Amanda Scott (4 page)

“What item is that?” inquired Lady Joan warily.

“Only a footman’s uniform, so that I might deliver my message to his lordship in person.”

Lady Joan burst into laughter. “A mighty fine spectacle you’d make, my dear. Have you not looked at our footmen? There is not a single specimen under six feet tall. You are a full foot shorter than that.”

Sylvia frowned. “I forgot. But we must come about, for I am determined to know his reaction, and I cannot trust such an order to one of your people even if I might trust any of them to describe Greyfalcon’s reaction accurately afterward.”

Lady Joan opened her mouth to speak, then bit her lip and kept silent instead, but the movement caught Sylvia’s eye. “What is it? Come, Joan, you have thought of something.”

“Only that I do have a page’s uniform that might well fit you, though the page himself is stouter of build then you are. But, Sylvie, you cannot do this. Harry would cut my heart out if I let you.”

“Oh, pooh, Harry knows us both well enough to know where to lay blame if he should by some misfortunate chance discover this plot. He might scold you, but if you do not yet know how to bring that man around your thumb, Joan, then I never knew you at all.”

Lady Joan looked self-conscious for a moment, then grinned. “All right, I daresay I can manage Harry. After all, there is no need for him to know anything at all about it, but I still think it would be better to send whatever message you mean to send to Greyfalcon by footman. Each one of them may be trusted not to read the contents of your message.”

“Perhaps, but I do not mean to take that chance, for only think of the dust that would be raised if such rumors got around London. In truth, Joan,” she added when her friend continued to look mulish, “I cannot bear simply to go back home and wait to see if my plan has succeeded. I shall know by looking at him, but that is the only way. Don’t worry, the man hasn’t laid eyes upon me in several years. Even if he recognizes your livery, he will never suspect a page of being anything but what he appears to be.”

“I suppose not, but if you haven’t seen him in so long, how can you be certain you will recognize him?”

“Well, I shall take the message to his house, of course. He lives in Curzon Street.”

“But he will most likely be out during the day, Sylvie. You would then have to seek him at his club.”

“Well, I shall go there. And never fear, Joan. He was a man grown when last I saw him. He cannot have changed as much as I have.”

The arguments did not rest there, of course, but Sylvia’s determination carried the day, and two o’clock the following afternoon found her upon Greyfalcon’s doorstep, her slender form attired in a loose-fitting gray page’s uniform, her long silky hair tucked mostly into the cap but cunningly arranged to look like boy’s hair tied back at the nape of the neck with a black silk ribbon. The cap itself was pulled low over her forehead, nearly to her eyes, its white feather curling near her right cheek.

True to Lady Joan’s prediction, his lordship was found to be from home, but his man displayed no reservation about confiding his whereabouts. Having had the forethought to retain her hackney coach in the street, Sylvia gave the coachman instructions to set her down next at Brooks’s Club in St. James’s Street.

“I’ll not be able to keep me ’orses standin’ ’ere in all this traffic, me lad,” the jarvey said when they had reached their destination. “’Sides, there be ’acks aplenty all about.”

Sylvia nodded, paid him, and climbed the steps to the front door of the famous club with only a slight pang of trepidation. Her primary emotion was excitement. She was doing the unthinkable. No woman of quality would be caught anywhere on St. James’s Street except in a closed coach with a proper escort. Certainly no lady of quality would stride—in breeches, yet—up the front steps of Brooks’s Club and expect to gain entrance. A liveried servant pulled open the door for her and nodded toward the porter’s room.

“May I be of service to you, lad?” inquired the stately gentleman behind the window there.

“I’ve a message for Greyfalcon,” Sylvia muttered, keeping her voice as much of a growl as possible, lest he detect feminine notes in it.

But the porter had other thoughts in his mind. “The Earl of Greyfalcon to you, my lad. I’ll take the message.” He raised his hand to signal one of several page boys standing against the opposite wall.

“No! That is,” she added more carefully, “my orders are to see the message personally delivered into his lordship’s hand.”

