A Gentleman Undone (15 page)

Chapter Eight

P
RINCE
S
QUARE-JAW
. Really.

With the first two fingers of her left hand Lydia tipped Edward’s chin up and back. With her right hand she applied the straight razor. The tiny rough beginnings of a beard ticked against the blade and gave way, up the column of his throat, up the underside of his jaw, to the clean right angle of his chin. She swished the razor in her water bowl and wiped it deftly on a towel, one side and then the other.

He’d closed his eyes while she was brushing on the soap and still sat that way, head tilted, outspread hands resting on his trouser-thighs, as calm and relaxed and accustomed to this as … well, as a prince. Perhaps a square-jawed one. She applied the blade again, clearing another path of smooth skin among the lathered stubble.

In the mirror she saw her own shape behind him, prim and workmanlike, the prince’s diligent valet. Often she did this naked, or in some interesting state of dress. Today she wore her plainest high-necked nightgown, and a flannel dressing-gown belted tight. She had a lesson to prepare, and no time to squander on a dissipated romp.

“By the by,” he said as the blade came off his chin and arced through sunlight to the water bowl. “I’m afraid I must ask you to give up the diversion of taking over my cards sometimes at Beecham’s.”

“I beg your pardon?” Her hand froze where it was, just above the bowl.

“Only the proprietors have a certain image they’d like to keep up.” He didn’t open his eyes. “To have a lady playing with the gentlemen is a bit too reminiscent of one of the lower hells, or so it was put to me. I’m sorry, love. I know that was one of your pet amusements.”

Don’t call me love
. She plunged the blade into the water. Really, what he called her was the least of her concerns.

She’d known her time at the table might end. She ought to have been better prepared. “I hadn’t realized I offended anyone.” Four hundred and ten pounds sat in the drawer of that table by the window, and four hundred and ten pounds were not nearly enough.

“Nor I, else I should have said something before. But now we’re both the wiser.”

Indeed. The razor beat a bitter chime against the china bowl, striking resolve into her marrow. If one path was blocked to her, she’d just have to find another. She touched the blade to the towel again, and spoke lightly. “There are gaming hells where ladies play?”

“I shouldn’t call them
ladies
.” His half-smooth, half-stubbled throat rippled with a chuckle. “Desperate creatures, and the proprietors know it. Think nothing of raking in a woman’s last farthing and allowing her to play on for graver stakes.”

“Those sound like dreadful places, altogether.” One more stroke up the length of his throat. “Do you mean you must play against the house itself? Not against each other, as at Beecham’s?”

“To be sure. The fellow who deals the cards, or spins
the wheel, is in the establishment’s employ. No chance of him forgiving a loss.”

No chance of getting a turn with the deck, either, and ordering the cards to her liking. She swished the blade in water and watched in the mirror as it cleared a swath of his jaw. “I don’t know why anyone would wish to play under those conditions. To never be the banker puts you at a disadvantage in games like vingt-et-un, for example, where ties are awarded to the banker.”

“Oh, but the rules differ.” Ah. Now they came to it. “I think there are houses where a tie simply counts for a tie, no money passing either way. And some houses place constraints on the banker’s play.”

“Constraints?” Mildly she repeated the word, while her attention sharpened to an edge that might put the razor to shame.

“There are houses where the players may stick at fifteen but the banker must keep drawing cards until he reaches seventeen. And then he
must
stick once he’s reached it. And often you see the first card dealt faceup.”

She’d held the blade away from his face while he spoke, and a sudden jagged glitter of light told her her hand was shaking. She doused it, razor and all, in the basin, shaping that chaotic agitation into a few fierce flicks of the wrist. “The banker’s first card shows?” she said, because she must say something.

“The player’s first card as well. So I don’t suppose there’s really any advantage.”

Fool of a man, there was
every
advantage. The visible cards alone! Late in the deck they would make a tremendous difference in her knowledge of what cards remained. Even early in a shuffle, the banker’s first card could tell her things. If he showed an ace, she would know his prospects were good, and she could wager accordingly. Add to this the unutterably elegant constraint
of the banker’s continuing to draw until he reached seventeen …

Something overhead caught her eye: a dozen spots of sunlight dancing to the rhythm of her razor in the washbasin. She let her hand go still and watched the spots slow and subside, each sliding into its proper place like a number in a solved equation. She might devise some calculations. The variables were too many for her to know exactly how to play every hand, but with pencil and paper and hours of rigorous, satisfying work she might—

“Lydia.” The word barged into her sweet symphony of thought like a screech from one of the reed instruments. Singular. She’d never supposed there might be a right way and a wrong way to pronounce her name. “Have you gone into a trance, there?” He’d opened his eyes, finally, to investigate the lapse in her ministrations.

“Forgive me. I was distracted by the light.” She wiped the razor dry and glanced at the mirror to find he’d closed his eyes again.

Some men there were who knew how to look at a lady, and make her feel she’d been seen. Or perhaps there was no question of knowing how. Some men just looked at ladies that way.

Nothing to the purpose. Here was the man to whom she’d attached herself, and here was the task immediately before her. She angled the blade, set it to his cheek and drew it back, the soap mounding up as she went. But some men, one couldn’t help observing, would have kept their eyes open.
Tell me what absorbs you so
, such a man might say.
I wonder at your thoughts
. He might even guess:
It’s to do with cards, isn’t it?

She brought the razor away and tipped it above the washbasin, its dollop of lather and bristles sliding off to land with a faint
plash
among the rest of the sudsy flotsam. Some men had no valet or even mistress, and must
see to their own shaving. Standing shirtless before a mirror, perhaps, the towel draped carelessly over one well-articulated shoulder.

