Cynthia Bailey Pratt (15 page)

Watching Sir Carleton’s profile, Danita marveled that it did not alter in the slightest, whether his stacks of coins hid his wineglass or dwindled to half a dozen lonely sovereigns. She was not herself conversant with the intricacies of whist, but there was something fascinating in the undulating cards spilling, like a frozen rivulet, across the felt-topped table. Time passed without her realizing it.

Edward Stowe, hanging over the back of her chair, sometimes whistled softly at some turn of the cards whose meaning was lost to her. No one spoke now, except to say, “Small slam,” or “Grand slam,” like the sudden crack of breaking ice beneath unwary feet. Once, when Lord Framstead straightened with an excited murmur and slapped his fist into his palm, the duke had raised his eyebrows to stare at him before turning his viperish eyes on Danita. His thin lips smiled before he dropped his attention again to the cards. After that. Lord Framstead kept silent.

Perhaps because of the silence, Danita felt more and more the tightening tension in the room. The stack of coins before Sir Carleton began once more to mount, this time inexorably, as the number of tricks before him lengthened. Faster and faster, the hands were played out. Danita found herself twisting the silk of her gown in a perspiring hand.

“Not long now,” Framstead murmured irrepressibly.

She only knew the game was over when Sir Carleton stood up. Quickly, her mind grasped that the other players had no fund of coins to match his. He turned and gave her a little bow, as though thanking her.

The tension snapped like a rein on a runaway horse. Without thinking, Danita jumped up from her chair and flung her arms about him. “I’m so glad,” she said. “I’m so glad!”

Chapter Eight

Immediately, Danita stepped away, feeling Sir Carleton’s great frame rigid in her arms. When she saw the tinge of red in his tanned face, she herself went scarlet. Her eyes flicked right and left. The flabby man poured another drink from the bottle in the center of the table and toasted her with a leer. The duke himself looked up from the last cards and a hot gleam came into his cold eyes.

“Excuse me,” Danita whispered, almost speechless. “The excitement ...”

“I should not have brought you,” Sir Carleton answered in a low tone. Turning about at once with a smile, he said, “Thank you. Your Grace, for a most instructive evening.”

“You are the most damnably lucky fellow, Blacklock. I felicitate you.” The lean nobleman’s words were civil, but Danita felt his eyes rake over her as though she too were part of Sir Carleton’s winnings. Suddenly, her gown seemed far too low and it was all Danita could do to keep her hands from covering what was revealed.

Somehow, she managed to find enough poise to nod to the duke as she followed Sir Carleton from the room. The next she knew, she was again mewed up in a smelly chair, being bounced atrociously in the direction of New Bond Street. But when the door opened and she was freed, the softness of new-mown grass met her slippered feet and the cool scent of the Avon filled the air.

“It is too early to return you home. People are still abroad and you might be seen,” Sir Carleton said after telling the chairmen to wait. “Will you walk with me for a little while? We will see the fireworks from here. I promise to take you back the moment they start, so you may avoid your great-aunt.”

“I must change my gown before she comes.” Her objection seemed to come from outside herself. Danita had no wish to leave him to walk alone in the peace of the Bowling Green above the softly calling river. She took the hand he held out.

Once safely out of the earshot of the chairmen. Sir Carleton said, “I never should have taken you there! What the devil was I thinking of?”

“I imagine you were thinking of winning,” Danita answered.

“As if that matters a damn. It was you I should have considered, Danita. You and you alone. Did you see how they looked at you? As if ... as if you were a...”

She bit her lip at the memory. The glow of the lingering twilight came diffused through low clouds and he could not see any sign of her embarrassment. He himself was just a darker shade against the silver-green of the smooth lawn. “I saw. It wasn’t important. You won, didn’t you?”

She could understand now that a card game held a certain interest, though she still failed to see why high stakes made it any more enjoyable than playing for pins. She tried to forget hurling herself into his arms in an ecstasy of relief when she realized he would not now need to leave Bath. Why his remaining near her was so important, Danita preferred not to consider.

“I could have smashed their faces,” he growled, paying no attention to her. “I cannot believe myself so stupid as to never imagine what they would think of you. How could I expose a gently bred girl to an atmosphere like that?’’ Flinging away her hand, absently retained, Carleton turned as though to lead her back to her conveyance.

