The Double Wager (23 page)

“What do you mean?” she whispered.

He smiled directly into her eyes as he answered. “A night with you, Henry.”

Henry’s mouth dropped open. “Where?” she asked naively.

The smile broadened. “In bed, obviously, my dear.”

Henry was saved from the ignominy of being seen to jump to her feet and smack the face of Mr. Cranshawe in that appallingly public setting. As she was about to respond to the impulse, she was aware of Eversleigh stepping back into the box. His eyes found her face immediately and took in its expression. His eyelids drooped over his eyes as he strolled forward.

“Ah, Oliver, dear boy,” he said languidly, “you are becoming quite the stranger these days. It seems quite a while since you invited yourself to breakfast last.”

“I had the distinct impression that I was not welcome the last time I came, Marius,” said Cranshawe, an edge to his voice.

Eversleigh raised his quizzing glass and surveyed his heir unhurriedly through it. “Indeed?” he said. “What can have given you that impression? Ridley was there, was he not? I cannot remember his being rude to you. There was the matter of a newspaper being left behind, though, was there not, dear fellow? It is still there for you to claim.”

He let the glass fall to his chest again.

“You are too kind, cousin,” Cranshawe said through his teeth.

“Not at all, not at all, dear fellow,” said Eversleigh. “You must give me as well as my wife the honor of your company, you know. In fact, dear boy, I must insist that you announce your visits so that I may not be deprived of the pleasure.”

“The second act is about to begin,” Cranshawe mumbled, getting to his feet and bowing stiffly. “Your Grace?”

Henry nodded, but she did not look up. The other three gentlemen also crowded around to make their farewells.

As Henry turned her chair to face the stage again, Eversleigh took her hand and laid it on his sleeve.

“I wish to leave,” she said, eyes riveted to the stage. “Please take me home, Marius.”

“No, my love,” he replied gently. “We must be seen to sit here in amicable agreement.”

His words hummed in Henry’s mind as the music and singing washed over her. What had he meant? Was there already talk about her and Oliver Cranshawe? Was Marius trying to avert it?

* * *

The Duke of Eversleigh walked into his secretary’s office the next morning before luncheon. He was still clad in riding clothes.

“Ah, James,” he said, “how predictable you are, dear fellow. One can always depend upon finding you here.”

“Well, you do pay me to work here during the daytime, your Grace,” Ridley replied patiently.

“Quite so, dear boy,” Eversleigh agreed, “though I seem to remember giving you an assignment yesterday that should have had you up and abroad.”

“I have already done my best on that mission,” his secretary replied, “and devilish difficult it was too, sir, if you will excuse me for saying so.”

“Oh, surely, James,” the duke replied, waving a hand airily in his direction. “And what did you discover?”

“I can find no trace of any debt incurred by her Grace that has not been sent here,” Ridley said.

Eversleigh regarded him thoughtfully. “Hmm,” he said. “Are you sure your information is complete, James?” 

Ridley shrugged. “I talked to the persons most likely to know about any gambling debts,” he said.

“My wife is missing a ring that she almost never removes from her finger,” Eversleigh said almost to himself, strolling over to take up a stand in his favorite spot, one elbow propping him against a bookshelf.

“Pawned perhaps, your Grace?”

“I think not,” his employer replied. “I have visited all the most likely jewelers this morning, and none of them knows of it. No, James, I believe it must have been pledged for a large sum.”

“Not a moneylender, your Grace?”

“I hope not, dear boy. Perhaps my heir has it. He has her in his power, I am sure.”

“You think he has lent her money?” asked Ridley.

“I fear so,” the duke replied. “She is frightened, at least, and my wife does not scare easily. I wish I knew why she needed money.”

“I—I think I might have the answer,” Ridley said, shifting uneasily in his chair.

Eversleigh looked penetratingly at him. “Well, out with it, dear fellow!” he said.

“I discovered that her Grace s brother, Mr. Giles Tallant, had quite, large gambling debts a while ago.”

“How large?” the duke asked.

“In the region of three thousand pounds, I believe, sir.”

