He would have liked to play on, but the club was emptying and the hostess raking in the cards. Collecting his money, Sir Charles suddenly remembered Dunstan’s sister locked in the room upstairs and he smiled, realising that the evening’s entertainment wasn’t quite over. But, strangely, after all the years of waiting for this moment to arrive, when he could repay Dunstan in full measure, the thought of seducing his sister to do so had lost its appeal.
He was about to leave the table when he became aware of someone coming to stand behind him. He half turned, expecting it to be his good friend the proprietor, but instead he met the full cold gaze of Alistair Dunstan, who had been watching him for the past hour.
“You know why I am here, Meredith,” said Alistair in an icy voice, seeing Sir Charles’s shoulders stiffen.
Sir Charles could almost feel the effort he was exerting to keep his rage under control and he smiled thinly, looking at him with cool mockery, having no intention of denying anything. He had no reason to. By being alone with him in an establishment such as this, Sophie’s reputation was already ruined, which was what he had set out to do, and the letter she had written to him, which he would make public when it suited him, would damn her even further and ruin her chances in the marriage market. However, he couldn’t help wishing Dunstan hadn’t found her until he’d had the whole night to make certain her ruin was complete.
He sneered, having some dim consciousness of the rage that must have consumed Dunstan on finding his sister gone, becoming all the greater when he had discovered she was with him, and becoming greater still on learning she had come with him of her own free will. He was jubilant that at last he could triumph over the humiliation he had suffered over Marianne at Dunstan’s hands.
“I applaud your detective work, Dunstan. I take it you have found your sister?”
Alistair’s face was like granite. “It wasn’t difficult. Your habits are well known,” he said with biting scorn. “After what you have done this night, Meredith, I have every reason in the world to kill you, but because my sister has suffered nothing more serious than a damaged heart—and a harsh lesson as to what to expect from a black-hearted villain like yourself—I will let you live.”
Sir Charles snorted with contempt. “That’s extremely generous of you, Dunstan.”
“I’m not being generous, Meredith. I haven’t finished with you yet. Ever since Marianne’s death, in your heated imaginings you have held me responsible—rightly or wrongly is not for either of us to judge, for only she could have done that. But when I married her I was ignorant of the fact that the two of you had an understanding. It could be said that you drove her to her death yourself when you took off for Europe and left her, and in your arrogance expected to find her waiting when you returned. Being the sort of woman she was, did it never occur to you that she would play you at your own game?”
Alistair’s words were savage and taunting, causing Sir Charles’s eyes to glitter with unconcealed hatred.
“Damn you, Dunstan,” he rasped. “How dare you shift the blame for what happened to me?”
“I am not here to rake over old coals, Meredith. As far as I am concerned what happened is over and done with. But how dare you strike at me through my sister and leave her broken? To retaliate by inflicting pain and misery on such an innocent as she is a coward’s way. If you insist on revenge—an eye for an eye, wound for wound—then have the guts to face me and not take it out on a vulnerable young girl who has done you no harm.”
“I may be many things, Dunstan, but I am no coward,” he seethed, his voice trembling with anger.
“Then prove it. Either we settle our differences at the card table or I shall call you out. What is it to be?” Alistair asked, with ominous coolness.
Alistair’s deep loathing of Charles Meredith was profound, and after what he had done this night he would gladly kill him, but, knowing of his passion for gambling and his lack of expertise with either pistol or rapier, he knew he would choose the former. Alistair would deal Meredith a blow where it would hurt the most—his wealth. He himself was a match for any man when it came to a game of cards, and before the night was out he intended to ruin him.
Fired up by the prospect of another game, of subjecting Lord Dunstan to the same humiliation he himself had suffered at his hands, Sir Charles did choose the former. After all, his luck had been in so far—in fact, he felt as if the cards had been his to command. But when he recalled the last time he had seen Dunstan play cards at Bricknell House, ruthlessly and without batting an eye ruining the man, James Fraser, who now stood at his shoulder—whose debt Dunstan had obviously rescinded on his marriage to Fraser’s sister—his sudden surge of confidence took its first knock of the night.
“I cannot think of any combination of circumstances that would make me risk my life, Dunstan, so cards it will be.”
“You will play?”
“Yes,” he hissed through his teeth, his eyes narrowed so that they gleamed like bright slits. “I will play and make you regret ever stealing Marianne from me. Damn you, Dunstan. You may have been responsible for her death but I will not let you be responsible for my ruin. There will be just the two of us?”
“Of course. I am sure that, for a percentage of whatever either of us wins, Mr Ingram will put one of his private rooms at our disposal.”
Alistair was right. For a high percentage Mr Ingram, an odious, greedy little man, was only too delighted to let them retire to one of his private rooms, presiding over the game himself. Several people who were reluctant to go home drifted in to watch. Sir Charles put his entire winnings onto the table and Alistair put down notes almost to a similar value, having had the presence of mind to bring along some funds with such a thing as this in mind.
It was not an unusual occurrence at the club for members to stay on and play among themselves, but it was clear from the outset to the proprietor and everyone else that this was no ordinary game of cards, for the atmosphere between the two players could be cut with a knife.
