Viscount’s Wager

by Ava March

  No, he shouldn’t hope. Hope was a dangerous commodity, one he couldn’t afford. One he didn’t deserve.

  He folded and sealed the note, addressed it then set down his pencil. Another pause, another deep breath. Then he wiped at his eyes and pushed to his feet.

  * * *

  Perched on the edge of the mattress, Anthony leaned down and pulled on his boots. Early afternoon sunlight streamed through the windows of his bedchamber. October and a bright, sunny day did not go hand in hand in London. The past few days of dense clouds and intermittent rain showers had finally given way to not only a dry day but a blue sky, and Anthony was determined not to let the rarity pass him by.

  If nothing else, going for a ride in Hyde Park might help him forget about Gabriel for an hour or so.

  And he really did need a reprieve, even if only brief, from the mass of heartache labeled Gabriel.

  A week had passed since Gabriel had walked away from him. Hell, he could still hear the echo of the door slamming shut in Gabriel’s wake. A sharp slam that if Anthony had a whit of sense about him, he’d be wise enough to recognize signified the end.

  Not that they’d really had much of a beginning. All they’d had were a few evenings together and then the occasional nightly visit from Gabriel. That was all. Oh, and lies and denials and omissions. There had been a bloody hell lot of those.

  Anthony pushed from the bed and crossed to the chest of drawers to grab a pair of leather riding gloves.

  A week had passed without so much as a glimpse of Gabriel. Their argument necessitated something from Gabriel. A word, a knock on Anthony’s door. Some show, some gesture from Gabriel if he had any desire to repair the mess left between them. But the man was clearly avoiding Anthony, and doing so for a reason.

  They were over. Even if they hadn’t begun, they were done. And Anthony needed to accept that.

  If Gabriel truly wanted to have any sort of real relationship with him, the man would have been somewhat honest with him. Gabriel would have at least trusted him enough to admit he’d developed more than a small problem with gambling, never mind why he’d developed that problem in the first place. But Gabriel hadn’t done that, had he?

  You have no right to accuse me of such a thing. Gabriel’s voice, sharp with anger, sounded in his head.

  Apparently sharing a bed with Gabriel, giving him his body and his patience and his understanding, indulging the man’s every sensual whim, had not given Anthony that right.

  Bastard. With a slap of his gloves against his thigh, he turned from the chest of drawers.

  Enough of Gabriel Tilden. Anthony should have learned his lesson in regards to that man seven years ago. He hadn’t then, but he sure as hell would learn that lesson now.

  Gabriel was not the one for him. Never had been, and never would be. And today was a beautiful day and Anthony was going for a ride.

  He left his bedchamber and found the maid, Lizzie, running a cloth across the end table beside the couch, wiping away dust that likely had never had a chance to form. The young woman insisted on dusting during every visit. Anthony rather thought she did it because it gave her something to do beside tidying up, stocking his meager larder and seeing to his laundry. He really didn’t need a maid to visit thrice a week, but he knew she needed the income. So he allowed her to bustle about the apartments for a couple of hours in the afternoons, and made himself scarce while she did so.

  “I picked up some oranges from the market for you, my lord, and I left the day’s post on your desk.”

  “Much thanks, Lizzie.” He dropped a few coins for her onto the console table to cover the cost of the oranges, and before he walked out the door, he shoved the day’s post into a desk drawer.

  As he stepped out of his building, he paused and tipped his face up to the sun. Gave himself a moment to soak up the warm rays. And he shouldn’t much worry what Gabriel was up to at that very moment or whether he was in Gabriel’s thoughts at all. If Gabriel had made his way back to the gambling tables, so be it. All Anthony knew was that Gabriel did not care to make his way back to Anthony’s own door. That was what mattered. And therefore, they were done.

  Resolved, Anthony continued down the stone steps and turned right on the walkway, in the direction of the livery that stabled his horse. A gallop along Rotten Row, the autumn breeze nipping at his cheeks, the pound of hooves on the dirt lane and the trees whipping by him in a blur of red, yellow and orange leaves, would be just what he needed to help him forget Gabriel. Because Gabriel Tilden sure as hell had forgotten him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Gabriel set down his pencil and stared at the list on his desk. How the hell had he allowed himself to get into this situation? He should have stopped after the first loan. Christ, he should have never made that first wager. Should have never attempted to blanket the guilt with the prospect of a win. The deeper he had got himself into debt, the higher those wagers had become in an effort to pull himself out of debt, and the stronger his conviction that the tables would surely look kindly on him again. And now? The total at the bottom of the list was staggering.

  If he was being bluntly honest, he’d admit he had deliberately avoided making this very list. He hadn’t wanted to see all those numbers set out in a neat column with the accompanying interest beside each one. Hadn’t wanted to face the result of the time he had spent at the gambling tables.

  Five days ago, he had arrived in Derbyshire, and he’d done every other task he could think of to avoid this list. And maybe, perhaps, he had even lingered a bit over some of those tasks.

