A Gentleman Undone

by Cecilia Grant

  “I’m sorry for how I responded, I mean. For my lack of understanding. I fear wounded vanity got the best of me.” That wasn’t the whole truth. He’d pierced other things besides her pride. But it was truth enough for this moment.

  He dropped his glance to the ground between them, and his voice dropped likewise. “You have ample reason to be vain, where I am concerned. But surely you remarked that for yourself.”

  A fresh gust of wind drove her cloak against the back of her legs and carried her wet hem into contact with his boots. His coat billowed out behind him.

  “You know I’d like to be your lover.” He spoke just loudly enough to be heard over the flapping of their garments. “I have been, in my dreams, more than once.”

  “But you can’t. I know.” Her voice sank to match his.

  “But I won’t.” He raised his eyes again. The wind was blowing full into his face but he didn’t turn aside. “I want to be something different to you. I want to be someone …” His eyes cut past her to some horizon where the rest of his thought must lie. “Someone you can trust. Not only at cards.”

  Now she was the one to look away, down to where the edge of her windblown skirt still lingered about his boots like an emissary for the rest of her, a scout demonstrating how easily the gap between them might be bridged. “Don’t hope for that.” She dug her fingers into the folds of her cloak. “It’s not something I can give.”

  He nodded once, still gazing past her. His shoulders rose and fell with a great breath, and she knew beyond any doubt that he was letting go of a hope that had meant much to him. The middle of her chest burned, painfully, as her limbs would if she’d come in from freezing weather to sit too near a fire.

  A lock of her hair escaped its pin and rode out on the wind, one more insubordinate part of her reaching for him. She put up a hand to tuck it back, but his hand got there first.

  Carefully, he set the lock behind her ear, smoothing it in a futile attempt to resist the wind. His solemn eyes traveled from her hair to her face. “You ought to go back to the house. Your hem is soaked and you haven’t any hat.”

  He hadn’t asked why she couldn’t trust him. He’d accepted her edict so readily, with such resignation, as though there were really nothing extraordinary in her saying so.

  And suddenly she needed him to know. “Will you walk with me?” Her hand closed over his and the lock of hair whipped free again. “I have a story I’d like to tell.”

  Swift comprehension kindled in his eyes. He bowed, and slipped his hand free to offer her his elbow.

  She shook her head. Proximity would make some parts of this too difficult to voice. She caught up her skirts and started down the hill, and he fell in beside her.

  “This isn’t a story I’ve told before. It’s sordid, I’ll warn you now. But it will help explain why I don’t have it in me to trust you.”

  “You needn’t explain. I’m not expecting—”

  “Mr. Blackshear.” Her pulse was pounding in her ears. “I’ve resolved to tell you this. Do not give me the smallest opportunity to turn coward and run from that resolve.”

  He inclined his head. She saw it sidelong. His hands went deep in his greatcoat pockets and he walked on, waiting for her to speak.

  One big breath. “In short, I trusted a gentleman once and paid a steep price. My subsequent experiences with gentlemen have been …” But he could guess what those experiences had been. “I suppose trust is like a muscle that wastes away for lack of use.”

  No answer for a minute besides the woolen rustle of his clothing and the squeak of his boot heels on the wet grass. “Did he seduce you, the man you trusted?” he then said.

  “No more than I seduced him.” To put all the blame on Arthur’s side would put all the mastery there as well. It hadn’t been like that. “We were in love, I suppose. He was a neighbor, of family somewhat better than mine, though somewhat less well off.”

  “He hadn’t the liberty to marry for love.”

  “He said he would make his own liberty. I think he believed he would. At all events we entered into a secret engagement, but his promises—but his love, I suppose—proved insufficiently stalwart in the face of his parents’ disapproval.”

  One sideways glance at his dark undissembling eyes told her exactly what impression he’d formed of Arthur. He was all but biting his tongue to keep from voicing it.

