Lady Allerton's Wager

She blushed even harder at that but her mouth set in a stony line. ‘What I would have done is immaterial, my lord, since you lost. You claimed never to renege!’

Marcus shrugged. ‘I lied.’

‘A liar and a cheat,’ Beth said, in a tone that dripped contempt. ‘I repeat, my man of business will call upon yours on the morrow, my lord, and will expect you to have ready the title to Fairhaven to hand over.’

The study door closed behind her with a decided snap and Marcus heard the quick, angry tap of her footsteps receding across the marble hall. He picked the dice up casually in one hand and sat down in one of the chairs. A whimsical smile touched his lips. He could not believe that his judgement had been so faulty. To mistake a lady for a Cyprian, even given the circumstances…He had been thoroughly misled by his desire, like a youth in his salad days. Led by the nose—or some other part of his anatomy, perhaps. It had never happened to him before.

He tossed the dice absent-mindedly in his hand. So he had been richly deceived and for an intriguing reason. He wanted to know more about that. He wanted to know more of the lady. Damn it, he still wanted her. Marcus shifted uncomfortably in his chair. And he needed a drink. Urgently.

Justin found him in the refreshment room after he had already downed a glass of brandy in one swallow. Justin watched him take a refill and despatch it the same way, and raised his eyebrows.

‘Unlucky in love, Marcus?’

‘Unlucky in games of chance,’ Marcus said feelingly. He took Justin’s arm and drew him into the shelter of one of the pillars, away from prying gossips. ‘Justin, you know more of West Country genealogy than I! Tell me, does Kit Mostyn have a sister?’

Justin nodded. ‘He has a widowed younger sister, Charlotte. Allegedly a blonde beauty, but she lives retired so it is difficult to say with certainty.’

Marcus frowned. Beth had never been a blonde and she could scarcely be described as retiring. Perhaps she was Mostyn’s mistress after all. Yet something in him rebelled at such a thought.

‘What is all this about, Marcus?’ Justin was asking, looking puzzled. ‘I thought you were about to make a new conquest, old fellow, not indulge in a mystery play!’

‘So did I,’ Marcus said thoughtfully. His face lightened and he held up the glass. ‘Only find me the bottle and I will tell you the whole story!’

‘I cannot believe that you just did that, Beth.’

Christopher Mostyn sounded mild, but his cousin knew full well that he was angry. She had known him well enough and long enough to tell.

Beth sighed. ‘It was your idea to escort me there, Kit—’

‘I may have escorted you to the Cyprians’ Ball, but I did not expect you to behave like one!’

Now Kit’s voice sounded clipped, forbidding further discussion. Beth sighed again. Kit was head of the family and as such she supposed he had the right to censure her behaviour. The fact that he seldom did owed more to his easygoing nature than her obedience.

Beth rested her head back against the carriage’s soft cushions and closed her eyes. Truth to tell, she could not believe that she had behaved as she had. And she had only told Kit half the story, the half relating to the wager. She knew that if she had told Kit that Marcus Trevithick had kissed her, very likely he would have stormed back and challenged the Earl to a duel and matters would be immeasurably worse.

Beth opened her eyes again and stared out of the window. They were travelling through the streets of London at a decorous pace and the light from the lamps on the pavement skipped across the inside of the carriage in bars of gold and black. It hid her blushes and a very good thing too, for whenever she thought of Marcus Trevithick, she felt the telltale colour come into her face and the heat suffuse her entire body.

Not only had she overstepped the mark—by a long chalk—but she knew that she had been completely out of her depth with such a man. She had a lot of courage and, allied to her impulsive nature, she knew it could be her downfall. However, her nerve had almost deserted her in that secluded room. If he had won the bet…Beth shivered. Like as not he would have demanded his prize there and then on the card table or the floor…But he had not won. She took a deep, steadying breath.

Marcus Trevithick. Children of her family were taught to hate the Trevithicks from the moment they were born. There were tales told at the nursemaid’s knee—stories of treachery and evil. The Earls of Trevithick were jumped-up nobodies, whereas the Mostyns could trace their ancestry back to the Conquest and beyond. The Trevithicks had stolen the Mostyn estates during the Civil War and had wrested the island of Fairhaven from them only two generations back, taking the family treasure and the Sword of Saintonge into the bargain. No good had come to the Mostyns ever since—their fortunes had fallen whilst the Trevithicks had flourished like an evil weed.

Marcus Trevithick. Beth shivered again. She could not believe that he was evil, but he was certainly dangerous. He was also the most attractive man that she had ever met. Having been a child bride, her experience was necessarily small, but even so she was certain that he could stand comparison in any company.

The carriage drew up outside the house in Upper Grosvenor Street that she had rented for the little Season. Kit descended and helped her out with cold, studied politeness. He did not say a word as he escorted her up the steps and into the entrance hall. Beth bit her lip. She knew she was well and truly in disgrace.

