Amanda Scott (7 page)

“Very well, but I don’t know how you can say you’re out of vein when you were winning every throw you cast before supper,” Thomas complained as they made their way to the table.

“That was, as you say, before supper.” The servant approached with the brandy Nick had ordered, and at their request, he soon provided them with a second glass, a fresh thirty-two card piquet pack, and a wooden piquet marker. “You deal, Tommy,” Nick said. “I shall pour the brandy.”

“Right you are,” Thomas said, removing the binding and shuffling the cards with practiced speed. “I should tell you at the outset that, although I haven’t altogether lost my shirt, my pockets are well and truly to let for the duration unless your nag wins the sweepstakes tomorrow.”

“I’ll frank you for now. We’ll play for chicken stakes if you like.”

“Are you feeling quite the thing?” Thomas said, dealing them each twelve cards and fanning out the rest in the center of the table.

“I’m well enough.” Having poured generous amounts into both glasses, and resolutely ignoring the recurring memory of a slim and supple body squirming in his grasp, Nick set the bottle down, drank deeply, and picked up his hand.

Watching him curiously, Thomas said, “Look here, old son, if Drax gave you bad news about Prince Florizel’s chances, I wish you would tell me before the nag turns tail on the course tomorrow and runs off into the Dyke with my wager.”

“There’s naught amiss with Florae or Quiz,” Nick said as he sorted his cards and mentally scored the hand. “I’ll take five,” he added, discarding that number and taking the top five cards from the stockpile. Looking at them, he grimaced, thinking it was just as well that he had decided not to try his luck again at the hazard table.

“Dealer takes the remaining three,” Thomas said, doing so.

Nick drank more brandy and finally blinked away what seemed to have become a tenacious mental image of Miss Seacourt. “I declare a point of five,” he said.

“Value?”

“Forty-four.”

“No good.”

“Three kings?”

“No good.”

Resigned to a second-rate hand, Nick led his ace of diamonds.

Lord Thomas declared, “Point of five, tierce in spades, fourteen tens.” He followed suit with the eight of diamonds, while Nick marked the score on the board.

Having no second ace with which to take advantage of the nine points down, Nick played a seven. By the end of the hand, the unguarded king of spades he had kept in hopes of drawing the fourth king caused him to lose seven tricks, leaving him a net score for the hand of eight to Lord Thomas’s forty.

“Take care you ain’t routed,” that gentleman said, grinning.

Nick gave him a look, shuffled, and began to deal the cards.

“Good evening, gentlemen.”

They looked up as one to find Lord Yarborne standing beside them. A man with more than fifty summers behind him, he was fashionably dressed in a dark blue coat, light pantaloons, highly polished shoes, and snowy white linen. Looking from one to the other with a benign smile, he said, “Forgive me for interrupting your game, but I’ve not had a spare moment since I saw you today at the Heath, Vexford, to inquire after the health of your estimable sire.”

“He is perfectly stout, sir, thank you.”

Despite Tommy’s earlier suggestion that Yarborne was acquainted with Ulcombe, Nick had not been aware that the two were particularly friendly. He could not recall Ulcombe’s ever mentioning Yarborne’s name, and that fact must have reflected itself in his expression, for Yarborne said, “I had the honor to be of some service to him, you know, in his recent arrangements to endow a home for blind orphans, and I believe he said I could expect to see him here at the Spring Meeting.”

“To be sure, one can generally rely upon him to attend,” Nick agreed, “but he’s spent so much time of late with the orphanage that estate matters required his presence at Owlcastle this week. He won’t miss the Epsom Derby, however. You can be sure of meeting him there.”

“I daresay I shall see him in town before then,” Yarborne said easily. Turning to Lord Thomas, he said in a bantering, almost avuncular tone, “I hear your luck was out tonight at the hazard table, my boy. Hope you haven’t gone and earned yourself a lecture from that parson brother of yours. I’m told he arrived this afternoon.”

“Oh, yes, Dory’s here, all right and tight,” Thomas replied, “but he’s not one for chafing a fellow, you know. Got his own trials to bear.”

“Altogether a most worthy man, I’m told, though I’ve never had an opportunity to become formally acquainted with him.”