  The ground sloped upward again and she pushed her stride longer. She would go over the next part quickly, lightly, like one of those insects who skated across water without ever breaking the surface to drown. “When I discovered myself to be in a difficult condition I wrote to him and received my letter back, its seal unbroken. I’ve heard reports he married a lady with thirty thousand pounds.”

  “Wait.” He sounded half strangled. He’d halted ten feet back and he stood there now, downhill from her, face tilted to stare as he might at some grisly apparition. “I thought you couldn’t …” He was blushing. She would concentrate on that novelty, that she might not linger on other thoughts.

  Her hands let go her cloak edges and her arms fell straight at her sides. Facts, plain and unadorned, one after the next. That was the way to get through this. “I was with child for several months. Then I bled, and I had a fever, and I nearly died. And since then I’ve never conceived again, nor even …” Of a sudden she needed to take a breath. She twisted so as not to face him, and sucked in chilly air. “It’s made me convenient, you know. At the brothel I could entertain men every day of every month, and there was no risk I would ever …” But that was obvious. She didn’t need to say it. “I don’t delude myself Mr. Roanoke would ever have engaged me without that advantage. I wonder if we might start walking again.”

  Two or three forceful strides brought him up the slope and he fell in at her side. “Did he know? Your young man?” He sounded ready to slap a glove in Arthur’s face. “Did he hear of your illness?”

  “I assume so. I think most of the neighborhood did.” She’d begun this story too soon, she could now see. They had a long walk ahead of them and he might wish to fill it with such questions. “He didn’t come beg my forgiveness on bended knee, if that’s where your questions tend. By then I didn’t hope for it. I ceased to love him with remarkable speed.”

  He didn’t answer at first. In the lull she heard the steady march of his Hessians, felt the way he weighed what she’d told him. “Were your parents still living then?”

  “Indeed.” Abruptly she stooped to pluck a sodden wildflower from out of the grass. Maybe she wouldn’t say any more than that. Or no, she might say just a bit. “No one would have blamed them if they’d turned me out of the house. But they never did, though I know I shamed them terribly.” She tore a petal from the flower and threw it away.

  “That must have made the loss of them doubly difficult.” He spoke like a doctor, tranquil and reassuring as he prodded at her broken places. Her broken places hurt like fire all the same.

  “It should have been difficult in any case. No other family would take me in, and the cousin who inherited claimed that my portion had all been spent on doctor’s bills. I was penniless and disconsolate. You can see, I trust, how such a woman ends in an establishment like Mrs. Parrish’s.” She let the flower fall. “I believe that concludes my tale. I’d be obliged if you didn’t repeat any of it to others.”

  “Of course. You honor me with your confidence.”

  He must know without her saying so that she’d left herself raw from unburdening, because he didn’t ask any more questions. What a singular man he was, too principled for careless pleasure in a gaming-hell hallway, but drawing her into such delicate intimacy as no lady in Camden Town could possibly approve, if she knew of it.

  Maybe it’s not what you think. His understanding with that lady. Maybe it was some bargain of convenience that left both free to love elsewhere. Maybe it was … some poor but respectable aunt for whom he’d taken responsibility.

  Nothing to the purpose. He would not be
her lover. How many times did he have to say so, for her to grasp the fact?

  They parted ways at some distance from the house, for discretion’s sake. And when she crawled into bed a short time later, finally free of her damp gown and stockings, her thoughts did not dwell on the things she’d told him or other maudlin details of her past. Neither did she indulge in recollections of his graceful, tactful attention. Instead she fell asleep on a memory of the picture he’d made when she’d come upon him, poised on that ridge with his coat carried by the wind, a desolate figure looking out toward the vast indiscernible sea.

  BY THE time he took up a place along the wall in the billiard room that night, he thought he might really run mad. Not one word had he exchanged with Lydia since they’d come to the end of their walk. She’d spent the day in Roanoke’s room, or in retirement with the other ladies, or too far away from him at the dinner and supper tables. While he’d spent the day seething with the wrath he’d swallowed when she’d told him her story, not one bit of it given voice because he’d known she wouldn’t welcome that.

