Read The Marriage Wager Online
Authors: Jane Ashford
The Marriage Wager
Copyright © 1996 by Jane LeCompte
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Cover art by Alan Ayers
Cover photo by Jon Zychowski
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Originally published in 1996 by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., New York
Colin Wareham, fifth baron St. Mawr, stood at the ship’s rail watching the foam and heave of the English Channel. Even though it was late June, the day was damp and cool, with a sky of streaming black clouds and a sharp wind from the north. Yet Wareham made no effort to restrain the flapping of his long cloak or to avoid the slap of spray as the ship beat through the waves. He was bone-tired. He could no longer remember, in fact, when he hadn’t been tired.
“Nearly home, my lord,” said his valet, Reddings, who stood solicitously beside him. He pointed to the smudge of gray at the horizon that was England.
“Home.” Colin examined the word as if he couldn’t quite remember its meaning. For eight years, his home had been a military encampment. In the duke of Wellington’s army, he had fought his way up the Iberian Peninsula—Coruña, Talavera, Salamanca—he had fought his way through France, and then done it again after Napoleon escaped Saint Helena and rallied the country behind him once more. He had lived with blood and death and filth until all the joy had gone out of him. And now he was going home, back to a family that lived for the amusements of fashionable London, to the responsibilities of an eldest son. His many relatives, at least, were pleased. According to them, as baron, he should never have risked himself as a soldier in the first place. Their satisfaction at his return matched the intensity of the outcry when he had joined up at twenty.
Reddings watched his master with surreptitious anxiety. The baron was a big man, broad-shouldered and rangy. But just now, he was thin from the privations of war and silent with its memories. Reddings didn’t like the brooding quiet that had come to dominate St. Mawr, which the recent victory at Waterloo had done nothing to lift. He would even have preferred flares of temper, complaints, bitter railing against the fate that had decreed that his lordship’s youth be spent at war. Most of all, he would have rejoiced to see some sign of the laughing, gallant young lad who had first taken him into his service.
That had been a day, Reddings thought, glad to retreat into memories of happier times. His lordship had returned from his last year at Eton six inches taller than when he left in the fall, with a wardrobe that had by no means kept up with his growth. The old baron, his father, had taken one look at Master Colin and let off one of his great barks of laughter, declaring that the boy must have a valet before he went up to Cambridge or the family reputation would fall into tatters along with his coat. Colin had grinned and replied that he would never live up to his father’s sartorial splendor. They had a bond, those two, Reddings thought.
He’d been a footman, then, and had actually been on duty in the front hall of the house when this exchange took place in the study. He had heard it all, including the heart-stopping words that concluded the conversation. The old baron had said, “Fetch young Sam Reddings. He follows my man about like a starving hound and is always full of questions. I daresay he’ll make you a tolerable valet.” And so Reddings had been granted his dearest wish and never had a moment’s regret, despite going off to war and all the rest of it. It was a terrible pity the old baron had died so soon after that day, he thought. He’d be the man to make a difference in his lordship now.
The ship’s prow crashed into a mountainous gray wave, throwing cold spray in great gleaming arcs to either side. The wind sang in the rigging and cut through layers of clothing like the slash of a cavalryman’s saber. It had been a rough crossing. Most of the passengers were ill below, fervently wishing for an end to the journey or, if that were not possible, to their miserable lives.
The pitch and heave of the deck left Colin Wareham unscathed. What an adventure he had imagined war would be, he was thinking. What a young idiot he had been, dreaming of exotic places and wild escapades, fancying himself a hero. Colin’s lip curled with contempt for his youthful self. That naïveté had been wrung out of him by years of hard campaigning. The realities of war made all his medals and commendations seem a dark joke. And what was left to him now? The numbing boredom of the London Season; hunting parties and the changeless tasks of a noble landholder; his widowed mother’s nagging to marry and produce an heir; the tiresome attentions of insipid debutantes and their rapacious parents. In short, nothing but duty. Wareham’s mouth tightened. He knew about duty, and he would do it.
The pale cliffs of Dover were definitely visible now as the ship beat against the wind to reach shore. The mate was shouting orders, and the sailors were swarming over the ropes. A few hardy gulls added their plaintive cries to the uproar as the ship tacked toward the harbor entrance.
