by Jane Feather
"I understand she performed magnificently."
"I fear I'm a poor judge," Judith said.
"But not of the cards. Anyone who plays at Amelia Dolby's must have both inclination and skill… or perhaps simply need?" she added, her eyes narrowing as she awaited Judith's reaction.
Judith bowed. "As you would know, ma'am."
Lady Barret smiled faintly. "Husbands can be so difficult about money, can't they?" Her tawny eyes held Judith's for a long minute, then with a word of excuse, she moved away.
"Good heavens," Isobel said, taking a cream puff from a silver salver presented by a waiter. "Are you at war with Agnes Barret, Judith?"
"At war? What a strange idea. How should I be?"
"I don't know," Isobel said. "But the air was crackling. Wasn't it?" She appealed to her companions as she popped the creamy confection into her mouth with an unconsciously beatific smile.
Cornelia was frowning. "There's something about her, or is it about you, Judith? I can't put my finger on it, but when she was standing so close to you… Oh, I don't know what I'm talking about." She shook her head in exasperation. "I'm going to play loo. It may be poor-spirited of me, but I enjoy it, and I'm perfectly content to make pin money tonight."
"I am too," Isobel declared, beckoning to the footman with the pastries. "I find high-stakes playing exciting, but it makes me most dreadfully nervous… one of those, I think." She selected a strawberry tart. "These are quite delicious. Why don't you try one, Judith?"
"The chicken in aspic rather put me off," Judith said. "Besides, I haven't your sweet tooth."
"It's a great trial," Isobel said a touch dolefully. "I shall become very fat, I'm convinced."
Sally laughed. "You'll be magnificent, Isobel, a plump and indolent matron of unfailing generosity, dispensing hospitality from your sofa, and taking in every waif and stray who comes your way."
Judith smiled. It was a fairly safe prediction. Isobel had a heart to match her sweet tooth.
"Very well, we'll play loo," she agreed. "I've a bellyache and a headache, so I might as well play schoolroom games." In fact, she would really prefer to be home in her bed with a book, drinking hot milk laced with brandy. And Marcus would come in later, and when he realized she didn't feel like making love, he'd make up the fire and bring his cognac and sit on her bed and talk to her. Would he be relieved that she hadn't conceived?
Judith dug up a smile and followed her friends into the salon where the loo table was set up.
The clock in the smoky room struck midnight when Marcus downed his mug of gin and water in the Daffy Club and stood up.
"Whither away?" Peter Wellby asked, watching the smoke from his clay pipe curl upward to the blackened timbers of the low ceiling.
"I have to track down my brother-in-law," Marcus told him. "He said I'd find him at White's this evening."
"Decent fellow, Davenport," Peter observed, rising with him. He extinguished his pipe and handed it to a waiting serving lad, who took it away to be hung up over the stained planking of the taproom counter until its owner came again. "Mind if I accompany you?" Peter picked up his cane. He glanced dispassionately into his empty tankard. "Had enough blue ruin for one evening."
"A glass of reasonable port won't come amiss," Marcus agreed.
Sebastian was at the faro table when his brother-in-law arrived. He was winning steadily but with such careless good humor that the growing pile of rouleaux and vowels in front of him seemed unremarkable.
Gracemere held the bank. He glanced up as Marcus strolled over to the table. For a moment, their eyes met and again Gracemere experienced the shiver of terror of that long-ago morning, when Carrington had found him with Martha.
Hatred flickered in the earl's pale eyes and was answered with a cold, mocking disdain before the marquis turned his black gaze on Sebastian.
"A word with you, Sebastian, when the table breaks up."
"Yes, of course." Sebastian carelessly arranged several rouleaux around his chosen cards. "I think I'll close after this hand, anyway… while I'm ahead."
Gracemere slid the top card off the pack in front of him, revealing the knave of hearts. He laid it to the right of die pack. "That's me done for the night," Viscount Middleton said with a sigh, pushing across his rouleaux that lay beside his own knave of hearts. "The play's getting too rich for my blood."
Gracemere turned up the second card: the king of spades. This one he laid to the left of the pack.