The game they chose to play was piquet, and James, looking on, was forced to remember his own miserable defeat at the same game when Alistair had been his opponent over a year ago. If Alistair played with the same ruthless determination as he had then, he did not hold out much hope for Sir Charles Meredith.
As was customary the two players cut to deal—ace ranking the highest card—which fell to Alistair, giving him the choice of first deal. The cards were shuffled and dealt onto the green cloth and the game began. The flickering flames from the candles played on Alistair’s chiselled features as he watched his opponent closely, quietly confident, and inside the room the air was charged with expectant excitement.
It became clear early on that Alistair’s mastery of the game surpassed Sir Charles’s; he had the amazing ability to reject the right cards from his original hand and an equal ability to enter into all the complicated moves which influenced the game.
The wagers were high and Sir Charles won a little and lost more, seeming oblivious to the muted murmurs of the spectators gathered around the table as he watched Alistair’s long, flexible fingers shuffle again and again, flicking over card after card, producing from his hand an ace, another ace, a king, a queen. Damn the man, he seethed, feeling the luck which had been with him earlier seeping away, perspiration gathering on his brow and beginning to ooze out of every pore as Alistair prolonged his agony. Was there no stopping him?
A pulse beat at the side of Sir Charles’s face, his play becoming erratic and desperate as his pile of coins and banknotes began to decrease, whilst Alistair’s mounted steadily as the play went on. When Sir Charles had nothing left, he refused to cease playing, even though he knew Alistair was unbeatable, and he was reduced to signing one IOU after another.
Three hours later the game was over and the room empty of everyone but the players. Only James remained and he was waiting in the next room. Alistair rose from his chair and looked down at his defeated opponent coldly.
“I thi
nk now we are quits, Meredith. Let this be the final chapter to Marianne’s life. To your life’s end you will not dare to cross my path again. Is that understood?”
Despite the heat in the room and the liquor he had consumed, Sir Charles’s face was waxen-white against the dark brown of his coat as he tried to absorb what had happened to him. His nostrils were pinched and he seemed to have difficulty breathing as he rose from his chair, resting his hands on the table for support.
“Aye—I understand. You may have ruined me and my family—but you deserve to live in wretchedness till your life’s end for what you did to Marianne,” he said through his teeth as he glared with blood-shot eyes at Alistair, still unable to forget his torment over her loss in his moment of ruin. “And, yes, I loved her, damn you. I’m not proud of the way I treated her, but she was the only thing in my life I have ever loved. She begged you to release her—to let her go—but you refused to consider it, choosing to live for the rest of your life with a woman who despised you rather than tarnish your noble name with a divorce.”
Alistair’s mouth curled cruelly. “Have you forgotten that on the night she left Huntswood she was running to you, Meredith? She would not have returned to me. When she plunged into the river it was almost certain death. I went after her because the conditions as they were that night were not fit to let a dog out, never mind a half-demented woman who was hell-bent on going to her lover. I also wanted to tell her that I had every intention of divorcing her. You see, nothing could have induced me to live with a woman who was to bear another man’s child.”
The silence that fell on the room was so profound that if anyone had entered at that moment they would have heard their hearts beating. Sir Charles’s face became filled with honest puzzlement as his mind took its time to register what Alistair was saying.
“Forgive me, Dunstan—but what the devil are you talking about?”
Alistair stared at him, his head becoming clouded. “You mean to tell me,” he said, a sudden chill entering his bones, “that when Marianne asked me for a divorce you were unaware that she was carrying your child?”
Horror flashed into Sir Charles’s eyes. “She was to bear my child?” he said hoarsely.
“You had no idea?”
“Of course not.” He stared ahead of him. “My God!” he got out with an effort. “Why did she keep it from me?”
Alistair shook his head. “I don’t know. No doubt she would have told you—in time.”
“Why didn’t you tell me of this before you ruined me?”
Alistair sighed. “Because I thought you knew.”
His shoulders sagging, as if all the life had drained out of him, Sir Charles lowered his head. “No.” And he said nothing more. It was a quiet sound that hung between them, without anger or emotion, but it held all the cruel and bitter anguish which he felt.
Alistair turned and left the room, having reduced Charles Meredith and his family to a state of penury they could never have imagined—or deserved. He felt no satisfaction for what he had done, no sense of victory for overcoming a man he no longer considered to be his enemy, only a bitter taste of self-loathing, despising himself with a virulence that was almost unbearable for having completely annihilated someone who believed he had every justification in the world to hate him.
At Dunstan House, Sophie was recovering from her ordeal at Sir Charles’s hands quite well, Louisa observed crossly and with a sense of irritation, considering the trouble she had put everyone to. Looking at her, no one would believe she had been abducted by the villainous Sir Charles Meredith just a short while ago and locked in a room above a gambling club in one of London’s seediest districts. Still, she was thankful they had managed to find her before any lasting hurt had been inflicted on her. She just wished that Alistair and James had returned with them to Dunstan House, for she would be unable to cease worrying until she saw them.
