The Gamble

by Joan Wolf

  By Joan Wolf

  The Deception

  The Guardian

  The Arrangement

  The Gamble

  Published by

  WARNER BOOKS

  THE GAMBLE. Copyright © 1998 by Joan Wolf. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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  ISBN 0-7595-8216-5

  A mass market edition of this book was published in 1998 by Warner Books.

  First eBook edition: March 2001

  Visit our Web site at www.iPublish.com

  For Catherine Coulter—thanks, babe, for all the good advice

  CHAPTER

  one

  BELIEVE ME, IT IS A DEFINITE SHOCK TO DISCOVER that one’s father was a blackmailer.

  This happened to me one rainy Friday afternoon, about ten days after my father’s death. The rain was beating heavily against the library windows and the room smelled strongly of the coal-burning fire and of old leather book bindings. I was going through the drawers of Papa’s desk to clean them out when I found the documentation.

  When at first I realized what I was holding, I was horrified. There were five victims identified on Papa’s list, four of whom he had caught cheating at cards and one of whom he had found cheating on his wife (an heiress). There was a file of the evidence he had accumulated against each victim and an accounting of the amount of money that Papa had succeeded in squeezing from each of them as well.

  It amounted to quite a substantial sum.

  I sat back on my heels and stared at the papers I had heaped on the old red Turkish carpet in front of me. I had never harbored any great illusions about my father, but I must admit that I had not thought him capable of this.

  Next I wondered where all the money had gone to.

  If he had put some of it aside for his daughters, I thought bitterly, then Anna and I would not find ourselves in the dreadful situation in which we now stood.

  I got to my feet and went to the windows to look out at the rain-drenched garden, my mind once more running over that situation, like a child lost in a maze, hoping that somehow the next turn would be the one that would lead her out.

  My father had been Lord Weldon, of Weldon Hall in Sussex. As he had no sons, the title and the estate were entailed upon a cousin of his, whom I had met twice and whom I disliked intensely. Now that my father was dead, the victim of a bludgeoning by a London thief, my sister and I found ourselves almost totally dependent upon the new Lord Weldon (who had a mouth like a fish and who had once tried to kiss me with it) for our welfare.

  It was not a situation that I liked.

  As I stared out at the rain, a scheme began to form in the back of my mind. I turned back into the room, and before I quite knew what I was doing, I had scooped up the blackmail evidence, stuffed it back into its folder, and fled up the stairs to the privacy of my own room.

  * * *

  I didn’t get a chance to look at the folder again until after dinner, which Anna and I took by ourselves in the dining room, as we had ever since my mother had died five years before. Papa had rarely been home, preferring to spend his time in London, where the gambling was more easily come by.

  After Anna had gone to bed, I went upstairs myself, spread all the incriminating papers out on my bed, and read through everything carefully. My father had collected quite an impressive file on each of the men he was squeezing, including newspaper clippings about the various activities of his victims. I suppose this helped him to know when it would be most profitable to ask for money. The files made for interesting, if sordid, reading.

  In every case the evidence against each man was fairly solid. If it hadn’t been, I suppose the victims would never have paid up.

  I dragged an old oak chair across to my bed, made five neat piles of the papers spread out upon my ancient tapestry bedspread, and began to read through everything again.

  Mr. George Asherton was the first candidate I looked at. Papa had caught him playing with a deck of shaved cards at Brooks’s, one of the premier clubs for gentlemen in London. I read on and discovered that Mr. Asherton was an elderly bachelor who lived with his mother.

  Next came Sir Henry Farringdon. Sir Henry was the man who had married an heiress from the city. Evidently her father had tied her money up well enough to keep Sir Henry on leading strings and he couldn’t afford to let his wife find out about the pretty little dancer he was keeping on the side.

  As soon as I saw that Sir Henry was married to a Cit, I lost interest in him. A wife with no social connections was useless to me.

  My father’s next victim was the Earl of Marsh. In many ways he fit my needs. He was married. His wife was impeccably aristocratic and moved in the best social circles. But reading between the lines of the Morning Post articles my father had clipped, I could see that his reputation was extremely unsavory. Seriously unsavory. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to trust myself to a man like that.

  Next came Mr. Charles Howard. About eight months ago my papa had caught Mr. Howard using a strategically placed mirror to cheat at cards. Mr. Howard was young, though, with young children. I didn’t think he would be of much use to me.

  Then there was the Earl of Winterdale. In many ways he seemed to be the perfect choice. One thing struck me as odd about him, however. Unlike the other victims, he had not made a payment to Papa for over a year.

  Then a piece of information from the Post struck me like a bolt of lightning from the sky. This season, the Winterdales were presenting their daughter, Lady Catherine Mansfield, to the ton.

  Perfect! I thought. If Winterdale was already presenting his daughter, I saw no reason why I couldn’t easily blackmail him into presenting me as well.

