A Gentleman’s Game (16 page)

Still she hesitated.

He touched her chin, bringing her gaze up to his. “If she’s important to you, then I want to know her. That’s all.”

Wide green eyes searched his, and then she gave another quick nod. “All right. But please do not refer to my debt. To her. I should—not like to discuss it.”

Back came the short sentences. The pride. The armor. Now, why was that? Shouldn’t she be thrilled to see the person who had provided her with lifesaving balms and care?

Maybe not. No gift came without strings of obligation; this one had taken her from her family when she was little more than a girl.

“I promise to greet her as I would any new acquaintance,” he said. “With my usual charm and winning personality. You’ll love having me there.”

She smiled as he hoped she would, though the expression was fragile.

Well, he would just have to make good on his word. He’d win over the benefactress, and that would help convince Rosalind that he was more than the sort of home-lacking, wheel-repair-forgetting, late-for-dinner flutter wit she must think him.

The family’s sitting room appeared shabbier in daylight than it had the evening before. On the worn horsehair furniture, the caller sat like a jet brooch, glossy and black-clad. Rosalind accepted a polite embrace from the older woman, then introduced Nathaniel to Mrs. Bowen Jones.

“Pleased to meet you,” he replied with perfect correctness as he bowed.

Mystified to meet you
might have been more accurate, though. Where was the effusive cheer from one who was, as Rosalind had described, practically a family member? Instead, the Widow Jones was almost impossibly serene. A small, neat woman of about forty years of age, she had raven-dark hair and a pale face that must once have been stunningly beautiful.

“Chandler, did Miss Agate say?” Her voice was low, with an accent Nathaniel took a moment to place as Welsh. “You must be related to Sir William.”

“Yes, he’s my father.”

“And what is that like?”

“Having Sir William as a father?” An unusual question. “It is a never-ending delight, madam,” he said drily.

“In what way?” Her black brows were lifted, her expression as cloudless and tight as a porcelain doll’s.

Huh. No smile at all. “In every way imaginable. For example”—he grinned at Rosalind—“I was able to make up part of the group traveling to Epsom, which meant I had the privilege of meeting the Agate family along the way.”

Aha, this won a tight smile. Even saints had feelings. “It is a privilege indeed to know them.” She turned her back on him then, giving her attention to Rosalind. “I have much to discuss with you. Do you need breakfast first?”

Rosalind made some quiet reply, catching Nathaniel’s eye over Mrs. Jones’s shoulder for just a second before she returned her attention to the widow. There were so many things in that look of hers. Embarrassment? Shyness? She hadn’t wanted him to meet Mrs. Jones, and he’d blundered by insisting. Now he was an intruder in their first hello after a long good-bye.

It was a relief a minute or two later when a knock sounded at the door, giving him something to look at besides the pattern on the papered wall.

One of the grooms peered in, hat in hand. “Mr. Nathaniel, the wheelwright sent over a messenger. The carriage will be ready in an hour.”

And this a Sunday. He wondered how much Lombard had promised to pay the wheelwright. Whatever the amount, it was worth it to get on their way again.

Nathaniel thanked the servants, then stood to bid the women farewell. “That’s a piece of good news. I’d better see to the rest of the party. I need to visit the family’s town house to collect a few items, then I’ll fetch the carriage with Lombard and return for you, Miss Agate. Will you be prepared to leave in, say, two hours?”

“Certainly.” At his side, she folded her arms and rubbed at her right elbow. He had seen that elbow, had kissed it along with so many other parts of her body. Now he must call her
Miss Agate
again.

Mrs. Jones’s delicate brows lifted. “Your carriage met with some mishap, I take it?”

“Yes,” he answered. “Such things happen on the road.”

“Indeed they do. If that is all that befell you, you must consider yourself fortunate.” She looked thoughtful. “Please tell your father hello for me.”

He blinked. “I’d be glad to. I wasn’t aware that you knew him.”

“I did once, yes.” Again, that tight smile. “It was—how did you put the matter?—a never-ending delight.”

* * *

Queen Anne Street, where Sir William owned a house, was a few miles from the Eight Bells. As Bumblebee cut placidly through the morning traffic of London, all clopping hooves and carriage wheels and calling voices and coal smoke, Nathaniel hummed at the memory of Rosalind admitting there was something she wanted. Rosalind, baring herself. Rosalind, with him.

It was precious to be sought by someone not used to wanting things. If only she could have pulled him closer instead of pushing him away when he mentioned the word
suitor
. She wanted him, yes; she liked him.

But she still didn’t trust him. Not enough to allow him a piece of her future.

He was used to not being trusted. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, though. Especially by someone he wanted to pursue.

Someone he could fall in love with. If he allowed it. If she did.

