My Lady's Pleasure

by Julia Justiss

  The horsewhip his cousin had brandished wouldn’t have kept him out. Jeremy’s assertion that another confrontation with Teagan would perhaps fatally tax their grandfather’s rapidly failing strength had.

  Montford smiled again as he won a second trick. Focus on the present, Teagan rebuked himself with disgust. If he weren’t more careful, the earl would very soon have no need of skill to accomplish Teagan’s ruin.

  Had that been the purpose of Montford’s unprecedented candor? To rattle Teagan out of his customary sangfroid?

  The flicker of a glance at his cousin’s impassive face told him nothing. Renewed fury settled Teagan’s disordered thoughts. Whatever ploys you use, you’ve chosen my ground, and you shall not win on it, he silently vowed.

  The room remained quiet, the attention of everyone present riveted on their table. Teagan narrowed his mind to calculating the statistical probability of the cards he needed being still in the deck, and predicting from his cousin’s play the cards he held.

  Teagan rallied to win the first hand, then lost the second. The earl, he had to admit, had gotten much better at analyzing his opponent.

  Still, after Teagan drew for the decisive third hand, the tightness in his chest began to relax. Given what he held, he was reasonably sure of winning at last.

  With cool confidence he laid down an ace—only to have his cousin trump it. To his surprise, the earl then led back with another off—from the one suit in which Teagan had only a single low card. To his growing dismay, with unerring accuracy his cousin took control of the game, leading each play with a superior trump or a higher card in the suit, as if he had deduced the whole of Teagan’s hand.

  Teagan was going to lose.

  As if from a great distance, he heard his cousin’s shout of triumph as he threw down the last card.

  “Done—and done in!” Montford crowed. “Make sure to send the horse before you slink out of town.”

  Weighted down by the enormity of the impending disaster, Teagan sat stunned, watching the face card his cousin had just played spin on its edge.

  Like a runaway stallion, his mind raced pell-mell through the consequences of his impending loss. A lightning-fast, covert trip to his rooms to recover his few remaining coins before the news got out and the vultures descended, cutting off any escape but prison. Shame that he must betray his landlady’s confidence in him by leaving her unpaid. A detached calculation of whether his coins would take him far enough from London to escape the magistrate. And if he made it away, whether he’d still retain enough to stake a renewed round of gaming.

  The quixotic conclusion that perhaps he would have to enlist, after all.

  But while those dark thoughts went swirling through his head, a darker shadow on the edge of the falling pasteboard suddenly captured his attention. While his cousin accepted the congratulations of his friends, Teagan leaned forward to seize it.

  Even after he examined it more closely, he had difficulty believing the stunning conclusion. No wonder his cousin had been so confident of winning. The cards they’d been playing with were marked.

  His cousin was rising, the other gentlemen slapping him on the back. Teagan rummaged through the deck, finding on other pasteboard edges the same subtle indentations.

  Idiot! He cursed his inattention, for though the marking system was not one he’d seen before, he should have found the earl’s unexpected skill in this hand suspect early on, had he not allowed his cousin to rattle him by resurrecting old ghosts.

  And then a sense of imminent triumph swelled his chest. ’Twas not Teagan who would be ruined tonight, but his duplicitous cousin.

  Much was permitted the favored few who possessed wealth, title and privilege. A man might humiliate his wife by openly flaunting a mistress. Might beat his spouse and children, abuse his servants and retainers, neglect his lands, beggar his estates. But a gentleman never, ever cheated at cards.

  To do so would mean expulsion from every club, social ostracism for both the offender and his kin, a shame that would dishonor his name for generations. Even the ignominy of a ruined gamester’s suicide was less damaging to his family than the dishonor of his being found a cheat.

  All those years of slights, insults, persecution were about to change on the edge of a spinning card.

  But even as he opened his lips to proclaim his discovery, Teagan hesitated. His cousin could descend to the fiery pit with Teagan’s fervent blessing. But this disgrace would ruin not just Jeremy Hartness, but his entire family.

  His wife, a bland society matron of whom Teagan knew no ill except she—or her relations—had displayed the poor judgment to have her wedded to his cousin. Their young son now at Eton where, as Teagan well knew, the boys were even crueler than their elders to one they judged unfit.

