“Sorry for the delay, boys,” rang out a cheery voice behind George’s back. “The lady simply wasn’t satisfied with only one go.”
George went rigid in his seat, and his chair swayed ominously. Yes, that voice, that intonation, that particular means of expression that suggested wild flourishes of a lace-cuffed hand. The man he’d met in Kent as Leach, but who was actually Lucy’s brother. Jack’s father.
George pivoted in his seat, nearly upsetting the beleaguered chair, to make certain. He called Miss Abercrombie’s portrait to mind—the broad idiot’s grin, the ace peeking out of his sleeve. He understood the symbolism of that card now. Padgett wasn’t a cheat at cards, per se, but he was a charlatan.
George shot to his feet, mimicking that portrait grin. He’d never been one to seek out confrontation, but oh, how he was looking forward to this one, played out on his terms. He’d imagined meeting Jack’s father and happily throttling the bastard, but now he had a much more satisfying plan. If he played this just right, he could ruin the man, just as the idiot had ruined Isabelle.
“Evening there.” He thrust out a hand. “George Upperton. And your name?”
Padgett stepped back and looked George up and down. His smile stretched to a near grimace. “Good God, what are you doing here?”
“Playing faro with my pal Matthews here. Poorly, if you must know. The others have been telling me the oddest stories. Seems they’re here with a man named Padgett. But you wouldn’t know him, would you?”
Padgett’s grin faded, and he lowered his voice. “Might I have a word with you in private?”
George resumed his seat, planting his feet to keep the chair from swaying. “I’m sure whatever you have to say you can say in front of the others.”
The others were eyeing George and the newcomer the way a glutton might size up a ceiling-high trifle.
“What did you say your name was again?” George added.
“Padgett.” He spat the name as if it were a curse, which in George’s opinion was the most appropriate way to pronounce it.
“Care to join us?” George spread his chips out over several cards. Time to start employing a different strategy. “I have to admit this is the strangest coincidence.” He ignored Padgett for now and addressed Matthews. “I’ve just come up from a house party in Kent. One of the guests looked exactly like Padgett here. Same height, same face, same voice. An identical twin, I’d swear to it.”
Williams nudged at Padgett with his elbow. “Roger, you never said you had a twin.”
“No, just a sister,” added Roberts.
And what would the others say if George revealed that said sister had serviced him in bed for the past six months? “Oh, this man couldn’t have been Padgett’s brother. He told us his name was Reginald Leach.”
“Leach?” Matthews paused in the middle of stacking his chips.
“Yes,” George said, “that was the name. Have you ever heard anything more ridiculous? At any rate, this Leach fellow liked to listen to himself talk. Nothing like our friend Padgett here. You’re awfully quiet, you know. Are you certain you feel up to a few turns?”
“Perhaps he’s exhausted himself,” said Matthews.
The others chuckled.
“Why don’t you shut your gob and place the next wager?” Padgett growled. “Or are you afraid of running up more debts? Seems I’ve heard a thing or two about you.”
“I’d be happy to match any wager you’d care to make. We could go one on one.” George casually pulled a pack of cards from his topcoat and handed it to Matthews for inspection. “Piquet if you like.”
George’s words brimmed with bravado, but he didn’t care. He knew enough unsavory details about the man sitting across the table. He could rattle Padgett with a well-placed barb. All lay in the timing, just like in the boxing ring. He only needed that one fleeting instant when his opponent dropped his guard and bang—he’d sneak in with his signature left hook. So what if, in this case, that hook was verbal?
“How do I know you’re good for it?” Padgett sneered.
“I’m more worried if you’re good for it. You see, I played against Leach last week.”
“Wait a moment,” Andrews broke in. “Who the hell is this Leach person?”
“God only knows. The name sounds made up if you ask me.” George gave the cards a final shuffle. “Shall we get down to business, gentlemen? Why don’t we begin with the amount of that marker?”