The house in Marylebone was damp and cold, with a fashionable address but little living space. It was shut up almost entirely between Nathaniel’s visits, with only a few servants to keep it in repair.

When he arrived then, he would not bother approaching the front door. He’d simply ride around to the mews, leave Bumblebee with a groom, and dart inside.

From the safe where he kept a store of his own ready money, he would take…oh, say, one hundred pounds. For Rosalind, to stake her wager once the party reached Epsom in safety. Maybe he’d place a bet himself.

Such a withdrawal would nearly beggar him for the quarter, but if he could have, he would have paid twice as much. More. Any amount to give her the peace of knowing her debts would be paid.

Soon enough, he reached Queen Anne Street and drew near the townhouse. And halted.

Because in front of the redbrick house was a carriage with a familiar crest. A
Chandler
crest.

“Impossible,” he murmured. Someone must have borrowed the vehicle.

Spurring Bumblebee into a trot, he threaded through the passage to the mews and handed off the horse as he’d planned.

As he pounded up the rear steps and entered the house, he peered into each room. No signs of activity, even from the few servants who ought to be present. And the curtains were still closed as though the house were deserted.

But the
carriage
. Why was the carriage here?

On the ground floor, he crossed the tiled entryway. Before he made for the stairs, he ought to check the back parlor. “Hello?” he called.

Before he reached the room, he heard something familiar. Expensive wooden wheels over costly marble, a low, luxuriant rolling sound.

And a second later, Sir William Chandler emerged through the doorway.

As soon as the sitting-room door had closed behind Nathaniel, Aunt Annie pulled Rosalind to a seat beside her. Her familiar scent of lemon verbena had once seemed sweet; now it tugged Rosalind back to the sickroom.

“You have neglected your letters since leaving Newmarket,” said the low voice.

“I’m sorry. The days of travel were long.”

At once, she regretted offering an excuse. Aunt Annie was sure to poke holes in it, revealing it for its own emptiness.

“Oh? Yet I saw a notice in a village broadsheet about your traveling party’s participation in a fete. There was time enough for that.”

Rosalind sat silent.

“I am not angry with you,” Aunt Annie added. “Only disappointed. I rely on you, you know.”

“I know. I couldn’t stay in Newmarket. Sir William would have become suspicious if I refused to travel.”

“Quite all right.” She took up Rosalind’s unresisting hand and patted it. “You shall return soon and continue the search through his papers.”

“There’s no need.” She pulled her hand free, spirits lifting. “I have good news. Excellent news. I’ve bartered my presence on this trip for a stake to wager on the Derby. The amount of my choice, the horse of my choice. If I lose, I’ll lose nothing of my own. I intend to bet enough so that if I win, I’ll be able to pay every debt. One hundred fifty pounds.”

Aunt Annie’s expression did not alter.

Perhaps Rosalind had not been clear. She tried again. “The money I win, I’ll give to you. Then you may give it to Tranc to pay my debt and yours. We will be free.”

Her voice was almost pleading by the end of this speech, but Aunt Annie remained as carved-pearl as ever. Then, with a sigh, the widow sank back against the hard cushion of the sofa. “You have made this bargain with young Nathaniel Chandler, I suppose. And you take him at his word?”

“Well—yes. He needed me to accompany him to Epsom, or his father would not have entrusted the traveling party to him.”

“And what has he taken from you, along with your time and so trustworthy presence?”

“Nothing.”

Aunt Annie twisted the heavy gold rings on her fingers. “You are a terrible liar, Cyfrinach. Remember what I taught you.”

“‘Don’t lie,’” recited Rosalind. “‘Lies are messy and sure to be found out. Just leave out parts of the truth.’”

She didn’t want to leave out parts of the truth about Nathaniel. She didn’t want to discuss him at all. He was hers, untouched by Aunt Annie and Tranc.

“Very good. I am pleased that you remember.” The widow’s smile was like a blade. “By your own admission, Nathaniel Chandler has agreed to defraud his father. How can you be sure he won’t lie to you as well?”

“Defraud—no! It’s not like that at all. Neither of us is lying to Sir William.” Not exactly. They were only…well, leaving out parts of the truth. “And I know he would not lie to me.”

She knew because of the way he had traced her scars so tenderly. The way he had taken her, leaving no inch untouched, unkissed.

Aunt Annie tutted. “How long have you trusted me, and how long have you known him? What do you owe me, and what do you owe him?”

So it was to be this as always.

“There can be no comparison.” Rosalind felt dull as a stone. Too dull by far to be an agate, with all its varied layers and bright stripes. “I owe you my life.”

Yet she wondered how much she would choose to give were it not wrung from her endlessly.

“Aunt Annie. If I do get the money, will it suffice? Will it be enough to clear my debts and for us both to be free?”