The porter grimaced and said in strong British accents, “A
billet doux,
no doubt. ’Tis only the ladies who insist upon such nonsense. Very well, here is a salver, for you’ll not hand it to him more personally than that upon my premises.” He handed her a small silver salver and nodded to the young page who had answered his summons. “Take this lad to the Subscription Room. He has a message for Lord Greyfalcon.”

Sylvia followed the page, content now that she need worry no longer about anyone’s suspecting she was other than she appeared to be. As she crossed the black-and-white tiled floor of the front hall toward the green-carpeted marble staircase that swept up the right wall and then, from a corner landing, continued along the rear wall, she glanced about, paying little heed to the famous portrait of Charles James Fox that hung over the fireplace like a tutelary deity, but approving of the general atmosphere of the place. She had often wondered what a gentleman’s club would be like, and Brooks’s appeared to be elegant yet friendly and casual, much like her Uncle Lechlade’s country house.

They reached the first floor, and a low murmur of masculine voices drifted to her ears before the page stepped aside to allow her to pass through the tall arched entrance into the Great Subscription Room.

“Over yonder,” the boy said tersely with a small gesture when she hesitated upon the threshold.

But Sylvia had already spotted Greyfalcon, sitting at a table toward the rear of the room. Though she had told Lady Joan that she had no fear of failing to recognize her quarry, she had indeed experienced a qualm or two on her way to the club, for she had not seen the man in several years, but she knew now there had been no cause for such worry. Greyfalcon looked precisely as she remembered him.

He was not built like Christopher, which had always surprised people who had met first one and then the other. Christopher had been of no more than medium height with very broad shoulders and the narrow waist but muscular thighs of the sporting man. He had been a bruising rider to hounds and a consistently merry companion, with the devil of mischief lurking always in his azure eyes. His hair had been blond and curly, his complexion fair and ruddy.

Greyfalcon was taller, just over six feet, and although he had the same broad shoulders, his frame was sparer, almost lanky. His hands were particularly long and slender, elegant and graceful in their movement. Sylvia watched them now as he placed several chips out on the table before him. When his signet flashed in the light from the room’s hundreds of candles, her gaze moved to his face. There, too, the resemblance of Christopher was slight. Greyfalcon’s complexion, like his hair, was darker and his eyes seemed always hooded, as though he feared they might give away his thoughts. She knew they were darker than Christopher’s had been, indigo rather than azure, and she remembered suddenly that while Christopher’s had seemed always to be filled with warmth and laughter, his brother’s eyes could change in an instant from the ordinary to the dangerously chilling.

The page behind her suddenly murmured his impatience to be gone; so, swallowing carefully, she placed the small packet she had so carefully prepared at Reston House upon the silver salver. Then, noting few of the famous room’s attributes other than the high, barrel-vaulted ceiling, the glitter of a thousand candles, and the gray-and-black herringbone carpet beneath her reluctant feet, she pulled her cap a little more firmly down over her eyes and made her way across the room, wondering for the first time since leaving Oxfordshire if she was being very wise.

O
NLY TOO SOON DID
Sylvia find herself at Greyfalcon’s table. The five men seated there were in the midst of a hand, and she knew at once that she would have to wait a few moments before daring to interrupt.

The table was covered with green baize upon which had been painted a pattern of thirteen numbers, representing the value of the cards in each suit. An assortment of colored chips had been placed upon these numbers, and several of those chips had been “coppered,” which is to say that a penny had been placed upon each of them. In front of Greyfalcon, who held the bank, was an open-framed box from which, as Sylvia came to a halt at his elbow, he drew a card face up and laid it beside the box. It was the nine of spades.

“Aha, nine the loser!” exclaimed the gentleman to Greyfalcon’s right, a dapper young man attired in a bright-green coat with tight red armbands. Perched atop his carroty hair was the most astonishingly beribboned straw hat Sylvia had ever clapped eyes upon. It was all she could do not to stare. The gentleman continued gleefully, “And my copper sitting right on my number-nine chip. Pay up, old man.”

“Contain your soul in patience, Lacey,” recommended another of the gentlemen, this one older and more conservatively dressed. “The turn is incomplete and there might yet be a split.”

“Aye,” put in a third dryly, “and if there is, ’twill be the best luck Greyfalcon’s had today. The devil’s in his cards, and no mistake.” He regarded the dealer with wary amusement, drawing Sylvia’s attention back to the man she had come to see.

