“May I inquire as to what you expected?” Randolph asked as he settled deeper into the floral upholstered chair.
He wanted to impress this particular woman.
Especially now that he thought she had a Thoroughbred.
Xenobia tore her attention from her caller and briefly regarded the flames in the fireplace. Besides the beauty of their hypnotic waves and ever-changing colors, the warmth they provided was also welcome. “I expected you would be a fop,” she finally replied, once again daring a glance in his direction.
She almost hoped he would be.
At least then she could easily dismiss him out of hand.
When she noted his furrowed brows, Xenobia continued. “A dandy, wearing heeled slippers and rings on every finger. A powdered wig on your head and a mouche on your cheek. Dressed in puce satin pantaloons with a matching tailcoat, and an embroidered waistcoat with more flowers on it than anything in my wardrobe.” A smile lightened her face then as her description grew ever more ridiculous, despite her having described what her late husband looked like on the nights they attended the theatre.
She didn’t want to think about him. Didn’t want to think about how best friends could grow apart after a few years of marriage.
At first confused, but then amused by her words, Randolph allowed a grin. “Oh, my. I do hope you’re not disappointed,” he murmured, appreciating her attempt at humor.
She shook her head. “If you had been a fop, I would have had Chesterfield show you to the door.”
If he had looked anything like James, she would have retrieved her small pistol from the dressing table in her bedchamber and shot him in the head.
Both of them.
At least Sir Randolph was handsome, in a rather brutish sort of way. His body wasn’t anything like her late husband’s, although his clothes seemed to fit him to perfection. His dark hair, wavy and a bit too long in the back, would not have worked in any of the Roman styles currently favored by men in the nobility. His jaw was entirely too square, his nose didn’t include a hook at the end, and his dark brows framed eyes that were so blue, she was sure she would be caught staring if she so much as looked in his direction.
Randolph blinked. “I thank you for seeing me then,” he replied. “Lady Comber gave me just a brief description of the situation. What are your expectations?”
Xenobia inhaled softly, not sure if she could admit just why it was she had agreed to this meeting. Julia’s note was so unexpected and yet described exactly something her cousin would do. “May I ask first what others say in response to that question?”
Angling his head slightly, Randolph wondered at her hesitance. From what he had learned of her from his discussion with Lady Comber, she was a widow just recently out of mourning. She had no children. Just a filly in need of training.
“Well, we usually discuss the expected amount of time it might take. It varies, of course.”
Xenobia blinked. “So, you are paid according to the amount of time you spend with a... a client?” she struggled to get out.
He nodded. “I am, but I am very good at what I do, and I’m usually able to break a filly in a couple of weeks at most.”
Xenobia blinked again, never having heard the term used to describe a full-grown woman before. “Break a filly?” she repeated, a stab of fear causing her heart to race. “Do you often equate the female sex to a... a horse?” she asked in confusion.
It was Randolph’s turn to blink. “Rarely,” he replied. He held up a finger, as if to make an exception. “I might have. My father has said many times that he is married to a ‘spirited filly.’”
“And if your... client... is not spirited as much as she’s simply in need of... company, what then?”
Randolph’s gaze darted to the fire as he parsed her words in his head. “There are no other horses in your stable?”
Understanding his query as a metaphor, Xenobia said, “The only stallion died more than a year ago.” As she gave her own metaphor further consideration, she thought she should have referred to her late husband as a gelding. He certainly hadn’t done his job as a stud, given he never got a child on her. “And other than the two shires that pull my barouche, there are no other horses in the mews. That belong to me, at least.”
Angling his head to one side, Randolph displayed an expression of disappointment. “There is no timid filly in need of attention?” He thought of the book she’d had in her arm.
Still had in her arm.
She hadn’t set it aside when they took their seats, and now he wondered if she’d kept it in the event she thought she might need it as a weapon. Something to clobber him with should he attempt to take liberties with her.
Randolph took a deep breath and held it a moment. This encounter was not at all going as expected, but then he had been experiencing a number of odd situations of late.
Especially the one that had happened just the day before.
Secrets of a Gaming Hell
The afternoon before at The Jack of Spades, St. James Street, Mayfair
Randolph stepped into the dimly lit gaming hell that had at one time been a bastion for vingt-et-un players. Their dealers, most of them young women of questionable virtue, were known as the best in the business. The odds of the card game usually favored the player, but with a skilled and beautiful operator, the house broke even and instead made its money on the other offerings of the typical gaming hell—liquor, high-stakes card games, and the brothel on the second story.
Once Frank O’Laughlin had installed a billiards table in a space that had at one time acted as a smoking room, the clientele changed.
So did reports of foreigners attempting to pass counterfeit currency.
Randolph knew Frank bought his liquors from a reputable source, a broker who had a royal charter from the Crown. But when his deposits into the Bank of England started to include notes of questionable authenticity, he went on notice.
Allow an agent of the Crown to investigate by acting as a client, or shut down his establishment.
