The Duke's Gamble

She turned back to face the others. Nearly all the men were grinning, or rolling their eyes. Most of them had seen such gifts arrive before for her or her sisters, and just as promptly go back out the door again to their hapless senders. They understood. So why hadn’t the mighty Duke of Guilford?

She leaned forward, her palms flat on the edge of the table and her voice full of determination.

“Consider yourselves all to be on your guard,” she said. “You know what to do. Penny House cannot afford a breath of any scandal to tarnish its good name, and I know I can trust you to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

But could she dare say the same of Guilford?

Alec, Baron Westbrook, stood in the shadows of the wall across the street from Penny House and watched the members climb up the steps and into the club for a night of genteel gaming. Light from the scores of candles in the chandeliers streamed from every window, and even from here Westbrook could hear the happy rise and fall of all those well-bred male voices, happy to be eating rich food, drinking smuggled French wines, and winning and losing vast sums of money as if it were nothing but sand.

Westbrook stepped back farther from the street, pulling his hat down lower over his face. He knew all about Penny House. He’d been one of the first flock of members approved by the committee when the club had first opened. He’d joined, of course, and come to see what all the fuss had been over the three red-haired sisters holding court as if the place was their palace. He’d come, because it was the thing to do, and he’d played, because he couldn’t help himself, not where dice were concerned.

But after the first fortnight, he hadn’t returned. He’d found the place too oppressive, too genteel, even stuffy, to suit his idea of amusement, as if the Penny women really were true ladies, ready to slap your wrist for any behavior they deemed untoward. Why, he might as well be at home with his widowed mother, being criticized for wasting his life and his fortune.

Most of all, he’d hated how the forced gentility of Penny House had altered the gaming tables. There was none of the wild excitement that Westbrook craved most from gaming, the raucous, drunken revelry and the underlying edge of danger that was so at odds with his ordinary life. He preferred to try his chances in the lowest gaming dens, ones full of thieves and scoundrels and sailors on leave, than to suffer the rarified pretensions of Penny House.

The only trouble with the dens was that they expected a man to pay his debts at once. They didn’t make allowances for bad luck. They were chary with credit, even for a gentleman and a lord, and they hired bully boys with knives ready to extricate the losses from those who weren’t quick about it.

Blast Father for leaving him a title, but no estate to support it! If only Father hadn’t blown out his brains with a pistol and left his family penniless, then he wouldn’t be forced to grovel to Mama’s brother for every last farthing. Uncle Jesse was in trade, shipping and coal and tin and other vile, low activities, and though he would inherit it all once his uncle died, the old miser didn’t understand that a lord needed funds to match his title. Instead he whined about losses and reverses, squeezing every penny and actually suggesting that Westbrook might look into trade himself.

Westbrook watched another chaise stop at the club, the light from the lanterns flanking the entrance catching the gold-trimmed coat of arms painted on the chaise’s door. Westbrook didn’t have a carriage of his own; he couldn’t even afford to keep a chaise. Maybe one day, when his luck with the dice changed, or when Uncle Jesse finally went to the devil where he belonged.

When Penny House first opened, the sisters had been free with credit to the membership to encourage the play. But once the club had become so damned fashionable, they’d tightened up the lines again, and Westbrook couldn’t be sure what kind of welcome he’d receive.

But that was going to change, wasn’t it? Scandal would do that, and no scandal was bigger in a gaming house, high or low, than cheating. Cheats made everyone anxious, uneasy, ready to point a finger at everyone else. The fashionable world would shift to another club, the wealthiest gentlemen would go elsewhere for their entertainment. The sisters would welcome a gentleman like him in their doors, and they’d be happy to give him credit to keep him there.

He took one last look at the brightly lit club. Not yet, not tonight. But soon he’d be back inside, with credit to spare as he sat at the hazard table.

And this time, he meant to win.

