The Dowager's Wager

by Nikki Poppen

  Giles cleared his throat. “I knew you would say that. So, to preempt your impending boredom, I have arranged for something special. If you will all follow me?” He cocked a challenging blond eyebrow at the group, daring them to dispute his latest game.

  Chatham groaned. “Whatever you have in mind, we’ll have to do it here. It’s positively a crush in here and I doubt there are any other rooms unoccupied at this point.” He gave Giles and Alain a wicked wink. “Who knows what kind of decadence we may uncover if we go opening closed doors.”

  “Never fear, I’ve planned for that contingency as well. The only private place I could secure was the verandah.” With his trademark efficiency, Giles ushered the group towards the row of French doors leading out onto the wide verandah overlooking the now dark gardens. There would be nothing to see out there tonight in the dead of an English winter. No one would bother them. They would have their privacy.

  Tristan hung back, finding himself reluctant to engage in whatever scheme Giles had concocted. A tug on his arm indicated that Giles would not let him slip away. Giles had maneuvered back through the crowd to usher him along. “Come on, Tristan. I’ve planned this bit of fun especially for you. Alain says you’re determined to find a wife.” Giles winked at him and managed to deftly relieve a passing footman of two champagne bottles. Giles’s deft antics made him laugh and Tristan found himself capitulating to his friend’s well intended contrivances.

  Once on the verandah, Tristan watched Giles settle them all on the wide stone steps, and pour everyone another glass.

  “Let’s get on with it, Giles. It’s freezing out here!” Chatham griped, blowing in his hands and rubbing them together.

  “Drink your champagne and stop carping,” Giles scolded. “Besides, after the heat of the ballroom the cold is welcome.” Then he got down to the business at hand, the surprise. “In honor of Valentine’s Day, I have invited the lovely Irina Dupeski, fortune teller extraordinaire, to tell our fortunes in the hopes that we shall find success in amour.” Giles finished with a grand flourish, introducing from the shadows a ravenhaired woman dressed in luscious multicolored skirts.

  “Your friends, my lord?” She asked in a Russian tinged accent, sweeping the group with a white smile framed by red lips. “Who shall be first?” she flirted.

  “I am” Alain volunteered with his characteristic impulsiveness, thrusting out his palm as Irina settled on the step next to him.

  She ran an experimental finger over his palm, caressing the lines. “What do you want to know, my lord?”

  Tristan’s thoughts drifted away from Alain’s fortune as the gypsy’s words were drowned in a wave of laughter from the group. He looked at each of his friends in turn and felt an all too familiar pang of loneliness deep in his chest. He envied them their closeness. He envied them the years they’d had together before his arrival into the tight-knit coterie. He envied them the last seven years he’d been absent from their presence, pursuing his own official and unofficial activities on the Continent for the Crown.

  Tristan shifted his position on the balustrade where he sat, drawing himself further into the darkness, away from the shafts of light spilling out from the ballroom. He could see Giles, his golden head thrown back in a deep, honest laugh, his warm brown eyes sparking with mischief as he playfully ribbed Chatham. In a moment, the teasing passed. Chatham threw a warning look to Giles as Irina moved to take his palm.

  Tristan sighed. How he’d missed them all! His selfimposed exile had transpired in a vacuum of loneliness. He’d missed Giles constantly organizing their entertainments. He’d missed Chatham with his distinctively soft, clipped aristocratic voice that women fell in love with everywhere. He’d missed Alain, his best friend, most of all. It had been too difficult to think about Alain without also thinking of Isabella-a very good reason why one shouldn’t fall in love with one’s friend’s sister. He had learned that lesson too late.

  Tonight, as Queen of the Heavens, she embodied the sun, dressed as she was in a high-waisted gown of bronze silk with tiny puffed sleeves banded in black velvet. Her honeycolored hair was piled high on her head in thick ringlets, a few trailing down to brush the almost bare expanse of her shoulders. Around her slender neck hung a topaz pendant which was designed to emulate the sun. He was filled with an unexpected and entirely inappropriate impulse to trace her body with his hand from the column of her neck to the topaz jewel that rested just above the swell of her breasts.

