The Gamble

by Joan Wolf

  Catherine was going on, “Unfortunately, Mama herself is not up to accompanying us this evening, as she was ill for most of the night with a stomach ailment. So will you please come with me, Georgie?”

  I stared at her with a mixture of amazement and amusement. “Do I really qualify as a chaperone, Catherine?”

  “Of course you do. You are married to my cousin, are you not?”

  A thought struck me, and I narrowed my eyes. “By any chance, did you and Rotheram wait until you knew Lady Winterdale would be unable to accompany you before you arranged this little expedition, Catherine?”

  She looked a little sheepish. “If Mama came, you know she would never let me out of her sight, Georgie. You are not so old-fashioned.”

  I smiled. “That is true.”

  I thought of Philip’s strictures about staying home. He would be furious if I went to Vauxhall. I looked once again at Catherine and knew that I didn’t have the heart to disappoint her.

  I thought of a compromise.

  “Would you mind if I invited Captain Stanton to come with me?” I asked. “I feel bad that I have been able to see him so rarely since he came to London.”

  “Of course you may invite Captain Stanton,” Catherine replied promptly. She looked at me anxiously. “Then you will do it, Georgie? You will come?”

  I took a deep breath. Frank would protect me, I thought. After all, he was a Peninsula veteran.

  I would have Frank. I would be wearing a domino, which would afford me a disguise. In a burst of inspiration I decided that, as an additional precaution, I would ask Betty to sew a pocket into my domino. It wouldn’t hurt to carry a little extra protection with me in case I needed it.

  “Yes,” I said to Catherine. “I will come with you to Vauxhall.”

  * * *

  There were eight of us in the Duchess of Faircastle’s party that evening: the duchess and Lord Margate; Lord Rotheram and Catherine; Mr. Fergus MacDonald and Lady Laura Rinsdale; and Frank and I. Vauxhall itself was situated south of the Thames and to get there we first took two carriages to Westminster, where we boarded a boat to cross the river.

  The evening was beautiful and clear, and the setting sun cast shades of red, orange, and vermillion on the waters of the river. Suddenly I wished with all my heart that it was Philip sitting close beside me in the boat, and not Frank.

  Our party disembarked on the south side of the river, and we entered the gardens by way of the famous Grand Walk. I thought that the long nine-hundred-foot pathway, lined with elms and blazing lanterns, made the place look like the enchanted land in a childhood story my mother used to tell. Couple by couple, the duchess’s party proceeded along the Grand Walk, until we reached a large open space in the middle of the gardens, where refreshment booths were arranged in two wide semicircles. These booths were well lit and adorned with bright scenes painted on their backs. The duchess had hired one of the booths for the evening, and we located it by her name, which was discreetly posted on a card on the booth door.

  We all eight of us took our seats in the booth, which was decorated by a painting of a maypole dance, and I looked curiously at the scene around me.

  In the middle of the open space left by the circle of boxes, an orchestra was playing, and couples were strolling about the area to meet and greet acquaintances. The booths were low enough for those dining within to lean over and shake hands with the people whom they knew. Farther down the Grand Walk was a big rotunda, where dancing was going on.

  I gestured to the orchestra. “Is this the concert?” I queried Catherine, who was seated next to me. She was wearing a blue-silk domino and a matching mask.

  “No. Mr. Hook is to play the organ later.”

  “Oh.”

  “I say, this is quite a place, Georgie,” Frank said from my other side. Like the other gentlemen in our party, he was wearing a black-silk domino over his evening clothes.

  “You have never been to Vauxhall, Captain?” the duchess asked graciously. The duchess’s domino was lavender, as was her mask.

  “No, your grace.”

  “You will quite enjoy it,” the duchess predicted. “You and Lady Winterdale must take the opportunity to explore some of the more famous paths. The South Walk, for instance, has three marvelous archways that simulate the ruins of Palmyra. They are quite realistic, I believe.”