Frank agreed to not only host an agent to investigate, one who would act as a frequent gambler, but he went one step further. “I’ll supply an apartment in which he can live and a reward for when the damned frogs are caught,” he claimed.
At no point had the suspected source of the problem been mentioned, although early intelligence reports did suggest a French connection. The Napoleonic Wars were a distant memory for most, but that didn’t mean the treachery of the French had been forgotten.
Although Randolph was glad for the offer—there were times when he played billiards until well past three in the morning—he only took advantage of the apartment a couple of nights a week. He had a more than modest townhouse in Westminster, courtesy the Reading marquessate, where he preferred to spend his nights.
Even if Barbara no longer lived.
The reminders of her were everywhere. In her bedchamber, where his gifts of an ivory comb and brush from Floris still decorated the dressing table and her gowns still hung in the elaborately decorated dressing room.
In the breakfast parlor, where the sideboard featured an array of delicate pottery from Wedgwood, pieces she had personally chosen while on a trip to Stoke.
In the dining room, where the Waterford crystal goblets added brilliance to his otherwise dull dinners.
In the nursery, where Charlie’s bassinet sat in one corner and her oak rocking chair stood in another.
And in the parlor, where her portrait, commissioned by her father upon her betrothal, still hung above the fireplace mantel.
Twice he had ordered its removal, and twice he had stayed the order before the butler could see to carrying out the mission. “My son will wish to know his mother’s likeness,” he had said, usually after he recovered from his hangover.
Thank the gods he could still play billiards when he was half-foxed. Vingt-et-un and French Hazard, not so much.
He couldn’t seem to add numbers when his brain buzzed from too mu
ch alcohol.
The burly dunner at the front door of The Jack of Spades gave Randolph a nod and checked the time on his chronometer. “You’re early,” he accused.
Randolph waved a hand down the front of his body. “I need to change into different clothes,” he replied, annoyed by the guard’s comment. If the large, bald dunner, whose primary job was to collect the debts owed to the hell, knew his usual arrival time, then his marks might have noticed as well. “Next time, I’ll be late.”
Randolph knew they were down a side street at The Ace’s Hole, a seedy public house that offered rancid meat pies, sour ale, and games of chance that definitely favored the house. The dice were loaded, as was the director who kept tabs on the proceedings.
He knew because he had just come from there.
Before that, his marks had been at Crockford’s, a hell that featured a varied clientele and existed for the sole purpose of separating their players from as much of their money as possible. Although a sharp eye could catch Crockford’s operators’ frequent attempts at cheating—their operators employed slight of hand along with waiters that made sure to distract a player’s attention when a cheat was in progress—there were few when the drinks were encouraged and kept full.
Randolph was glad his assignment was based primarily out of The Jack of Spades. If cheating happened, it wasn’t because Frank O’Laughlin encouraged it. In fact, the owner employed a number of crowpees to watch the play, not only to catch customers who might be cheating, but to keep an eye on the employees as well. Frank had just the week before fired a clerk and an operator for taking a baron for all he had, most of it through slight of hand.
Both were now employed at Crockford’s.
Frank also didn’t employ any puffs. “I don’t want decoys playing with high stakes,” he had said when his director—the superintendent of the play—suggested it one night when the floor was quieter than usual. “Cheating will not be tolerated at the Jack,” he had added in a hiss. “You want to cheat? Go to Crocky’s.”
Dressed in his most pedestrian clothes—worn trousers, a plain brown wool waistcoat, and a top coat from the turn of the century, Randolph appeared as if he were a down-on-his-luck farmer who gambled for the sake of his paltry existence.
The deceiving appearance meant he now had over fifty pounds in his pocket, probably all of it counterfeit.
After he changed into the garb of a well-to-do member of the gentry, he intended to win far more from the targets. He had overheard their comments about intending to finish their night at The Jack of Spades.
Besides the difference in his clothes, he would change his overall appearance by wetting his wavy hair and combing it back from his face, shaving, and then donning a pair of spectacles that would have him perceived as a gentleman fresh from the country.
He made his way through the gaming hell to the back and up the stairs to the first story. His room, all the way at the end of the hall and facing the street, required he pass the doors of rooms belonging to vingt-et-un operators, crowpees, bartenders, waiters, and the gaming hell’s cook, a cranky old woman known for morning meals that rivaled an aristocrat’s wedding breakfast.
Randolph looked forward to those breakfasts on the two or three days a week he woke up in the gaming hell. If he didn’t respect Frank so much, he would have made an offer to Annie to be the cook at his townhouse.
His apartment was one of only two that featured windows that looked out over Stafford Street. Not that the view was particularly pleasant. Although poverty wasn’t rampant in Mayfair, desperation was for those who hoped to earn a shilling or two from its residents. A young woman who looked as if she hadn’t slept for several days was attempting to sell wilted flowers to anyone who passed on the street. A three-legged dog followed his charge, a young boy pulling a cart filled with limp vegetables.
But the one sight that had Randolph pausing before stripping off his cheroot smoke-laden clothes was that of a familiar man taking his leave of a gaming hell across the street.