“Ah, Cyfrinach.” Aunt Annie shut her dark eyes. When she opened them, her gaze was gentle and sad. “It will never be enough. The information is what we need. The proof to trade with the knowledge Tranc holds.”

“I don’t understand. What knowledge could he hold? I have done nothing—” Rosalind cut herself off. She had done nothing for which the law could touch her, but she had done much she knew was wrong. Taking papers from locked desk drawers, copying them over and sending them off to Aunt Annie. Listening at keyholes. Stealing secrets that could never be unknown again. All for Tranc, who owned her debt.

She wished, not for the first time or even the hundredth, that Aunt Annie had never done business with such a creature.

“He does not hold over us knowledge of your doings,” Aunt Annie broke in, “but of mine.”

And finally, in the cramped sitting room of the Eight Bells, in a voice as quiet as rain, she told Rosalind what had happened in Spain in 1805, thirteen years before.

There had been a baby. Sir William’s baby.

“Though at the time,” Aunt Annie said, “he was not yet a baronet, only a mister. He was a widower, and I was a new widow. The affair was not so wrong, surely, except for its result.”

She twisted a ring off entirely. Beneath it, her finger was marked tight and pale. “Tranc helped me find a safe place to deliver the child once I returned to England, then found a family with which to place her. He has used this information against me ever since. My secret, my shame, could lose me my place in respectable society.”

A saint on earth.
Mrs. Agate wasn’t the only one who thought of Anne Jones thus. Benefactress not only of Rosalind Agate, but of foundling homes in Wales and East London. Yes, her tidy place in the welcoming, vivid Holloway neighborhood would be erased if her secret was known.

Of course, Rosalind had lost many places in the service of Aunt Annie’s secret. Her place amid her family had been the first.

She shook her head. “The money must satisfy Tranc, Aunt Annie. That has always been the understanding. I worked to pay off my debt.”

“The money will pay your debt, yes, but it will not absolve me.”

Rosalind slid away, wishing the sofa permitted more distance between them. “I am sorry for that, but once my debt is paid, my dealings with him will be completed.”

“But that is impossible, Rosie. Cyfrinach. You must see that. You’ve used forged references. Everywhere you have worked, something has been damaged. Papers stolen, outbuildings burned, horses made ill. It wouldn’t take much of a hint for someone to notice the pattern.”

The voice was calm as ever, but there was steel in Aunt Annie’s dark eyes.
You’re in it as long as I am
, they said.

Aunt Annie had used her, just like Tranc was using Aunt Annie. For a long while, Rosalind had thought this.

But she had never known about the child, and that changed matters. That softened the stone about her heart. Some things were far too difficult to bear alone, and giving up a loved one was one of them.

“Why did you have me hold so many posts?” she asked. “If what you needed to learn was at Chandler Hall, why did you not approach Sir William at once, years ago?”

“Tranc.” Aunt Annie jammed the ring back onto her finger. “I had always to do his bidding before my own. He collects secrets as your mother collects spoons. Only recently did I get a step ahead of his demands, enough to send you to Sir William to look for evidence of our affair in Spain.”

But it was Rosalind, not Aunt Annie, who had done his bidding. Only Rosalind had taken the risk of searching desks, copying notes. Rosalind left friends as soon as they were made.

Only Rosalind had been fool enough to think one hundred fifty pounds would save her life.

“Do you ever see the child now?” she asked.

“No. Never in thirteen years. It is for the best, though. She does not know the people who have raised her are not her parents.” When Aunt Annie looked away, Rosalind noticed threads of gray in her neatly pinned dark hair. “I send money every year. As much as I can.”

Rosalind put her arm around Aunt Annie, easing the older woman’s head onto her shoulder. It was a bony substitute for Mrs. Agate’s pillowy hugs and the low hum of her mother song. But it was better than nothing, better than solitude.

After a moment, Anne Jones, mother of a lost girl, relaxed onto Rosalind’s shoulder and drew the sort of shuddery breath that meant one was trying not to weep.

“Thank you for saving my life,” Rosalind said. And she began to hum, smoothing back Aunt Annie’s hair with a gentle hand.

She thought of Nathaniel. Again. Always. Her scars had saved her life, he said. If she had not scarred, she would not have healed.

But there were so many ways to be scarred, and one could not buy healing with the transfer of coin. Not even one hundred fifty of them, silver sovereigns in towering stacks.

No, Rosalind didn’t want to be part of these old, old secrets and rivalries anymore. But someone had to be. Tranc would exact whatever he thought his due from whomever came his way. As long as he got what he required, he’d have no reason to turn his gaze to those who were more vulnerable. To Carys, as Aunt Annie feared, or to the child Sir William did not know he had.

