The Player (Rockliffe Book 3) (25 page)

It was Caroline’s turn to stare.
 

‘Oh,’ she said weakly.

‘Oh,’ he agreed.
 
‘As to your looks … it’s true that you don’t appear to advantage. But
who told you that you are plain?’

‘My mother mentions it from time to time.’
 
Two or
three times a day, usually
. ‘And, if you’d seen my sisters, you’d
understand why.
 
They’re both
exceptionally pretty – as was Mama in her day.
 
I had the misfortune to inherit Papa’s looks rather than hers so
naturally I’m a disappointment.’

Sarre leaned back in his chair and said
deliberately, ‘Your mother isn’t a man.’

Her jaw dropped.
 
Then, ‘Obviously not – though I don’t see the relevance.’

‘No.
 
Of
course you don’t. However, let’s return to safer ground and something I hope
you
will
understand.
 
To put it bluntly, you are the worst-dressed
female I’ve ever seen.
 
With the
exception of that bronze domino, every single garment you possess seems to have
been specifically designed to obliterate you.
 
You’re
not wearing them –
they
are wearing you.
 
And the effect is disastrous.’ A sudden
dazzling smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. ‘You wanted
honesty.
 
There it is.’

He stopped and waited for her to be offended.
 

For a moment, she continued to stare at him out of
wide, faintly stunned brown eyes. He didn’t know that, just for a second or two,
his smile had knocked her sideways and, quite literally, taken her breath away.
Then, incredibly, she started to laugh and said unsteadily, ‘I know.
 
My g-gowns are awful, aren’t they?
 
Every single one.’

‘Yes.’
 
He
let her laugh, enjoying the sound of it. ‘You didn’t choose them?’

She shook her head.
 
‘Grandfather wanted me to have a complete
wardrobe before I got to London.
 
The
dressmaker in Harrogate said bright colours were fashionable and Grandpa liked
them so … so I let them have their way.’
 
She paused, trying to quell her giggles. ‘You wouldn’t
believe
how many hours Lavinia and I
spent removing most of the trimming, trying to improve them. It didn’t work
though, did it?
 
They are beyond help.’

‘They are.
 
You
, on the other hand are not.
 
Correctly gowned, I believe you would
surprise yourself.’
 
For a moment, he
contemplated giving her the green gown and then, with reluctance, decided
against it.
 
He rose, offering her his
arm.
 
‘Shall we remove to the parlour?
 
If you feel disinclined for further
conversation and would prefer to read there are books you might like.’

She didn’t want books.
 
She wanted more glimpses behind that
invisible wall of his.
 
Sitting down
beside the fire, she looked at the playing cards he had left lying in seemingly
odd patterns on the table.

‘You were playing something earlier?’

‘Merely passing the time.’
 
He gathered up the cards and shuffled them
out of habit.
 
‘It was nothing of any
consequence.’

Admiring the easy expertise of his hands, Caroline
said, ‘We could play piquet, if you like.’

‘No.’

The word came out swiftly and with flat
implacability, accompanied by an almost imperceptible shudder. Misreading the
reason behind this, she said defensively, ‘Grandfather taught me and I play reasonably
well, I believe.’

‘I daresay.
 
But you don’t want to play cards with me.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I always win.’

‘That sounds like an idle boast,’ objected
Caroline.
 
‘No one
always
wins.’

‘I do. Or, at least, I can.’
 
He sat down facing her and swiftly set about
discarding all the cards below seven to create a thirty-two card piquet
deck.
 
‘Do you want me to prove it?’

‘Yes.
 
But
you can deal the first hand.’

‘You think that will help you?’

‘It gives me the advantage.’

Sarre shook his head.
 
‘Normally, perhaps.
 
But not with me.’

And he proceeded to demonstrate.

At the end of three hands in which Caroline had
lost with disastrous consistency, he smiled a little and said, ‘More?’

‘No.’ She sat back, baffled and frowning. ‘How did
you
do
that?’

‘Another secret – which, if it got out, would see
me black-balled at White’s.’ He waved his hand negligently at their discarded
game.
 
‘I count cards.’

Caroline looked blank.
 
‘I don’t understand.’

‘I can tell what’s in your hand with almost total
accuracy.
 
Of course, it’s easier with
piquet than most games.
 
Any experienced
player ought to be able to do the same thing up to a point. But I … I have an
extra ability that enables me to do it with any card-game.’
 
He paused.
 
‘Originally, I used it to earn my living and later, to finance my share
of Sinclair’s.
 
Now
, however, it’s become something of a handicap because, although
it’s not exactly cheating, neither is it completely honourable.
 
But trying
not
to do it gives me a headache – which makes sitting down to a
sociable game of cards virtually impossible these days.’

‘So you don’t play?’

‘Not if I can avoid it, no.’

