Jack of Clubs

by Barbara Metzger

  Harriet ran, though, laughed and chased leaves as they fell, and brought pretty ones back to show her Cap’n Jack. Allie did not think she had ever seen the girl so merry, not since the time Mrs. Semple had discovered a mouse in her chamber pot. Harriet skipped down the paths and Allie could not help but worry that her pupil was growing too happy in a situation that could not last. The captain seemed amused, but how long before he decided he’d rather have a pretty woman on his arm? What would happen to Harriet then?

  Some of the sunshine dimmed for Allie and she tugged her cloak closer.

  “Are you cold, Miss Silver?”

  Allie shook her head, but put more distance between herself and the captain. She must not let herself grow used to having a caring, courteous, handsome gentleman at her side either.

  While Allie was thinking, Mr. Downs and Darla had taken a different path. Harriet was far ahead, kicking acorns off the walkway. Allie and Captain Endicott were as good as alone, or as bad. This was just what Allie had feared, or one of the things, anyway.

  As if reading her mind, Captain Endicott waved his arm in a circle. “No one is here but a few nannies and their charges, the occasional poet, and a single drunk, asleep on a bench. You see? This is not Hyde Park, where the beau monde meets to shred reputations and arrange marriages. There is no one here to care that every punctilious rule of polite behavior is not met. There is no one here to frown in disapproval that the sensible Miss Silver is enjoying herself for once. Smile, ma’am, for life is too short not to enjoy days like this.”

  The captain was right: no one could see her but the squirrels. Allie would have one more night in a comfortable bed, another day of fine meals, one afternoon of not worrying about tomorrow. The club was closed, besides, so she had no fear of encountering would-be employers or inebriated gamblers. Her host was acting like a perfect gentleman, not a rakehell, and Harriet was acting like a little girl, not a housewrecker. Allie would enjoy this day.

  She held her face up to the sun and smiled.

  The captain smiled back, then paused at a bench where they could sit and watch Harriet talking to the dairy maids who tended the small herd of cows, selling milk to the park visitors.

  Harriet ran back and Captain Endicott tossed her a coin, after asking if Miss Silver wanted a glass.

  Allie was content to sit and listen to the birds and the cows and the girls’ chatter.

  “You could take your bonnet off, you know. I won’t tell.” The captain was holding his own hat in his hand. “Be daring.”

  No. That was too daring. According to Mrs. Semple, once one rule was relaxed, the others fell like raindrops. If a woman loosened her stays, she would loosen her scruples. Bend her posture, bend her moral backbone, too. If a girl smiled at a handsome stranger, Mrs. Semple warned, she would throw herself into his arms next, begging for his kisses. After kisses…Well, everyone knew what came after kisses.

  Everyone but Allie, it seemed.

  Oh, she knew the mechanics of the physical act. She was five and twenty, after all, and well-read. But she could not imagine a woman losing herself in a man’s embrace so that she forgot her principles, lost her reservations—and then lost her virtue.

  Mrs. Semple would have apoplexy if Allie removed her bonnet. She would have dismissed her on the instant, thinking her a bad influence on the senior girls. Bother Mrs. Semple. Allie was not about to toss her bonnet over the windmill, merely over her back. She was not going to accost the captain, casting herself against his broad chest, weaving her fingers through his wavy hair, feathering caresses on his smooth-shaven cheeks, breathing in the clean, spicy scent of him.

  “Are you warm now, Miss Silver?” he was asking, concerned at her quickened breaths.

  “Fine. I am perfectly comfortable. I shall keep my bonnet on, however.”

  *

  After the park, they returned to the club for an early dinner. Harriet would never go hungry at The Red and the Black, it seemed. The captain was a large man who needed a quantity of food to keep him content.

  Meals were too uncertain in the army, Mr. Downs explained when Allie questioned another lavish meal, with the supply wagons leagues away, if there were any supplies for the men at all. Soldiers and officers alike had learned to value regular meals and full bellies.