Chapter Three

T hat night Amariah came early to the hazard room, standing to one side of Mr. Walthrip’s seat at his tall director’s desk where she could see the table and all the players gathered around it. There were also twice as many guards in the room tonight, tall and silent as they watched the players, not the play, and Amariah was glad of their presence. She’d never before entered this room at this hour of the evening, choosing instead to come only when it was near to closing and the crowds had thinned. From the club’s opening night, Pratt had advised the three sisters that it was better for them to avoid the hazard table at its busiest. He’d warned them that the hazard room was not a fit place for ladies, even at Penny House, and how with such substantial sums being won and lost each time the dice tumbled from their box, the players often could not contain their emotions, or their tempers.

Finally seeing it for herself, Amariah had to agree with Pratt. Special brass lamps hung low over the table to illuminate the play, and by their light the players’ faces showed all the basest human emotions, from greed to cunning to avarice to envy, to rage and despair, with howls and oaths and wild accusations to match. Only Walthrip, sitting high on his stool, remained impassive, his droning voice proclaiming the winners as his long-handled rake claimed the losers’ little piles of mother-of-pearl markers.

Tonight fortune was playing no favorites, with the wins bouncing from one player to the next, yet still the crowd pressed like hungry jackals three and four deep around the green-topped table. It was a side of these gentlemen—for despite their behavior now, they were all gentlemen, most peers, among the highest lords of the land—that Amariah had never seen, and as she studied each face in turn, it seemed that any one of them could be capable of writing the anonymous letter, just as any of them might be tempted to cheat the odds in his favor. She’d always considered herself a good judge of a person’s character, and now she watched closely, looking for any small sign or gesture that might be a clue. She was also there as much to be seen as to see, for the same reason she’d had Pratt double the guards: she wanted the letter writer to understand she’d taken his charge seriously.

Absently she smoothed her long kid gloves over her wrist as her glance passed over the men. Could it be Lord Repton’s youngest son, newly sent down from school and working hard at establishing his reputation as a man of the town? Was it Sir Henry Allen, gaunt and high-strung, and rumored to have squandered his family’s fortune on a racehorse who’d then gone lame? Or was it the Duke of Guilford…?

Guilford! With a jolt, her wandering gaze stopped, locked with his across the noisy, jostling crowd. He was dressed for evening in a beautifully tailored dark blue coat over a pale blue waistcoat embroidered with silver dragons that twinkled in the lamps’ diffused light. While most gentlemen looked rumpled and worn by this hour of the night, he seemed miraculously fresh, his linen crisp and unwilted, his jaw gleaming with the sheen of a recently passed razor. He didn’t crouch down over the table like the others, but stood apart, the same way she was doing. His arms were folded loosely over his chest, and his green eyes focused entirely—entirely!—on her.

Fuming in silence at his audacity, she snapped her fan open. Of course he’d sought her out, not just in Penny House, but in this room; there’d be no other reason for him to be here at the hazard table. She knew the habits and quirks of every one of the club’s members, and Guilford never ventured into the hazard room, neither as a player nor as a spectator. For a man who prided himself on his charm and civility, the wild recklessness of hazard held no appeal, and it would take a sizable reason for him to appear here now.

A reason, say, like the bracelet she’d returned earlier this afternoon.

As if reading her thoughts, he smiled at her, a slow, lazy, brazenly seductive smile that seemed to float toward her over the frenzy of the game.

To her mortification she felt her cheeks grow hot. Gentlemen gawked and gazed at her all the time at Penny House—she was perfectly aware that being decorative was a large part of her role as hostess—but somehow, after last night, it seemed different with Guilford. It felt different, in a way that made absolutely no sense, as if they were sharing something very private, very intimate between them—something that, as far as she was concerned, did not exist and never would.

She made a determined small harrumph, and raised her chin. She couldn’t believe he’d look at her in such a way in so public a place as this, with so many others as witnesses. Not, of course, that any of these gentlemen were ready to witness anything but the dice dancing across the green cloth. She and the duke might have been the only ones in the room for all the rest might notice. Guilford knew this, too, just as he’d known she’d be here, and his smile widened, enough to show his infamous single dimple.

Indignation rippled through her, and the fan fluttered more rapidly in her hand. Hadn’t he understood the note she’d returned with the bracelet? She’d been polite, but firm, excruciatingly explicit in offering no hope. Had he even read it? She shook her head and frowned in the sternest glare she could muster, and pointedly began to look away.

