The Gamble (21 page)

I could feel the sudden tension in Philip. He said coldly, “I do not believe I know this gentleman, my dear.”

He knew perfectly well who Asherton was, and he knew that Asherton was one of the men on Papa’s list, but I said, “My lord, may I present Mr. George Asherton. He was a friend of my late father’s.”

Mr. Asherton bowed. “Lord Winterdale. I am pleased to make your acquaintance, sir.”

Philip looked at him icily. “How do you do,” he said.

Undeterred by my husband’s unwelcoming behavior, Mr. Asherton said, “May I request the honor of your hand for this dance, Lady Winterdale?”

I said quickly, before Philip could snub him, “Certainly, Mr. Asherton.” I smiled up into my husband’s rigid face. “Will you excuse us, my lord?”

He gave me an exceedingly hard look, which I ignored. I wanted to talk to George Asherton. Specifically, I wanted to allow him to talk to me. He might let something fall that would give me a clue as to whether or not he was the author of that threatening letter.

The dance was a country dance and as we walked toward the floor Mr. Asherton asked me if I wouldn’t rather sit it out. He looked a little surprised when I agreed, but he escorted me to a chair along the wall and went to fetch two glasses of punch for us. Philip and Catherine had moved to a place on the other side of the room, almost directly opposite to my chair, and as I glanced at them I noticed how the blazing wall sconce shone on my husband’s raven head and sparkled off Catherine’s diamond earrings and her spectacles.

It was quite clear that Philip meant to keep me under close surveillance, and I found this thought to be extremely comforting.

Mr. Asherton came back with the punch and sat down on a gilt chair next to mine. He shifted his weight, and the chair creaked in tune with his corset.

“I was so sorry to hear about your accident the other day, Lady Winterdale,” Mr. Asherton began. He did not look sorry at all. “I understand that you took an ugly fall from your horse.”

“Yes,” I said. “He was stung by a bee, and he threw me.”

Asherton regarded me with watery blue eyes. “Stung by a bee?”

I sipped my punch and nodded.

He cleared his throat in a loud, disgusting manner. “One would be more inclined to believe that tale if one hadn’t heard of other unaccountable accidents befalling you, Lady Winterdale.”

My head snapped around, and I stared at him. The sconce above us illuminated a bald patch in the middle of his head. “What other accidents?” I demanded.

“For example, I heard just yesterday that a few weeks ago you fell into the lion’s cage at the Tower.” Asherton’s pudgy face was hard to read since it was so unnaturally smooth and unlined for a man of his age. “Is that true?”

“Where did you hear that?” I demanded.

He shrugged and once more his corset creaked. “I don’t recollect specifically. It was the talk of White’s, however.” He narrowed his eyes, and for a moment his fat face actually managed to look dangerous. “A blackmailer’s existence is extremely hazardous, Lady Winterdale,” he warned. “Look at your own father. He was stabbed to death on the streets of London, was he not? Now you yourself have first fallen into a lion’s den, and then been thrown into the path of a horse and carriage in Hyde Park. Don’t you think it would be wise of you to give up your evidence and put an end to your nefarious career?”

The blood ran cold in my veins at his words about Papa.

It had never before occurred to me that Papa might have died at the hands of one of his victims.

I managed to say in a voice that did not shake, “Are you responsible for the accidents that have befallen my family, Mr. Asherton? You appear to know a great deal about them.”

He bared his teeth at me. They were very small teeth for such a big man. “Someone is responsible, Lady Winterdale. I do not fool myself that I am the only one whom your late father was blackmailing. I do not know who the others were—except, of course, for Winterdale, who is obvious. But someone is out to stop you from following in your father’s footsteps, my dear. It may be Winterdale, whom you have entrapped into marriage, or it may be someone else. But my advice to you is to give up your evidence. It is the only way you can assure your own safety.”

“I destroyed the evidence,” I said grimly. “I do not know how many times I have told you that.”

“If you destroyed the evidence, then why did Winterdale take you in and pay a huge amount of money to give you a Season? Why did he marry you?”

This, of course, was the unanswerable question. I could hardly say that Philip had done it to get back at his aunt. Even I could not wish that kind of a scandal on Lady Winterdale. And it was unlikely any of Papa’s victims would believe such an explanation.

“He knew my circumstances, and he felt sorry for me,” I said lamely.