A movement on the opposite side of the deck caught Colin’s eye. Two other passengers had left the refuge of their cabins and dared the elements to watch the landing. The first was most unusual—a giant of a man with swarthy skin, dark flashing eyes, and huge hands. Though he wore European dress, he was obviously from some eastern country, an Arab or a Turk, Colin thought, and wondered what he could be doing so far from home. He didn’t look very happy with his first view of the English coastline.
The fellow moved, and Colin got a clear look at the woman who stood next to him. A gust of wind molded her clothing against her slender form and caught the hood of her gray cloak and threw it back, revealing hair of the very palest gold; even on this dim day, it glowed like burnished metal. She had a delicately etched profile like an antique cameo, a small straight nose, and high unyielding cheekbones, but Colin also noticed the promise of passion in her full lips and soft curve of jaw. She was exquisite—a woman like a blade of moonlight—tall and square-shouldered, perhaps five and twenty, her pale skin flushed from the bitter wind. His interest caught, Colin noticed that her gaze at the shore was steady and serious. She looked as if she were facing a potential enemy instead of a friendly harbor.
As he watched, she turned, letting her eyes run along the coast to the south, her gaze glancing across his. Her expression was so full of longing and loss that he felt a spark of curiosity. Who was she? What had taken her across the Channel, and what brought her back? She turned to speak to the dark giant—undoubtedly her servant, he thought—and he wondered if she had been in the East, a most unlikely destination for a lady. She smiled slightly, sadly, and he felt a sudden tug of attraction. For a moment, he was tempted to cross the deck and speak to her, taking advantage of the freedom among ship passengers to scrape an introduction. Surely that pensive face held fascinating secrets. He took one step before rationality intervened, reminding him that most of the truly tedious women he had known in his life had been quite pretty. It would be unbearable to discover that only silly chatter and wearisome affectation lay behind that beautiful facade. Colin turned and saw that they were approaching the docks. “We’d best gather our things,” he said to Reddings, and led the way below.
The other pair remained at the rail as the ship passed into the shelter of the headland and the wind lessened. The dark giant huddled his cloak closer, while the woman faced the waves head-on. She seemed to relish the cut of the spray and the salty damp of the air. “There it is, Ferik,” she said after a while. “Home.” Her tone was quietly sarcastic.
The huge man viewed the buildings of Dover without enthusiasm. A gull floated by at the level of his head, and he looked at it as if measuring it for the roasting spit.
“When I left here seven years ago,” said the woman, “I had a husband, a fortune, six servants, and trunks of fashionable gowns. I return with little but my wits.”
“And me, mistress,” answered the giant in a deep sonorous voice with a heavy accent to his English.
“And you,” she replied warmly. “I still don’t think you will like England, Ferik.” He looked so odd in narrow trousers and a tailcoat, she thought, utterly out of place.
“It must be better than where I came from, mistress,” was the reply.
Remembering the horrors she had rescued him from, Emma Tarrant had to agree.
“Except for maybe the rain,” he added, a bit plaintively.
Emma laughed. “I warned you about that, and the cold, too.”
“Yes, mistress,” agreed her huge servitor, sounding aggrieved nonetheless.
Emma surveyed the shore, drinking in the peaked roofs of English houses, the greenery, the very English carriage and pair with a crest on the door, waiting for some passenger. Seven years, she thought, seven years she’d been gone, and it felt like a lifetime. Probably it was a mistake to come back. She would find no welcome, no feast spread for the prodigal daughter. Indeed, she had no intention of seeing anyone from that old, lost life. She only wanted to live among familiar surroundings again, to speak her own language, to feel other than an alien on foreign soil. She was asking so little. Surely, it would not be denied her.
The sailors were throwing lines to be secured and readying the gangplank. Men bustled on the docks. “Come, Ferik,” said Emma. “We’d best see to our boxes.”