  Lord above, what the world did to people. What people did to each other. He should like to hunt down that spineless cad who’d abandoned her and thrash him within an inch of his life. And then he’d find every swiving bastard who’d despoiled her, who’d reduced her to a convenient barren womb, and he’d darken their daylights, one by one.

  Will flexed his fingers, fitting his hands together and stretching his arms before him, palms out. One swiving bastard, at least, was within reach. Roanoke held court at one of the room’s two tables, hitting hazard after cannon after hazard with an irksome unnecessary flourish, and also an irksome degree of skill. He wouldn’t look near so smug with half his teeth knocked out.

  But what good would that do her? Prince Square-jaw was but a minor pestilence in a life of relentless calamity. Even if he should be brought to repent, and apologize for how he’d misprized her, and perhaps even settle some amount of money on her as would guarantee her independence, so many wrongs would remain unrighted. Every man who’d ever touched her could make recompense and it would not bring back her parents, or her brother, or the possibility of motherhood, or the hope and faith with which she must once have approached her life.

  “Back for more punishment, are you?” Lord Cathcart slouched into place at his left. “I should have thought you’d be consoling yourself with a woman tonight. Our host laid in a few spares, you know.”

  It was true. Alongside the by-now-familiar faces of the assorted mistresses he’d remarked several new ones, ladies hired for the purpose of amusing the un-mistressed male guests. He’d exchanged pleasantries with one for a full minute in the library last night before grasping that something was on offer.

  “If I gave up that easily I shouldn’t have come back alive from the Continent. Last night’s games were practice, merely. Tonight you shall see what I can do.” Of women he said nothing. He was near to climbing the walls of this room on account of a woman; near to boiling over with outrage at what she’d borne and fury at his utter powerlessness to remedy any of it. What he wanted was distraction, and not in any feminine form.

  “I’ll see, to be sure.” The viscount rubbed his hands before him. “Five pounds says my first ball lands nearer the cushion than yours.”

  Ten minutes later they had a table, and Will had something immediate on which to fix his thoughts. Billiards rewarded practice: he could see at once he’d improved since those few rusty games last night. Cathcart won the five-pound bet, but Will went on to win the game.

  There was an art to it, or perhaps a science, or perhaps both. Yes, art, without question, in the gleam of the ivory balls, the neat thrust of the cue arm, the clack of one ball against another or the muffled carom off a cushion. And science, to be sure, in the invisible lines a player sketched from cue ball to red ball, cue ball to cushion, red ball to pocket, cue ball to opponent’s ball until an imaginary spiderweb of lines and angles overlaid all six by twelve feet of baize.

  She would enjoy that aspect. Did she ever play billiards? Yes, here was a better, calmer way to think of her. Doubtless she’d be one of those players who studied a table and saw possibilities, not just for the immediate lie of the balls but even four or five shots into the future.

  Now they were speaking again, he might try whether he could talk her into a game some quiet afternoon when the tables were free. If she’d never played before he could show her how to hold the cue, his arms carefully circling her from behind, his body held a conscientious inch away from hers.

  “Fine shot, there.” He glanced up to see Roanoke watching from the wall, his coat put off and a glass of rum in one hand. He and Cathcart were into their third game—rather he’d just won their third game by sinking the red ball in the middle right pocket, the viscount’s cue ball in the top-side right, and his own off the cushion into the middle left, ten points with one stroke of the cue. A fine shot indeed, by any measure.

  “Lucky shot, you mean to say.” Cathcart had lit his pipe and now spoke round its stem. “Any bacon-brain can have a game or two where the balls line up in his favor. You ought to have seen him last night.”

  “Last night was practice, I told you.” He moved round to the left side to fish the ball out of that pocket. “I hadn’t played in a while. I needed to get back my touch.”

  “It’s all in the touch, to be sure.” Roanoke stood directly in his field of view now. His eyes narrowed slightly, as though taking Will’s measure at the table. A well-launched cue ball would crack him in the nose. Get the carom right and it would land in the glass of rum. Three points for that. “Had some experience playing, have you?”