The Earl of Greyfalcon drank deeply from the glass near his left hand, and Sylvia was certain from the look of him that it was not the first glass that had been served him that afternoon. His dark hair was tousled, a lock falling over his forehead, and there were lines in his face that made him look older than his twenty-nine years. As he drew the next card and placed it beside the first, he grimaced and young Lacey let out a crow of delight.

“Look, Lancombe, the winner is your ace. He owes us both now. No split this turn. Too bad, Franny, me lad.”

The older man grunted as he shot an oblique look at the dealer, then said quietly to Lacey, “It would behoove you to learn to take your winnings gracefully, sir, not to chortle over them.”

Abashed, the younger man offered a hasty apology, adding, “No doubt the luck will change when you pass the deal, Fran.”

“Perhaps.” Greyfalcon drew the next card, and Sylvia shifted impatiently, causing him to glance up at her. “You want me, boy?”

“Aye,” she muttered, carefully keeping the right side of her face, that which the feather concealed, toward him. “I’ve a message fer ye, m’lord.”

Scarcely glancing at the salver, Greyfalcon scooped up the packet and shoved it inside his coat, tossing several chips from the pile before him upon the salver in the packet’s place. “The porter will change those for you.”

“Thank ’e, sir, but I’m t’ see ye open the packet,” Sylvia muttered.

Greyfalcon drew the next card without looking at it as, with a sigh, he extracted the packet once more from his coat, ripped it open, and dumped the contents, both sealed letter and folded note, onto the table. “You’ve seen. Now go.”

“Ye’re t’ read at least the note, an it please ye, sir.” A hint of desperation crept into her voice.

He glanced at her then, but she kept her face carefully averted and breathed a small sigh of relief when he said nothing further and began to unfold the note. Since it explained merely that Lord Arthur was doing Greyfalcon the courtesy of showing him the accompanying letter before having it printed in both the
Times
and the
Gazette,
Sylvia was not the least bit surprised when, having scanned it rapidly, he tossed it down with an angry oath and snatched up the letter, breaking its seal without comment.

She watched him carefully now, determined to know his every thought by the changing display of expressions that flitted across his face. He read the whole letter much more rapidly than she expected, however, and thus was she caught off guard when his head suddenly snapped up and she found herself looking directly into a pair of steel-blue eyes aglint with fury.

With an involuntary shiver of fear, Sylvia jerked a bow and began hastily to turn away, but Greyfalcon’s hand shot out with even greater speed to clamp around her upper arm, none too gently.

“Please, my lord, I have done only as I was commanded to do.” Again she muttered the words and kept her face averted, but she had glimpsed a fleeting look of astonishment in his eyes during that brief moment when her gaze had collided with his, and she very much feared that he had recognized her.

A moment later she was sure of it when Greyfalcon pushed back his chair and got to his feet. He seemed suddenly much bigger than she remembered, for although in her memory he was taller than Christopher, she had not remembered that he was so tall as he seemed now, looming beside her, his hand tightly gripping her arm. Casually he waved his other hand toward the small pile of chips on the table before him. “Look after this paltry lot for me, Lacey.”

A chorus of protest arose from his gaming companions, but he ignored it, retaining his grip on Sylvia’s arm and turning toward the door. When the protests became more voluble, he glanced back over his shoulder. “You cannot complain, my friends, for you had nearly cleaned me out. Moreover, ’tis not as though I were quitting as winner, nor as though you will not have more from me before the day is done. Don’t forget you are all coming to dine with me this evening.”

There was laughter then, and several ribald comments regarding both the nature and the importance of any message that could spur Greyfalcon to such a hasty exit, comments that sent flames of color shooting up Sylvia’s cheeks. A moment later the comments were forgotten as Greyfalcon propelled her down the wide, carpeted stair to the main hall and, scarcely giving one of the pages time to reach the front door and open it for him, out and down onto the flagway that bordered St. James’s Street.

Certain that she would retain bruises upon her arm for weeks, Sylvia began as soon as they reached the pavement to protest his rough treatment. “Unhand me, my lord. You have no right—”