Gambled Away: A Historical Romance Anthology

by Rose Lerner

  She was wild-eyed and furious, and Delilah nodded as if she understood how she deserved Helen’s fury and James’s disdain.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “If you were in my position, you might understand better. I’ve got people, you know. People who count on me.”

  “I don’t care about your people. Get out!” Helen said.

  “I’ll put your name on the board,” Delilah said to James. “And I’ll cover your entry-”

  “I’ll pay my own way,” James said. “But you had better mean what you say about handling Guy and Charles after the game.”

  “Of course I mean what I say. You know that. But Kyle’s still gonna be outside. In case you get any ideas.” The door closed behind Delilah and Kyle, and he could hear Helen’s ragged breathing.

  How had they fallen so far? So fast? From hope to despair, from purpose…to this. A gunman outside.

  And Helen with no choices. Again.

  And him, stepping into a role he never wanted.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

  “Aren’t we all.”

  “Can you trust me?” he asked.

  “Absolutely not.”

  He sighed. “Can you try? One more day.”

  “Because you are going to win me in a poker game?” she asked with no expression. Her dressing grown was blue cotton, and in her rush to put it on the collar had gotten caught all around her neck. Tucked in. And he had to clench his hands against the urge to untuck it. To pull her close.

  Hug her.

  “I am.”

  She pursed her lips and shrugged. “I have lived eighteen months without hope or choice. I don’t care anymore.”

  “Do not give up hope, Helen, please. You will not leave with Charles Park. Not tomorrow night, not ever again.”

  “I will let you hope. I’m too tired for such work.” She did look tired. Exhausted. Broken.

  “I’ll leave you,” he said. “Can I get you some food, fresh water?”

  “Like a horse?”

  He glanced away, filled with guilt and anger at his role in her being the prisoner of people he’d thought were his friends. And perhaps…he hated to admit it. Perhaps they were right. Doing this legally. Making sure Park could not follow them. Making sure she was healthy before she headed out across the wilderness.

  “Before you go…” She grabbed the case from the small dressing table and held it toward him. “I need it. The morphine.”

  “You want me to inject you?” he breathed.

  “You, or I will do it myself, and that won’t end well.”

  He hesitated, trapped in a terrible corner by his Hippocratic oath, his temptation and his unrivaled care for her. “Fine,” she muttered and began to open the case with wildly shaking hands. She would hurt herself. Give herself too much. He couldn’t stand there and watch her do it, so he put his hands over hers.

  Oh, she was chilled. So chilled. Her fingers were clammy. He eased the case from her trembling grip.

  “I will only give you enough to keep the worst of the symptoms at bay,” he said, compromising on all sides.

  She sniffed, her eyes beginning to fill with tears.

  “Just give me the morphine and get out.”

  He slipped the glass bottles and the needle from their places inside the purple velvet case. And prepared the syringe.

  He hadn’t had syringes in his tent during the war. They came after, a medical marvel for nurses and hospitals and morphine inebriates.

  She stood there with her arm out.

  “I’m sorry to make you do this,” she said. “It must be difficult.”

  “Well, it’s not easy.”

  “Does the hunger for it ever go away?”

  “It does, but not forever. I live with it. Just as you will live with it.”

  He touched her elbow, the tender skin, pale just over the dark blue veins.

  His thumb found the main cubital vein and pressed down, making it pop up against the skin. The point of the needle slid in easily and he pushed the plunger down with his thumb, sending the drug into her blood.

  She whimpered slightly, a sound of surrender and fear.

  I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. The words beat in time with his heart.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Better,” she answered, her eyelids lowered.

  He got her into bed and with a heavy heart he blew out her lamp and left the room.

  Outside, as promised, was Kyle with his shotgun.

  “I’m sorry,” Kyle whispered.

  “Fuck you,” James said, over his shoulder as he walked to the balcony to look down. Delilah was there, sitting at the bar close to the fireplace. The sherry bottle at her elbow.