  “A bit.” The man’s voice stirred up every rash, heedless impulse in him. Had some experience playing with your woman just the other week. You can ask her about my touch. He bit his tongue and rolled the ball down the table to the baulk cushion. The viscount’s ball came rolling alongside. “I’d left it off the past few years.”

  “And for my part, more than a bit.” Cathcart came round to the baulk end of the table, rotating his right wrist and flexing all the fingers in unhurried fashion. “We used to play at school and I, at least, kept it up.”

  “We ought to have a round, then.” Arrogant coxcomb wouldn’t know his company was unwelcome if the fact was spelled out before him in letters of fire. He gave a nod as though it had all been decided. “I’ll play the winner of this match.”

  “Are you prepared to wager?” The rash impulses were coalescing into one whirlpool of reckless intent. “His Lordship’s been lining my pockets handsomely. I should need some inducement to play anyone else.”

  “You need to win this match before you go setting conditions for the next.” The viscount frowned at his cue ball as he leaned forward and drew back his right elbow. In fact they hadn’t wagered at all since that five pounds on the first shot, but he made no comment on the fact. He was game for whatever contrivance Will had in mind.

  “Glad to hear it. The more you win from him, the more you can lose to me.” Roanoke lifted his glass again.

  That’s right, souse yourself stupid. Get your hands and your eyes speaking two different languages. That will suit me just fine.

  Cathcart prodded his cue ball down the table to two inches shy of the cushion. He’d got it within an inch on all three of their previous games. He didn’t speak or look up but the message was clear: this game, and the pleasure of playing Prince Square-jaw, were Will’s for the taking.

  They kept it close. By aiming for flashy shots they assured frequent misses and frequent swapping of turns, which gave a man ample opportunity to sort out the question of just what he thought he was doing.

  What he was doing, rather. Thought played little part. Anger had hold of the reins, and goading it onward was an overwhelming ache, a yearning to just seize her with both hands and pull her out of her grim circumstances, if only for a night.

  His nerve-endings all sizzled like drops of water flicked on a hot grat
e. How much could he persuade the man to risk? What would he have to risk on his own side? Ought he to start with a modest wager and a loss, and work his way from there?

  The final shot was a gift. Cathcart took out his pipe and swore when his ball rebounded off the top-side cushion to lie an inch apart from the red ball, for all the world as though he hadn’t used every bit of his skill to effect the arrangement.

  Will sank the pair, red to the top-side right pocket and white to the left, with one clean shot down the middle. Three points for the winning hazard on red, two for the winning hazard on white, and two more for the cannon. “That’s fifty more you owe me,” he said, just in case Roanoke had supposed they’d be playing for half-crowns.

  “I’ll take it out of what you’ll lose to me tomorrow at piquet.” The viscount tossed his cue to Square-jaw, who grabbed it one-handed—perfectly adequate reflexes—and set to wiping it with the opposite shirtsleeve while simultaneously balancing his drink in that hand.

  Will laid his own cue on the table and turned away to take off his coat. One button, two buttons, three buttons. It wasn’t decided yet, what he would do. Nothing wrong with a fair cash wager. Lord knows he could use fifty pounds.

  The soft thunk of ivory on baize. Someone was setting up the cue balls. “What stakes do you like?” said Roanoke, and the mere sound of the man’s voice decided him after all. No starting modest. No fifty pounds.

  He slid out of his coat and let it fall on the nearest chair, turning to fix the other man with a considering look. “Let’s make it interesting.” He hefted his cue and balanced it between both hands. “What do you say to putting up your mistress?”

  Three or four colors of surprise chased across the man’s countenance before he muscled his features into aplomb. He tipped his head back a bit, giving him a shrewd, superior aspect. “Fancy Lydia, do you?” He’d paused in wiping his cue, but now he resumed that action. “None of the pullets I hired in are to your taste?”