Eversleigh whistled. “Rash puppy!” he said. “I doubt if his brother allows him near enough to pay that. And have these debts been paid, James?”

“Yes, your Grace,” Ridley replied, “in full.”

“Ah,” Eversleigh commented, straightening up and tapping his boots with his riding crop. “I believe I shall see if my brother-in-law would like to share luncheon with me at White’s. Do take a break soon, James. Too much work cannot be good for the health.”

“My midday break is due to begin in a half-hour,” Ridley explained to his employer’s disappearing back.

Henry spent the morning in her room, breaking with her usual routine of riding early. She felt very close to despair. It seemed that everything was going wrong around her. The new debt to the moneylender looked like an insurmountable problem now in the morning light. Henry did some calculations in her head, and then on paper to make sure that she had not made an error. If she saved most of her allowance each month, she would be able to repay little more than the interest on her loan. There was no way she would ever be free of the whole debt. That meant that she would never recover her ring. Its absence would be a great loss to her. More important, she did not know how she would answer Marius if he asked about it again, and he surely would. Soon he would demand to know the name of the jeweler to whom she had taken the ring to be checked. And then she would be forced into more lies.

She had, in fact, got herself into a terrible mess, and all for nothing, it seemed. Oliver was still insisting that she owed him interest on his loan. He had not said, and she had not asked, how much it was. But she had the distinct impression that the amount was limitless. Even if she went out now and pawned her most precious piece of jewelry and sent the money to Cranshawe, he would claim that it was not enough. And how could she argue? There had been no written agreement.

Henry thought about his words of the night before and clenched her fists. How dare he so openly proposition her? He had looked her right in the eye as he spoke, too, and smiled that charming smile that had so disarmed her when she first met him. Anyone looking across to their box would have assumed that he was paying her some lavish compliment. The rat! Henry considered playing along with his game. What if she agreed to meet him in some private place and set up some devious plan of revenge? She considered how satisfactory it would be to go at him with her fists, to break that handsome, aquiline nose and smash forever that flawless smile. She sighed. How provoking it was to be a woman, to know that there were limits to her strength. She considered using a riding crop as a weapon, but that was too risky. Doubtless the scoundrel was strong enough to wrest it from her grasp. No, the whole scheme was too risky, she decided. Unless she could be sure of overpowering him, she would be in grave danger once he achieved the upper hand. He was already openly set upon ruining not only her reputation, but also her person. She shuddered to think what added indignities he would heap on her if he were also enraged.

What was she to do, then, when she did hear next from Cranshawe? She could not pay him and she would not meet him. The only other alternative seemed to be to make a clean breast of the whole thing to Marius. She found it hard to understand now why she had not just gone to him at the start, or at least as soon as she began to have doubts about Oliver’s integrity. It would have been so easy then, and surely she could have thought of some way of keeping Giles’ name out of it However, she had not gone to her husband, and now it was surely impossible to do so. At best, Marius would consider her foolish and stubborn, and he would be right. But he could never respect or love her. At worst, he would refuse to believe that she had not been more involved with Oliver than she had been. He was already suspicious. How could she ever convince him that she had never considered his cousin as more than a casual friend? No, this was a predicament that she would have to get herself out of, though there did not seem to be any way.

But why did she care what Marius thought of her? He did not care about her. He had married her for some reason that she could not comprehend. But obviously all his interest was in that overblown doxy, Mrs. Broughton. Even last night they had not been able to keep their eyes off each other. Henry supposed that he spent much of his days and the evenings, when he was not with her at the home of his mistress. Her fingernails dug painfully into her palms as she imagined him doing with the delectable Suzanne what he had done with her two nights before.

Henry could not escape the truth. She loved Marius quite hopelessly. Finally, after believing that no man would ever be worthy of her entire trust and respect, she seemed to have found such a man. And, in addition, he was a man who could make her pulses race and her knees and stomach feel like jelly. Even now Henry yearned to run to him, to curl into his arms and beg him to take her burdens on his own broad and capable shoulders. And one part of her mind was convinced that he would not turn her away, that she could trust him. But how could she believe that when he had turned her away the morning before at a time when she had been glowing with love and vulnerability, and when he kept a mistress with whom he had been involved long before he had met her? Oh, it was all very confusing.