‘I couldn’t tell what you were doing.
 
Can other people?’

‘They’d start to suspect something if they played
against me often enough,’ he shrugged.
 
‘In the days when I relied on it, I had to take extensive precautions.’

‘Such as what?’

‘I played in numerous different
establishments.
 
And as numerous
different gentlemen.’

Caroline stared at him in fascination.

‘Will you show me one?’

To her amazement and for the first time ever, he
actually laughed.

‘Another time, perhaps.’
 
He rose to offer his hand and draw her to her
feet. ‘I don’t know if we’ve progressed at all from this morning.
 
If we haven’t … if, tomorrow, you still find
marriage with me an impossible prospect and want to go home, I’ll arrange it as
quickly as possible and do whatever I can to minimise the damage.’

She glanced up beneath her lashes, a look made all
the more seductive for her being totally unaware of it, and said, ‘You … you
may not be
entirely
impossible.
 
For the rest, I don’t know.
 
The best I can say is that I will at least
think
about it.’

‘Which is probably more than I deserve,’ came the
dry response.
 
‘Thank you.’

~
 
*
 
*
~
 
*
 
*
 
~

If you find marriage
with me an impossible prospect …

Caroline awoke with his words still echoing in her
head.
 
The truth, which she’d finally acknowledged
to herself the night before, was that it wasn’t.
He
wasn’t. Somehow, in the space of a single evening, he’d become rather
alarmingly possible and she didn’t know quite how it had happened.
 
She also had more sense than to accept it
without question.
 

The man she’d sat down to dinner with last night
had been the Earl of Sarre but the man she’d said goodnight to had been someone
else; someone whose demeanour had spoken less of icy reserve than emptiness –
or perhaps a long-held disbelief in happy endings.
 
That man had been
human
and had awoken the first stirrings of liking.
 
But then, she’d liked Claude Duvall,
too.
 
More than liked him.
 
It wouldn’t do to make that mistake again.
And yet …

There were complexities to him she couldn’t begin
to understand, though she suspected they had their root in whatever had
happened ten years ago and which he was very reluctant to talk about.
 
Plainly, this involved a girl falling to her
death … which, though quite bad enough, was far from being the whole
story.
 
She wondered why Sarre felt that,
if she was to be his wife, he was duty-bound to reveal it.
 
Then, putting the thought aside, she examined
the other more pertinent things.
 
Such as
how – his deception aside – she actually felt about him now.

A tricky one, that.
 
Self-possessed and generally a little
intimidating, he wasn’t an easy man to know.
 
But just a tiny glimpse under the surface had shown her a fascinating
puzzle that she’d rather like to unravel.
 
He wasn’t as hard and cold as he appeared.
 
Indeed, she was beginning to suspect that the
shell was there to protect a core of something he didn’t want the world to see.
 
As for the rest … he was far from being
typical of his class.
 
He’d worked for
his living and enjoyed it; he’d invested his earnings wisely, in a way Grandpa
would undoubtedly applaud; and his peculiar facility with cards meant that he
wouldn’t be frittering away money at the gaming-table.
 

All these things were points in his favour.
 
And there were two others which ought to have
been of little consequence but weren’t.
 

He’d smiled; just once and very briefly but it had
stolen her breath.

And Claude Duvall’s kisses had melted her bones …
except, of course, they hadn’t been Claude’s kisses at all. They had been
Sarre’s.
 

Never having kissed anyone else, Caroline wasn’t
sure what to make of this. But she rather thought that, unless he’d acted even
that
… or unless all men kissed exactly
the same – which she suspected wasn’t the case – there was no reason to suppose
that Lord Sarre’s kisses would be any less bone-melting than Claude Duvall’s.
 

At this point a rather shocking notion occurred,
making her blush.
 
Of course, she
couldn’t possibly
ask
Sarre to kiss
her … but neither did she have to actively discourage him from doing so.
 
After all, it was a pertinent fact which
might help her to decide.

She heard Sally tap at the door and climbed out of
bed.
 
It would be interesting to see who she’d
be meeting over the breakfast table.

*
 
*
 
*

Sarre, by contrast, was reluctant to face his fate
too soon and had therefore broken his fast early and taken Argan out across the
fields.
 
Then, returning to the stable,
he spent a lot longer than was absolutely necessary grooming the horse and
tidying the tack-room before slipping into the house through a side door so he
could get to his bedchamber unseen and groom himself.

By the time he finally put in appearance
downstairs, Caroline had eaten two slices of bread-and-butter and was finishing
her third cup of coffee.
 
The moment he
walked through the door, the sense of disappointment she’d been telling herself
she absolutely
did not feel
, melted
away, causing her to say cheerfully, ‘Good morning.
 
You must have been up very early.’

‘Moderately so.’
 

He busied himself pouring coffee.
 
