A Gentleman Undone (22 page)

She moved a step nearer, grip still steady on his arm, the light rose fragrance of her soap infusing his breaths. “Please,” she said. “I cannot do this without you.”

She knew exactly where his weakness lay, didn’t she? He couldn’t walk away from a plea for help. Was she using that now, contriving to yank his puppet-strings the same way she was playing that Corinthian at the table? “Lydia.” He angled his head to make the shortest path
from his mouth to her ear without actually bending, and sent the word out on just enough breath to reach her. “I know I need to trust you, but—”

“You don’t need to trust me.” Her second hand joined the first, the two of them clasped halfway between his wrist and his elbow. “In fact I don’t advise it. But please trust the odds.” Her fingers gave a quick squeeze. “If circumstances haven’t changed in another hour, we’ll consult here again. In the meanwhile, apply yourself to amusements that will keep your counters in your pockets. Have a drink. Find a lady to flirt with. Just be sure you can always see me.” Her hands slid down his arm to fold about his hand. His fingers curled in spite of themselves round hers.

The longer they stood here, the more ways she found to seduce him to her will. He drew one more breath. “Very well. I’ll drink and flirt. But won’t it serve you right if I get into a brawl and go home with someone else.”

“That will teach me a lesson indeed.” He could hear the shape of her smile. She wiggled her fingers free of his and flattened her two hands with his between for an instant, as though she were patting out a mud pie. Then he heard the shush of her skirts as she spun and left him, striding with adamant purpose back to the gaming salon.

H
E DIDN’T
, however, drink or flirt. Alcohol compromised his quickness; no point in adding
that
impairment to a situation that was likely already to tax his brain. As to the flirting, he’d succeeded in making only one circuit of the room, and ruling out two ladies—both of them already juggling the attentions of several would-be suitors—from the list of contenders before a quick glance at Lydia sent all the rest of his surroundings into a dim haze.

She was talking to the banker, with that same vapid animation he’d witnessed on his every previous glance. But she was leaning forward now, forearms on the table, hands clasped.

The signal. His pulse pelted like hail on a slate rooftop. Finally, the deck had turned and it was time for his part of the scheme.

He made his careless way to the vingt-et-un table, where she glanced up as he pulled out the chair to her left. She smiled. Her glance flicked downward, taking in the ridiculous assemblage of clothing he’d thrown on, and her smile spread like spilled honey, slow and sweet and rich with sensual approbation. When her eyes came to his again they were heavy-lidded, as though she’d been drugged by the mere sight of him.

Yes, he’d known she might play it this way. If her guise was to approach every man as a potential protector, then an indifferent manner with him should have come off as conspicuous. He bowed—not too friendly, not too distant—and took his seat.

Three other men sat to Lydia’s right: the Corinthian, to whom she now turned with some remark no doubt calculated to keep him on the string, and beyond him, two older gentlemen who had apparently been proof against her charms. The seating arrangement, of course, would not be accidental. His place at the end, last in every deal, would mean she could incorporate the visible cards of the other players, in addition to her own cards, when she made the mysterious calculations that would drive his wager.

Will took the counters from his pockets and heaped them before him on the table as the first cards came down. Six, eight, three, Lydia’s was a four, and he drew an ace. The banker showed nine.

As the first man set out his bet she angled left, facing him with a smile so bewitching it ought to be burned at
the stake. “Let me guess.” She made a quick survey that took in his person as well as the abundance of counters. One of her hands rose from the table and draped pensively at the ridge of her collarbone. “You’ve just come out of the Navy and you’ve got prize money wearing holes in your pockets.”

Navy
was the pertinent word. Any maritime reference must lead him to
boat
. From boat to
sank
, from sank to
cinq
. Five counters.

She wanted him to bet a hundred pounds on his first card alone. No wading in gradually here.

“Madam, please.” The banker’s tone of voice suggested he’d had to recall her attention too many times already from the gentlemen about her to the game. “Place your bet.”

With her free hand she plucked up one of her pound counters and set it forward, her other hand still at her collarbone performing an idle caress. He could almost hear the drag of her kid-gloved fingertips over her skin.

He could even follow the logic of her strategy in regard to his wager. A ten would bring him twenty-one, and presumably a good quantity of tens remained, to warrant a five-unit bet. “Such a diffident wager from such a forthright lady.” He gave her half a smile as he stacked five counters forward of his cards. “I believe in doing a thing boldly if you’re to do it at all.”

A second card came down before each player. Will lifted the corner. Ten of spades. Good Lord, that was easy.

He flipped his ten faceup and sat back, one elbow atop the back of his chair, his heart going like a runaway wagon down a cobblestoned hill. Of course the banker might still tie him, but at the very least he’d keep his hundred pounds. And he’d made himself popular with the other players at the table. Twenty-one meant the
banker must keep drawing in hopes of the tie, and that meant a good chance the fellow would go bust.

The first two gentlemen stuck after their second cards. Lydia and the Corinthian stuck after three. The banker added a six and a queen to his nine, and had to pay every player.

“Do a thing boldly, indeed.” What a preposterous figure she made, employing one of the little rakes to sweep in her meager two pounds. “But then I suspect you do all manner of things in that fashion.” Neither her face nor her voice betrayed anything beyond the slightly unseemly, slightly desperate attempts to draw him into flirtation. Nevertheless he knew that wrapped up in her tawdry chatter was a private expression of approval and encouragement. She liked the way he played his part.