  He shifted, trying to exorcise his growing discomfort. Seeing her yesterday had affected him more than he could have imagined. The incident in the garden had nearly unmanned him. The evening’s festivities with their overt themes of love had done nothing to alleviate his situation. Isabella had been true to her word in assisting him with his search for a wife. She’d been by his side most of the evening, guessing at which Eligibles were cloaked beneath the dominoes. But not even the beauties she’d encouraged in his direction had been enough to distract him from her presence or the recent memory of her touch when she’d held his hand by the fountain. Tristan shifted again and made to slip further into the shadows but Giles’s voice broke into his reveries.

  “Tristan, give Isabella your domino, she’s left hers inside. We all know you’re a furnace anyway.” Giles ordered with a goodnatured laugh, referring to the inordinate amount of body heat Tristan managed to generate regularly, even in the middle of a winter night. Tonight, Tristan wished he weren’t quite so hot-blooded. A dash of cold would be welcome to subdue his more heated thoughts.

  The object of his ungentlemanly discomfort was indeed shivering, Tristan noted as he complied with the command, draping his cloak about Isabella’s shoulders while Irina finished with Giles’s fortune. He hoped everyone was too distracted by the fortune teller to notice the effort it took for him to make his action look like a casual gesture. His fingertips inadvertently brushed the exposed skin of her shoulder and he felt her stiffen at the contact. He wished he could see her face at that moment of contact. Did she shiver from hidden desire or from dislike? Had his scar repelled her?

  Irina approached the spot where he and Isabella sat. Tristan withdrew hastily back into his dark corner behind her. He hoped the fortune teller would overlook him or at least have the wits to sense his reticence and leave him alone. He was not destined to be so lucky. Irina stepped past Isabella and took possession of his hand. “Such a handsome man must have a good fortune awaiting him.” Irina flirted playfully, drawing him from his latest shadowy perch. He did not protest her inspection. He had not planned to participate in such a school boyish venture, but he was trapped now. He was only glad she had grabbed for his right hand and not his ruined left. He was not ready for others to know of his injury. There would be questions asked that he could not answer.

  “Alas, a cold but loyal heart dwells within you” Irina fell silent, letting Tristan’s hand go slack in her own. “I am sorry. You are blank to me” She turned his hand back to front and back again, studying the short, clean nails on one side and the multitude of criss-crossing lines scored deep in the palm on the other. The pretty gypsy furrowed her brow in puzzlement. Her eyes suddenly brightened. “Wait, there is something else here.” She smiled up at him with dazzling white teeth. “You will find love soon. It will be a deep, abiding love that transcends all else.” Redeemed, she let his hand drop back to his side.

  Giles clapped his hands appreciatively. “We are all in luck tonight! What good fortunes await us all in amour.”

  Chatham held up a hand. “Don’t jinx it, Giles. We still have Isabella’s fortune to hear.”

  Chatham had meant it goodnaturedly, but from his position behind her, Tristan could see Isabella flinch at the reminder. Was she also reluctant to have her fortune told?

  Irina took the cue and studied Isabella’s hesitantly offered palm. “Let’s see, my lady. This is good. You have a long life ahead of you. You shall become a Grande Dame. What’s this?” Irina ran a finger down a line creasing the center of Isabella�
��s palm. “Love” Irina shook her head sadly. “This is not good. The line is troubled. You have loved intensely in your youth, but only for a short while and it has hardened you,” she paused here for dramatic effect. “You fear love and all the things that accompany it. You caution yourself against loving again. But you must, or you will be doomed to spend your long years alone.”

  The other three laughed and offered humorous consolation to Isabella, but Tristan was not amused at all as he watched Isabella angrily snatch back her hand. She gave a gallant toss of her head and declared in what he expected was her best London-hostess tone, “La, Giles, you are not paying her enough. Fortunes are only supposed to be good.”

  “I think she must have gotten the fortunes reversed,” Chatham jested as Giles took the gypsy off to handle payment. “Tristan is the least likely candidate to love hastily. If any of the fortunes are false, it is his. I think the fortune teller was overwhelmed by his pretty face.” Chatham winked at his friend.