GEORGE held on to his final card, knowing it would beat anything Padgett held. That was the beauty of piquet. A reckless player could give away the contents of his hand in the declaration phase, making him that much easier to beat.
Padgett scowled across a mountain of chips. The final hand, and enough lay on the table to buy off Redditch and more, just the way George had planned.
“Go on,” Padgett said. “Finish me.”
George allowed himself a grin. “Perhaps I’d rather savor the moment.”
“Why? You know you’ve won.”
Not only won but taken all the tricks this hand—a capot. The victory ought to have elated him. In one turn of the cards, his debts would be cleared, along with Summersby’s, but he’d let his opponent make off with the entire pot if it meant he could have Isabelle.
He nudged a stack of chips worth at least a hundred in Padgett’s direction. “How about I give you a chance to earn back some of your losses before I turn the final card?”
Padgett rounded brandy-bleary eyes. “Why in God’s name would you do that?”
“I want answers.” George slammed his final card facedown on the table. “Why did you abandon Isabelle?”
Padgett’s glance flitted from side to side—checking his friends’ reaction. The others sat in rapt silence, riveted to the proceedings. With each verbal salvo, their heads bobbed back and forth as if they were tracking the progress of a cricket ball. With such captive witnesses, at least no one would later accuse George of cheating.
“I didn’t know she was in a delicate condition.”
George snatched a chip from Padgett’s stack. “Oh, come now. You knew to contact her before you made off with her boy.”
“I didn’t know at first.”
“Isabelle said you disappeared right after you seduced her.”
“I had my reasons.” Padgett eyed his chips, as if he were afraid George might deprive him of a few more. “Bad enough I ruined her. Only I didn’t run far enough before her father’s cronies caught up to me and told me of the rest of it, that I’d left her with child. He wanted restitution.”
“So you ran on instead of doing the right thing.”
“Good God, man. Do you know what sort the Earl of Redditch is?” Padgett had long since dropped his jovial manner and replaced it with a sort of grim desperation. George had seen similar expressions on Summersby’s face. “Of course I ran. Thought he couldn’t touch me on the continent. As it was, it took him a while to find me.”
“Then why come back?”
“I came up with a scheme to beat the bastard at his own game.” Padgett stretched his lips into a semblance of a smile that was as far from his usual grin as a skull’s leer. “Instead of me paying, it would be him paying me to keep quiet about his daughter.”
George tamped down an upsurge of rage. “And you had to involve the child in that?”
“The boy was a means to get Redditch’s attention. Isabelle couldn’t pay, but Redditch could. Not that it matters anymore, does it?”
God in heaven, what an idiotic risk to take. As much care as the man had shown his daughter, he wouldn’t have given a fig for the child. No, Redditch was cold enough to leave them all to rot.
Game over. He flipped the final card, stood, and seized Padgett by the lapels. “So just like that you were willing to ruin her all over again?”
Padgett rolled his shoulders free of George’s grip. “She was already ruined. What’s it to you?”
Roberts and Matthews stood, but George pushed past that negligible barrier.
He rounded the table, reared back a fist and smashed it into Padgett’s face. His nose crunched beneath George’s knuckles, his head snapped back and his chair overturned. The heavy table beckoned. How George would love to upend that, as well, but not at the expense of his hard-won gains.
“You’re no more than a pathetic coward,” he growled over Padgett’s inert form.
He scooped up his winnings and stalked to the wicket to exchange his chips for blunt. With every clunk of his Hessians on the floor, his anger drained away, as the echo of his last words replayed in his mind. Pathetic coward. George might as well have aimed those words at himself.
* * *
THE Upperton carriage rattled to a halt in the middle of the dusty street. After hours of sitting still, Jack squirmed out of Isabelle’s embrace, no doubt eager to run the kinks from his legs. No sooner were the steps lowered than Jack bounded free.
“You’re to stay near the house,” Isabelle scolded as she alit.
“Aw, Mama.”