  He’d fabricated a story about how he was moving to London to be closer to his family and made sure it circulated about the village. He’d walked his property and checked the current condition of his land, sold his two plow horses and three dairy cows to his neighbor up the road and used the proceeds to pension the older couple who had served as his housekeeper and general farmhand-of-all-work and hired a few boys to help him take his hogs to market. He had even gone into Charlotte’s bedchamber, collected the dresses that had still hung in the closet and taken them in to the vicar to be given to the needy.

  Gabriel let out a sigh, the heavy despair seeming to echo around him, as he stared at the numbers he’d written.

  The worst of it, though? He had drained his bank account dry before he’d even procured the first loan. Slightly more than 6,500 pounds gone. The interest from the sum combined with the income from his land was to have allowed him to live in comfort for the rest of his life. And now he had nothing.

  Correction—two months in London had left him with less than nothing.

  Frankly, he was rather surprised his creditor had not come knocking on his door, demanding repayment. Gabriel had taken out four loans in total, using his property to obtain the second and to secure the first. In order to get Carter to agree to the third, Gabriel had to agree to 100 percent interest for the full total. And what in God’s name had Gabriel been thinking by agreeing to double that ridiculous rate in order to get the fourth loan?

  He hadn’t been thinking. That had been the problem. He’d been chock-full of desperation, so much so that no common sense had remained. All he’d known was that the three loans were coming due soon and he’d had no way to repay them—let alone the interest—save to turn over his property, and he’d wanted to avoid that end at all cost. He had lost every shilling from those loans. And so he had begged and pleaded, had come damned close to offering to drop to his knees and do whatever necessary to secure that fourth loan. The only fortunately about the whole situation had been that he’d been able to remain on his feet, and the only price he had paid was to agree to Carter’s ridiculous terms and to repay it all within a week’s time.

  Twelve thousand pounds. His house and property could more than cover the four loans but not all of the associated interest. That total at the bottom of the list
was much too large, and his property not vast enough. He had worked hard over the last seven years to make improvements to the land, to determine which crops grew best and how to gain the most yield from each growing season. Yet he couldn’t turn his property into one thousand acres of prime farmland, and he couldn’t turn his modest abode into a sprawling manor house.

  What the hell was he going to do?

  He scrubbed his hands through his hair. Turning over his property, parting with the one thing that had brought him joy over the course of his marriage, was hard enough, but to do so and still be in debt? He’d have nothing left, no home to call his own, no income to support himself, no means to repay the outstanding balance. And he couldn’t turn to his siblings for assistance. While they all lived comfortably, none of them were tremendously well off. And what would he tell them? Certainly not the truth.

  His pulse picked up. That sense of desperation began to claw anew at his throat.

  His gaze darted to the study window, the curtains drawn back revealing a large swath of tilled fields that soon would not bear his name. Did he have enough from the sale of the hogs to cover passage across the Atlantic?

  He gave his head a sharp shake. What was he thinking? To run from his debts like a coward? No. He would not do that. He had got himself into this situation and he needed to remedy it. To face the unholy mountain head-on. But how?

  As he looked about the study in a vain hope the answer would somehow present itself, his gaze stopped on the pewter tray on the corner of his desk. The empty pewter tray, holding not a letter from the post. Another reminder that he had single-handedly ruined everything good in his life.

  Five days since he’d arrived in Derbyshire. Five days since he’d sent Anthony the letter. And five days without a word in reply. He hadn’t sent it express, but surely enough time had passed for Anthony to have received the letter and to have sent a reply or traveled to Derbyshire...if he cared to do so.

  A wince squeezed his eyes shut as what felt like a knife dug into his chest.

  But Gabriel deserved the pain, and he deserved every bit of Anthony’s silence. Had earned it with his lies and omissions, not to mention the angry shouts he’d thrown at Anthony.

  Words on a page had not been enough to earn Anthony’s forgiveness. He’d known that when he’d penned that note, had written as much. And he had vowed to Anthony in that very letter that he would dig himself out of the hole he’d landed in.

  Therefore, he would do so.

  Squaring his shoulders, he took a deep breath and tried to clear his mind of the heartache and despair that had been his ever-present companions of late. He needed to focus, to think.

  What did he possess of value?

  The answer was obvious—his home and his property. They were the only things he still had left, so he needed to get resourceful and figure out how to wring every last farthing from the place before he returned to London to hand the deed over to Carter.

  * * *

  Anthony lifted his arm and knocked on the door. He was beyond caring if Gabriel thought him desperate for being the one to do the seeking. He just wanted to lay eyes on Gabriel, to assure himself the man was all right, and then...

  And then if Gabriel wanted to make a step toward an apology or an explanation or reconciliation, he’d have the opportunity. If Gabriel didn’t take it, then Anthony was prepared to leave the shabby inn and truly put Gabriel behind him. To put a stop to the building worries. To forget Gabriel Tilden once and for all.

  Shifting his weight, Anthony glanced about the narrow corridor. What was taking Gabriel so long to answer his knock? For good measure, Anthony gave the door another rap of his knuckles. Was the man not in his room? It was barely ten in the morning. Not near time for any rational individual to be at the gaming tables.