“
Winterdale?
” Mr. Asherton stared at me as if I were mad. “Winterdale never felt sorry for anyone in his life,” he said. “Do you know how he got his money? He won his entire fortune from a young Italian count, who went out immediately after the game in which he lost all his possessions to Winterdale, including his family villa, and killed himself. At the time, Lady Winterdale, Count Ferria was all of twenty-three years old.”

I could feel myself go pale.

I’ve killed an innocent man before
, Philip had said.

I set my jaw. “And how old was my husband?” I asked Mr. Asherton.

“Oh, he was about the same age, I suppose,” Asherton replied impatiently. “But at twenty-three, Winterdale was a man of the world. Ferria was still a babe in arms.”

I said grimly, “Was the game fair?”

Asherton glared at me. “I suppose it was fair. I never heard that it wasn’t.”

“Then that Italian count was a fool,” I said stoutly. “Gentlemen shouldn’t play when they can’t afford to lose.” I glared back at my companion. “As you, of all people, should know, Mr. Asherton.”

Mercifully, the music was ending and I got to my feet. I looked around for Philip and saw him coming across the floor in my direction.

“Allow me to tell you that I find you to be an excessively unpleasant man, Mr. Asherton,” I said. “I shall make a bargain with you. I will stay away from you if you will stay away from me.”

Philip arrived at my side and gratefully I put my hand upon his sleeve. I said, “This punch I have been drinking is warm, my lord. Do you think we might go into the supper room and have another glass?”

“Of course,” he replied.

As we crossed the floor together in the direction of the door, I could feel the eyes watching us.

I was going to have to tell Philip about the fact that news had got out about my fall into the lion’s den at the Tower, but I decided to keep my suspicions about my father’s death to myself.

CHAPTER
twenty

W
E LEFT THE BALL EARLY AND ALL THE WAY HOME
in the chaise, Lady Winterdale complained to Catherine about her giving so many dances to Lord Henry Sloan. Lord Henry, as a younger son, might have been a perfectly adequate suitor for me, but Lady Winterdale had set her sights higher for her daughter.

While Catherine murmured innocuous responses to her mother, I sat with my eyes half-closed, listening to the sound of the rain bouncing off the top of the town chaise. Philip sat beside me in silence, staring moodily out the rain-drenched window.

It was midnight when I entered my dressing room to get ready for bed. Betty was waiting for me, and she unbuttoned all the small covered buttons at the back of my pale rose evening gown and helped me into my nightdress. She unbraided my hair and brushed it so that it fell smoothly between my shoulder blades. Then I put on my green-velvet dressing gown and went into my bedroom next door.

The coal fire was blazing in the fireplace, and a brass candelabra on the writing desk between the two big windows cast its yellow light across the rug. I took off my dressing gown, got into bed, and strained my ears to hear through the walls into the room next door.

The faint rumble of male voices floated to my ears.

Philip was talking to his valet. He must indeed be coming to bed.

I leaned back against my pillows and smiled with a mixture of anticipation and relief.

Five minutes later he came through the door, blew out the three candles in the candelabra, and joined me in bed.

Our lovemaking that night was both the same as it had been at Winterdale Park, and different. Philip’s need for me was the same, as was his heart-stopping tenderness. And the swelling surge of my own response, the thrilling convulsion of pleasure that his driving desire gave to me, this too was the same.

And afterward, when he lay breathless on top of me, his heart pounding, and I held him tightly in my arms, so deeply loved that I never wanted to let him go, that too was the same.

But when I awoke in the early hours of the morning, I was dismayed to find that Philip was not beside me in the bed. The rain had stopped and a faint glow of moonlight showed me his figure at the window. He had put on his dressing gown, and he was standing there, his forehead pressed against the glass, staring out at the empty garden.

He looked so desolate, so unbearably lonely.

Anguish struck my heart. In my foolish lovesickness, I had thought that marriage to me would put an end to that isolation of his. I had thought that now that he had a wife who loved him, he would never wear that look again.

And indeed, at Winterdale Park, it had seemed as if we had joined together in a way that was deeply personal, in a way that went well beyond the merely physical attraction that was so obviously between us.

Things had changed since we returned to London.

And what, after all, did I really know of him, I asked myself tonight. In truth, he had shared very little of his thoughts and feelings with me. He was a man who had learned to live his life alone, relying on his own resources and his own talents and his own wits.

Was I refining too much on the fact that he was a good lover? He had made love to many women; I was aware of that. Why should I be of any more importance to him than any of the other female bodies into which he had poured his passion and his seed?

I lay there in the dark, and looked at my husband, and felt more unhappy than I think I had ever felt before in my life.