  Tristan shifted into the light, displeased with the direction of the conversation. He attempted to come to Isabella’s rescue. “How do you know? Maybe our little gypsy witch was jealous that Isabella was surrounded by so many handsome men?”

  “Maybe it is all insignificant dribble.” Alain spoke from where he was reclined on a stone step, looking as comfortable in the winter air as if he were lazing about in a summer hammock.

  Tristan narrowed his gaze, taking in the mischief in his friend’s eyes. Alain hadn’t said much since the game had begun. He had his answer momentarily.

  “Maybe all our fortunes are false because there is no such thing as true love. Valentine’s Day is nothing but one gigantic farce.” Alain waved his mask for extra emphasis. “I propose a test for love.”

  “Ho! A test of love, I’ve been gone too long.” Giles sailed back into their midst and took up his position at Chatham’s right shoulder. “We are agog with interest, Alain. Proceed.”

  “I propose a test to prove the existence of true love, or lack thereof and by doing so, proving the legitimacy behind Gresham’s fortune.” Alain offered, pushing up from the step and pacing the verandah as he outlined the wager. “I think there is no such thing as true love and all our fortunes are poppycock. Since Tristan’s is the fortune which will be fulfilled first, we will use his as the experiment. As such, I will wager that Tristan doesn’t fall in love and fulfill his fortune by the end of June. Any takers?”

  “Do you take us for addlepated nincompoops?” Chatham said, deflated. “Tristan’s not interested in anyone and he’s been gone for ages. It’ll take the entire Season for him to reestablish himself. The odds are against us.”

  Alain shrugged nonchalantly and pushed his hand through his hair. “On the contrary, Chatham, I think the odds are decidedly against me. Isabella has agreed to help Tristan find a wife and Tristan is eager to wed. Is no one game enough to test the fortune?” he asked again.

  Tristan attempted to put an end to the awkward wager. “Alain, it seems no one is willing to take your offer. Alas, I am a poorer catch than I thought.” He had meant it as a self deprecating joke. Chatham and Giles laughed but his words found an unlooked for champion in Isabella.

  Isabella spoke up. “I will take your wager, brother. Our friend is a fine catch. I think he will fall in love by June and prove your cynical outlook false. If I am right, you are going to buy me the horse of my choice at Tattersalls.” She beamed at her brother.

  “Not that horse, Bella. I will never buy that horse for you. You know how I feel about the subject” Alain’s voice was filled with consternation, suggesting they’d been over the subject before. “That horse is a menace. You could get seriously hurt or worse”

  Isabella only laughed. “Then you’d better hope Tristan keeps his track record clean and doesn’t fall in love.”

  Muted sounds of the city at rest randomly pierced Tristan’s self absorbed thoughts as he climbed the stairs to his Mayfair town house in the early morning hours. The clack of Alain’s coach wheels on cobblestones faded into the distance as he fumbled for his house key. He was looking forward to a quiet glass of brandy to soothe his raw nerves. The evening had bordered on disclosures he was not ready to make and he’d been on constant alert not to let anything of his recent past slip. He’d only dropped his guard with Isabella and that had nearly been disastrous. He did not want her pity over a shattered hand.

  He sighed and let himself in. The foyer was dim and empty. All the staff had retired for the evening, which suited his need for privacy. Tristan crossed the hall to his study and came to an abrupt stop as he entered the darkened room. The place felt disturbed. A chilly draft blew against the folds of his cloak. Silently, he drew forth from its secret compartment inside his cloak, the slim lethal blade he’d become accustom to carrying over the last seven years and spoke in a low, commanding tone. “Show yourself. I am armed and aware of your presence. I will not hesitate.”

  “Moreland, sheath that blade of yours. I am from the Home Office. We have business to discuss.” A gravelly voice intoned.

  Tristan’s eyes grew accustomed to the dim room and he followed the voice to the wing-backed chair near the window. He could make out the lines of a man’s figure seated there. “Light the lamp on the table and show your face. Do not move from that chair.” He commanded in a stern voice used to giving orders, although he did not doubt the truth of the man’s claim. No one but his military superiors called him by his surname, Moreland.