  His name was on the blackboard behind the bar.

  It was done.

  And he was going to win.

  Heaven help them all.

  Chapter 10

  * * *

  Agnes had tailored his finest jacket, the burgundy one. Taking in the shoulders and the hem on the sleeves because he’d lost so much weight. She’d shaved him too.

  After, he put on the silver vest that had been a gift from a lover he could barely remember and he picked his old Colt out of the drawer of his dresser, a relic left over from his days of house calls.

  The weight of it did not make him feel any safer. It never had.

  But he wasn’t going to go walking into the pit of vipers downstairs without every weapon he could gather.

  “Can you even shoot that thing?” Agnes asked as he tucked it into the holster in the small of his back.

  “Let’s hope so.”

  Finally, he looked at himself in the mirror, something he hadn’t done much of in the last few weeks.

  That’s me, he thought, taking stock of the stranger looking back at him.

  His pink, freshly shaved cheeks. His hair was shiny and smelled of bay rum.

  The streak of silver was new. Just above his right ear.

  He tilted his head, trying to get a better look at it, wondering if he liked it. Wondering if it mattered.

  There’d been a boy in Massachusetts General, a black soldier who’d had hair with a bright white streak through it.

  Woke up after Petersburg like this, he’d told James while coughing blood into a linen cloth.

  The boy had died a few days later.

  “The girls all say that silver streak makes you look real distinguished,” Agnes said, peeking into the mirror from beside his shoulder.

  Her round face was contemplative, studying the streak. A problem she was determined to solve. “But we could put boot black in it if it bothers you.”

  “I don’t think we need to go to such excess.”

  “Well, if you say so.”

  “Otherwise,” he asked, “do I pass muster?”

  She smiled, revealing her crooked eyetooth before she caught herself and ducked away.

  “You’ll do.”

  “Thank you for your work on my jacket,” he said. “You’re very good with a needle.”

  She pulled the sleeve of his jacket, straightening the shoulder, eyeing the hem she’d fixed. “Well, we couldn’t have you go down there looking like a boy in his father’s suit.”

  It felt good to be back in his fine clothes. He liked them. Liked how they made him believe, at least a little, that he was a fine kind of man.

  They conjured some of the confidence of those heady Paris nights.

  He pulled some money out of his wallet and gave it to Agnes. The last of what he had after paying Delilah the entrance fee for tonight’s circus.

  Agnes tucked the bills into the bosom of her dress.

  “You think you can beat that man?” Agnes asked.

  “You don’t think I can?” he asked back.

  She sighed heavily, and he laughed.

  “What a pleasure to realize the confidence I instill in everyone. Let’s put ourselves out of our misery and find out, shall we?”

  He opened the door
for Agnes with a flourish, and she swept out like she was wearing a ball gown. Across the hallway, Guy stood outside Helen’s door.

  “Just a moment,” James said to Agnes and crossed the wide balcony over to the large man.

  “What the hell happened?” Guy asked through lips that didn’t move.

  “Delilah wouldn’t let her leave.”

  “You couldn’t work around a whore?” Guy asked.

  “There’s another plan.”

  “Good luck. I’ve done all I can for you.” Guy blew out a breath, focusing his eyes over James’s shoulder, dismissing him.

  Downstairs was a very different Delilah’s than he’d ever seen. The mood was electric and troubling. There were a group of black men standing, arms crossed, at the bottom of the stairs, glaring at a group of men who wore what was left of their Confederate uniforms. The birdcage had been replaced by a table with intricately carved mahogany legs.

  Park was already sitting at the table with five other men. He wore his gray suit and an expression of such barely constrained glee that James was taken aback for a second.

  “Here he is!” Delilah said with a wide grin as she swept across the floor from the bar. Which she was tending, since Kyle sat at the table with his hair slicked back like a boy going to church.

