity. Then his face cleared. “Ladies don’t have to either,” he said triumphantly. “Do you care to gallop, Miss Colby?”
“No,” said Amanda crossly. “And it is not the same for ladies. What else can a lady do, if she does not marry? She can become a governess, someone neither fish nor fowl, despised by the mistress and the upper servants. She can become a companion, and measure out her days holding some cross old lady’s knitting.”
Mr. Carruthers reined in his horse to give the matter full attention. A shaft of sunlight gilded his curly fair hair and sent prisms of light sparkling from the large diamond in his stock.
At last he turned an awestruck face to Amanda. “By George, Miss Colby,” he said in admiration. “I always thought you was a deep’un. Now, I would never have thought of a thing like that.”
Short of saying to this cackle-brained lump of amiability, “Will you marry me?” I don’t really see what else I can say, thought Amanda.
Nonetheless, she tried again. “I must marry, you see. I only hope I can find someone kind and good-natured.”
“Like me,” said Mr. Carruthers jovially, and Amanda sighed with relief. “Tell you what, I’ll look around m’ friends. Now, I don’t plan to get leg-shackled for a few years, but I’ve noticed that some of ’em are suddenly struck with the thought. Take Philip Otley. One minute, biggest rake in town. Gets moody one night. Looks down at the dregs of his fifth bottle and says, ‘I’m going to get married.’ Just like that! ‘Who?’ I asks. ‘Don’t know,’ says he, ‘but anyone will do.’ So there you are. Would you care to gallop, Miss Colby?”
“Oh, yes,” sighed Amanda. She let him fly off ahead and stayed where she was, wrapped in thought. She had wasted weeks on Mr. Carruthers. And she had all but proposed to him. Good heavens! What if he went about the clubs saying Amanda Colby was desperate for a husband!
She spurred her horse and galloped after him, only to find when she finally caught up that she need not have troubled. Mr. Carruthers had already forgotten the whole conversation.
Amanda began to feel downcast. Catching a husband was going to be very difficult. Oh, if there was only a way of making money that did not involve marriage!
Without really taking into consideration to whom she was speaking, she voiced this thought aloud to Lady Mary, simply because Lady Mary happened to be the only female around when she arrived home.
“There is a very easy way,” said Lady Mary casually. “But I suppose you know about it.”
Amanda shook her head.
“Well, it depends on your luck at the card table.…”
“I am very lucky.”
“Then there are gaming houses for ladies, all most genteel, I assure you.”
“But how does one gain an introduction to one of those houses?”
“In the case of the best ones, by invitation. You see, a certain noble lady will send out cards of invitation, just as if to an ordinary card party. That way she can escape the attention of the law. Not that there is anything precisely illegal, you understand.
“All the best people go. I have an invitation to Lady Mannering’s tonight, but I have refused it because we are bound for the opera. Of course, I could go anytime during the night because the play will not finish until dawn but—ah, me—I do not have your luck.”
Lady Mary rummaged around in her diamond-shaped reticule and brought out a plain card with black embossed lettering. “There, you see… I think I hear dear Charles in the hall. Excuse me, Miss Colby.”
Amanda slowly turned the invitation card over in her hands. It was oddly worded in that no one in particular was invited. “Admit bearer” was inscribed in small, curly script at the bottom.
Amanda wondered and wondered whether to go and try her luck. She decided to leave her fate up to the gods. If Lady Mary asked for her invitation back, then she would not go. But as the day wore on, calls were made in the company of Aunt Matilda, Mrs. Fitzgerald, and Lady Mary, but Lady Mary did not mention the gambling house again.
They were about to set out for the opera in the evening. Lord Hawksborough had said he would meet them there. He avoided Amanda and always seemed only to see her when they were both surrounded by a crowd of people. Aunt Matilda was scanning a letter which had come from Mr. Cartwright-Browne by the morning post. She had put off reading it, because, she said, it would no doubt be full of the boring details of yet another lawsuit against Mr. Brotherington.
But as her eyes moved over the crabbed handwriting, her long sheeplike face fell and the end of her nose began to turn pink, a sure sign of distress.
“What is it, Aunt?” asked Amanda.
“It is Mr. Cartwright-Browne. He wishes to terminate the lease of Fox End. I doubt if we shall find another tenant to take it for a mere three months. I suppose I must give in gracefully, or no doubt he will try to sue me. We could have done with the extra…”
Aunt Matilda bit her lip and glanced away from Mrs. Fitzgerald, but everyone knew what she had been about to say.
They most certainly could have done with the extra money.