Danita followed across the grass, seeking light words to calm him. “You are right about the atmosphere. I must reek of smoke. The fresh air is very reviving.” She touched his sleeve and he faced her, though impatiently. “What an idea you must have of me. Sir Carleton, to think me gently reared? Do you forget what position I held when first we met? Don’t concern yourself with my sensibilities. As you said before, who notices a companion? Tomorrow, not one of those men would look twice at me if they passed me on the street.”

A shadow of his usual smile crossed his face. “I have always known people are blind, but that seems to be beyond the bounds of possibility. I should know you anywhere.”

Danita wanted to answer him in the same vein. She felt tied to him with threads she could not explain, any more than she could break them. But a lifetime of hiding her feelings robbed her of the words to express her tenderer emotions. For a moment, they stood in silence.

Then Carleton said, “Forgive me my outburst. Miss Wingrove. Gambling, like any other sport, has exhausting effects.”

“You seemed so calm at the time. It was I ...” Her embarrassment over her unladylike behavior returned in a boiling rush. She was grateful that when he spoke again, his tone was almost professorial.

“In gambling, as in so many things, there is a certain code to be obeyed. It is against this code—for lack of a better word—to show pleasure in winning. I suppose its true purpose is to prevent us from showing sorrow at losing. All the same, you could not know anything about that. I should not have taken you there to learn it. I beg your pardon for that, as well.”

“There is nothing to forgive. I went with you of my own free will.”

“You should not have done so.”

“But you persuaded me so prettily.”

He overlooked her smile and said seriously, “There, you see, the entire responsibility is mine. And I apologize.”

“If you are going to apologize for taking me there and ruining my reputation, then tell me at least it was not in vain. I could not follow the game very clearly, being ignorant of whist. Did you win?”

By the moon, rising in the sky behind them, she saw that his expression was one of amazement. “You are the most remarkable female I think I’ve ever come across. Does nothing faze you? Do you never want to run away and cry?”

Danita could not tell if he remembered those moments in the Gardens when he’d found her making an emotional spectacle of herself. She’d come close to crying then, but only when he’d spoken to her so kindly. Now, she tossed her head and said confidently, “Never! Now, tell me, how much did you win?”

“No fortune. The duke failed to break me, however.”

“Was he trying to?”

“He did his best. I suppose he hadn’t counted on my knowing a gentleman’s game like whist. He hasn’t a very high opinion of country bumpkins like myself.”

“You’re not!”

“No, but he thinks anyone not born within the sight of St. Paul’s dome to be a rumptious chawbacon.”

“Well, all I can say is he is not my idea of a duke.”

Carleton’s low chuckle was what she’d most wanted to hear. Confidingly, she tucked her hand in the crook of his arm, shaking back the concealing cloak to show the gleaming fabric of the gown he’d chosen for her. The evening air moved warmly over her revealed bodice and half-revealed shoulders.

“Shall we walk a little before I must go?” She searched herself for shame at her forwardness and found not an atom of it. Was this how Berenice felt when she pressed her company on an unsuspecting male? Danita silently promised she’d not scold Berenice for this sin in future. There was something exhilarating in feeling her female power this way.

“With great pleasure. Miss Wingrove,” he said, bowing.

“You called me Danita not a moment since.”

“Did I?’’ Sir Carleton said, hardly seeming to attend.

Downcast, Danita freed herself and walked down to the water without speaking, her feet whispering on the gravel footpath. The Avon ran past with a glimmer of silver and pearl. From across the water, borne by the mysterious vagaries of a breeze, came a distant music from the Sydney Gardens. Sometimes she could hear laughter as though issuing from a dream-world.

If this was a dream, she wondered how soon the morning would come, and with it the awakening back into the mundane details of her dull life. She turned her back on the river to find Carleton, only to discover he stood close behind her. Her heart began to beat in a dangerous rhythm as she, her head tilted upward, recalled the tender brush of his lips against hers.