  “Duchess, is that you? I saw your name on the booth.” A middle-aged woman whose cheeks were too obviously painted, was standing in front of our booth looking up curiously. “How nice to see you here.”

  As the two women engaged in light conversation, I looked slowly around the open arena in front of me at the strolling couples.

  It occurred to me that a great many of the unmasked pairs who peopled the scene were married, but not to each other.

  This was an extremely depressing observation, particularly in the light of my thoughts about my own husband earlier this morning. I looked now at Catherine and Lord Rotheram. His head was bent to hers, and he was listening intently to something she was saying. Would his feelings for Catherine last, I wondered, or would the corrupt morals of his mother and her lover, and the world they inhabited, subvert the purity of his feeling for Catherine and eventually send him off to find someone more worldly and less vulnerable than she?

  I looked once again at Rotheram’s partially masked face. I remembered the lines that pain had engraved at the sides of his eyes, and the fear for Catherine that had gripped my heart loosened. Catherine was safe with her Edward, I thought. He was a man who had learned the hard way to value what was important in life.

  Frank murmured in my ear, “Georgie, will you dance with me?”

  I didn’t think I should leave the booth, but I also realized that this was the only chance Frank was likely to get to dance with me during his stay in London. I had invited him to accompany me here, I thought. I owed it to him to give him a dance.

  “Of course,” I said lightly, and let him lead me to the rotunda, where a waltz was being played.

  Frank put his arms around me and we stepped off together.

  He began to talk immediately. “I have been trying desperately to get you alone, Georgie. Do you have any idea of the innuendos that are going around town about your accident in the park?”

  My pink domino swung out behind me as we made a turn. “I know exactly what is being said, Frank, and none of it is true. Philip is not trying to do away with me, I can promise you that.”

  “Is it true that you fell into the lion’s cage at the Tower?” he demanded.

  “Yes.”

  He shut his eyes. The part of his face that was revealed by his mask was very pale. “Georgie, I think you ought to let me take you back to Sussex to stay with my parents.”

  I decided then and there that I had better tell him the whole story. After all, he was my oldest friend. I knew that he loved me. It wasn’t fair to allow him to think that I was married to a man who wanted to kill me.

  I said, “Frank, after this dance is over, let us go for a walk. I have a long and rather ugly story to tell you. It doesn’t put me in a very good light, I’m afraid, but at least it will make you understand that I have nothing to fear from Philip.”

  He hesitated, and then he said, “All right.”

  We danced in silence until the music had ended and then we turned to leave the floor together. At the edge of the rotunda, we almost literally ran into Lord Marsh, who stopped me by the simple expedient of stepping in front of me.

  “Lady Winterdale,” he said with every evidence of pleasure.

  I was still wearing my mask and I demanded, “How did you know who I was?”

  “I recognized your hair,” he said with that nasty amusement that never touched his eyes. “If you wish to disguise yourself, you would do well to exchange your braids for curls.”

  I said fiercely, “Step out of my way, if you please.” I had no intention of even pretending civility to the man.

  Lord Marsh sighed. “Such rudeness,” he
said sadly. “I am shocked, Lady Winterdale.”

  I replied in an icy voice, “I am quite certain that nothing is capable of shocking you, Lord Marsh. Now please let me pass.”

  After a moment, he stepped out of my way and I brushed past him, ostentatiously holding my skirts aside in order to make certain that they did not touch him.

  “Good God,” said Frank, once we were out of Marsh’s earshot. “What was that all about, Georgie?”

  “I plan to tell you,” I said. “Come, let us go for a walk.”

  It was growing dark so we chose the South Walk, which was well lit and fairly crowded with couples. I began my tale by telling Frank about how I had found out about Papa’s blackmailing scheme, and I carried on from there with how I had followed up by blackmailing Philip. I left very little out and when I had finished, I said, “So you see, it is I who have behaved very badly, Frank, and Philip who has behaved very well.”