  He caught sight of the sheriff, who from the looks of things had deputized some civilians in case things got out of hand. One of whom was Langston Jeffries, a black man working with Steven on the railroad.

  The blackboard behind the bar no longer listed the men who’d put up the money to play in the game. In good Denver tradition, it was now the list of the men playing and the odds of their winning. His name was second to last—odds were not in his favor.

  Which, frankly, worked just fine for him.

  Kyle was in the first position. The favorite.

  That stung, actually.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Delilah asked, curving her arm through his and leading him through the throngs of men towards the stage.

  “It takes time to look this pretty, Delilah. Why is Kyle the favorite?”

  “You sore?”

  “No… Yes.”

  “You’ll live. Now, play and get this loathsome man out of my building.”

  She practically shoved him up onto the stage.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said with a wide grin. “Gentlemen.” He nodded at each of the other players: Charles, Kyle, Matthew Pinkerman who ran the shipping company that took materials down to Golden. Plus two other men he didn’t know, but judging by their state of inebriation and filth, he decided they would not be competition.

  Kyle wouldn’t either.

  Pinkerman might be a threat.

  And of course Park.

  “Our last player is here. Are we ready?” Charles asked, pulling a deck of cards from his pocket.

  “I’m not playing with your cards,” Kyle said, all belligerence. James nearly rolled his eyes. Honestly, Kyle. Some subtlety.

  “It’s a fresh deck.” Charles held up the deck to reveal the unbroken red seal.

  “I don’t give a shit if you just gave birth to them, I won’t use your deck.”

  Pinkerman laughed.

  “Does anyone else have a deck of cards?” Park asked, not seeming upset in the least, and James figured that Park’s ability to win consistently had very little to do with a marked deck.

  “We have some.” Delilah was back behind the bar, and she handed new cards to one of Kyle’s urchins. The crowd parted like the Red Sea to let the kid scramble up to the stage.

  There were three decks, each fresh. “Is this agreeable to everyone?” Charles asked, glancing at each of the players.

  Everyone nodded except Pinkerman. “Since we’re airing concerns,” he said. “I would like us all to remove our coats.”

  As if to demonstrate how it was done, he slipped out of his serviceable brown jacket. The room was utterly silent, and James could feel everyone watching Charles Park as the unknown in the room.

  “It seems I have fallen in with a group of very distrustful men.” Charles laughed, but he unbuttoned his jacket and slipped it off his shoulders. He hung it over the back of his chair and then lifted his arms, pulled up his sleeves and showed his bare wrists to the crowd.

  “Satisfied?” Park asked Pinkerman.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  James shrugged out of his jacket. So did Kyle—a worn thing with frayed sleeves. Two of the others weren’t wearing jackets. But the third, in a denim coat he was all but sweating through, seemed reluctant. One of his friends elbowed him in the ribs and the boy looked like he might just burst into tears.

  James sighed. “What have you got under your coat, son?” he asked in his best doctor voice.

  The boy stood, and four aces slipped from the sleeve of his too-big jacket. “Can I get my money back?” he asked.

  “No,” Park said, cold and final. He lifted the cards. “Delilah, honey,” he said, and the endearment hit a wrong note and made James’s skin crawl. “I think it’s best you deal. Is that agreeable to everyone?”

  Every moment the tensions in the room increased, Park seemed…happier. It was as if he was feeding on the discomfort. James felt a chill roll up his spine. There was something else happening. Some other kind of game was being played, and James didn’t know what.

  “It’s agreeable to me,” James said, and the rest of the table nodded.

  Kyle quickly grabbed a chair and set it at the table near him. Of course. And Delilah sat, smiling, her sequins and feathers and silks all shining in the candlelight.

  With an audible snap that James felt in his gut, she broke the seal on the cards. “As Mr. Park stipulated, the game is five card draw-”

  “Wait.” Park held up a finger and looked over the sea of heads toward Guy, who stood at the foot of the stairs. “Where is my Northern Spy? Guy?”