Sebastian had bet on its counterpart and chuckled amid a chorus of good-natured groans at his continuing luck. "Never mind, tomorrow it'll have deserted me completely. The lady's a fickle mistress."
Gracemere took up the rake and pushed three fifty-guinea rouleaux across to him. "You can't walk away just yet, Davenport. Not with the luck running so completely in your favor."
There was something in the earl's voice that made Sebastian instantly alert: an eagerness that Gracemere could barely conceal. Sebastian glanced across the table and saw a shimmer of anticipation in the pale eyes. Gracemere expected to win the next cut.
He shrugged acceptingly and sat back, watching as the earl dealt afresh. A new pack of cards was then put in front of him. "Stakes, gentlemen." He smiled around the table.
Sebastian placed two rouleaux against the seven of clubs. The others around the table made their own bets.
Gracemere turned up the first card in the pack and laid the seven of clubs to the right of the pack.
Sebastian pushed his stake across the table without a word. The earl smiled, his eyes meeting the other's cool gaze.
"Ill luck can't last. Try another," Gracemere suggested, his tongue running over his lips.
Sebastian shook his head. "Not tonight, my lord, my luck's turned. Carrington… at your service."
He followed Marcus to a chair by the fire. Gracemere had placed the seven of clubs. Sebastian had expected it, though he didn't know how it had been done. He knew most of the tricks of card sharping, but he'd missed that one, though he'd guessed that Gracemere was going to try something. The earl had been playing straight up to now, and a hundred guineas was no great sum, so why had he decided to win it in such risky fashion? Was it something he did occasionally to keep his hand in, as Judith and Sebastian did once in a while? Or could he really not endure to lose even once to a man he was determined to fleece?
Sebastian knew that his strategy had succeeded and Gracemere had picked him as his next victim. He had now to draw him in deep by offering alternate wins and losses, while Judith established her own place in the earl's sphere, so that he wouldn't think twice about her presence at his side in the card room. However, if he was going to have to pit his skill against devious play so soon, they would have to think again. Only trickery could defeat trickery, and they couldn't afford to play their double act prematurely. He might have to resign himself to more losses than they'd decided he could comfortably bear.
Having reached that decision, Sebastian dismissed Gracemere from his mind for the moment and smiled at his brother-in-law, reaching for the decanter of port on the table.
"So, what is this unfinished business, Marcus? I confess you have me intrigued."
"An outstanding debt," Marcus said, taking the glass he handed to him. "Thank you. How much did you pay for Judith's horses?"
"A fraction above four hundred," Sebastian said easily. "They were a bargain."
"I won't dispute that." Marcus sat down in the winged chair, crossing his long legs in olive pantaloons. "And the coach-builder?"
"Two-fifty, I believe." He sipped his port. "It's a capital turn-out. I'd not resent the outlay."
"Oh, no, I don't in the least." Marcus made haste to reassure him. "I'll give you a draft on my bank for six hundred and fifty guineas, if that'll suit you."
Sebastian choked on his port. "Whatever for?"
"You did act as your sister's agent in this matter?"
"Yes, of course I did, but… Oh." Comprehension dawned. "You think I was her banker
… No, I assure you, Carrington, Judith paid every penny herself. I did nothing more than effect the purchase."
"Judith. "Marcus sat up abruptly. "Don't try to bamboozle me, Sebastian. I know full well your sister couldn't possibly have afforded such a sum. I know how much her quarterly allowance is, and I examine all her bills."
He put his glass on the table. "I've agreed to allow Judith to keep her carriage and horses, so you must understand that "I can't permit you to assume an expense that is rightfully mine."
Sebastian frowned into his glass. A thorny thicket seemed to have sprung up around him. It had slipped his mind that Marcus didn't know of Judith's financial independence. But even if it hadn't, he could hardly take Marcus's money on false pretenses. After a minute he said, "Evidently your arithmetic is at fault, Carrington. I assure you that my sister paid for that turn-out herself." He added with a bland smile, "She works miracles with the smallest amounts of money, Judith does."