“He’s spent days cooped up with naught to do but eat,” Biggles reminded her. “Let him run.”
“He can run all he likes in the garden.” She would never let him out of her sight again.
Biggles laid a fleshy hand on her shoulder. “Ye won’t hold him forever.”
Isabelle knew. God, she knew. But for the next few days, she would fly into a panic every time the boy left her line of sight.
“Come in the house.” Biggles gave her a comforting squeeze. “I’ll start a fire and make ye some tea.”
Isabelle paused on the threshold. Biggles had stepped over a cream-colored rectangle of paper lying on the floor. She picked it up. A quality calling card, such as she used to possess. A shiver snaked down her spine, and she turned the card over. Her father’s name and title marched across the vellum in stark black ink, so thick the letters were raised. A summons. Her father was calling her home, so many years after he’d turned her out. But why?
“Wot’s all this then?”
She looked up sharply, but Biggles’s gaze was fixed not on her, but in the corner near the hearth.
Isabelle had cleared away the remains of the scandalous picnic she and George had shared, but the basket still stood in the corner next to the fireplace. The sight brought back a spate of now painful memories, but she refused to dwell on them. “I was sent a few gifts from the manor. There’s chocolate. Perhaps we can make a pot for Jack.”
Biggles lowered her brows into a scowl. “That boy’s had more than his fill of sweets. He’d be certain to refuse after all the bellyache he’s endured.”
That pronouncement was nearly as painful as any memory of George her brain might conjure. The thoughtfulness of Julia’s gift had touched her deeply. The idea of finally providing her boy with an indulgence had delighted her, and now even that chance had been ripped away. Lucy had got there first and spoiled the treat for Jack. Now Isabelle was deprived of even the small joy of watching her son’s eyes widen with relish the first time he felt the velvet glide of chocolate on his tongue.
“Damn the woman,” she muttered, folding her fingers about her father’s card.
Crouched before the hearth, Biggles glanced over her shoulder. “Wot’s this now?”
“That … that …” Isabelle couldn’t bring herself to voice the name, nor could she come up with an adequate identifier to describe her.
Biggles, however, cottoned on. “That strumpet? She is to be sure, but such talk is beneath ye.”
Well Isabelle knew it. She didn’t even think of her cousin in those terms, but Lucy … Lucy had stolen her boy, and George … No, no, she must not think of him. George had never been hers. He never would be.
You could have had him. You could have said yes.
Perhaps, but at what price? Best she never found out.
“Do ye want to talk about what happened while I was away?”
“I let a man charm me again.” That much was safe. That much she could admit to without dwelling on what might have been. “You’d think I’d have learned better after the first time.”
“Men are meant to charm women, and we as women are inclined to fall. It’s the way of things.”
Isabelle stared while Biggles poked at her nascent fire. “You were never so foolish.”
“Foolish?” Biggles reached for the kettle. “P’rhaps. But lucky, too. I was never caught.”
Of course she wasn’t, and if she had found herself with child, she knew just what to take to restore her courses.
“Ye wouldn’t be wanting some pennyroyal with your tea, would ye?”
“No.” The reply was automatic. More the fool her, perhaps, if she actually was expecting George’s child, but she could no more expunge the seed than she could Jack. She looked up to find Biggles watching her closely. She held the other woman’s gaze and repeated the reply. “No.”
“Have ye fallen for the man, then?”
Isabelle closed her eyes against Biggles’s continued scrutiny. “It does not matter. I’ve no claim on him, whatever else happens. If I bear his child, he’ll never know.”
Biggles opened her mouth, but a rapping at the door cut off her reply.
“Lawks, give a body time t’ get home,” she muttered. “Must’ve had their noses pushed t’ the window awaitin’ our arrival.”
“Yes, and now they’ve come to see what they can dig up,” Isabelle replied darkly.
Biggles pressed her lips into a line of assent and opened the door. “Why, Mrs. Weston.”
The vicar’s wife stood on the threshold, her expression collected, or perhaps a better term would be set.