  Captain Endicott did not believe in skimping on his staff, either, unlike many employers. He might not be able to pay them as much as he wished, but he could feed them, as well as he ate himself. Dinner was served in the staff dining room, near the kitchens below stairs.

  Allie could have insisted on a tray for her and Harriet up in their sitting room. She could have insulted Mr. Downs, Darla, Mrs. Crandall and the others, too, besides disturbing someone’s dinner to wait on them. Harriet was already asking the chef about dessert, and Captain Endicott was wiping the milk moustache off her lips. This would be Harriet’s new family, Allie supposed, dealers and demimondaines, and dinner with the staff would be routine. Heavens, her guardian might have run a chimney-sweeping business, mightn’t he? This was better, wasn’t it?

  One more broken rule was not going to matter to Allie’s future, so she permitted the captain to lead her into the long room. He placed her beside him at the head of the plank table, with Harriet next to her, and Mr. Downs across. Darla popped into the chair next to him, and glared at a redhead who tried to lean across the table toward Downs, revealing more of her bosom than a request for the salt warranted.

  Allie kept her eyes on the food, not on the females at the other end of the table. Her host kept her and Harriet entertained with stories of his own childhood, his brother and their various pets. He also explained about his missing half-sister, and why the family believed she might be alive.

  So fascinating was the story of how the two brothers had never given up hope, but had traced the child to her kidnapper’s sister, that Allie forgot about the coarse accents and the casual manners at the other end of the table. The captain told how Molly Godfrey had not withdrawn funds from the blackmailer’s account in three years, and how scores of Bow Street Runners and hired detectives were out looking for where she might have lived, and under what name.

  “As soon as the club is on sounder footing, I intend to scour every dressmaking establishment in London,” Captain Endicott continued, “because we know Molly was a seamstress. She might have taught her adopted daughter, who would now need to earn her own living, if Lottie is not wed or settled in some small town, sewing flour sacks for the grist mill. I have hope. It is long odds, I know, but if my half-sister is in London, I will find her. If she is in the countryside somewhere, the hired investigators will find her. We will have her back, I swear.”

  And he would, Allie believed. Captain Endicott could do anything he set his mind to, except run a proper household befitting an earl’s brother.

  Calloway had produced a fiddle, and a few of the younger women were dancing. They taught Harriet some of the steps, while others sang the words to the popular tunes. The captain and Mr. Downs raised their own voices, and soon the dining hall was filled with song and laughter. The chef danced with Mrs. Crandall, and the captain partnered Harriet and the buxom redhead. Allie refused to dance, but she did sing along when she knew the chorus. The smile Captain Endicott gave her was sweeter than the syllabub.

  Later, when most of the staff had retired or gone out for the evening—Allie did not want to know where—the captain took out a book and started to read aloud. Mrs. Semple had done the same on a Sunday evening, reading sermons and improving works to her captive audience.

  To Allie’s shock, and everyone else’s delight, the captain had chosen a lurid, purple-covered, gothic tale of dark castles, hidden treasures, evil barons, and daring rescues. Mrs. Semple considered such works the devil’s handicraft, and would have burned the thing instantly. The women hung on his every word and Harriet’s eyes were wide as saucers. Even the men, Downs and Calloway and the chef, pretending to be savoring their ale, listened attentively. So did Allie, sighin
g over the poor damsel’s plight, sighing louder over the dashing hero.

  When Captain Endicott closed the book, everyone groaned. His throat was tired, he explained.

  “Miss Silver can read some tomorrow night,” Harriet insisted, “so you will not wear out your voice.”

  But tomorrow night the casino would be open, and Allie would be gone. No one wanted to ruin the child’s pleasure, though, so they all nodded and smiled and helped put away the glasses and dishes.

  “Wasn’t this the best day ever?” Harriet asked Allie when she would have led her upstairs to bed, far past her usual bedtime.

  To Allie’s surprise, it had been. “I cannot remember a nicer time.”

  Harriet yawned and asked, “Don’t you think so too, Cap’n Jack?”

  “One of the happiest I can recall,” he answered without hesitation. “Thanks to you and Miss Silver.”