Nervously, she stammered out her thoughts, “I almost feel as though I were dreaming. My beautiful dress and the music and...and ...” Danita would have given her soul to be able to say, “and you,” but she caught back the words, for how could she know if he wanted to hear them? She was his luck, perhaps, nothing more.

“You’ve been very kind to me, Sir Carleton. I don’t know how to thank you. Kindness is not something I’ve met with very often.” Oh, dear, how sorry for herself she sounded.

“No?” he said. “I find it easy to be kind to you.” He paused, and Danita felt a deep trembling shake her self-control. Then he cleared his throat and went on, breaking the tension, “And are these the things you dream about? Fine dresses, summer evenings, et cetera? I would have thought you’d have some lofty ambition.”

“No, not lofty. Only ...”

“What is your dream, Danita?”

The warmth in his voice flustered her. Fortunately, in answer to that particular question, she did not need to think. “Independence. I never want to have to ask anything of anyone again as long as I live.”

“Ah, yes, independence.” The warmth was still there, but it was overlaid with amusement. Stepping a little away from her, he bent and picked up a stone, larger than the rest of the gravel under their feet. “Most women achieve a limited independence by marrying,” he said lightly.

“How can independence be limited?” she asked with a smile that said the question was hypothetical. The moon had risen free of the veiling clouds and sent its beams down, defeating the twilight. Still she dared to ask, “What of you? Have you never wished to marry?’’

“Once. A long time ago. It became impossible.”

“What happened? I’m sorry...it’s none...”

“She became a nun.”

“With so much to live for?” The exclamation was involuntary. She could not imagine giving up loving Carleton for a life of permanent maidenhood.

The large shoulders shrugged as he turned the stone over in his fingers. “She was called. At first, she tried to fight it, but I knew she was not happy. How could I stand in her way?’’

“Are you a Catholic?”

“No.” He chuckled and tossed the stone into the river, where it left not even a ripple behind. “My grandfather had an argument with the priest and said he’d convert rather than see the man again. There are still a few people on my estate who cross themselves when Black Charlie is mentioned. They say his ghost walks my house, but I’ve never seen him. I put him down to creaking floorboards. Are those fireworks never going to go up?”

Was he tired of her company so soon? Danita felt she could spend hours listening to him talk, waiting eagerly for the faint traces of his home in his speech. “Perhaps it is too inclement for them to be seen. It is rather misty,” she offered.

“No, look.” Following his pointing finger, Danita saw a small light, no bigger than a firefly, rising into the air. After a moment, in which she lost sight of it, there was a fall of twinkling lights, vague and indistinct. The flat sound of the explosion came back to them across the river.

“Not perfect conditions,” Carleton said matter-of-factly. “Come, we should be leaving.”

On the way back to the chairmen, Carleton asked, “If, by chance, your great-aunt does find out about tonight’s escapade, what will you do?”

“What I shall do in any case. I have applied to some parents of my former students for references. When my time with Mrs. Clively is over, I shall advertise to become a governess.”

“You have all this planned out?”

“Of course. My residence with my great-aunt was never to be permanent. No more so than my employment by Miss Massingham.”

“And is this what you mean by independence, Danita? Wandering from one temporary employment to the next?”

A little stung, she replied, “I hope one day to have again an establishment of my own. My last attempt in that direction was, as you know, unsatisfactory.” She challenged him. “I do not think you should speak so slightingly of my employment. Sir Carleton. For nearly seven years I made my own way with my school. I did not live from hand to mouth, waiting for my luck to change.”

“Yet, your luck did change, eventually. As you yourself reminded me, your millinery business did not succeed.”

“I did my best.”

“I know. Believe me, I’m not sneering at you. Quite the opposite. I respect you. Stable and sensible you. I wish I could be that way. I hope one day ... I know you’ll make a success of governessing. Or whatever you set your hand to. Listen.” He stopped walking and touched her arm. “If you ever want for anything...I’m the richer by five hundred pounds tonight, through my association with you....”

“Five hundred pounds,” she breathed, tottering. Then she remembered he’d recently lost eight hundred and her inability to understand a gambler’s life grew stronger. He should stop while he was on the right side of the ledger. She knew he’d netted a fortune by his bet on Milliner’s Kiss. Wasn’t that enough, even if he had debts?