“Oh, he’s worthy enough, is Dory,” Thomas said with a chuckle, “but just now he’s more concerned with dancing round a parson’s mousetrap than with accomplishing deeds of rectitude or poking his nose into anyone else’s affairs.”

“He is ten years your senior, is he not? Do you say that he has formed an attachment at last with an eligible female?”

“Worse,” declared Lord Thomas, eyes atwinkle. “A predatory widow’s taken a fancy to him. That’s why he took it into his noddle to take that dashed foolish walk along the Devil’s Dyke today, Nick,” he added with a wide grin. “Told me he was afraid of encountering her at the Heath, because she’s formed a dashed nuisancing habit of following him about, wherever he goes. He told me that after supper. You’d gone back to the Rutland Arms.”

Yarborne said, “I had the good fortune to dine tonight with my son, who’s come down from Oxford for the long vacation. I had expected him to accompany me back here, but he’d got himself invited to some assembly or other instead.”

“There are any number of assemblies this week, I believe,” Nick said. He thought ruefully again of Clara, only to have her glittering image replaced at once in his mind by that of a slender figure in a voluminous cloak, with silvery flaxen hair highlighted by the golden glow of stable lanterns.

“There are all sorts of entertainments,” Yarborne said. “Women need something to amuse them while their husbands and sons are racing and gaming.”

“Some of the men must be dancing, too,” Thomas pointed out, “or else the ladies would have no partners. Don’t dance much myself, mind, but someone must.”

Yarborne smiled. “True enough. But I’ve interrupted your play long enough, gentlemen. You ought to bring Vexford along to the Billingsgate one evening when we’re back in town, Thomas.”

Lord Thomas looked surprised. “You’ve played at the Billingsgate Club in St. James’s Street, have you not, Nick?”

“Once or twice.”

“I thought so, by Jupiter. It ain’t but a few blocks from Barrington House.”

Yarborne’s smile widened. “We must put your name up for membership, Vexford, though the powers that be won’t thank us for the gesture if you break their bank, I’m told your luck is quite extraordinary.”

“It is thought to be so only because I generally stake myself against the house, and don’t accept every wild bet that’s offered to me,” Nick said mildly.

“Is that how you built your reputation? Perhaps I should follow your example—though I’ve had very good luck of late,” he added with a glint of sardonic amusement. “Enough now. Get back to your cards.” And he vanished into the milling throng.

“What was that in aid of, I wonder,” Nick said musingly.

“Your father,” Thomas said, looking surprised. “Said so himself. Managed to be of service to Ulcombe, he said. Daresay he wants to pursue the acquaintance. Like my father said. Happens to
him
all the time. He’s surrounded by toadies.”

“But one can hardly think of Yarborne as a toady if he already has built nearly as great a reputation for good works as my father has.”

“Works too hard at it, and he’s dashed expensive, Yarborne is. He’s got his finger in a dozen pies besides his charities. I don’t like him much though, when all’s said and done. May be a warm man financially, but otherwise, he’s a cold fish if you ask me. Walks as if he’s soiled his smalls and can smell it. Ulcombe ain’t like that.”

“No, he’s not,” Nick agreed. “Have you aught to declare?” Thomas picked up the hand he had put down out of courtesy when Yarborne interrupted them, glanced at it, and said, “Point of five.”

“It’s good.” Nick sighed and poured a generous amount of brandy into his glass. His luck had clearly deserted him.

When Sir Geoffrey grabbed Melissa and pulled her across his knee, she went limp. She did not try to struggle or to fight him, focusing her energy instead on enduring the punishment, and on doing nothing more to fan his anger. Long ago she had learned that struggling produced dreadful consequences. In the terrible moments that followed, each stroke of the riding whip laid a line of fire across her body, but though she sobbed, she did not scream or cry, or stir from the humiliating position.

When he stopped at last, she remained exactly where he had placed her, tense and frightened, until he said grimly, “You may get up now, Melissa.”

She stood carefully, choking back sobs. Nine years had dimmed her memory of the pain he was capable of meting out. She had not remembered, either, how difficult it was to maintain an appearance of submission. She kept her eyelids cast down, knowing that to look at him would be foolhardy, since he might choose to read insolence or antipathy in her expression even if both were absent.

He said quietly, “I am sorry you forced me to be harsh with you, Melissa, but you ought to have remembered that I never tolerate disobedience.”