  He was silent as we walked away from the third arch that simulated the ruins of Palmyra. Then he said gruffly, “He could still be at the bottom of these attacks, Georgie. From what you have described to me, he was forced to marry you after all.”

  “I was pushed into the menagerie before we married,” I pointed out. “And really, Frank, I don’t think I am such an antidote that my husband needs to go to such horrific lengths as murdering me in order to be rid of me!”

  He let out a long sigh. “Of course you’re not an antidote, Georgie. I suppose I want to think the worst of Winterdale because I’m jealous of him.” We had taken off our masks as the crowd on the walk had thinned out and now he turned to look at me, a very worried look in his steady gray eyes. “But if Winterdale isn’t the one who is responsible for these accidents, then who is?”

  “Philip is trying to find that out.”

  Frank said, “Have you seen anyone on that list here tonight besides Marsh?”

  “No.”

  “Of course, that doesn’t mean anything,” he said worriedly. “This place is full of people wearing dominos and masks. God knows who could be stalking you, Georgie. You should never have come here.”

  I patted his sleeve. “I had to come for Catherine’s sake. And since Philip was out of town, I asked you for protection, Frank. I shall be perfectly safe as long as we stay together.”

  By this time we were almost at the very end of the South Walk. It ended with a Greek temple, which I understood was lit with an artificial fountain on gala nights at Vauxhall. Tonight, however, the temple was dark and deserted, and the path around us was deserted as well. Frank and I had been so deeply involved in our conversation that we had not realized how far we had come from the crowds that filled most of the pleasure garden.

  In fact, right now we were the only couple at this end of the South Walk.

  Frank looked around him and then said authoritatively, “Come along, Georgie. Let us return to the rest of our party immediately.”

  I agreed and the two of us turned to retrace our way back to the supper boxes.

  We had not gone above a dozen steps when I heard the sound of steps behind us coming from the direction of the Greek temple.

  “Run, Georgie!” Frank yelled at me as he whirled with fists raised to confront the four men who were rushing at us.

  I screamed and tried to go to his aid, but a large, callused hand seemed to come out of nowhere to close over my mouth and pull my head back against a man’s coat. I struggled, trying to kick my attacker, and someone swore, and I felt the sharp crack of a fist on my chin, and then blackness descended.

  CHAPTER

  twenty-one

  I WOKE IN A SMALL, DIRTY ROOM THAT SMELLED LIKE cabbage and beer and urine. My jaw ached something fierce. I was lying on a filthy straw mattress on the floor. Two men were standing at the foot of the mattress, arguing.

  “We’ve bin paid t’snuff her, Alf. I say we do the job, collect our blunt, and be done wi’ it.”

  “I ain’t sayin’ we don’t do that, Jem. I just say we have our bit o’ fun wi’ her first. A fancy lady like that—when ’r you likely to get a bit o’ muslin like that come your way agin, eh?”

  Even in my semidazed state, it didn’t take me long to realize what they were talking about. They were going to kill me, but if the one called Alf had his way, they would rape me first.

  I lay very still, with my eyes shut, and tried desperately to remember what had happened.

  I remembered going to Vauxhall with Catherine and Frank. Then I remembered the pocket I had had Betty sew into my domino. Moving very slowly, I slid my fingers across my dress. The silky smoothness I touched told me I was still wearing the pink cape.

  Thank God.

  I opened my eyes a slit so that I could see the two arguing men. Then, slowly and carefully, I reached my fingers inside the domino to the pocket. The small knife I had hidden there slid into my hand.

  The room I was being held in was very small, and the arguing men at the foot of the bed were blocking my way to the door.

  My heart was pounding and my blood was singing in my ears. My head pulsed with pain. The smell in the room was so bad that I felt like throwing up.

  I had not been this frightened even in the lion’s den.

  I had to get out of here.

  I summoned up all my courage and moaned.

  Immediately the men fell silent.

