The Deception (26 page)

I pulled the hood of my cloak farther forward, and we went in.

The first thing I noticed was the unappetizing smell of mingled gin and beer and wine and male sweat. I shot a swift glance around the room, which was filled with men in green eyeshades playing at cards or dice around green-baize-covered tables, and saw to my dismay that there were only three other females present, and I could tell from their dresses that they were not ladies. One of them looked at me and sneered. The whole thing was even worse than I had imagined.

“Damn,” I muttered under my breath. Adrian would murder me if he ever found out about this.

“The E.O. table is this way, my dear,” Chalmers said smoothly. I resented the “my dear,” but I could hardly demand that he call me Lady Greystone.

“What time is it, Mr. Chalmers?” I asked.

He took out his watch. “Nine-thirty.”

Harry was supposed to come and get me after he left Chalmers’s lodging. We had figured that he should be able to make it to St. James Square by ten-thirty. “Just play E.O. for an hour, Kate, and then I’ll fetch you home,” he had said.

I squared my shoulders and said bravely, “I can hardly wait to play.”

It took me exactly one half hour to lose all the money I had come with. I bet odds eight times in a row, and evens came up eight times in a row. Then I switched to evens, and what came up? Odds!

The men gathered around the table commiserated with me on my bad luck.

“I’m afraid I haven’t any more money,” I said to Chalmers.

He looked surprised. I suppose what I had lost seemed paltry to him, but it represented all the money Harry and I had won the previous afternoon at whist, plus the remainder of my quarter’s allowance.

Chalmers’s surprised look was quickly followed by one of his shark’s smiles. “Allow me to procure you some refreshment, my dear,” he said. “The luck is sure to change.”

I accepted the offer of refreshments, because I had another half an hour to waste until I could look for Harry to rescue me. I was not happy when Chalmers escorted me down the hall and into a small, deserted salon, but neither did I want to spend any more time than was necessary in the view of the denizens of that disgusting hell.

“You can take off your cloak now, Lady Greystone,” Chalmers purred. “Make yourself comfortable and I will pour you some wine.”

The only seating in the room was two small sofas, which faced each other on either side of the fireplace, with a table between them. I left my cloak on, sat squarely in the middle of one sofa, and folded my hands. “I do not drink wine, Mr. Chalmers,” I said. “I would like some tea.”

“This isn’t Almack’s my dear,” he said. “We don’t serve tea.” I found that “we” very interesting. Evidently Harry had been right when he surmised that Chalmers was in partnership with the owners.

“Well, lemonade, then.” It cost me some effort, but I did not twist my hands nervously in my lap.

He shrugged and went to the bellpull. After a minute, a thin, pimply-faced boy came into the room, and Chalmers ordered lemonade for me. Then he poured a glass of wine for himself.

The lemonade came, the boy left, and Chalmers closed the door behind him. We were alone.

Damn,
I thought.
Now I’m really in the soup.

He put the lemonade down on the table, sat next to me on the sofa, and lifted a hand to push back the hood of my cloak. “I can quite understand that you don’t want anyone in the room outside to recognize you, Lady Greystone,” he said, “but surely there is little point in hiding your lovely face from me?”

“I’m cold,” I said.

The worm actually touched my cheek. It took heroic self-control on my part to keep from flinching away from him. “You don’t feel cold to me,” he said.

I began to inch toward the end of the sofa.

“If you would like to continue to play E.O., Lady Greystone, I will be happy to advance you the money,” he said.

“That is very nice of you, Mr. Chalmers,” I moved a few more inches, “but I am afraid that I would be unable to pay you back. I’ve gone through all of my quarter’s allowance, and I can’t possibly ask my husband for more money.”

“You’ll win,” he said confidently. He moved after me.

“But what if I don’t?”

His eyes narrowed in a manner I didn’t like at all. “There is another way you could pay me back, my dear,” he said, “and your husband wouldn’t have to know a thing about it.”

By now he had me pressed up against the arm of the sofa. He reached an arm in front of me, neatly trapping me in the corner. “Let me up, Mr. Chalmers,” I said warningly.