“Yes, Papa.”

“That is not a proper apology.”

“I am sorry I disobeyed you. P-please, forgive me.” She stared at the floor as she spoke, knowing that if she were to look at him now he would surely see her resentment. It was all she could do to keep her voice from betraying her feelings.

“That’s better,” he said, putting an arm around her and giving her a hug. “It would not do for me to be giving Yarborne a disobedient bride, now, would it?”

She stiffened. Then, to cover the involuntary movement, she slipped from his embrace and turned to pour water from the washstand ewer into the basin. The water was tepid. She splashed some on her face, realizing only when she straightened that Sir Geoffrey had moved up beside her and was holding out her towel.

“Thank you.” Taking it from him and patting her face dry, she moved away toward the fireplace.

She could sense him watching her, could feel the silence lengthening uncomfortably, before he said lightly, “You know, my darling, I don’t believe you are entirely reconciled to this marriage.”

“I do not want to marry a stranger old enough to be my father,” she said, struggling to keep her voice calm. “Surely that is n-not so odd.”

“Are you thinking of disobeying me again?” His voice, soft and silky smooth, sent icy prickles of fear shooting up her spine.

“N-no, sir.” She could manage little more than a whisper.

“I did not quite hear you.”

She did not think she could utter the words again. Recalling a similar scene in the distant past, she remembered wishing then that she had a fairy godmother who would whisk her away to a distant country, preferably one where females were not ever burdened with fathers or husbands.

“Look at me, Melissa.”

From somewhere deep inside, drawing on long buried instincts, she summoned up the strength not only to turn and face him but to manage a small, rueful smile as she did. Tears clung to her lashes, and her smile lacked confidence. She moistened her lips and said, “I have not behaved well, Papa. No doubt you were right to say I have become spoilt over the years. I will try to do better.”

“You must do more than try,” Sir Geoffrey said. “Yarborne will know how to manage you, I expect, but I’ll be very much displeased if you embarrass me when you meet him, or do anything to disgrace the Seacourt name. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.” She understood that he intended to beat her into submission if she defied him, and she knew he was perfectly capable of doing so. Using her fingers as makeshift combs to push her hair back from her face, she said as matter-of-factly as she could, “Did you say you’ve had no chance to speak with him yet?”

“He is staying at the White Hart, but he did not dine there tonight and the porter did not know where he could be found at that hour. I had a few drinks to pass the time, not wanting to traipse all over town, but I came away when the fellow told me at last—as he ought to have done at once—that Yarborne wouldn’t return before midnight.”

“Then you will speak with him in the morning,” she said with relief. Perhaps she might yet find a means of escape.

Sir Geoffrey did not respond at once, and she realized with a flutter of fear that he had been watching her. She smiled again, smoothing her skirt with nervous hands, before he said, “I think perhaps it would be wise to look Yarborne up tonight. After all, one does not like to put off settling one’s debts of honor.”

A glimmer of hope stirred. “As you please,” she said, striving to look and sound submissive as she turned to pick up her brush from the dressing table. “Perhaps you could ask someone to send Mag to me before you go. I would like to go to bed.”

“You will not require Mag’s services.”

Confidence surged through her. If he left her alone while he went to find Yarborne, surely she could manage to slip out to the stables again. This time, with no large stranger to stop her, she could be well away from Newmarket long before Sir Geoffrey returned. Knowing that she must not agree too quickly, however, lest she renew his suspicions, she peeped up at him from beneath her lashes and said in a coaxing voice, “You give me too much credit, Papa. I am dreadfully unhandy, and I’d prefer to have her assistance. I’d like some hot water as well.”

“You are not going to bed yet, I’m afraid.”

“I-I don’t understand. Do you want me to await your return before retiring?”

“No, Melissa. You are going with me.”

She said in dismay, “You cannot mean to drag me all over town while you search for Yarborne!”

“I have no intention of giving you a second chance to escape.”

“I won’t,” she said desperately. “I’ll give you my word if you like, but please don’t force me to go with you. What on earth will people think?”

“I don’t care what they think, but perhaps Yarborne will have returned to the White Hart by now. Under the circumstances, no one could think it outrageous for me to present his betrothed to him there.”