He was a mystery to me. He had lived a life that was utterly foreign to the world in which I had been brought up. He had known many women, he had caused a man’s death, and he talked of killing with a casualness that frightened me.

But I could not forget that he had been cast into that ugly, rapacious world as a boy and been forced to survive largely on his own. How could I blame him for what he was? How could anyone blame him?

Indeed, it seemed to me that he could have been far worse.

He was gentle with Anna.

He was kind to Nanny.

I looked at his back, at those wide shoulders that managed to look so untouchable, and quelled my urge to get out of bed and go to him. He wouldn’t welcome my presence now. Instinctively, I sensed that. So I lay perfectly still and waited for him to come back to bed on his own.

It took him fifteen more minutes before he turned away from the window and came back to our bed. His movements looked unutterably weary.

But what is the matter, Philip?

I longed to cry those words out to him. I longed to reach my arms around him, and hold him close to me and give him the comfort of my body.

But he didn’t want me. He had wanted me earlier, but not now.

He punched his pillow into shape and turned away from me and settled once more to sleep.

I lay awake for a long time, the tears seeping silently out of my eyes, trying to understand what bitter and divisive thing might be keeping us apart.

* * *

I woke with a headache.

“Too much champagne punch,” Philip said when he came in at ten o’clock to find me lying heavy-eyed in bed.

He was dressed in riding clothes and there was fresh color in his cheeks. He did not look like a man who had spent half the night staring out the bedroom window.

“Have you been to the park?” I asked wistfully.

“Yes, Isabelle and I had a nice long gallop.”

I shut my eyes. It was not the champagne punch which had given me the headache, and I knew it.

He said, “Georgie, I have had a letter this morning from my agent about problems with the canal at Winterdale Park. I am going to have to go down there to have a look at it and make some decisions.”

I said quietly, “Do you want me to go with you?”

He frowned at me. “I do, because I don’t like the idea of letting you out from under my sight. On the other hand, I plan to be back tomorrow, and there seems little point in forcing you to make the trip back and forth for such a short stay, particularly if you are not feeling well.”

I sighed. “I think it would upset Anna to have me come and go as quickly as that.”

“Well then, that answers the question, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose it does,” I replied glumly.

He was holding his tan leather riding gloves and now he slapped them decisively against his thigh. “Very well, then. I will be gone overnight and during that time I want you to keep to the house.”

“Good heavens, Philip,” I said impatiently. “There is no reason to make me a prisoner. As long as I exercise sensible precautions, I don’t see any reason for me to have to stay within-doors.”

“You may not see any reason, but I do,” he replied. “You will obey me in this, Georgianna. There have already been two attempts made on your life, remember.”

“I promise not to go near any more menageries,” I said with an attempt at humor.

He favored me with an extremely hard blue stare. “Stay indoors. Do you hear me?”

I slid down in the bed. I stuck out my lower lip. “Yes, Philip,” I said ungraciously. “I hear you.”

“Good. I will be leaving within the hour. You may expect me back sometime late tomorrow.” He came to bestow a chaste kiss upon my forehead. “I hope your head feels better,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said. “Goodbye.”

He went out the door. With difficulty, I refrained from throwing something after him.

Sometimes, I thought, he could be a very difficult man to love.

I went back to sleep for another hour and when I awoke the second time, I felt better. As I was getting dressed, Catherine came into my dressing room and asked to talk to me privately. I told Betty to have some tea brought up to us and invited Catherine to sit down in one of the worn, chintz-covered chairs. I took the chaise longue.

After some casual chitchat about the previous night’s ball, she finally came out with the real reason for her visit. “I have a favor to ask of you, Georgie. Do you think you might accompany me to Vauxhall tonight?”

“Vauxhall?” I was astonished. “Is Lady Winterdale allowing you to go to Vauxhall, Catherine?”

Vauxhall pleasure gardens were a very popular entertainment venue with the
ton
, but Lady Winterdale did not consider them entirely respectable for an unmarried girl, and consequently neither Catherine nor I had ever been there. From what I could gather, the reason for Lady Winterdale’s disapproval was that the punch served at Vauxhall was extremely potent, and many of the young bucks who attended the entertainments there tended to get rather boisterous. A few had even been known to pull an innocent young miss off one of the pleasure-garden paths and into the woods for an illicit kiss.

“There is to be a concert this evening, and the Duchess of Faircastle has invited me to accompany her party,” Catherine explained. Her eyes shone behind her spectacles. “Edward is going to be there, too, Georgie. We will be able to have supper together in one of the booths, and perhaps we can even go for a walk together down one of the paths . . .”