  A match flared. The wick of the lamp caught, revealing an angular face framed by thinning gray hair and distinguished by a long nose. Sharp eyes stared back at him. “Hello, Moreland. As distrustful as ever, I see”

  “Halsey.” Tristan said coolly, still alert to danger. He recognized the man. He had worked with him before. This was no ruse. Halsey was important to the Home Office. They wouldn’t send him on a fool’s errand.

  Getting straight to business, Halsey extended a cream envelope marked with the official seal. “We have a simple but vital job for you”

  Tristan raised a wary eyebrow. In his experience, those two words did not go together. No piece of vital espionage work was ever simple. He voiced his disbelief and broke the seal, scanning the contents as Halsey spoke.

  “We’ve discovered information about the man who evaded you in France last fall. He’s an English informant working for the French. We believe he has recently returned to England. The office would like you to serve as bait to draw him out. It’s very simple, as you see”

  Tristan gave an empty laugh. “He knows who I am. He’s already exposed me. There’s nothing I could tempt him with. He knows I am through with the game”

  “You’re wrong. He’s only exposed you to himself. He’s kept your identity quiet from others. We have reason to believe that you’re the reason he’s risked returning to England. Whatever is between the two of you has become per sonal to him. The informant is hunting you” Halsey let the last words hang in the air.

  Tristan could feel the tic in his cheek twitch. “What exactly do I need to do?”

  “Be yourself. Your exploits in Europe are legendary as an entertainer and womanizer. Now that you’re home, announce that you’re throwing a fete at your estate to reintroduce yourself to Society. We’ll resurrect the `secret admirer’ ploy. If the informant believes you have information, he’ll be less likely to kill you off. The informant will be bound to show up at the house party, thinking you’re still receiving information coded in love notes. We are fairly certain the informant is among the ton.” Halsey chortled and rubbed his hands together in glee. “Everyone will believe you. In the barracks you’re known as a regular walking bacchanal, my dear fellow. The informant won’t miss such a perfect opportunity to finish his business with you”

  “The Home Office believes the house party ruse will work?” Tristan questioned.

  “As long as you stay alive to give it. There’s always a chance the informant will strike at you before you discover who he is.”
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  The dynamics of the situation were not lost on Tristan. “This is to be my last assignment?” He understood perfectly how he was being used. He was live bait, which created an added incentive for him to join in the manhunt. One last mission and then he could put his career behind him.

  “Yes and a good way to end your career, too. You’re young enough to want a real life back, especially with the money you’ve got. No sense tempting fate and not living to make use of that fortune” The statement was about the most sentimental collection of words Halsey had ever uttered in his life, Tristan thought as he watched the agent disappear out the window.

  Tristan didn’t relax his stance until Halsey was well out of sight. Then he strode to the lamp and held the note over the flame until it burned. Finally, he collapsed into his worn leather chair and put a hand across his eyes. What a damn fine night this was turning out to be, he thought with sarcasm. Between Isabella discovering his injury, Alain’s crazy wager and the sudden but perhaps expected news that his career was over, the evening couldn’t get any worse.

  He reflected on all that Halsey had said. Was Halsey right? Did the rest of the world see him as an immoral debaucher, to whom nothing was sacred? How ironic when he prided himself on settling for nothing less than a loving marriage-his very excuse for not having married yet.

  He would marry for love or not marry at all. Of course he didn’t shout that desire from the rooftops. His cover hadn’t allowed him to. Tristan groaned. In France, his job had demanded he create an alternate identity. He’d acted the role of the socialite officer. He’d given splendid entertainments and spent most of his time convincing others he was nothing more than a buffoon who’d bought a commission in the army for the thrill of it, having no real leadership or military capabilities to recommend himself otherwise.

  The ladies had loved him. He’d had a string of highly public affairs, many of which weren’t real and others which were exaggerated-the most prominent being with the incomparable Beatrix Smallwood, the supposed widow of a cavalry officer but in reality his accomplice and partner. All of which made it easy for him to overhear or be the direct recipient of information he would not have been privy to if he’d been a serious military man. The affairs made it easy to explain his late night absences from his quarters on Rue de Madeleine.