  Someone was not quite as happy with the day, however.

  Rochelle Poitier stormed into the room, cursing that no one had answered her knock at the front door.

  “It’s Cap’n Jack’s ladybird,” one of the dealers whispered to another, as they hurried out of the dining hall. “And she looks fit to pluck a few feathers.”

  Harriet tugged on Allie’s hand instead of following her away from the coming tempest. “If she’s his ladybird, does that mean Cap’n Jack is a gentlemanbird?”

  Chapter Nine

  Oh hell, Rochelle.

  Jack remembered, too late, that he was supposed to take her to the park this afternoon. Not Green Park, either, but Hyde Park, where she could be seen in his curricle, in her furs and finery. He was supposed to take her to dinner to make up for the missed engagement yesterday. He was also supposed to bring her a final gift and a fare-thee-well. Mostly he was supposed to keep her away from Miss Silver.

  Instead he had spent his day trying to make the schoolteacher smile. She was not smiling now. She was trying to drag Harriet out of the dining hall, as if Rochelle carried some dread contagion. In the old maid’s opinion, she likely did: leprosy, lung fever, light skirts.

  “How can you tell the girl birds from the boy birds anyway?” Harriet was asking, to avoid leaving the room while such an interesting encounter was taking place.

  “Not now, brat,” Jack said, positive such a discussion was Miss Silver’s job, not his. It could not be her duty, though, if she did not stay.

  He had tried all day to change her mind about leaving. He had thought the task might be impossible, and hardly worth the effort, until he’d seen her with her honey-colored curls down in the morning. Who would have thought the starchy spinster had come-hither hair? Lud, with that fiery mane, she had to have some flame in her soul, some spark that would let her take a chance.

  Money would not work on the prickly female, nor promises. So Jack had tried to show her how decent his odd household could be, how comfortable, how good for Harriet. Surely she could see that the poor poppet was having far more fun than she would at any stuffy school, or with some unfeeling strangers paid to foster her.

  Whatever ground he had gained was trampled under Rochelle’s satin slippers. If a barque of frailty could sail into the house unannounced, Miss Silver’s pursed lips seemed to be saying, the governess would be leaving port. He’d be lucky if she waited until the next morning.

  The worst of it was, she was right. Rochelle was no fit company for a child, unless he wanted Harriet to grow up thinking of her body as merchandise and men as meal tickets. Damn, he had been a guardian for little more than a day. Was he destroying the child’s morals?

  Miss Silver was not giving Harriet the right role model either, though, holding virtue as a shield against the world. Harriet was no prim and prissy miss, and he would not want her to be browbeaten into one. He despised those paragons of proper behavior who were afraid to contradict a gentleman, afraid to laugh out loud, afraid to wear bright colors, lest they lose their vouchers to Almack’s. Harriet deserved better.

  Maybe they would be better off without Miss Silver after all. Jack looked at her, glaring at him. Then he looked at Rochelle, glaring at the governess. Both were defending their means of support, but that was where the similarity ended. The courtesan was guarding her territory. The schoolteacher was guarding her reputation. The contrast between the two women’s motives was as vast as the differences in their appearance.

  Rochelle wore an ermine cape, her scarlet hair piled high, her pink silk gown cut low. She wore diamonds at her wrist and rubies at her throat.

  Miss Silver wore a dark, shabby sack of a gown, an ugly bun behind her neck, and a watch pinned to her flat chest.

  Rochelle was like a bright fireworks display; the governess was an unlit candle, straight but cold and pale.

  And Jack was a jackass. He wished he could flee the room the way Downs and Calloway did, herding the others ahead of them, except for Harriet and her duenna. Damn, was it just two days ago when all he had to worry about was making money? Now Jack was responsible for a chit and a chillingly respectable female. Then, he’d been thinking himself quite the man about town, with a full-time mistress and anytime maids. He’d had no one to please but himself and his desires.

  A man about town? Now he felt like a molester, robbing Harriet’s innocence, giving a decent woman a disgust of him. His brother would be disappointed. His sister-in-law would be appalled. He was ashamed of himself, and he was angry at Miss Silver for the unfamiliar feeling. Just because she was a prig and a prude did not mean he had to live like a saint. Did it?