On the steep, ladderlike stair leading below deck, they had to squeeze past a tall gentleman and his valet who were coming up. Even their few pieces of worn, battered luggage jammed the opening, so that for a moment, Emma was caught and held against the ship’s timbers on one side and the departing passenger on the other. Looking up to protest, she encountered eyes of a startling, unusual blue, almost violet, and undeniable magnetism. From a distance of less than five inches they examined her, seeming to look beneath the surface and search for something important. Emma couldn’t look away. She felt a deep internal pulse answer that search, as if it was a quest she too had been pursuing for a long time. Her lips parted in surprise; her heartbeat accelerated.
Colin Wareham found himself seized by an overwhelming desire to kiss this stranger to whom he had never spoken a word. Her nearness roused him; the startled intelligence of her expression intrigued him. It would be so very easy to bend his head and take her lips for his own. The mere thought of their yielding softness made him rigid with longing.
Then the giant moved, backing out of the passage and hauling one of the offending pieces of luggage with him. The woman was freed. “Are you all right, mistress?” the huge servant asked when she did not move at once.
She started, and slipped quickly down the stair to the lower deck. “Yes,” she said. “Thank you, Ferik.”
“Beg pardon,” murmured Reddings, and hurried up.
Colin hesitated, about to speak. One part of him declared that he would always regret it if he let this woman slip away, while another insisted that this was madness. Reddings leaned over the open hatch above him. “Can I help, my lord?” he asked. The outsized man started down the stair again, effectively filling the opening. It
was
madness, Colin concluded, and pushed past the giant into the open air.
***
A week later, Emma sat at a card table in Barbara Rampling’s drawing room and pondered which suit to discard. It was a matter of some importance, because for the past year her only means of support had been her skill with games of chance. She considered a minor club, then a diamond. Her opponent was a wretched player, but overconfidence was always a mistake. It had been the downfall of her late husband, Edward, who never stopped believing that the next hand of cards, or the next turn of the wheel, would favor him. He had run through all of Emma’s substantial fortune on the basis of that belief, and had managed to maintain it up to the very moment he was killed in a tavern brawl over a wager.
Emma laid down her card. While her opponent considered it, she glanced up and caught Barbara Rampling’s eye. Though she had only just met the woman, she felt she knew her. Barbara, too, had had a husband whose grand passion was gaming rather than his wife. When his insurmountable pile of debts had caused him to put a bullet through his head, Barbara had opened this genteel gaming hell in her own house in order to keep from starving. Emma was quite familiar with such places; she had spent the last year in them. She was even grateful. She could not enter the clubs where gentlemen played deep. It was only thanks to people like Barbara that she could survive at all.
Edward’s only legacy, besides debts and disappointments, had been the lessons he gave Emma in gambling. Under his tutelage, she had learned to play all sorts of card games and, surprisingly, had proved to have real talent. It had driven Edward nearly mad—that she could be so skillful and yet have no desire whatsoever to play. In the last days she had kept them afloat for a while by winning. But no one could have kept pace with his continual losses. His death had ended an accelerating spiral of ruin that had very nearly pulled Emma under with it.
Her opponent frowned. She was a careless player who did not seem to grasp the principles of the game. She was also, Emma had been reliably informed, easily able to afford substantial losses. Emma need not feel guilty if she came out of this evening set up for a month.
Hiding her impatience while her partner decided on her play, Emma gazed around the room once again, automatically cataloguing the crowd at the tables. Most of them were tiresomely familiar types; she had encountered them in grand salons and mean inns all across the Continent and as far away as Constantinople. They made up a floating international population of sharps and gulls, the cunning and the lost, who shared just one overriding characteristic—they cared for nothing but the game. The usual mixture of contempt, pity, and dislike that assailed her in such places gathered in Emma’s throat. Sir Edward and Lady Emma Tarrant, she thought with bitter humor. She had certainly never imagined it would end like this.
Her gaze paused and then froze on a young man at a corner table, playing faro with a single opponent. He could not be more than seventeen, she thought, and he exhibited all the terrible signs she knew so well—the obsessed glitter in his eyes, the trembling hands, the intent angle of his body bent over the cards. He was losing money he did not have. The sight made Emma sick. She would have stopped him if she could, but the last seven years had made her only too familiar with the gamester’s mania. He would not hear anything she said.