So, it developed, did he. Well, and why not? What wouldn’t he give, after all, to be someone else, someone so complacent in his notions of how the world would dispose itself to oblige him? Perhaps he might have grown into such a fellow, had one or two or fifteen things been different. For tonight, and for as many nights as their scheme persisted, he could at least try on that life, the way he might try on some velvet-trimmed dinner jacket that didn’t quite fit and was anyway beyond his means.

Therefore he played the role with gusto, adopting a brooding, fist-to-the-jaw, lower-lip-pushed-out posture between turns and a slight fatalistic flourish of the wrist when he must handle his counters either way.

And with every fresh deal, he caught at Lydia’s constant stream of prattle, sifting it through his fingers meticulously as a jewel thief appraising the proceeds of his latest heist.

She addressed herself to the Corinthian: “If I lose five pounds more I vow I shall
quit
this game. You must hold
me to that.” Quit meant
cease
, and cease meant
six
, and that meant one hundred twenty pounds.

To the banker: “You think to ruin me, don’t you? But you see how I hold on, if only by a whisker.” Whisker. Cat.
Quatre
. Four counters.

And to him: “You must have my share of luck along with your own.” (Luck! A secret jab at him! Numbers overrunning her brain like thistles in a knot garden, and she still had capacity to make a joke that only he and she would apprehend!) “I hope you’ll be mindful of that when you see me on the street tomorrow, begging for a crust of bread.” Bread. Wheat.
Huit
. God in Heaven, eight counters. One hundred sixty pounds.

But he did as she directed. He handled his cards carelessly, that she might get a look at them and plan how to proceed. He watched for the cues that told him to buy or stick, and measured them against his own understanding. Fifteen against the banker’s visible nine; he didn’t need to see her touch her right finger to her thumb to know he should buy. Pair of tens against a seven, he’d stick whether or not she fidgeted with her bracelet.

He didn’t win every hand. Even with favorable odds he’d sometimes draw an inopportune card or watch the banker get a good one. On those occasions he fancied he could feel her willing him into steadiness, surrounding him with a confidence so solid he almost believed he could lean his weight against it. Not that he needed that, now. Occasional losses notwithstanding, the trend was clearly in his favor. He shrugged at each defeat, and made asinine remarks as to the merits of losing boldly, and waited, always, for her next coded directive.

Devil only knew how much time had passed before she put up both hands to adjust her hair. The quit signal. He’d lost two hands in a row—thankfully on moderate wagers—and she’d apparently decided the composition of the deck was not to her taste.

Half of him wanted to plant himself in that chair and refuse to budge. What rarefied joy it was to work in secret concert with a woman, their shared interest unsuspected by the others at the table, their awareness of each other heightened every moment by the clandestine nature of their bond.

The other half was more than ready to be done. The sooner they both left this table, the sooner they could acknowledge one another, and celebrate together what they’d achieved. He reaped the counters by fistfuls and stashed them in his pockets, and excused himself to go claim a profit of somewhere near a thousand pounds.

O
NE THOUSAND
, one hundred and sixty-two pounds. Even counting her thirty-eight pounds lost and his forty thrown away at hazard, it was a splendid, splendid beginning.

Lydia slipped from the gaming salon and started down the main hallway. Half an hour more she’d lingered after his exit, flirting with Mr. Keller at her right—a pleasant, innocuous man, Mr. Keller, delighted to flirt and be flattered, but without the means to pursue anything further—and generally making sure no one would have any cause to connect Mr. Blackshear’s time at the table with hers.

Oh, but he’d been magnificent, Mr. Blackshear had. She’d feared, after their earlier conference, that he wouldn’t have the stomach for it after all. But he’d been a bulwark. He’d been a rock. He’d shrugged off losses of a hundred and two hundred pounds like a stallion twitching its flank to throw off a gnat, and hadn’t he looked superb doing it! She would tell him so, in decorous terms. She would praise his resolute poise, and she would joke that he ought to wear that riding coat more often, and perhaps grow his hair to romantic lengths.

Dimmer and dimmer went the light as she moved down the corridor away from the gaming room. By the time she rounded the corner she could scarcely see a thing. She could feel him, though, a warm substantial presence somewhere ahead, and an instant later she felt him beyond any doubt as his hands came out to seize her, and pull her forward into the dark.

He caught her at the waist and lifted her, spinning round with an exuberance that echoed her own. She set her hands on his shoulders, so solid under his coat, and clenched her teeth to forbear laughing aloud. Coins jingled merrily in the reticule that swung from her wrist, and somewhere in his coat-pockets too, a fitting music for this makeshift celebratory dance. Here, unexpectedly, was something new with a man, a chaste congress of body, spirit, and brain, a pleasure she might have dismissed as no worthwhile pleasure at all, had she merely heard it described.

Her skirts twisted round her legs as he spun her, cool and delicious against the few bare inches between stocking-top and chemise, and when he set her on her feet she teetered for a step, hobbled by the skirts that had still to unwind, captive in her own sarcenet snare.

His hands stayed at her waist, steadying. His breaths sounded in the stillness, one breath and two. And of a sudden he crushed her to him: his arm bound her at the waist, his other hand splayed at the back of her neck, and his mouth came down hot and ravenous on hers.

Chapter Twelve