  I had no idea why Lord Winterdale, who from all of the information Papa had gathered seemed to be an extremely wealthy man, had found it necessary to cheat at faro, but evidently he had. Perhaps some men just did it for the excitement, I thought. Anyway, my papa had caught him and had been squeezing him for quite a while.

  I narrowed my eyes thoughtfully, went through the file again, and decided that Lord Winterdale was my man.

  * * *

  If you are thinking “like father like daughter,” I cannot blame you. It is a small excuse, I suppose, that I was only going to blackmail one man instead of five, but that I had every intention of blackmailing that man there was no doubt.

  I bundled all the papers back into the folder before one of the housemaids came to help me undress for the night. After she had left I got into the bed that had been mine since I had been old enough to leave the nursery, but I didn’t sleep. Instead I pulled the coverlet up over my shoulders and settled down to spend the rest of the night listening to the rain tap against the window while the following thoughts chased round and round in my brain:

  How much money did I have at my immediate disposal?

  What conveyence would I use to get to London?

  Where would I stay when I got there?

  Would Anna be safe while I was gone?

  And finally, what would I do if the Earl of Winterdale refused to be blackmailed and threw me out of his house?

  The rain came down and my thoughts churned around and around in my sleepless mind.

  What would Frank say when he learned what I was doing? I had already told him that I could not marry him, that a soldier’s life would never be suitable for Anna, but I knew he hadn’t believed me.

  If he learned that I had gone to London, he would go berserk. />
  Well, I would worry about that when it happened.

  I turned restlessly onto my other side and my thoughts veered off in another direction. I could probably marry old fishmouth, I thought. The big advantage of that course of action would be that Anna and I would be able to remain at Weldon Hall. The even bigger disadvantage, of course, was that I would have to let old fishmouth do more than kiss me.

  The thought of that was so repugnant that the dangers of a trip to London seemed positively pleasant in comparison.

  As the light began to creep into my room, and the rain to slow outside my window, I rolled onto my back and flung my arm across my forehead.

  I thought firmly: This is the only legacy Papa has left to me and it would be fainthearted of me not to use it. If I fail, then I will simply come home, and Anna and I will be no worse off than we were before I left.

  I quoted to myself the lines of the Marquis of Montrose that I always summoned up when I needed to find courage:

  He either fears his fate too much

  Or his deserts are small

  That puts it not unto the touch

  To win or lose it all.

  Tomorrow, I thought resolutely, I would see what I had to do in order to get myself to London.

  * * *

  After breakfast I had my chestnut mare saddled and rode over to see Frank’s father, Sir Charles Stanton, our local squire. After Weldon Hall, Allenby Park was the second most important house in the neighborhood, and I had been in and out of it all my life. It was a typical gentleman’s home, built of yellowish brick and standing in small but pretty grounds, which were blooming now with early-April flowers: daffodils, alyssum, cowslip, and violets.

  When I rode up the graveled drive, Lady Stanton was standing at the foot of the shallow front stairs. She told me that Sir Charles was in the stable, then mounted into the gig that was waiting for her and drove smartly off. I followed her directions and rode around to the back of the house, where I found Sir Charles admiring a new litter of spaniel puppies that were nested amidst the straw in one of the stalls.

  “Ah, Georgie,” he said in greeting. “Ain’t these a pretty sight?”

  “They’re adorable,” I said with a smile, going down on my knees next to him. We fussed over the puppies for a while, exchanging some of our favorite dog stories, and then I asked if I might talk to him. He invited me to accompany him back to the house, where we walked in the side door and went into his office, a male bastion of chestnut-paneled walls and ancient oak furniture. It was Sir Charles’s favorite room, the one place where his wife did not care how much mud he tracked in on his boots.

  I sat in the chair that faced his desk, and he regarded me with the steady gray eyes that he had given to Frank. “How may I be of service to you, Georgie?” he asked.

  I trotted out the lie I had prepared. “I received a letter yesterday from a firm of solicitors in London, Sir Charles. Evidently Papa had done some business with them in the past and they have asked to see me. It is necessary, therefore, that I go to London and I was hoping that you might recommend a respectable place where I might stay.”

  He said immediately, “Nonsense. If these solicitors wish to see you, then tell them they must come to Weldon Hall. There is no reason for you to have to go to London.”

  “They write that I must come, Sir Charles,” I insisted. “Considering my circumstances, I do not think that I can afford to neglect any possibility that might mean an improvement in Anna’s and my situation.”

  He contemplated me in silence for a moment, his gray eyes thoughtful. Then he said, “I know you have been left in an awkward position, my dear, but surely the solution to that must be as clear to you as it is to me. It was obvious that your cousin was much taken with you when he visited here last Christmas. A marriage between the two of you would have the eminently desirable effect of giving both you and Anna a home. And not just any home, but the home you have known for all your lives. Now I ask you, what could be better than that?”

  “Sir Charles,” I said pleasantly, “I would rather spend the rest of my life spinning wool in a factory than marry my cousin. He has a mouth like a fish.”