“I have the headache,” said Amanda suddenly. “I feel I cannot attend the opera tonight. Present my excuses to Lord Hawksborough.”
“You are certainly very flushed,” said Mrs. Fitzgerald.
“Oh, I think she should most certainly lie down,” said Lady Mary sweetly, and Amanda looked at her with sudden suspicion.
Did Lady Mary guess what she, Amanda, planned to do?
But that was impossible.
In the privacy of her bedroom, she studied the invitation again. Montague Street. Not so very far away. She could take a hack.
Amanda sat and thought furiously. She felt she did not have the courage to visit a strange house on her own. There was no one she could ask to go with her.
Susan!
Susan was staying at home because she said she detested opera. All that caterwauling and screeching gave her the vapours.
After a search, Amanda found Susan in the Green Drawing Room, lying on a sofa in front of the fire, reading a letter and eating chocolates.
“You didn’t go either,” said Susan, thrusting the letter under a cushion. “What’s the matter? No other men to steal?”
“Oh, Susan, do not be at odds with me,” said Amanda. “I need your help.”
“Fire away,” said Susan, sitting up and looking more amiable. “Richard told me to take care of you, anyway.”
“Richard? When did you see him?”
“I didn’t,” said Susan, blushing. “He… er… wrote.”
“How is he? What does he say?”
“Oh, this and that and t’other,” said Susan airily. “Tell me your problem.”
So Amanda outlined the
Colby predicament. She said she was desperately in need of money, and winning money at cards would mean she did not have to get married.
Susan began to look bored. She detested card games almost as much as she detested the opera.
“And don’t you see,” Amanda went on desperately, “Mr. Cartwright-Browne has left or is leaving Fox End, so if we had money, Richard and I could return, and you could come with us. We could go fishing and shooting and you would not need to go to balls or parties.”
“So what do you want me to do?” asked Susan with sudden enthusiasm.
Amanda held out the invitation. “Come to this gaming house with me.”
Susan scowled at it. “Lady Mannering… she is not quite bon ton but I have not heard anything really bad about her. Very well. We will take the vis-á-vis as if we are going on a call. If we go and get a hack, the servants might gossip.”
Amanda went to give her a friendly hug, but Susan said gruffly, “Keep your distance. I still do not trust you.”
“Oh, Susan!” said Amanda, much exasperated. “You never wanted Mr. Dalzell anyway. You’re like a dog with a bone it doesn’t really want.”
“But such a pretty bone,” remarked Susan. “Come along. It’s all very exciting. But I shall watch, mind you. Do not expect me to play. You have money?”
“Yes, I’ve saved most of my allowance.”
Despite Amanda’s secret fears of finding herself in a smoke-laden den of iniquity full of painted women, they set out.
The gambling club turned out to be almost disappointingly refined.
Amanda handed over the card and introduced herself to Lady Mannering, a grim-faced woman of uncertain years who looked like a governess. They left their cloaks and rather shyly entered the gaming room.
To Amanda’s relief, she recognised several of the ladies present. She sat down at a faro table and Susan stood behind her, occasionally sighing and shuffling her feet.
Amanda played and played. Susan eventually moved over to a sofa in the corner and fell asleep.
Sometimes Amanda won a little, sometimes she lost a little, and then, quite amazingly, she began to win and win. When she found she had won the incredible sum of five hundred guineas, she tore herself away from the table and awoke Susan. Lady Mannering relaxed her grim visage to congratulate Miss Colby on her luck. Miss Colby should return the next night, she said. The stakes would be higher, a deal of very rich ladies were expected to attend, and there would be a champagne supper. Amanda looked excited. Susan yawned cavernously in Lady Mannering’s face and said grumpily that once was enough.
“But I have won five hundred guineas,” exclaimed Amanda as they jogged home.
“Then keep it,” said Susan. “You’ll lose it if you go back tomorrow.”
“No. Just one more time. And please come with me. I’ll… I’ll pay you.”
“Just invite me to that place of yours in Hardforshire,” said Susan with a reluctant smile. “And take five of those guineas and give them to John coachman to keep his mouth shut. If he gossips in the kitchens, cook will tell the housekeeper and she will tell the lady’s maid, Mathers, and Mathers will tell Mama.”
The coachman not only promised to keep quiet but also let them in by a back door to the house around by the mews and so they were able to creep quietly up the stairs unnoticed.
“I think the headache must be becoming infectious,” said Lord Hawksborough to his fiancée, Lady Mary Dane, as they sat out in the refreshment room at Lord Tavistock’s ball the following night. “Both Susan and Miss Colby seem struck with it at the same time.”