"What possible source of-" The question died on his lips. How could he have been so naive? So blind? He'd placed a limit on her spending and she'd simply reverted to her old ways.
"I take it Judith continues to engage in high-stakes gaming as a source of income?" His voice was level, no hint of his seething fury.
Sebastian examined his brother-in-law's drawn countenance. The white shade around his mouth, the flint in the black depths of his eyes told their own tale.
"You couldn't expect Judith to accept a humiliating dependency," he said, giving up on trying to mislead Marcus. Clearly, it was useless. "When you limited her expenditure, she had no choice but to look after her own needs."
Marcus ignored this. His voice was still even. "Do you have any idea how much my wife manages to make in a week at the gaming tables?"
Sebastian sucked in his lower lip. "It would depend on where she played and whether she needed money. But on a good evening, playing high, she could probably come away with a thousand without it seeming too noticeable. Much more, of course, if she were playing at Pickering Street."
Marcus felt as if his head were about to explode. "So she frequents hells, does she? It must feel quite like old times."
Sebastian winced. "Ju's not like other women, Car-rington. She has her pride… maybe more than most." He shook his head, feeling for words. "But if you try to impose your will on her, she'll fight back. She's never been financially dependent on anyone. If you'd simply trusted her to keep her expenditure within bounds, none of this would have happened."
"I'm indebted to you for pointing that out to me." Marcus stood up. "However, it just so happens that my fortune is not at the disposal of every adventuress who manages to lay some claim to it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to attend to your sister. So far, I've failed to impress her with the depth of my feelings on this score. I am now going to put that right."
Heavy-hearted, Sebastian watched Marcus stride from the room. The fragile edifice of his sister's marriage was about to be cracked wide open; that much he knew absolutely. Whether it could be repaired remained to be seen. But he had to be there for Judith. She would need him very soon.
He drank another glass of port and then went home to await developments.
20
Marcus strode up St. James's toward Curzon Street. It was a dark night but he'd have been unaware of his surroundings even in brightest moonlight. His mind was a seething witches' brew of anger, disappointment, and something that he vaguely recognized as sorrow. Sorrow for the savage, abrupt destruction of his budding belief that his marriage, founded on quicksand, could be reconstructed, grounded now in cement. He had begun to lay down the burden of mistrust, gradually to allow the warmth of his feelings for Judith to overcome the doubts, to be seduced by her in every respect as thoroughly as he'd been seduced simply by her body in Brussels. And now it was all gone, ashes on his tongue. She wanted what he could give her materially, and when he didn't satisfy those wants, she gave not a thought to his position, to her position, but simply took what she wanted, perpetrating her deceitful masquerade as shamelessly as ever. She had no interest in or intention of being his wife in the fullest sense, adapting her life-style to the obligations and duties of that position even as she enjoyed its advantages. She was using him, as she had used him from the start.
At the corner of Duke Street and Piccadilly, the sounds of uproar broke through his self-absorption. A group of young bloods of about Charlie's age were drunkenly weaving their way along the pavement, arm in arm, nourishing bottles of burgundy. One of them fired a flintlock pistol in the air, and their raucous hilarity brought an officer of the watch out of an alley, his lantern raised high, throwing a yellow circle of illumination over the disheveled band. It was an error. With a fox hunter's "view halloo," the group surged forward, surrounding the man, clearly intent on one of the favorite pastimes of inebriated, aristocratic youth: boxing the watch.
Marcus's anger, already in full flame, needed only this to create a conflagration. He strode into the middle of the group, wielding his cane to good purpose, until he reached the fallen watchman. One of the young men, his face red, his eyes bloodshot, swung an empty burgundy bottle at the cane-wielding spoiler of their fun. Slender fingers gripped his wrist and the pressure made the young man wince. The marquis stared at him in silence. His grip tightened and, with a sharply indrawn breath, the young man let the bottle crash to the pavement. He fell back under the piercing menace of those ebony eyes and his companions, infected by the unspoken threat embodied in this new arrival, melted away.