  He was about to get rid of all of them, sending Harriet and the governess to their chaste beds, and sending Rochelle to perdition with a bank draft, when Harriet looked at the furious intruder. She twirled one of her red curls around her finger and said, “Maybe she did not like the bird you gave her, Uncle Jack. You know, that con jay.”

  Rochelle snarled, her painted fingernails curled like talons.

  “Stubble it, brat!” Jack said, wishing Harriet had not picked this of all times to claim him as a relative.

  Miss Silver looked angrier, if possible. She pulled Harriet further toward the exit door. “There is no call to shout at the child.”

  Of course there was. If not for Hildebrand’s heiress, Jack would not be in this damnable coil. If not for her, he would not need a blasted governess, and he would not be floundering for a way to avoid the social solecism of letting his convenient converse with a lady.

  Not that they were precisely conversing. Rochelle was sneering at Miss Silver. “What, couldn’t you convince Jack that he’d fathered your bastard?”

  Miss Silver gasped and tried to hide Harriet’s bright head in her skirts.

  “She called him uncle, not papa. So your ruse did not work. Why are you still here, then? Jack is not swimming in lard, if that is your ambition, and you are anything but his type. So try your tricks on some other swell. Maybe his high-nosed brother will pay you to keep another scandal from his precious wife.”

  “Rochelle, you do not understand. And I would appreciate if you left my family out of this conversation.”

  “Oh, I understand, all right. Some cheap slut scrubs her face, dresses like a vicar’s daughter, and throws herself on your mercy. You, gullible fool that you are, let her and the brat chouse you out of what little blunt you have. Meanwhile I have been waiting for this stupid club to turn a profit so you can treat me the way you promised. And now that it is close to being a success, you don’t have time for me? Well, Rochelle Poitier is not going to leave quietly, not to have some dreary soiled dove feather her nest instead of me.”

  “She’s not soiled. Miss Silver had a bath yesterday.” Harriet pulled out of Allie’s hold and stood face to face, or face to fur wrap anyway.

  Jack grasped the child’s arm and pulled her away, shoving her back toward Miss Silver and the door, hoping they would leave. Then he faced his former mistress, wondering at his one-time infatuation. “Rochelle, that is not the way of it at all. We can still go to dinner and di
scuss this calmly.”

  Rochelle crossed her arms over her chest, drawing attention to that bounty. Perhaps that explained his once smitten state.

  She tapped her foot on the floor. “I am not going anywhere while that woman is here sinking her hooks into you. You swore that I would be hostess at the club. I would be the toast of London and have a carriage of my own.”

  Lud, had he been promising with his private parts while his brain went begging? He could not have pledged so much, not even if he’d been foxed. Her breasts were not all that entrancing. They were too large and pendulous, now that he thought about it, utterly udder-like, in fact. He might have promised a carriage, though. Finding the money for that was a problem for another day. Getting rid of Rochelle before Miss Silver swooned or Harriet heard more than an eight-year-old ought was more immediate. “I do not believe we had a formal agreement,” he said now in a lower, more private tone of voice. “Such arrangements as we had are ephemeral at best. You of all people should know that.”

  “What’s a furimal?” Harriet asked, ignoring his efforts. “And will she kill that and wear it too?”

  “Dash it, Harriet, go to bed. No, wait. Rochelle, I should like you to meet”—he was not liking it, not at all. The girls who dealt at his tables were one thing, but Harriet simply should not know women like his former mistress—“my ward, Miss Harriet Hildebrand. And her governess.”

  Harriet would recover from the introduction. Miss Silver might not, so Jack purposely did not use her name. He could protect that much, if not her maidenly sensibilities. He could not look at her without seeing condemnation in her eyes, so he looked at his prior paramour instead. Damn, what had he seen in the flamboyant redhead? The answer was immediate and obvious. He’d seen the dasher’s flagrantly sexual style, and succumbed, dash it.