“Then it is a mercy,” said Lady Mary tartly. “I feel like a governess, having to be constantly in the company of these pimply schoolgirls.”
“I would call neither Susan nor Miss Colby pimply.”
“Their souls are pimply and covered with chalk and ink blots,” said Lady Mary, raising her hand to the sapphire pendant that hung between her breasts and hoping that his lordship’s eyes would be guided by the gesture and so divert his mind to a more interesting subject.
Lady Mary had reluctantly agreed to give the next dance to Lord Tavistock but was hoping he would not remember the fact, since she was not in the ballroom, but to her irritation, she found him at her elbow reminding her of the promise.
Lord Hawksborough watched her go. He found himself disliking her more and more and wondered irritably if he would have been quite comfortable in his engagement had Amanda not entered his life.
He saw Mrs. Burke, a notorious old gossip, bearing down on him and made a move to escape. But he was too slow and she was upon him, her old eyes snapping with malice and mischief.
“Well, Hawksborough,” she said. “You ought to keep an eye on that sister of yours. And little Miss Colby. Too young to be fleeced in a gambling hell.”
Lord Hawksborough took out his quizzing glass and stared awfully at Mrs. Burke. “What are you talking about?” he said acidly.
“Sally Struthers-Benson was at Lady Mannering’s hell in Montague Street last night and she said Miss Colby was gambling like Sheridan, while your sister egged her on. They allowed Miss Colby to win. They always do that the first time, you know. Got her coming back tonight to fleece the lamb.”
“My sister and Miss Colby, since you appear so interested in their welfare, are both at home with the headache,” said Lord Hawksborough, turning away.
“They’re both at Frederica Mannering’s faro table,” cackled Mrs. Burke, “or I’ll eat my wig.”
Lady Mary was performing a neat entrechat in a set of the quadrille when she stumbled and almost fell. She had just seen Lord Hawksborough striding out of the ballroom with a face like thunder.
She contained herself as best she could until the dance was over. Mrs. Burke came up immediately. “I was talking to Hawksborough,” she began.
“Where is Charles?” demanded Lady Mary, looking at Mrs. Burke with dislike.
“Said he had to find that Colby girl,” said Mrs. Burke maliciously, watching with satisfaction the red tide of anger rising in Lady Mary’s face.
“Is that the sister of the Colby I met at Bellingham?” said Betty Barrington, stopping suddenly beside them. “I had such hopes of Richard Colby. I met him when I was at the seminary in Bellingham, you know, I sent him to get chocolate drops. Well, he wanted to know when the Hawksborough coach was leaving, and that was on the very day they were held up by highwaymen. I thought Mr. Colby was a dashing and romantic highwayman who would throw me over his saddle bow and ride off with me. But alas! It was all so ordinary. I met him at a ball and he turned out to be nothing more than a respectable young man who had a tendre for Susan Fitzgerald. Ah, me!” said Betty, rolling her eyes in mock distress. “My heart was quite broken!”
She flitted off. Mrs. Burke saw new prey and took herself off as well.
Lady Mary stood very still, her blue eyes quite, quite blank.
Amanda had at last succeeded in dragging a reluctant Susan back to Lady Mannering’s in Montague Street. Susan was in a foul temper. The supper was in the form of a buffet and Susan immediately left Amanda to her card-playing and stomped over to it and began to help herself to an amazing amount of delicacies, which she proceeded to wash down with several bumpers of claret.
Drawing room and back drawing room had been joined together for the added company. There was hardly any sound, apart from occasional voices making a bid. Amanda was immediately and totally absorbed in the game.
She lost a little and won a little, just as she done on the night before. And then she began to lose steadily.
At one point she raised anguished eyes from her cards and looked to where Susan was moodily drinking wine.
Susan caught the look and came over and stood beside her. As Amanda’s last guineas were scooped away, Susan leaned over the banker’s muslin shoulder and ran a thumb over the cards.
“No wonder you’re losing,” she said in a loud carrying voice she had inherited from her mother. “These cards are marked.
See!” She held one up to the room full of women. “Pinpricks. The oldest trick in the game.”
“Cheat!” raged Amanda, seeing Fox End and an escape from Lord Hawksborough and the terrors of the London Season being snatched from her.
“Nonsense,” said Lady Mannering, sweeping forward regally. “Do not listen to the silly words of these little misses. Murphy! See these ladies leave immediately.”
A large, tough individual who acted as butler lumbered forward purposely.