  And Jeremy Hartness’s crime would besmirch the name of the grandfather who had apparently loved Teagan, the name of the mother he still cherished.

  What good has being grandson of a Montford ever done you? he asked himself mockingly. But even as he gazed down at the evidence in his hands and chastised himself for being twenty varieties of a fool, his mind was already considering other options.

  His cousin’s fall would be a mighty one, but few would notice the final ruin of a man clinging to the edges of gentility. How could the ignominy attached to his name be worse? There were compensations, he thought with a bitter twist of the lips, for having no reputation left to lose.

  If he could escape with his modest reserve, he could make his way somewhere else. Begin over again. Even join the army, if matters grew too desperate.

  Would anyone mourn his disappearance from London? Surely not the brandy-reinforced occupants of such hells as Devil’s Den. No one except the landlady he would, he vowed, at some point manage to reimburse.

  And perhaps one sweet lady whose grief might be deepened to discover the man she’d insisted on believing a gentleman was in fact only the impecunious gambler everyone had claimed him to be.

  Pain twisting in his chest at that thought, Teagan looked up. From across the table, amidst a cacophony of voices, cheers and catcalls, he saw Lord Riverton.

  A frown on his brow, the older man met his gaze and jerked his chin toward the cards.

  Riverton knew.

  Teagan drew in a sharp breath. Before he could speak or move, Riverton reached out to snag the elbow of the earl, who’d just called for his coat and cane.

  “Not so quickly, Montford. There’s a small matter of the cards…” Lord Riverton let his words trail off.

  Had it been Teagan who’d hailed him, his cousin probably would have brushed him off and walked away. But as a cabinet minister and one of the most highly placed men in England, Lord Riverton could not be ignored.

  A cabinet minister renowned for his penetrating intellect, as well. As Montford turned to the older man, the triumph faded from his face, to be replaced by uneasiness. “The…cards, my lord?”

  A calm sense of inevitability came over Teagan. For you, Mama. Giving Riverton a minute, negative shake of the head, Teagan rose. “The cards fell for you, Cousin.”

  Riverton returned a sharp look. Teagan met it steadily. Finally the older man nodded. “So it appears.”

  Relief washed over Montford’s face. “Indeed. Good evening, my lord.” Giving Riverton a deep bow, Teagan’s cousin turned to leave.

  “A word with you, Montford, if you please.” Lord Riverton’s quiet voice cut through the hubbub. While the earl froze in midstep, the cabinet minister turned to the friends who waited near the door. “Go along, gentlemen. Montford will join you later.”

  The earl looked back at Riverton, hesitating as if he wished to refuse but was unable to devise a sufficient excuse. Finally, summoning up a brittle smile, he faced his friends. “Get a table at White’s and order up a bottle, if you please, Wexley. I’ll be along shortly.” His face paling beneath the smile, he turned to Riverton.

  The cabinet minister motioned him to a table in the back corner of the room. “Over
there, where we can be private. Fitzwilliams, you will accompany us.”

  For a few long moments, the earl stood motionless. Teagan had the grim satisfaction of watching a sheen of sweat appear on his cousin’s brow. His fingers trembling slightly, the earl reached up to pull at his neckcloth, as if the material had suddenly grown too tight.

  Then, carefully avoiding Teagan’s gaze, he said, “My pleasure, Lord Riverton.”

  Teagan followed them to the table and sat where Riverton indicated. Though Teagan himself had chosen not to expose Montford, if Lord Riverton wished to reveal the bastard’s perfidy, so be it.

  A forced cheeriness in his tone, Montford began, “My lord, how can I be of…” At Riverton’s unflinching stare his words trailed off and he swallowed hard.

  After a long, tense silence the minister seemed content to prolong, Riverton said quietly, “You miserable little muckworm. Were it not for the respect in which I held your grandfather, I would have ordered that deck to be examined.”