  I tossed my head from one side to another, and moaned again.

  “She’s wakin’ up,” the man called Jem said. “I say we do ’er now.”

  “Go and see if the alley is clear,” the man called Alf ordered. “We don’t want no one to see us when we dump ’er. I hear’d Claven bin askin’ questions about that slingshot in ’yde Park. We don’t want Claven down on us, Jem.”

  “Ye’re right about that,” the other said fervently. I heard the door open and close and steps clattered on the stairs. Then I heard Alf’s step as he came over to the bed. My eyes were closed but I could feel him looking down at me.

  “Ye might be a fine lidy, but I’ll bet ye’re just the same under your skirts as any doxy from the street,” he said. He put his hand on the neck of my evening dress and began to rip it.

  I brought the knife up fast and stabbed him deep in his left shoulder.

  He howled.

  Blood gushed out of the wound. He clutched at it and tried to grab the knife.

  I pulled the knife out of the wound, inflicting more damage I hoped, rolled off the bed, and ran like a maniac for the door.

  Outside I found myself on a small landing, with stairs that only went down, not up. Evidently we were on the top floor. I held up my skirts and raced downward, praying that I would reach the ground floor before Jem came back from his job of checking the alley.

  I had just made it past the second landing when the front door to the narrow, stinking building opened and someone came in below me. I couldn’t take a chance that it would be Jem, so I turned and ran back up again to the second floor.

  There was no place behind the staircase to hide, only two rickety doors on the narrow landing. Desperately I tried one of the doors only to find it locked. I tried the other one and it opened. I ducked inside.

  The room was dark and it smelled just as badly as the room upstairs where I had been held. I was not alone in the darkness, however, as the sound of a creaking bed and the unmistakable grunts of a man in the final throes of sexual pleasure made clear.

  “Who’s that?” a rough, female voice asked through the thick, stinking blackness.

  The walls were so thin that it was easy for me to hear the sound of Jem’s feet tramping past the door and beginning to mount the steps to the next landing.

  “Oh dear,” I said brightly. “I thought that this was the Smith residence.”

  The man on the bed, who was obviously now finished with his business, cursed foully.

  “Sorry,” I said to the couple I had so rudely interrupted. “I’ll go.”

  I slipped out of the room, tore down the stairs and out onto a d
ark, narrow, and excessively smelly street.

  I had no idea where I was. Mayfair was the only section of London with which I was familiar, and clearly this was not Mayfair. One thing I did know, however. I had to get out of this neighborhood before Alf and Jem found me again.

  I began to run.

  Someone shouted at me from an alleyway.

  I stepped ankle-deep in something I didn’t even want to think about.

  Then I heard the sound of heavy steps in pursuit.

  I ran even harder, looking around desperately to see if I could find a hackney to take me back to Grosvenor Square. But evidently hackneys did not frequent this section of London. I thought of how my father had been killed, and ran faster. But my breath and my legs were beginning to give out.

  All of a sudden a woman’s voice from a doorway said urgently, “In here.”

  I didn’t even think, I just blindly obeyed the command, ducked into the doorway, and allowed myself to be propelled up a flight of narrow stairs and into a room. The door closed behind me and I stood still, my breath ratcheting in my lungs, my legs trembling with the effort of my run.

  The woman lit a single tallow candle, illuminating a bed, a scarred old dresser, and a baby’s cot in the corner. A tattered rag rug was on the floor, and muslin curtains hung on the windows. A single wooden chair faced the cold fireplace.

  The room smelled like turnips and baby.

  “Are you hurt?” my rescuer asked me in a voice that had a heart-warming burr that I recognized.

  I shook my head, still breathing too hard to talk.

  “There’s blood all over you,” the woman insisted.

  “It’s not mine,” I managed to say. I realized that I was still holding the knife in my hand, and I held up its bloody point to show her. “That man who was chasing me was trying to attack me. I stabbed him.”