But before she could, he nodded, tossing his dark, wavy hair back from his brow, and then, to her horror, he winked.

It was, she decided, time to retreat.

“I am returning to the front parlor,” she said to the guard behind Mr. Walthrip. “Summon me at once if anything changes.”

With her head high, she quickly slipped through the crowd to the doorway and into the hall, greeting, smiling, chatting, falling back into her customary routine as if nothing were amiss. Down the curving staircase, to her favorite post before the Italian marble fireplace in the front room. Here she was able to see every gentleman who came or went through the front door, and here she could stand and receive them like a queen, with the row of silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece behind her.

“Ah, good evening, my lord!” she called, raising her voice so the elderly marquis could hear her. “I trust a footman is bringing your regular glass of canary?”

“The lackey ran off quick as a hare the moment he saw me,” the white-haired marquis said with a wheezing cackle, seizing Amariah’s hand in his gnarled fingers. “You know how to make a man happy, my dear Miss Penny. If my wife had half your talents, why, I’d be home with her twice as often!”

“Double the halves, and halve the double! Oh, my lord, no wonder you’re such a marvel at whist!” Amariah used the excuse of opening her fan to draw her hand free from his. It didn’t matter that the marquis was old enough to be her grandfather; the same club rules applied. “What a head you have for ciphering!”

“Dear, dear Miss Penny, if only I could halve my years for your sake!” The marquis sighed sorrowfully as he took the glass of wine from the footman’s tray. “Here now, Guilford, you’re a young buck. You show Miss Penny the appreciation she deserves.”

“Oh, I’ll endeavor to oblige,” Guilford said, bowing as the old marquis shuffled away with his wine in hand to join another friend.

“Good evening, your grace,” Amariah said, determined to greet Guilford like any other member of the club. “How glad we are to have you join us. Might I offer you something to drink, or a light supper before you head for the tables?”

“What you might offer me, Miss Penny, is an explanation, for I’m sorely confused.” He smiled, adding a neat, self-mocking little bow. “Did you intend to refuse my apology as well as the bracelet?”

“I refused the gift, your grace,” Amariah said. They were standing side by side, which allowed her to nod and smile at the gentlemen passing through the hallway without having to face Guilford himself. “I gave you my reasons for so doing in my note.”

He made a disparaging little grunt. “A note which might be printed out by the hundreds, as common as a broadsheet, for all that it showed the personal interest of the lady who purportedly wrote it.”

“I did write it, your grace,” she said warmly. “I always do.”

“Following by rote the words as composed by your solicitor?”

“Following the words of my choosing!” she said as she nodded and smiled to a marquis and his brother-in-law as they passed by. “What about my words did you not understand, your grace? What did I not make clear?”

“If you didn’t like the rubies, you should just say so,” he said, more wounded than irate. “Robitaille’s got a whole shop full of other baubles for you to choose from. You can go have your pick.”

“Whether I like rubies or not has nothing to do with anything, your grace,” she said. He was being purposefully obtuse, and her patience, already stretched thin, was fraying fast. “My sisters and I have never accepted any gifts from any gentlemen. It’s not in the spirit of my father’s wishes for us, or for Penny House.”

“It’s not in the spirit of being a lady to send back a ruby bracelet,” he declared. “It’s unnatural.”

“For my sisters and me, your grace, it’s the most natural thing in the world,” she said. “If a gentlemen does wish to show his especial appreciation, then we suggest that a contribution be made instead to the Penny House charity fund.”

Again he made that grumbly, growl of displeasure. “Where’s the pleasure in making a contribution to charity, I ask you that?”

Her smile now included him as well as the others passing by. She’d long ago learned to tell when a man had realized he was losing, and she could hear that unhappy resignation now in Guilford’s voice. But she wouldn’t gloat. She’d likewise learned long ago that it was far better to let a defeated man salvage his pride however he could than to crow in victory. That was how duels began, and though she doubted that Guilford would call her out for pistols at dawn over a ruby bracelet, she could still afford to be a gracious winner.

“You will not take the bracelet, then?” he asked, one final attempt. “Nor anything else in its stead from old Robitaille’s shop?”