  Unless Gabriel wasn’t of a rational mind. Unless Gabriel was now spending all his hours at the tables. Unless—

  He gave his head a firm shake, trying to throw off the worries. But it was to no avail. The hurt-spawned determined disinterest toward Gabriel Tilden had transformed into worry days ago. And once those worries had sparked, he hadn’t been able to stop them from building.

  Why hadn’t he seen even a glimpse of Gabriel about London in weeks?

  Why hadn’t Gabriel paid him a call yet?

  Perhaps it was a bit self-indulgent of him, but Anthony couldn’t help but feel, given the scale of their argument, that Gabriel should have sought him out by now to apologize. To offer some sort of explanation for his behavior on that ugly morning, even if only a new set of lies. It wasn’t as if Gabriel had been indifferent toward him. Anthony had felt the bond between them, and he damned well hadn’t conjured that feeling through wishes alone.

  He was as certain as could be that Gabriel had been lying to him three weeks ago. Jack Morgan had reported he’d seen Gabriel gambling at a hell and losing rather badly, and that Gabriel was a known visitor of various gambling establishments in this end of Town. Pelham’s driver was not the sort to fabricate tales. Contrary to Gabriel’s denial, the man had obviously developed a fondness for the tables. Anthony knew without a doubt that fondness was the reason Gabriel’s visits to Anthony’s apartments had become less frequent, and why Gabriel had grown so distant with him.

  No one liked to be confronted with their problems. And Anthony hadn’t helped matters by allowing his anger and frustration to get the better of him. It was no wonder that morning had ended as it had. But weeks had passed and the fact he hadn’t seen Gabriel since...

  There was a click of a knob. A door opened near the end of the corridor and an older man with untidy gray hair left his room, locking the door behind him.

  As the man came down the corridor, Anthony turned his attention to Gabriel’s door and minded his own business.

  Why the hell hadn’t Gabriel answered his knocks yet?

  Unless...

  “Pardon, sir,” Anthony said, as the older man came upon him. “Do you know where I can find the innkeeper of this fine establishment?”

  “First floor. Ring the bell on the desk,” the man replied, all gruffness, without bothering to pause or to give Anthony even a glance.

  Lovely neighbors Gabriel has here.

  Or had, as Anthony soon learned from the innkeeper.

  He pulled a few coins from his pocket and set them on the scratched desk. “And do you happen to know when Mr. Tilden left your inn?”

  The innkeeper, a man of indeterminate middle age, shouted over his shoulder in the direction of the drawn curtain behind him, “Mildred. When’d that gent leave? The one with the fine manners.”

  “The Tilden fellow?” Carrying a bucket in one hand and a rag in another, a stout woman emerged from the room behind the curtain. “Must be near three weeks now. Thanked us for our hospitality. Said he was leaving Town.”

  Well, there was his answer. Gabriel had left London without a word to him.

  Anthony swallowed hard. “Much thanks.” He gave the pair a tip of the head. Tamping down the hurt, he made his way out of the inn to hail a hackney to take him back to Mayfair.

  Yet having his answer did nothing to ease his mind. It only served to spawn a new set of questions.

  Had Gabriel been on his way out of London when he’d knocked on Anthony’s door in the dead of night? Was that why he’d had his bag with him? But then, why hadn’t Gabriel told him as such? Or had he meant to tell Anthony the next morning? If he hadn’t confronted Gabriel, would Gabriel have told him of his own accord? Or had Gabriel told the innkeeper he was leaving Town as an excuse for why he had vacated the inn? Could Gabriel still be somewhere in London? But if he was, then that meant he was still deliberately avoiding Anthony.

  An afternoon riding about Hyde Park and an evening spent searching the gambling hells around Gabriel’s hotel in vain did little to quiet those questions.
They continued to spin in his head, making him toss and turn throughout the night, so much so that when he sat down for breakfast, his sister gave him a long-suffering look.

  “If you’re going to spend the night carousing about Town, perhaps it is best you spend the morning in bed,” Penelope said, as she added a lump of sugar to her tea.

  Bed was the last place he wanted to be. Alone at the apartments with only those goddamned questions for company. As soon as the sun had risen, he’d gone over to the town house in search of something to occupy him. “Are you taking issue with my appearance this morning, dear sister of mine?” He reached for the pot of coffee and poured himself a cup.

  “Merely offering a bit of advice.” She took a sip of her tea. “You wish to set a good example for Simon, do you not?”

  “It’s not as if my disgraceful self can have any effect on him.” He started in on the eggs on his plate. “Simon’s at Oxford until mid-December.”

  Penelope took a bite of the bread she had slathered with raspberry jam. “That is to be seen,” she said, with a hint of concern in her tone.

  “Why do you say that?”

  She set down her bread and met his gaze with eyes that held far more maturity than her twenty-one years. “I received a letter from him yesterday. I gather the term is not going so well for him. I would not be surprised to find him at our breakfast table before December.”

  As if Anthony needed another worry to add to the mass in his head. When his brother had departed London for Oxford a month ago, Anthony had assumed he’d convinced Simon of the merits of finishing his education. “Did he give you a reason?”

  “No. His letter just felt...melancholy.”

  “Perhaps he’s having troubles with one of his lessons. You know how he hates not to get top marks.”