He leaned forward so that his face was very close to mine. “Kate,” he said huskily. “You are so beautiful. You can play E.O. to your heart’s content, my dear, and all you have to do in return is be kind to me.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. His face was coming even closer, and I realized he was going to kiss me.

Revulsion galvanized me into action. I put the palm of my hand under his chin and shoved hard. I may be small, but I am strong. One cannot regularly ride a thousand pounds of horse in a collected frame without developing back muscles.

The worm was thrown off balance, and I slipped under his arm and ran to the door. I heard him curse as I lifted the latch. I slammed the door closed behind me and gave a quick look up and down the corridor.

I thought briefly about trying to escape out the back way, but then I heard Chalmers rattling the latch. I decided that safety lay in numbers, and raced up the hallway to the playing room.

As I entered on one side of the room, the door on the opposite side was opening to admit a new patron.
Please God,
I prayed,
let it be Harry.

The new patron had fair hair like Harry, but he was considerably larger.

It was Adrian.

Jem, the huge, toothless doorkeeper, took one look at him, growled, “Not tonight, my lord,” and stepped into his path. Adrian pushed him aside as if he weighed no more than little Ned. Across the smelly, crowded room, his eyes had found me.

“It’s Greystone!”

The name flew around the tables, and even the hands of the dealers stilled. Every eye watched as Adrian strode across that polluted room like the Archangel Michael blazing through the legions of hell. From close behind me I heard a sharp intake of breath, and then the sound of feet hastily retreating in the opposite direction. The worm had wisely chosen to make himself scarce.

Adrian stopped in front of me and said softly, “What the bloody hell are you doing here?”

His nostrils were white. His gray eyes were glittering. He was furious, and I couldn’t say I blamed him.

“I’m ready to leave,” I said.

“You’re damn right you’re ready to leave,” he said.

He never swore in front of me. He had to be absolutely livid.

“Come on,” he said. His voice; was still too soft to be heard by anyone but me, but he seemed to be talking through his teeth. “And pull up that bloody hood!”

I pulled the hood up hastily, and he grabbed my hand, put it on his arm, and held it there, as if he was afraid I was going to escape. Then he strode back toward the door, forgetting to moderate his stride to mine. I half ran, half skipped beside him, trying to keep up.

Jem was waiting beside the door. He opened it, and as Adrian dragged me out into the street, I distinctly heard him chuckle.

There was a cab waiting for us outside. Adrian opened the door, practically threw me in, and gave our address to the driver. Then he followed me, closing the cab door firmly behind him. The driver clucked to his horse, and the cab began to move.

I was alone with my furious husband.

I desperately tried to think of some reason to account for my presence at the hell that would not involve Harry. I am usually inventive, but at the moment I couldn’t think of a thing.

The best defense is a good offense, Papa had always said. I took his advice and launched the first shot, demanding, “How did you know I was there?”

“Bonds saw you getting into a cab with Chalmers outside of Drury Lane.” He was still talking through his teeth in that ominous fashion. “He came to White’s to tell me. Thought I should know that my wife was getting into bad company.”

I had met Mr. Bonds. He was an old friend of Adrian’s from Eton.

“I had my hood up,” I said suspiciously. “How did he know it was I?”

“He knew you were my wife, just as all the men in that bloody hell knew you were my wife!”

I was infuriated. “They didn’t know until you came charging in there tike an enraged lion and dragged me out! I had my hood up the whole time I was there!”

“You didn’t have your hood up when I saw you!”

I remembered how that had come about. “That Chalmers is a very nasty man, Adrian,” I said. “You won’t believe what he said to me.”

“Oh, yes, I would.”

“No, listen to this.” I leaned toward him earnestly. “I lost all my money in the first half hour I was there, you see, and so I told him I couldn’t play any more. He offered to loan me money if I wanted to continue to bet.”

He said grimly, “Kate, that is the oldest trick in the book.”

“I know that! I had no intention of taking his money. I told him I couldn’t, that I had no way of paying him back. And then he said that I could lose as much money as I wanted, so long as I was kind to him. Can you believe that, Adrian? The disgusting worm wanted me to sleep with him!”