  Sir Charles’s level brows, also like Frank’s, drew together. “Now, Georgie, I know that you and Frank are fond of each other, but . . .”

  I interrupted him. “This has nothing to do with Frank. I have told Frank that I will not marry him and I mean it. It is not possible for me to attach myself to a military man as long as I have the responsibility of Anna.”

  Sir Charles looked relieved. He liked me, but he did not want his younger son to marry a girl with no money. I didn’t blame him at all.

  Because he liked me, however, he felt guilty about that relief, and so he told me about Grillon’s Hotel.

  * * *

  I went to Anna’s room after dinner the following evening, when I knew that Nanny would be there, and broke the news that I would be leaving for a while. Anna was upset.

  “I won’t be gone for long, dearest,” I said to her, “and Nanny will be here with you, you know.”

  “But I want you, Georgie,” she wept. Anna’s weeping always broke my heart. I knew that what I was doing was for the best, however, and I steeled myself and soothed her as well as I could.

  Nanny didn’t help.

  “I don’t know what this nonsense is about London, Miss Georgiana,” she said crossly. “What do you need to do in London that can’t be done here?”

  Find someone to marry me, I thought, but the words remained unspoken. I smiled. “I have business to attend to, Nanny. Don’t worry, I will be staying at Grillon’s, which is a perfectly respectable hotel. It was recommended to me by the squire himself. I will write to you the moment that I get there so that you will know that I have arrived safely. Do not fret yourself about me. All will be well.”

  Nanny’s sour look was not precisely a vote of confidence, but she did not wish to upset Anna any more and so refrained from further comment.

  “As always, you will do what you wish to do, Miss Georgiana,” she said tartly. “What is new about that?”

  * * *

  I must admit that the stagecoach ride to London was excessively uncomfortable. Sir Charles had wanted me to take the mail, but the coach was cheaper, and saving money was definitely an object with me, so I had booked seats on the coach for myself and Maria, one of the Weldon maids. It was going to look odd enough for me to arrive at Grillon’s unattended by a gentleman; it would never do to be unattended by a maid.

  So it was that Maria and I found ourselves squashed inside the London stagecoach with two men who looked like merchants, a fat woman who took up far too much of her share of the seat, and a tall, skinny man whose knees kept hitting mine and who kept apologizing for the entire six hours it took us to make the journey. The coach felt as if it had no springs at all and we were jolted unmercifully, even though the road was good. The food we were offered at the two stops we made was inedible: mutton roasted to a cinder and gritty cabbage at one inn, and rare boiled beef and waxy potatoes at the other.

  I was horribly nervous about what I was going to do, however, and the distractions of the ghastly journey were actually rather welcome. Inevitably, though, our destination was finally reached and at midafternoon we entered the outskirts of London.

  Maria’s eyes were bugging out of her head as we drove deeper and deeper into the city. I thought ruefully that I probably didn’t look any less astonished. We were, after all, both country girls and neither of us had ever seen so many people or so many carts and carriages in one place in all of our lives.

  Maria and I took a hackney from the coaching inn where the London stage ended its journey to No. 7 Albemarle Street, the address of Grillon’s Hotel. I had sent ahead to book a room, so I was expected.

  The hall of the hotel was as grand as the ballroom of a nobleman, with great crystal chandeliers and polished green marble floors. The clerk behind the desk did not look happy to see me. Obviously he did not think
that I fitted the elegance of the surroundings.

  He flicked his eyes quickly up and down my person, taking in my old mulberry pelisse and hat. “Miss . . . Newbury?” he said haughtily.

  I gave him a return look that was even haughtier. I do not like to be sneered at. “I am Miss Newbury,” I announced, “and I require to be shown to my room immediately, if you please. I have had an excessively tiring journey.”

  We stared at each other for a few more moments, and then his eyes dropped away from mine. I had won.

  I have always found that perseverance pays off.

  “Of course, Miss Newbury,” the desk clerk said in a more conciliatory tone. “I will have someone show you up immediately.” He motioned to a white-wigged lackey who was lurking close by. “Take Miss Newbury and her maid up to her room, Edward.” He twitched his lips in a semblance of a smile. “I hope your stay with us is a pleasant one, ma’am.”

  I nodded graciously and swept off after the footman. Another lackey trailed after us, carrying my portmanteau.

  * * *

  I did not sleep very well that night. My whole body felt bruised and battered from the stagecoach ride, but I was so worried about my interview with the Earl of Winterdale that I felt wound tighter than a spring.

  Over and over I rehearsed the coming scene in my mind.

  He had to know that Papa was dead, and he must be wondering and worrying about what had happened to the evidence Papa had been holding against him. I thought that my appearance would not come as a complete shock to him.

  I wondered what he looked like, this wealthy earl who was dishonest enough to cheat at faro. According to Papa’s file he was forty-eight years of age and he had one son and two daughters. The son was twenty-seven. The eldest daughter was twenty-three and married. The daughter who was being presented was my age, nineteen.