  Guy leaned over the balcony.

  “Bring her down. For inspiration. To fire our imaginations, to show these boys what magic, what beauty is at stake.”

  The speech was old and the mania behind it was not about beauty and magic.

  James glanced sideways, making sure not to catch Delilah’s eye—she had already done enough orchestrating and he wanted to throw no more attention her way—but he caught Kyle’s jaundiced gaze and he knew they were in agreement.

  Something wasn’t right.

  “While we wait, shall I tell you how I came to know my Northern Spy?”

  “Please do,” said Pinkerman. James did not know the man’s heart or his story, but the gleam in his eye put him firmly on the side of those with avarice toward Helen.

  “I was a colonel serving the glorious Confederacy-”

  “I fought with the Georgia 9th,” Pinkerman said.

  “I was with the Hillyer Rifles at Gettysburg,” the silent near-child sitting across from him piped up. He and Pinkerman shared a short nod. Brothers in arms. Lovely.

  James and Kyle were the only ones silent.

  “Barkeep? Did you not fight in that glorious war?”

  “I’ve never been a part of a glorious war,” Kyle said, clearly losing patience. “Have you, James?”

  “Not at all.” The war he’d been in had been far from glorious.

  “But I fought for the Union,” Kyle said. There was a roar of support from part of the crowd.

  “Well,” Park said, casting them a dark glance for ruining his fine tale. “My home was outside of Charleston, and in the field I heard stories about Mrs. Rivers, whose husband was in service to President Jefferson in the capital while she and her daughter stayed nestled in the bosom of Charleston. Men spoke of Mrs. Rivers’s beauty and grace as if she’d been delivered to our fair city from heaven itself. She hosted parties for officers when they were in town. She offered baskets of food to our soldiers, dusty and exhausted and starving from their endless marching.”

  “I heard about them,” one of the soldiers said. “Heard tell Mrs. Rivers had a v
oice like an angel.”

  Park closed his eyes as if in some kind of ecstatic recollection. “Angelic doesn’t even do it justice. As beautiful as my songbird’s voice is, her mother’s was ten times better, nay”—he paused for dramatic effect—“a hundred times better. As beautiful as my Northern Spy is, her mother was…incomparable.”

  He glanced up and smiled wide. “There she is!”

  As one, every man in the room turned to look at her. She and Agnes stood at the top of the stairs. The glittering half-dressed creature they’d grown used to wasn’t visible. She wore a black dress. A mourning gown.

  If the men in the room were disappointed, it didn’t show.

  She was still lovely. Ethereal now in the dark gown.

  Park, at the head of the table, nearly clapped.

  “Join us, my darling spy,” he said. “I was just telling them about your mother.”

  It suddenly occurred to James that this was what had Park nearly levitating off his seat with anticipation. This was the game he was really playing. And it had nothing to do with the men around the table.

  This was about torturing Helen.

  “I thought we were here to play cards,” James said.

  “Who gives a shit about what happened years ago?” Kyle snapped.

  “Hold on, now,” Pinkerman said. “I’d like to hear the story.”

  “Me too,” said the solider who remembered stories about Helen and her mother.

  “What do you think, my darling spy?” Park asked. “Shall I finish the story?”

  Her smile was the emptiest thing James had ever seen, and the crowd didn’t care. She could be bleeding from her ears and they wouldn’t even flinch. The creak of the stairs as she came down them echoed in the silent room.

  “Well, there were rumors of course that something wasn’t quite right in that house. While everyone else in the South was starving, they always seemed to have meat on their table. Brandy for their parties. Lace and silks for new gowns.”

  That was undoubtedly a lie, but the story was rolling through the room.

  “They were selling their bodies,” Pinkerman said, lasciviousness gleaming in his eyes as Helen made her way to the table. The boys parted to let her get by, some not so much. Forcing her to squeeze past them.