The Widow Wager (2 page)

And then Sir Oswald’s face did change. He grinned as he set down his own hand.

With a grunt, Crispin turned his head and cast up his accounts in the nearest waste receptacle.

Gemma stared up at the cracked ceiling above her bed, just as she had every night for the past year since she’d been forced home after the death of her husband, the Earl of Laurelcross. Once upon a time, she had stared at that crack and imagined it was a slim opening to another world, a place where fairies danced and trolls made the tea.

Now she was older and knew the crack was really just a symptom of the nightmare that was her family circumstance. There would be no dancing fairies to come out and take her away.

“If only,” she murmured as she yanked the pillow out from under her head and pressed it over her face. The dark warmth was comforting on some level, but she knew it wouldn’t last. At some point, she would have to come out of this cocoon and back into a very uncertain real world.

“How did I get here?” she muttered into the pillow.

But she knew the answer to that question. She tugged the pillow away and gulped a breath of cooler air. She was here, back in her old childhood room, living under her father’s roof and rules, because of what she’d done. She’d put herself here the moment she caused her husband’s death.

She deserved this. This was her punishment. As were the sleepless nights, the loneliness, the anxiety that seemed to dog her every move.

She could have gone on, chasing her faults all over the room through the long night. Certainly, she had done just that many times, but she was interrupted in her reverie by a huge crash that echoed through the empty halls.

She jolted into an upright position and clutched her pillow against her chest. She could hear faint sounds from downstairs, muffled voices, but she didn’t know the source. Were they being robbed?

“A foolish home to choose, since we have almost nothing,” she muttered as she got up and began to search for something in the room that would make a good weapon. She could take it to Mary’s room and wait to see if anyone would come for them when the intruders realized that there was nothing of value in the house. Her younger sister’s innocence was likely the only thing anyone could barter with.

And Gemma would die defending that if she was forced to do so.

She sighed as she looked at the candlestick on the mantel. It was the best she would do, she feared. Without prying the half-melted candle loose, she swept it up. She began to move for the door but was stopped by a light knock from outside.

Did blackguards knock? They would be very polite if they did.

“Who is it?” she asked, hands shaking as she shifted the candlestick into a bludgeoning position.

“It’s Kate, Lady Laurelcross.”

Gemma relaxed. Kate was her maid, though she didn’t know why the girl would come all the way through the house from the servants’ quarters if someone was robbing them.

She opened the door and found her maid in her dressing gown, hair askew and eyes bleary with sleep.

“What is it?” she whispered, hearing the voices more clearly now. One sounded like…

Her father.

Kate shifted. “I’m sorry to wake you, my lady,” her maid said. “But—but your father insisted.”

Gemma pressed her lips together and lowered her candlestick. “In his cups, is he?”

Kate shook her head. “Not this time, my lady, no. But he…he wants to see you. He insists that you get dressed and join him and the other gentleman in the parlor.”

Gemma stepped back and motioned her maid into the room. “My father wants to see me in the middle of the night?” she asked, shutting the door behind Kate and leaning against it. Suddenly the exhaustion that would not allow her to sleep hit her all at once at the thought of facing her father.

Kate nodded. “Come, I’ll choose a dress.”

Gemma shook her head. “I just don’t understand. And you say there is another gentleman? Who is he?”

Her maid took Gemma’s candlestick and swiftly lit the wick. She set it aside and opened the dresser, where she found a gown.

“I didn’t see,” Kate said as she helped Gemma change with swift efficiency. “He sent Williams to fetch me, and you know the butler keeps his lips tight.”

“So a mystery caller, loud voices, crashing sounds. I don’t like it.”

Kate shrugged as she motioned Gemma into a chair and swiftly pulled her hair away into a loose bun. “Neither do I, but there is little choice, isn’t there? Your father will have his way.”

“Always.” Gemma squeezed her eyes shut. Kate had been with her a long time and she knew the truth as well as Gemma did, herself, though the servant would likely only ever say it when it was just the two of them.

As Kate stepped away, Gemma pushed to her feet and looked at herself in the mirror. She wasn’t exactly ballroom ready, but this was as good as could be done under such strange circumstances. She could only hope that whatever awaited her, she could bear it with some semblance of dignity.

Sometimes that was all she had left.

Gemma stood outside the parlor, staring at the half-open door. Inside she heard her father talking incessantly, his voice rising and falling, and frowned. He only spoke like that when he was very nervous or very proud. Either one of those things, coupled with her being called here in the middle of the night, was not a good sign.

Especially since her father’s guest hadn’t spoken a word in the few moments she had stood composing herself in the hall.

With a gasp of breath, she pushed the door open and stepped into the parlor. Her father stood at the mantel, leaning there with a cat-in-the-birdcage grin that made her stomach turn. His eyes lit up as she entered and her knees almost buckled.

What had he been up to?

Immediately, she turned her gaze to the other man in the room. He sat half-slumped in a chaise, supporting his chin with a fist. The light from the fireplace hit him full on and she gasped.