On impulse, Henry leapt to her feet and rang for Betty. She was going to go downstairs for luncheon and then she was going to order her phaeton and grays brought around so that she could go visiting and later drive in the park. She was Henry Devron, and nobody—not Marius, not Oliver—was going to keep her cowering in her bedroom.

* * *

Giles Tallant was sitting in the reading room at White’s when his brother-in-law strolled in. Although he held a paper in his hands and had his eyes directed at it, it would have been obvious to anyone who cared to observe that he was not, in fact, reading. Truth to tell, his mind was still reeling from what his brother had told him just a few hours before.

Philip had gone himself to Peter’s house to consult with Giles. Although his oldest brother was from home already, he was unfortunate enough to run into Marian, who was emerging from the breakfast room. She had quizzed him sharply on the strangeness of his being out alone at a time when any normal and properly reared youngster would be in the schoolroom at his books. Philip had mumbled some excuse about Miss Manford’s having postponed lessons until the afternoon, but was very relieved when the footman had returned to say that Mr. Giles would receive his brother in his bed chamber.

Giles had been still in bed, nightcap pulled rakishly over one eyebrow. A cup of chocolate was cooling on the night table at his side. He woke up in a hurry, though, when he heard Philip’s story. At the first part he bristled with indignation.

“She borrowed money from Cranshawe?” he said. “The fellow’s nothing but a rake. Don’t trust him.”

“But why would she, Giles?” asked Philip. “What would Henry want money for? His Grace buys her all the clothes and finery she wants, and she don’t gamble. She lectures Pen and me regularly on the sins of playing cards.”

“It was all my fault,” Giles said gloomily. “I’m the one who gambled myself into debt. Henry wormed it out of me. Said she had enough money to pay it off for me. The little widgeon. And I believed her.” He snatched the nightcap off his auburn curls and slammed it down on the bed.

“Oh, I say,” Philip commented, “you’re lucky Papa is not alive, Giles. You would have got a whipping for sure.”

“And would have deserved it, too,” Giles admitted. “And you say Cranshawe has been threatening her? I’ll call him out over this. Hand me my clothes, Phil.”

“You haven’t heard the worst of it yet,” Philip warned.

“Eh?”

“She went to a moneylender yesterday,” Philip said. “I followed her.”

“She what?” Giles blanched. “Why would the little sapskull do a thing like that?”

“Manny and Pen and I guess that things got too hot for her with the teeth, and she went for the money to pay him back.”

Giles groaned and clutched his head. “Oh, Henry, Henry!” was all he could say for a while.

“What are we going to do, Giles?” Philip asked. “Pen and I thought you might have some ideas.”

Giles groaned again. “Let me think about it, Phil,” he said. “I’ll come up with something.” Philip got up to leave. “But, Phil,” he added, catching his brother by the sleeve, “keep on doing what you have been doing. Keep an eye on Henry, will you?”

Sitting in his chair now at White’s, Giles was no nearer finding a solution than he had been while reclining in his bed at home. His first impulse had been to go to Eversleigh right away and confess all. That certainly was what he should have done at the start. He could have asked his brother-in-law for a loan. He did not think the duke would have refused. It would have been humiliating to have to go to him when Eversleigh had already taken on so many of the family burdens with his marriage to Henry. But he deserved the shame; he had behaved with terrible irresponsibility, getting himself sent down from university and then gambling away money that he did not possess.

But how could he go to Eversleigh now? It was Henry’s secrets more than his own that he would be revealing. And she must have been more than reluctant to turn to her husband if she had gone to a moneylender rather than appeal to him. Poor Henry! He could not betray her now.
^!

There seemed to be only one other solution. Giles would have to go himself to a moneylender and borrow the money with which his sister could repay both her debt and the interest that would have already accumulated. But it was a mad idea! Not only did he have no prospect of ever being able to repay the debt, but by acting in such a way, he would belittle the sacrifice that Henry had made for his sake.