Not that anything was amiss with Edward’s shoulders. Indeed his whole form could bear comparison with any man’s. Still, when she’d shaved her last stroke, wiped the remnants of soap from his face, and then glanced in the mirror to find him eyeing her with the first stirrings of unmistakable intent, she pivoted away to catch up his waistcoat.

“Perfectly timed.” She gave the waistcoat a brisk shake. “I do believe that’s your phaeton I hear outside.” Perfectly timed, indeed. The shave was usually followed by several minutes of more particular attentions, if not a full-scale return to the bed.

He glanced over his shoulder at the window, though of course he could not see to the street below. One corner of his mouth pulled down with indecision. His palm, flat atop his right thigh, smoothed the nankeen of his trousers. Clearly he was struggling with some personal calculus involving the questions of how quickly she could work, how long he could decently keep his driver waiting, and whether or not his appetite had been roused to such a pitch as to render the first two questions moot.

She moved her thumb infinitesimally over the fine stitching at the waistcoat’s armhole, her only outward manifestation of unease. What would she do if he should bid her come and kneel? She’d never refused him before.

No. I don’t want to
. The novel words loitered just back of her teeth. She could taste them. She could feel the way they would resonate from the roof of her mouth to the bridge of her nose. She could picture Edward’s astonishment, but her brain balked at picturing what might come next, in answer to such open defiance.

Never mind. A clever woman needn’t resort to defiance. “What a fine waistcoat this is.” She moved a step
nearer. “Did you choose it on purpose because you knew you’d be going to luncheon at your mother’s house?” She would mention his mother just as many times as were necessary to wilt his ardor.

“Hang it, Lydia.” He got grudgingly to his feet. “Why did you have to squander so much time in staring at the ceiling and talking of cards? I had no idea the hour had grown so late. Next time you must keep to the task.”

“Indeed I shall,” she said as she helped him into his waistcoat, and “The fault is mine,” and “Your mother is fortunate to have so dutiful a son.” Near a dozen such trifling pleasantries she’d uttered by the time the front door closed behind him.

She stood for a moment with her back pressed to the door, her palms flat against it at thigh-height on either side. Her muscles all tensed, unaccountably, gathering themselves as though Edward might turn about and pound on the door to demand his indulgence after all—of course he wouldn’t—and as though she might dig in her heels and oppose his efforts with all her weight and strength.

She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. But she stood nevertheless, poised above her own revulsion like a tightrope-walker above a moat boiling with sharp-toothed eels, until she heard the clop of horses pulling his phaeton into the street. Then she mashed the strange sentiments small, put them away, and went to begin her work.

I
VOW
I can’t tell one from another. You?” Nick spoke in an undertone, though there was little chance of his being overheard.

“The tiny red-faced one that can’t so much as lift its head is Andrew’s latest. Master Frederick. Kitty’s got him now.” Will nodded toward the corner of the room where babies were being passed about.

“Well for Heaven’s sake I hope I know
that
much.” Indeed they’d all been invited expressly for the purpose of viewing that most recent addition to the family, though by some obscure process the event had mushroomed into a full-on celebration of Blackshear fertility. Already there were ten children in the next generation, and all ten were present in his eldest brother’s drawing room, some doing their best to sit straight and be worthy of the honor; some conducting themselves with blissful infant ignorance of manners. “Keeping track of the very smallest is no trick. It’s when they get a bit older that they all start to blend together.” Nick gestured at the sofa nearest the bow window where they stood. “I believe one of the two climbing on Mirkwood may be my godson, but I’m hanged if I can tell you which one.”

“Don’t look to me for help. I would have sworn those were both girls.” He oughtn’t to say so—doubtless he’d offend some parent if he was heard—but his brother’s poorly stifled snort of laughter was a tonic he couldn’t resist. It seemed years since he’d laughed so easily, so carelessly with Nick. With any of his siblings, for that matter.

Across the room his elder sister glanced up from the baby she’d been admiring, and smiled. Kitty was Miss Slaughter’s precise opposite, wasn’t she? All he needed was half a second to see her fierce joy and relief at the sight of her two younger brothers giving way to some secret hilarity, as they’d been wont to do in simpler years.

He cut his own gaze away from the emotion in hers, fixing vaguely on the sofa where Martha’s Mr. Mirkwood was in conversation with Kitty’s Mr. Bridgeman. Surely he would soon come to feel as though he belonged among these people once more. They were his kin, after all, his blood, the only souls in the world who
shared his memories of a delicate mother and a sober-minded father who’d both left the breathing world too soon.

And yet he’d found himself making excuses to avoid them, these months since coming home. He’d had more to do with Nick than any of the others, but that had been largely on account of business. Even now, though he might have gone on joking about the little nieces and nephews, a particular obligation was tugging at him. He brushed a bit of lint off one cuff. “Do you remember that Grigsby fellow you introduced me to? The one who set up the trust?”

“Saw him just yesterday by Lincoln’s Inn.” Nick swung about to fix him with the full force of his curiosity. “What, are you wanting his services again? Found another orphan in need of an anonymous benefactor?”

Will shook his head. “Rather I’m hoping to do a service for a lady this time.”

“Not the boy’s mother, I hope. According to what Grigsby tells me, you’ve already done more for that family than anyone could reasonably expect.”

Grigsby needed to learn a bit of discretion, clearly. And he was in no position to render judgments as to the degree of Will’s obligation. “No, it’s another acquaintance and the money is all her own. She’s put a bit by and she’d like to invest it, but she hasn’t the means to retain a man of business. I offered to see whether I couldn’t find someone to help.” He laced his hands behind his back and stretched his shoulders, a gesture that would, with luck, suggest an attitude of casual indifference.