The officer of the watch scrambled up, retrieving his fallen lantern, straightening his coat, adjusting his wig that had slipped over one eye. He muttered about taking the young hooligans before the Justice, but the group had gone, and soon could be heard hooting and bellowing from the safety of a reasonable distance.
"Ruffians," Marcus stated disgustedly, kicking broken glass away from his gleaming Hessians. "Too much money and time and not enough to occupy them. Sometimes I think it would have been better if we hadn't beaten Bonaparte. A few years in the army would do them the world of good." The watchman agreed, but rather nervously. His rescuer seemed to be in as dangerous a mood as his assailants, judging by those intimidating eyes and the savage way his cane had thwacked across their shoulders. He ducked his head, mumbled his thanks, and took himself off on his rounds again, swinging his lantern.
The encounter had done nothing to quell the bright flame of rage as Marcus strode up the steps of the Herons' mansion on Curzon Street. Light poured from the windows, voices and the strains of dance music greeted him as he stepped into the hall. Instructing the butler curtly to summon Lady Carrington's chaise, Marcus strode up the stairs.
His hostess came fluttering over to him, all smiles, and Marcus forced himself to respond with due courtesy, but it was clear to Amanda Heron that the Most Honorable Marquis of Carrington's thoughts were elsewhere… and they weren't very pleasant thoughts, judging by the look in his eye. She was quite relieved when he excused himself and made straight for the card room, casting a quick glance into the drawing room, where the rug had been rolled up and a few couples still danced to the strains of a pianoforte.
Judith was not dancing. Neither was she in the main card room. Presumably the stakes at this insipid affair were not worthy of her skill, he thought savagely, turning aside to another, smaller salon.
He heard Judith's laughing voice as he stepped through the arched doorway. "For shame, Sally, you're looed. How could you have lost that trick?"
"Oh, it grows late," Sally protested. "And I haven't your powers of concentration, Judith."
The powers necessary to maintain a deceitful masquerade. Marcus stood for a minute in the shadow of a heavy curtain. Ten people sat in a cheerful circle around the loo table. They were playing limited loo, the penalty fixed at a shilling, but Judith had beside her a substantial pile of shillings, and as he watched, a man opposite pushed the pool across the table.
"Lady Carrington, you win again."
Judith experienced a start of pleasure at the sound of his voice, and missed the tone at first. She turned, smiling, as he came up behind her shoulder. The smile faded as she saw his expression, a slowly creeping apprehension prickling between her shoulder blades. "Carrington, I wasn't expecting you."
"Isn't this rather tame sport for you, my dear?" he asked, gesturing to the cards and the mound of small coins. His voice was heavy with sarcasm, and the rage that he could barely contain flared in his eyes.
Two spots of color pricked her cheekbones and her scalp contracted as apprehension became absolute. She became aware of the uneasy shirtings around the table, the puzzled glances at Lord Carrington. "I've always liked party games," she offered, desperately trying to defuse whatever this was. "We've been enjoying ourselves famously." She appealed to the table at large.
"Oh, famously," Isobel agreed readily, gathering up
her cards, her eyes warm and encouraging as she smiled at Judith. "Won't you join us, Lord Carrington?"
He shook his head with brusque discourtesy. "I wait only for my wife to make her excuses."
Only immediate compliance would end this mortification. Judith's head pounded as she pushed back her chair, picking up her reticule.
"You've forgotten your winnings," her husband said pointedly.
"They can go back in the pool." Judith thrust the shiny mound of coins into the middle of the table. Bidding her companions good night, she tried to smile as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening, but she could feel the stiffness of her lips and read in every eye both discomfort and consternation.
"Such winnings are too insignificant to be worth keeping, I assume," Marcus muttered against her ear as he drew her arm through his. Judith stiffened and would have withdrawn her arm, except that he tightened his grip, squeezing the limb against his body, so that to pull free would look like a struggle.
She couldn't think of anything that could safely be said in public, so she painted the stiff smile on her lips as they progressed through the rooms, bowed, made her farewells like a marionette obeying the puppeteer, and allowed herself to be removed in short order from the Herons' mansion and handed into the chaise, waiting ready at the door.