The Queen of Hearts was anything but—a gambling den lined with red velvet walls and faux gold gilt decor that made most of its money from prostitution. The girls they employed were considered the equivalent of courtesans, well-dressed young women who were the daughters of courtesans, educated and trained in the bedroom arts from the time they were old enough to be bedded.
The owner, fairly new compared to the owners of the other gaming hells and men’s clubs that lined the street, was an older matron who sported a mouche on one cheekbone and a white wig that was tall enough to house a colony of mice.
So what had his father, Randall Roderick, Marquess of Reading, been doing in there?
Randolph straightened in the chair in which he had become far too comfortable in Lady Dunsworth’s parlor. Then he winced at remembering his father’s earlier claim that he was spending his nights with his marchioness.
Randall Roderick’s claim that he was no longer a rake rankled.
Why did he lie to me? Randolph wondered.
The question had him wondering the same about Lady Comber. Did she really think it was necessary to make him believe Lady Dunsworth needed a horse trainer when all she wanted was for the two of them to meet?
He focused his attention more closely on the woman who had no intention of hiring him to train a horse.
He had just come to realize that it was she who was the timid filly.
The very last thing he wanted to do was to break her.
Mixed Metaphors
Still in the parlor at Bradley House
Timid filly?
It was Xenobia’s turn to wonder at their strange conversation. Was the term in reference to a horse? Or to her? As far as she knew, no one had ever called her a timid filly.
One of her finishing school friends, Rachel, had secretly called her a spendthrift due to her hesitance to buy things she could easily afford.
Her husband had called her “Dear Heart” whether he was pleased or vexed by her.
Her mother called her “Bea” when she’d had too much to drink.
Her cousins sometimes referred to her as “Lady X,” although never in public.
So what had Julia said to this man?
“I do not own a filly,” Xenobia stated. “Both of my shires are old and gelded,” she added, her mind racing with how she might gracefully dismiss Mr. Roderick and then hide in her bedchamber for the next decade.
But she noted the change in his expression, as if he had just realized exactly what she had just come to believe.
Julia Comber had obviously played a trick on him.
And on her.
“Forgive me, but I am left with the impression you think me something I am not,” he said quietly. When Xenobia turned her gaze on him, as if she expected him to say more, he added, “I am not a... fancy man for hire, my lady.”
Lady Comber had obviously given her that impression.
When he noted the look of confusion that crossed her face, he dipped his head. “I will admit, that once, a very long time ago, before I was married, of course, I accommodated a widow who was looking for a tumble. And I escorted a baroness to the theatre. Once.” He paused, remembering Lady Dunsworth was a widowed baroness. “She was old enough to be my grandmother and was in want of another man in her box in order to even out the sexes of those whom she had invited that night.
“But I am nothing like my father once was,” he quickly added.
When he watched her for what appeared to be signs of approval, as if he hoped her estimation of him had gone up just a fraction, her steady gaze gave away nothing of her thoughts.
Xenobia finally blinked twice, deciding for certain that she had completely misunderstood Julia. Misunderstood why her friend had insisted she meet this Mr. Roderick. He probably thought her a Merry Widow, fresh out of widow’s weeds and in search of a man to warm her bed every Tuesday and Friday night.
And why would he assume she knew anything about his father?
Who was his
father?
“I must apologize, Mr... Uh, Sir Randall, did you say?”
“Randolph,” he replied, a wince crossing his face.
She allowed her mortification to show in her expression. “I am so sorry, but I think my cousin Julia might have...” She allowed the sentence to trail off as she considered how to save face with the young man. “She may have misrepresented my situation when she asked that you pay a call. With you as well as with me.”
Instead of appearing annoyed as he had every right to be, Randolph allowed a wan grin and then sighed. “I had just come to that very conclusion as well, my lady.”
“Oh, dear. I feel awful. I’ve taken your time—”
“It’s not your fault, my lady,” he said with a shake of his head.
“I plan to be very cross with Julia when next I see her,” she said. “I cannot believe she would do this. May I... may I at least offer you compensation for your time? Or... or arrange for a coach to take you home, or wherever you would prefer to be? Your club, perhaps?”
Randolph stared at her. “No. No, my lady. That’s not necessary. My coach is parked just down the street.” He moved to get up, but saw how agitated she appeared. How tears were on the verge of falling from her bright eyes. “Please, don’t cry.”
“You must think me a... a wanton.” She dropped the book she was holding onto the adjacent side table and fished a hanky from inside the sleeve of her gown.
Settling back into his chair—hard—Randolph stared at her. “Hardly,” he said. “Lady Comber obviously made me out to be something I am not when she spoke of me with you, and then led me to believe you were in possession of a timid filly. A terrible trick for which I shall take a whip to her when next I see her.”
As he expected, Xenobia’s eyes widened as she gasped. “You wouldn’t!”
Have Yourself a Merry Little Secret : a Christmas collection of historical romance (Have Yourself a Merry Little... Book 2) Page 15