Just remembering that interview made me indignant. “He has teeth just like a shark,” I added.

There was a short silence. It was too dark inside the cab for me to see his face, so I didn’t know how he was taking this revelation.

“And what did you do after he made this disgusting proposition?” he asked finally. I thought his voice sounded slightly less grim than it had before. Still, I thought it would be wise to omit the part about Chalmers trying to kiss me.

“I ran away,” I said. “I had just come back into the gaming room, when you arrived.” I made my voice as conciliating as possible. “I must say, my lord, that I was extremely glad to see you.”

Silence.

“I’ll never go there again,” I said. “It was a horrible place.”

He grunted.

“Do you think the despicable Chalmers has made that proposition to other women?” I asked.

“I have no doubt that he has. And been accepted, too.”

I shuddered.

His anger appeared to have abated somewhat, and we finished the drive in silence. The night footman opened the door for us, and I was beginning to hope that perhaps Adrian was satisfied that I was properly repentant and would not pursue the matter further, when he said, “Come into the library, Kate. I want to talk to you.”

My heart sank.

I trailed behind him down the corridor to the teak-paneled library, where a fire was burning and the lamps were lit. He gestured me to one of the comfortable old green velvet chairs in front of the fireplace, and as I sat down he went to pour a glass of wine for himself. I looked at the decanter a little wistfully. I could have used a little wine myself.

“Would you like tea?” Adrian asked me courteously.

I shook my head. It was probably better to get this over with as quickly as possible.

He came to sit in the other chair, took a sip of his wine, and regarded me out of hooded eyes. “What you have not told me, Kate,” he said, “is why you went to that hell in the first place.”

I bit my lip and nervously smoothed my taffeta skirt. I still couldn’t think of a reason that wouldn’t involve Harry.

Adrian went on, “You told me you were going to the theater with Harry and instead you met Chalmers and went with him to a gambling hell. You obviously had an assignation with him. Was it the excitement of going somewhere illicit that drew you, Kate? Or were you so eager to gamble that you had to go to a place where you thought I would not hear about it?”

His words cut me to the heart. It wasn’t fair to let him think that he was married to a woman who had so little regard for his name; a woman who was nothing but a reckless gamester, a sensation-seeker. He had been so good to me; he didn’t deserve that. I was going to have to sacrifice Harry.

I bent my head, drew a deep breath, and told him what had happened.

When I finished the only sounds in the room were the crackling of the fire and the beating of my heart. When Adrian spoke at last, his voice was ominously quiet: “So Harry let you go alone to that hell with Chalmers.”

I flew to poor Harry’s defense. “It was only for an hour, Adrian! Harry said I would probably win, because that’s what they do to lure new pigeons into continuing to play once they start to lose. It was only because I lost all my money so quickly that I got cozened into being alone with Chalmers.” A thought struck me, and I frowned. “Do you think he fixed it so that I would lose?”

“Of course he fixed it, Kate.” The grim note was back in his voice. “He couldn’t wait to get his hands on you.”

“Well, Harry wasn’t to know that,” I said hastily. “And I got away from Chalmers and would have waited safely in the gaming room for Harry to arrive. It all would have gone perfectly smoothly if that wretched Mr. Bonds had not seen me and come tattling to you!”

He got up and went over to the decanter to pour himself another glass of wine. I said to his back, “Adrian, Harry only went along with my scheme because he was so anxious to keep the tale of his stupidity from you.”

“I did not think I was such an ogre,” my husband said.

“No!” I jumped to my feet. ‘
;
You don’t understand, Adrian! It is precisely because he loves you so much, and admires you so much, that he did not want to look small in your eyes. Don’t you see? Can’t you understand what it must be like to have
you
for an older brother?”

“If he loves me so much, then he should have trusted me not to think badly of him.” Adrian turned to look at me, his face very somber. “And he should never, never have let you go to that hell.”

He didn’t understand.

Suddenly the door opened, and Harry was there on the threshold. His hair was ruffled, his neckcloth was disordered, and there was dirt on the knees of his beige breeches. His eyes flew to me. “Kate, are you all right?”