Her voice trailed off, and she looked at me imploringly.

The poor girl, I thought. She and Rotheram had probably never once had a chance to be alone together.

“I thought Rotheram was still in mourning,” I said.

“He is, but it is perfectly proper to dress in a domino and mask when one goes to Vauxhall, you know. The duchess’s party is all going to dress in masquerade, so no one will know who Edward is. He will not scandalize anyone by his attendance.”

“But will your mama let you go?” I asked doubtfully. “You know she has never approved of Vauxhall, Catherine.”

Catherine sighed. “I had to hint to her that there was a chance that something might develop between Rotheram and me, and that has quite changed her attitude about my attending Vauxhall with the duchess. She insists, however, that I must have a chaperone other than the duchess, who will probably be too occupied with her own lover to do her duty by me.”

I had been quite scandalized when first I learned that the Duchess of Faircastle had a long-standing lover in Lord Margate, who was one of the regulars at her weekly musicales. He had also been regularly in attendance upon the duchess at all of the other occasions upon which our paths had crossed. In fact, as far as I knew, the duchess’s husband, the Duke of Faircastle, had not made a single appearance in London during the course of the present Season.

Catherine was going on, “Unfortunately, Mama herself is not up to accompanying us this evening, as she was ill for most of the night with a stomach ailment. So will you please come with me, Georgie?”

I stared at her with a mixture of amazement and amusement. “Do I really qualify as a chaperone, Catherine?”

“Of course you do. You are married to my cousin, are you not?”

A thought struck me, and I narrowed my eyes. “By any chance, did you and Rotheram wait until you knew Lady Winterdale would be unable to accompany you before you arranged this little expedition, Catherine?”

She looked a little sheepish. “If Mama came, you know she would never let me out of her sight, Georgie. You are not so old-fashioned.”

I smiled. “That is true.”

I thought of Philip’s strictures about staying home. He would be furious if I went to Vauxhall. I looked once again at Catherine and knew that I didn’t have the heart to disappoint her.

I thought of a compromise.

“Would you mind if I invited Captain Stanton to come with me?” I asked. “I feel bad that I have been able to see him so rarely since he came to London.”

“Of course you may invite Captain Stanton,” Catherine replied promptly. She looked at me anxiously. “Then you will do it, Georgie? You will come?”

I took a deep breath. Frank would protect me, I thought. After all, he was a Peninsula veteran.

I would have Frank. I would be wearing a domino, which would afford me a disguise. In a burst of inspiration I decided that, as an additional precaution, I would ask Betty to sew a pocket into my domino. It wouldn’t hurt to carry a little extra protection with me in case I needed it.

“Yes,” I said to Catherine. “I will come with you to Vauxhall.”

* * *

There were eight of us in the Duchess of Faircastle’s party that evening: the duchess and Lord Margate; Lord Rotheram and Catherine; Mr. Fergus MacDonald and Lady Laura Rinsdale; and Frank and I. Vauxhall itself was situated south of the Thames and to get there we first took two carriages to Westminster, where we boarded a boat to cross the river.

The evening was beautiful and clear, and the setting sun cast shades of red, orange, and vermillion on the waters of the river. Suddenly I wished with all my heart that it was Philip sitting close beside me in the boat, and not Frank.

Our party disembarked on the south side of the river, and we entered the gardens by way of the famous Grand Walk. I thought that the long nine-hundred-foot pathway, lined with elms and blazing lanterns, made the place look like the enchanted land in a childhood story my mother used to tell. Couple by couple, the duchess’s party proceeded along the Grand Walk, until we reached a large open space in the middle of the gardens, where refreshment booths were arranged in two wide semicircles. These booths were well lit and adorned with bright scenes painted on their backs. The duchess had hired one of the booths for the evening, and we located it by her name, which was discreetly posted on a card on the booth door.

We all eight of us took our seats in the booth, which was decorated by a painting of a maypole dance, and I looked curiously at the scene around me.

In the middle of the open space left by the circle of boxes, an orchestra was playing, and couples were strolling about the area to meet and greet acquaintances. The booths were low enough for those dining within to lean over and shake hands with the people whom they knew. Farther down the Grand Walk was a big rotunda, where dancing was going on.

I gestured to the orchestra. “Is this the concert?” I queried Catherine, who was seated next to me. She was wearing a blue-silk domino and a matching mask.

“No. Mr. Hook is to play the organ later.”