Charlotte Cavendish, Kit’s sister, was sitting in the red drawing room, her netting resting on the cushion beside her. She was reading from Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield but cast the book aside with a smile as they came in. Like her brother, she was very fair with sparkling blue eyes, slender and tall. A scrap of lace was perched on her blonde curls as a concession to a widow’s cap.

‘There you are! I had almost given you up and gone to bed…’

Her smile faded as she looked from her brother’s stony face to Beth’s flushed one.

‘Oh, dear. What has happened?’

‘Ask your cousin,’ Kit said shortly, stripping off his white gloves. ‘I will be in the book room, enjoying a peaceful glass of brandy!’

Charlotte’s gaze moved round to Beth. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said again, but there was an irrepressible twinkle in her eyes. ‘What have you done, Beth?’

Beth wandered over to the big red wing-chair opposite and curled up in it. She was beginning to feel annoyed as well as guilty.

‘It is all very well for Kit to act the moralist, but it was his idea to go to the Cyprians’ Ball in the first place—’

Charlotte gave a little squeak and clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘Beth! You told me you were going to Lady Radley’s rout!’

‘Well, so we did, but then Kit had the idea of the Cyprians’ Ball!’ Beth wriggled uncomfortably under her cousin’s horrified stare. ‘We were masked, so I thought there would be no harm…’ She looked defiant. ‘Very well, Lottie, I admit it! I was curious!’

‘Oh, Beth,’ Charlotte said in a failing voice. ‘I know I cannot accompany you about the town, but I thought you would come to no harm with Kit!’

‘Well, you were wrong!’ Beth said mutinously. It suddenly seemed much easier to blame the whole thing on her cousin. ‘None of this would have happened if Kit had not decided to have some fun!’

‘None of what?’ Charlotte asked, in the tone of someone who was not entirely sure they wanted to know the answer.

Beth yawned. She was very tired and suddenly wanted her bed, but equally she wanted someone to confide in. Her cousin had been as close as a sister this year past, closer than they had ever been in childhood when Charlotte’s five years’ seniority had put Beth quite in awe of her.

Beth, Kit and Charlotte had grown up together, but time and differing fortunes had scattered them. Charlotte had married an officer and followed the drum, Kit had spent several years in India and Beth had been orphaned at seventeen and left penniless. Friends and relatives had murmured of schoolteaching or governessing, but two days after her bereavement, Sir Frank Allerton, a widower whose estate marched with that of the Mostyns, had called to offer her an alternative future. He had not been a friend of the late Lord Mostyn, but Beth knew that her father had esteemed him as an honest man, and so she had accepted.

She had never regretted her decision, but she did regret the lack of children of her marriage. Her home and parish affairs had given her plenty to do, but when Frank had died, leaving her a widow at nineteen, she had been lonely. Though Kit had inherited Mostyn Hall and the title he was seldom at home, and it was Beth who kept an eye on the estate. Then, a year into Beth’s widowhood, Charlotte had lost her husband during the retreat from Almeira and had come back to Mostyn. Fortunately she and Beth had found that they got on extremely well. Charlotte was cool and considered where Beth was impetuous and tempered some of her cousin’s more madcap ideas. Beth’s liveliness prevented her cousin from falling into a decline.

‘So what has happened?’ Charlotte asked again, recalling Beth’s attention to the lamp-lit room. ‘You went to the Ball…’

‘Yes. We only intended to stay for a little, although I think Kit might have lingered if he had been there alone!’ Beth said, with a sudden, mischievous grin. ‘At any rate, it was not as I had imagined, Lottie! There was the most licentious behaviour—’

Charlotte looked exasperated. ‘Well, what did you expect, Beth? You were at the Cyprians’ Ball, not a Court Reception!’

Beth sighed. ‘Yes, I know! Everyone was staring at me—no doubt because they thought me a demirep!’ she added, before her cousin could make the observation herself.

‘Yes, well, it was a reasonable assumption—’ Charlotte looked at her frankly ‘—and you do have a lovely figure, Beth! The gentlemen—’

‘Spare me,’ Beth said hastily, remembering the disturbing heat in Marcus Trevithick’s eyes. ‘I thought you wished to hear what had happened, Lottie?’

‘Yes,’ her cousin said obligingly, ‘what did?’

‘Well, Kit and I had a few dances and, as we were waltzing, the behaviour was becoming more and more uninhibited so I decided it would be wise to come home. Then a gentleman came up to us and asked me to dance.’

Beth looked away. When Marcus Trevithick had first approached her she had been amused and some dangerous imp of mischief had prompted her to play along. She had not known his identity then, but she had been tempted by the atmosphere, tempted by him…

She looked back at Charlotte, who was waiting in silence. ‘We danced a country dance together and he introduced himself as Marcus Trevithick. I had had no notion—I have never met Trevithick before, and although he knew who Kit was he did not know me, though he made strenuous attempts to find out my name…’

‘I’m sure he did,’ Charlotte said drily. ‘Did he proposition you, Beth?’