She knew this man, at least by reputation. He was Crispin Flynn, the youngest son of one of the most notorious families in all of London. A family only very recently elevated by the elder brother’s inheritance of a dukedom. But everyone knew that Crispin Flynn had not calmed with the boon as his brother had.

He was wilder than ever, if gossip was to be believed. Though she knew from personal experience that gossip was often very much
not
true.

She examined the man closer. He was just as handsome as others in her acquaintance had sometimes whispered about. At present, he was quite undone. His hair stuck up at odd angles, his eyes were bleary and his shirt was half-untucked.

“There she is,” her father said, tearing her attention back to him and his smug tone. “My daughter.”

“What is going on, Father?” she asked, tearing her gaze away from their guest. “It is the middle of the night. What could you possibly want from me?”

She was shocked her voice could sound so calm when she trembled with anxiety. It was a means of coping she had developed of late and was very happy to possess.

Her father flicked his head toward their visitor. “This is Crispin Flynn.”

She glanced briefly at Flynn again. His eyes were unfocused, she doubted he was fully aware of anything happening at present.

“I—hello,” she offered weakly. He only watched her without response.

“Mr. Flynn and I were gaming tonight, over at Rickman’s.”

Now Gemma’s knees began to shake. “Oh, Father,” she breathed. “That place is terrible. You are better than that.”

His eyes narrowed at her admonishment. “You do not tell me what to do, girlie.”

She pressed her lips together before she said, “What did you lose?”

There was so little left for her father to barter that she shuddered to think what the next humiliation would be. He had been out of control for years, but it had come to a head when Gemma had been forced to return to her family home without a settlement after her husband’s death.

So this was all just one more punishment.

“You misunderstand,” Sir Oswald drawled, that smug expression darkening his face once more. God, how she hated and feared it. “I didn’t lose tonight, Gemma. I won.”

Gemma blinked, confusion wiping her mind clean. “I—what do you mean? You won? Then why do you call me to you? You can gloat tomorrow at a decent hour.”

She almost turned on her heel and left the room, but her father barked, “The wager was about you.”

Gemma’s jaw dropped open and her gaze darted between the two men. Flynn was sitting up straighter now, still merely watching her without comment.

“Me?” she repeated on the barest of breaths.

“You will go with Mr. Flynn tonight, Gemma. This moment. You are to be his bride.”

Gemma couldn’t breathe as she staggered away from her father, across the room, until her legs hit the edge of a table and she nearly toppled to the ground. She gripped the wooden surface, trying to think, trying to breathe, trying to wake up from this nightmare.

“What?”

“You heard me,” her father said, his voice soft and impassive, as if he were telling her an order he’d made for the household.

“But—but you said you won the wager with Mr. Flynn,” she stammered. “You—you said that he lost.”

“And by losing, he is forced to take you from my hands,” her father said, his voice dripping with the contempt he hadn’t hidden from her since her return to his home months ago.

His words sunk in and Gemma choked on a sob that broke from her throat unbidden. Emotions bombarded her, nearly taking her to her knees. She felt shame for how low she had sunk, how low her family now was…she felt pain that this was to be her fate.

But mostly she felt anger. Anger that her father would betray her in this manner, anger that Crispin Flynn was such a cad that he would accept such a horrifying, ungentlemanly wager. They were two of a kind, bastards who only cared for themselves.

“No,” she whispered.

Her father looked at her in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

She moved toward him, hands clenched. “I said
no
! You sold me once, Father, but I will
never
be sold again. I will not marry this man.”

She thought she saw Flynn’s face light up a fraction at her words, the first expression that had come over him since her arrival in the room, but her father distracted her from that observation.

“You dare defy me?”

“Oh yes,” she breathed. “I
will
defy you, consequences be damned.”

Her father moved on her in that moment, face red and fisted hand raised. To her surprise, the sleepy form of their visitor flashed with movement and suddenly Crispin Flynn stood between them, his hand pressed firmly into her father’s chest to keep him from whatever intent he had held in his angry heart.

Gemma stared up at her…what was he, anyway? Her protector in this moment, her tormentor hours before when he agree to her father’s terms? Her intended, even against her will?

He was bloody handsome.

The door to the chamber opened behind them and all three pivoted to see the intruder. Gemma’s stomach turned. There in the doorway stood her younger sister. Mary clutched her robe tightly around herself as she stared at the group in surprise.

“What is going on?” her sister asked, wide eyes finding Gemma behind the men.

Flynn’s gaze flitted briefly to Mary, but then returned to Gemma. It was a surprise, really. Mary was so much prettier, with her delicate features and darker hair. Yet this man had dismissed her with a mere flick of his stare.

“Go back to bed, Mary,” Gemma said, backing away from the distraction that was Crispin Flynn. “Everything is fine.”

Her sister opened her mouth to argue, but before she could say something, their father moved on her. Gemma stared at his suddenly lit up eyes and the way he smiled.

“No, no, Mary. Come in. Join us.” He slipped his arm around Mary’s slender shoulders and dragged her forward to stand beside Gemma. Without a word, Mary reached out to take her sister’s hand, trying to find comfort that Gemma wasn’t certain she could offer in the face of the surprising and upsetting events of the night.