Isabelle stood and fumbled immediately for her pocket. She’d carried Mrs. Cox’s bundle of herbs on her for the better part of three days, although they might now be worse for wear after their dousing. “Is Peter ailing again?”
“I haven’t come about Peter.”
Mrs. Weston’s tone carried an edge that sent a finger of warning creeping down Isabelle’s spine. She’d heard that very tone of censure before—from her own family. “Then why have you come? We’ve only just arrived from retrieving my son.”
“I am aware.” The vicar’s wife remained rooted firmly to the doorstep, as if the air in the cottage might somehow be tainted. Yet she craned her neck, and her gaze darted to the far corners of the room. “Rather a fancy conveyance. I trust it was well sprung.”
So cool she was in her superiority, so composed. Isabelle’s father had comported himself in the same manner—ever the gentleman, even when he turned his own daughter out of the house.
Biggles crossed her arms over her ample bosom. “Have ye come for a reason or are ye nosing for gossip?”
“It is my unfortunate duty on behalf of the parish to inform Miss Mears she is no longer welcome as a resident of this village.”
“Wot’s this now?”
Mrs. Weston went on as if Biggles hadn’t said a word. “We were willing to tolerate one natural child. Anyone might make a mistake, but as long as the error is atoned for, as long as it is viewed with contriteness and a firm intention not to repeat the error, well …”
She waved a hand as if chasing off a fly. “What we will not tolerate is the kind of carryings-on that might lead to more bastards. Beyond the intolerable example set by such behavior, we see no need to give alms when such could be avoided through more rigid morality.”
The ruffles on Biggles’s mobcap shook as she drew herself up. “Such nerve ye have, goin’ on about morality when Isabelle’s been sick with worry over her boy. Have ye no heart? I’ll warrant ye never lifted a finger to help her search.”
“My son was ill.”
“He wouldn’t always be ill if ye made certain he ate properly. Spoiled little brat.”
Isabelle should have reacted by now, but a numbness caused by the overwhelming emotions of the past few days encased her. She might as well be walking waist-high in icy water. No more. After losing her son, after Lucy, after George, after all the years she’d fought fo
r acceptance in this place, she no longer felt the inclination to fight. Society had defeated her. Let it win.
She closed her fist about her father’s card, and its thick edges cut into her palm. She did, after all, have a choice. “It’s all right, Biggles. Jack and I will be gone in the morning.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
REDDITCH’S BUTLER ushered George into a small parlor. The room was clearly not a place where the master would receive his most distinguished guests, but its polished woods, silk-upholstered furnishings, and embossed wallpaper made the space well enough appointed. An understated taste that screamed of blunt.
Lush carpeting muffled the sounds of his footfalls as he crossed to a painting. An ornate frame, edged in gilt, surrounded the portrait of a haughty-looking man in a white periwig, his cheeks rouged, his hand tucked into the breast of a teal blue coat. Lace cascaded from the subject’s cuffs and throat. His free hand perched atop a walking stick.
George allowed himself a grim smile. Redditch was such a stickler for propriety, or at least the appearance of propriety, but this ancestor—“Nothing but a macaroni.”
Footsteps echoed through the vast corridor beyond, and George turned, even though their rapid cadence indicated legs too short to belong to an adult.
Jack trotted into the room. “Thought I saw you.”
George caught his breath. What the devil was Jack doing here? And in that garb? The boy was clothed in deep green breeches and waistcoat of the same velvet he’d spotted on the footmen. Livery. Redditch had turned his own grandson into a servant.
George knelt to bring himself on a level with the child. “Why have they got you all jumped up like that?”
Jack glanced down at his garments and scrunched his face into a scowl. “Eastwicke says I have to. I don’t like it much. The coat itches, and the shoes pinch.”
“And what have they got you doing in such dress?” George couldn’t imagine a position fit for a lad his age. He was too small for the stables and had yet to develop the physical strength required of house servants.
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