Louisa realised she had Timothy to thank for Sophie’s swift recovery, having been a keen-eyed observer of his attentiveness towards her since leaving the White Hart Club. As soon as Sophie had dabbed the final tears from her cheeks with Timothy’s handkerchief and her eyes had fallen on him in the dim light that filtered into the carriage, they had opened wide and she had stared at him, before delight had flooded her face and she had smiled at him—a smile of promise, Louisa had thought—and Timothy had returned that smile, his expression one of wonder, disbelief and hope.
After he had said goodnight to Louisa on their arrival at Dunstan House, Sophie had watched him go, thinking what a fine-looking man he was, and as he’d gone out of the room he’d looked back over his shoulder at her, interest flaring and lingering in his eyes. No longer feeling the need to sob her broken heart out, she’d found no difficulty in returning his smile, and as Timothy had left for his family’s town house in Long Acre, where he and James were staying, he had no idea of the effect he had had on her.
In her night attire Louisa sat on a cushioned window-seat in her room, refusing to go to bed until Alistair had returned, feeling weak with relief when at last, with dawn covering London in a pinkish glow, she heard his tread on the landing outside.
After parting with James he’d come directly to see Louisa, entering the room quietly so as not disturb her in case she was asleep. She rose and went towards him, her hands outstretched. He stared at her with a remote, brooding look, his gaze sliding over her face, seeing that her eyes were full of apprehension and questions.
“Tell me what happened, Alistair. What did you say to Sir Charles?”
He sighed, wearily removing his coat and throwing it onto a chair and moving to the fire, which hissed in the quiet room. “I would like to say he got what he deserved, but between that and what eventually happens to him there is no connection whatsoever.”
“Alistair, please don’t talk in riddles,” she chided with gentle impatience. “Tell me.”
He smiled slightly, reaching out and stroking her cheek with a feather-light touch when she came to stand beside him, looking up at him, her wonderful eyes searching and questioning. “I retaliated by doing what I do best, it would seem. I did to him what I did to James. I ruined him at the card table. I took everything he owned, and it shames me to say that, whereas I walked away without a qualm after destroying James, tonight I experienced no satisfaction in annihilating Charles Meredith.”
“Not even after what he did to Sophie?”
“No. Besides, do not forget that she wrote to him and asked him to meet her in the park. I did warn her what he was like. She should have listened to me and taken note.”
“I know. But she is so young—so inexperienced in the ways of men.”
Alistair cocked an eyebrow and smiled at her. “Rather like yourself when you fell into my clutches, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps,” she whispered.
Alistair combed his fingers wearily through his hair. “I’m not proud of what I did tonight, Louisa. I never wanted this. To have ruined Meredith was one thing, but then to tear into him with words about Marianne and the child was another. It was quite the most despicable thing I have done in my entire life.”
He spoke with a solemnity that puzzled Louisa. “Why—what are you saying?”
“The plain and simple truth is that he didn’t know about the child. Marianne never told him. After what I had done I should have spared him that.”
Louisa looked at him mutely, unable to find words to say.
“I cannot leave things like this. I have to lay Marianne’s ghost to rest.”
“What will you do?”
“I shall call on him tomorrow. I am honour-bound to put things right between us—to return all I have taken from him this night. We wronged each other. We believed things of each other because it suited us to believe those things, which was the worst stupidity of all.”
“And what he did to Sophie? You know what he would have done to her had we not arrived when we did.”
“Yes, and that I cannot forgive. I am thankful we got
to her in time and she is unscathed. But despite being a villain I believe Meredith loved Marianne as much as he is capable of loving any human being. That was one thing I learned tonight—something which, in my conceit, I always doubted. He was overcome with grief when I told him about the child.” He took Louisa’s hand, drawing her close and looking deep into her eyes. “You do see why I must go and see him, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Louisa breathed. “Yes, I do. And I’m glad.”
The following day Louisa waited in a state of nervous anxiety for Alistair to return from seeing Sir Charles, clasping and unclasping her hands and pacing to and fro in the drawing room that overlooked the street so that she could see him coming. Never had she known the minutes to be as long as those she spent waiting for him.
At last he returned. She watched nervously as he came into the room, looking breathtakingly handsome in a coat and waistcoat of dark green, and a shirt and neckcloth of pristine white that emphasised his dark colouring. A thick lock of hair fell over his face, which was inscrutable.
“Did he see you?” she asked, moving towards him, unable to stand the strain of not knowing what had happened. “How was he?”
“Yes, he saw me,” he answered, his tone frank and unemotional, “and despite cursing the miserable lot that fate had dealt him he was agreeable.”
“And? Has he agreed to wipe the slate clean?”
“There was no pardon or forgiveness, if that is what you mean, but I think he is reconciled to what happened to Marianne at last. We talked for a while.”
“But has his lust for vengeance ceased?”
“As to that, Louisa, it’s no easy matter to put the unpleasantnesses that have existed between us for so long behind us—but I do believe he has no intention of carrying on the vendetta.”
“Then we can be thankful for that. Did you return everything you won from him last night?”
An Innocent Proposal Page 31