Better me than someone else
.

Nathaniel had said that too.

If Rosalind had been free to choose her own path, she might have chosen to love him. Just for that.

* * *

Nathaniel shook his head, but the vision in the townhouse’s entryway did not disappear. Here was Sir William, who ought to have been in Newmarket receiving Rosalind’s glowing letters of Nathaniel’s progress. Sir William, unmistakably real, heavy hands gripping the rims of his chair wheels as he rolled across marble tiles to face Nathaniel.

“Father. How did you get here?”

“Surely you remarked the carriage before the house. I have traveled day and night to meet you, only to find you—not here.”

Nathaniel’s week of careful planning began to unspool under his father’s scrutiny. “True. Yes. I was not here, but now I am.”

“And the rest of the party, and the horses?”

“At an inn called the Eight Bells, belonging to Ros—ah, Miss Agate’s family. It’s not far.” Sir William looked skeptical, and Nathaniel added, “It’s a respectable neighborhood. And I have had the horses under watch day and night since leaving Newmarket.”

“I do not know the Eight Bells. I haven’t approved it as a place to lodge.”

This was the sort of situation in which Rosalind would turn the subject to one she preferred. So he did the same. “If you planned to travel to London, or even to Epsom, why did you send me?”

“I didn’t send you. You forced my hand. And I didn’t plan to come, but you forced my hand there too.”

“How is that?” Trailing toward the stairs, he plumped down on the third one and faced his father at eye level.

“I received a copy of the
Kelting Monitor
with an enlightening article about my groom’s participation in a village fete. Two days out of Newmarket, you stopped on the road for a fete.” Sir William’s voice held all the weary calm of one who had learned a harsh truth he’d been expecting for some time. “I saw how you were treating my trust and that of our respected neighbor, Sir Jubal. You used your time for carousing.”

Damn. Damn. Damn. “Not carousing—no, it wasn’t like that. It was a day of rest, since our progress on the first day of travel was excellent. As I mentioned, the horses have always been under guard. Their safety was my first concern.”

“A day of rest. I see.” Sir William’s steely brows lifted. “So you work a day, then rest a day. Is that how it goes?”

Nathaniel set his jaw.

“And I arrive in London to aid you, after traveling day and night, only to find the house smelling of neglect.”

“It always smells like that. The roof leaks, as I mentioned in a letter a month or so ago.”

Not that Sir William was listening. Though his eyes were gray-shadowed with fatigue, he seemed buoyed by the conviction that he was always, above all, right.

Certainly he looked like himself, crisply attired and clean and groomed. Not like a man who had been through the hell of overnight travel on bumpy moonlit roads.

“Who has seen to you?” Nathaniel asked. “Where are the servants? The house should not be empty like this.”

“I sent them out to comb the city for you. For all I knew, you had been set upon by thieves. You were entrusted with valuable horses.”

“Who are safe and healthy.” Despite not following the baronet’s stringent guidelines as to feed—not that he was going to mention that at the moment. “How are the other horses that fell ill? The ones that stayed behind?”

The topic of horses softened the edge of Sir William’s voice. “Sheltie is recovering slowly, but I’ve hopes she’ll be all right in time. Jake, that old rogue, made a fine recovery. When I left, he was collecting ear scratches and radishes from every groom and stable boy.”

“Such coddling,” Nathaniel said drily. “And here I thought you expected your horses to be all business.”

Sir William hands traced his chair rims. “It’s good business to have healthy horses,” he said by way of excuse, looking away as though embarrassed by this hint of softness. “It’s clear the horses were fed something noxious, though I’ve been unable to find out what or by whom without a secretary to aid me.”

“And because you’ve been away from Chandler Hall for several days yourself.” Nathaniel braced his elbows atop his knees, settling his face in his hands. So the horses were well, but no one knew why they’d sickened. Everyone was in the wrong building this morning. Sir William was in the wrong
city
.

Damn.

Nathaniel looked up, chin on steepled hands. “How did you come by that article in the
Kelting Monitor
? Did you decide to travel based on that?”

“Yes. An old acquaintance sent me the article,” Sir William said. “One Anne Jones.”

Nathaniel sat up straight. “She mentioned she knew you. I was to greet you for her.”

“You’ve met her?” Sir William’s brow creased.

“Just before coming here. She is an old friend of the Agate family.” Anne Jones. Well, well. The sainted Aunt Annie had sent Sir William the article. If Nathaniel had the chance to meet her again, his
Pleased to meet you
would become
What the devil?

“What is Mrs. Jones to you, Father?”

Sir William shrugged the question off, impatient. “Nothing, nothing. I had not seen nor heard from her in years.”

“So you didn’t think it odd she sent you an article?”