  As the earl sputtered a protest, Riverton interrupted with icy contempt. “Spare me your excuses. And listen well. You beat your cousin at cards tonight, nothing more. If you or any of your friends spread tales of bankruptcy or ruination, I shall be compelled to reveal what I know. And though Society, hypocritical as it is, might dismiss an allegation coming from Mr. Fitzwilliams, I assure you the ton would take very seriously any such accusation made by me. I trust I’ve made myself clear?”

  The earl moistened his lips. “My lord, I assure you—”

  “Good. Remove yourself from my sight. And remain out of it.” Riverton waved his hand toward the door.

  The minister watched impassively as Teagan’s cousin hurried off, then focused his penetrating regard on Teagan.

  “A costly bit of honor, Mr. Fitzwilliams.”

  “Ah, milord,” Teagan replied, exaggerating the lilt, “as anyone can tell ye, an Irish gambler has no honor.”

  Riverton lifted his brows, but made no reply. “A fine animal, your stallion. I shall offer to buy him from Montford. Naturally, he will sell the beast to me, so you needn’t worry about his welfare.”

  A small sop, given the enormity of the catastrophe about to overwhelm him, but Teagan felt perversely comforted. ‘’Tis most grateful I’d be, milord.”

  Amusement flickered in Riverton’s eyes, and Teagan had the uncomfortable feeling that the older man knew his feckless gambler’s pose for the sham it was. “Given the consequences, I have no doubt your cousin will keep mum about the events of this evening. Which should give you a few days’ grace to gather your things and depart London before word of your…pecuniary difficulties gets out.”

  The heightened alertness that had sustained Teagan through the game began to ebb, and he felt suddenly weary. “Aye, my lord. Thank you for that, too.”

  Lord Riverton studied him. He seemed about to say more, but after a moment’s hesitation, merely nodded. “Good night, Mr. Fitzwilliams.”

  Bidding Riverton goodbye in turn, Teagan rose and made his way into the night. His footsteps on the dark street seemed to echo like the muffled beat of the drums before an execution. Though Riverton was undoubtedly correct about the silence his cousin would maintain concerning the events of the evening, Teagan’s long and intimate acquaintance with the less elevated strata of society told him that any one of a dozen other witnesses—waiters, footmen, the doorman—would quickly spread the titillating tale of this verbal duel between their betters.

  By tomorrow, every tradesman in town to whom he owed money would be on Mrs. Smith’s doorstep, probably followed by the constable. If Teagan wished to avoid the very real possibility of being clapped into debtor’s prison, he’d best clear out his things and leave London tonight.

  And go where?

  Dark memories he normally succeeded in suppressing flashed through his mind. Clutching the fingers of his dying mother long after she’d gasped her last breath, as if his six-year-old hands could keep her from death’s icy grip. Fear and blows and desperate hunger, replaced by wretched sickness on the heaving packet that had carried him across the Irish Sea. The kindly face of the clergyman who’d found him starving and half-frozen on the Dublin streets, assuring him the unknown relations to whom he was sending Teagan would welcome him home.

  And what a welcome. His hopeful dream of joining a family had not long outlived the moment when the cousin of like age to whom he’d just been introduced—Jeremy, now Earl of Montford—punched him in the stomach.

  A more recent memory, even more bitter, replaced that vision. Standing before his grandfather in the late earl’s study, the old man’s face contorted with rage as he uttered the last words Teagan ever heard him speak: “Get out of my house and take your black Irish arse back to the devil that spawned you!”

  He could go there, Teagan thought with macabre humor as he slipped upstairs to his rooms. Fearful that rumors might even now have begun to circulate, by the light of a single candle he quickly packed his few possessions and checked the pockets of all his waistcoats to augment the pitifully small store of coins he’d removed from his desk.

  He paused a long moment in front of his books. Then, with a sigh, he mended a quill, pulled a bill from the stack in his drawer and penned a note on the back of it, instructing Mrs. Smith, with his apologies for the inconvenience, to sell the volumes and accept the money thus obtained in lieu of the rent he owed her.

  In the bottom of the desk he came across his old dueling pistol. He checked the box and smiled without humor. He had only a few shots left, but if it came to that, one would be enough.

  After adding the pistol to his other belongings, Teagan slung the saddlebag over his shoulder. He paused, taking a last look about his room, his eyes lingering on the copies of Homer, Virgil and Plato.

  Not all his memories of this London sojourn would be bitter. He’d spent some quiet afternoons recapturing those lazy Oxford days when his life had been lived through the pages of his books, his future seeming securely pledged to the pursuit of scholarship.

  And he’d spent some joyous mornings in the company of an intelligent, spirited, inquisitive beauty who’d challenged his mind, tantalized his body and touched his soul. His lovely Lady Mystery, whom he’d once halfheartedly tried to lure to these rooms. One of the very few people he’d met to whom his past and his family background truly seemed to mean nothing, who had taken Teagan as she found him—and seemed to like what she saw.

  Desolation settled in his chest. Please God, he prayed, as he crept back down the stairs into the night, let it take several days for word of his ruination to spread to the ton and forever destroy her good opinion of him.

  Chapter Twelve

  B efore quitting London, Teagan made one more stop, at the stables where he boarded Ailainn. The horse lifted his head and whickered as Teagan silently approached.

  “It’s good ears you have, my beauty,” Teagan whispered, stroking the stallion’s velvet muzzle. “I must leave you now, but Riverton will make you a good master. A blessing, that, for if I thought you were to go to a rider as ham-fisted as Montford, I might have to use one of my last shots on you, and then where would I be?”

  The horse snorted and tossed his head, as if disagreeing.

  “Ah, ’tis sorry I am to abandon you, my lovely, but I’ve no choice. Though Lord Riverton might forgive the theft, you’re too striking to pass unnoticed, and the duns would find us too easy to follow.”

  Giving the stallion one last bit of sugar, Teagan stepped away, resisting the burning in his eyes. “Taim i’ ngra leat,” he whispered.

  Blindly he walked away, forcing his thoughts to the bargain he must strike at a livery stable on the outskirts of the city. He’d need a mount less flashy than Ailainn, and priced accordingly, to get him surreptitiously away.

  As he exited the stable, a prickling of apprehension penetrated his depression. Instantly alert, he halted, sensing more than seeing a form in the shadows.

  “Don’t be reaching for your poppe
r, now.” A man’s voice came out of the darkness. “I mean ye no harm. In truth, ’tis a proposition to yer benefit I’ve got for ye.”

  “Who are you?” Teagan demanded. “Step out where I can see you.”

  The man moved cautiously closer. In the dim light of a neighboring gas lamp Teagan could just make out the broken-nosed profile of a one-armed man, the buttons of his ragged uniform coat glinting in the gloom. The maimed rifleman he’d seen begging for coins in the meaner neighborhoods by the West India docks.

  Teagan relaxed a little. “What do you want, soldier? I’m afraid I’ve no blunt to spare tonight.”

  “Boot’s on t’other leg, sir! As it happens, I heared ye might be of a mind to earn some yerself.”

  Teagan smiled without humor. “Ah, how swiftly the news of disaster blows on the wind.”

  The soldier grinned back, a single tooth gleaming. “Aye, it rightly does. And knowin’ how’s you might not be wantin’ to leave the city, with that purty little lady ye’ve been squiring about still residin’ here and all, there’s a gent I knows what thinks ye might be ripe for an occupation to get ye back in the ready.”

  “Which ‘gent’?” Teagan asked, still marveling at the speed with which word had spread from Devil’s Den.

  “A gent with money in his pockets, and ’tis all ye need to know about him.”

  A job offered by a gentleman who wished to remain nameless was a dubious prospect, but Teagan wasn’t in a position to be overly choosy. “What sort of occupation?”

  “Nothin’ too hard for an enterprisin’ gallant like yerself what knows his way about the streets and the parlors, if ye take my meanin’. Ye’ve only to drop by the house of a government mort and pick up a case from his stables. If somewhat was to see ye nosin’ about, ye can claim to be payin’ a visit, which is the beauty of it, ye see. Take the case and fetch a horse from the livery I shows ye, and ride yer bundle to a barkeep in Dover. And keep your trapper shut after. Easy enough, eh? Do it right and quick, with no questions asked, and there’ll be a bagful of guineas in it, with a promise of more.”