The truth was that, once again, he’d slept
very little but had spent a large part of the night addressing the two possible
permutations today would bring.
 

If she turned him down, he’d have to arrange to
get her back to Town and steel himself to face the aftermath.
 
This might be diluted a little by sending
Bertrand post-haste to London with letters for Henry Lessing, Lady Brassington
and, God help him, Caroline’s mother. Then she’d be gone.
 
Even after such a short time, he suspected he
would miss her – but that was ridiculous, of course.
 
What he would miss was the kind of female
companionship he hadn’t had in a while and which, once he was reputed to be an
unprincipled libertine, he was unlikely to have again anytime soon.

The scenario if she changed her mind and accepted
him was different but, in the immediate future, no less unpleasant. He couldn’t
let her walk down the aisle not knowing but he dreaded the prospect of putting
it all into words.
 
Since the day his
parents had dragged the story out of him while he was still paralysed with shock,
he’d told only one person.
 
Sharing a
lodging meant that Bertrand had seen both the nightmares and what they did to
him which had meant that revealing their cause had become unavoidable.

Taking his coffee to the table, he sat down and
said neutrally, ‘It’s a fine day.
 
The
wind has dropped somewhat.
 
Perhaps
later, if you wish it, we could walk to the town. It isn’t far.’

Although he hid it well, Caroline sensed a shred
of unease and realised that he probably expected her to demand that he take her
home.
 
She also realised that though this
was what she
ought
to say, it was no
longer what she actually wanted.
 
So she
drew a careful breath and said, ‘Yes.
 
I’d like that.’

A light flared briefly in his gaze and then was
gone.

 
‘I can’t
promise that there is a great deal there, but it’s quite pretty and you might
find the history of the place interesting.
 
It’s one of the Cinque Ports, you know.’

‘Sink ports?’
 
She shook her head.
 
‘No.
 
I don’t know.’

He gave the merest hint of a smile and said, ‘It’s
actually ‘cinque’ – the French for five because, originally, there were five
ports – but no one pronounces it that way. You’ll have to stop me if I become
boring.
 
Unfortunately, no schoolboy
escapes that particular bit of history in this part of Kent.’

‘
Is
it
boring?’ she teased.

‘No. I don’t think so – but then, I was brought up
not far from here.
 
I probably should
have explained.
 
This house is entailed
to the eldest son and so has been mine since birth.
 
Sarre Park is roughly ten miles away and is currently
occupied by my mother.’
 
He drained his
cup and stood up.
 
‘I have a couple of
small tasks requiring my attention but I should be free in about an hour.
 
Will that suit you?’

‘Perfectly – though I’m happy to await your
convenience.’

‘A gentleman is never supposed to keep a lady
waiting,’ he replied with a trace of sardonic humour.
 
‘Another inescapable and well-learned lesson.’

Caroline watched him go, her eyes thoughtful.
 
Two things struck her.
 
He was very carefully avoiding the question
hanging over them both.
 
And little
splinters of ice had been evident in his tone when he referred to his
mother.
 
Both deserved some
consideration.

*
 
*
 
*

Leaving the sea behind them, they walked to
Sandwich along a rutted track that crossed the fields.
 
For a time, neither of them spoke but finally
Caroline said, ‘Does this land belong to the house?’

‘Most of it.’
 
He glanced across the uneven terrain. ‘It might do for sheep, I suppose,
but very little else.’

‘Do you know much about sheep?’

‘Absolutely nothing.’

Caroline tutted reprovingly.

‘They’re not as easy as you might suppose.’

‘No?’
 
He
sounded genuinely interested. ‘I take it you
do
know about them?’

‘I’m from Yorkshire,’ she said dryly, ‘where one
could be forgiven for thinking there are more sheep than people.’

‘Ah.
 
Well,
I suppose all that wool has to come from somewhere.’

She smiled. ‘You see?
 
You know more than you thought.’

‘But not enough, it would seem.’

‘Not quite.
 
And if you’re seriously interested in sheep, I’ll educate you on the way
back.
 
But right now, I want your
school-room history of the town.’

‘Port,’ he corrected.
 
‘Or that’s what it used to be before the
river silted up and made it less viable for shipping.
 
Do you
really
want the lesson?’

‘Yes.
 
I
want to know how well you learned it.’

‘By heart, if you must know. Very well, then.
 
Sandwich was first mentioned as a Saxon
stronghold in 664 AD and is listed in the Domesday Book.’
 
He slanted an oblique smile at her.
 
‘1086, as I’m sure you knew.’

‘I was just about to say that very thing.’

‘You were?’

‘No.
 
Go
on.’

Sarre shook his head and suppressed a tremor of
laughter.

Caroline saw and wished he’d stop doing it.

‘During the reign of Edward the Confessor,
Sandwich and four other similar ports in the area were grouped together to
become known as the Cinque Ports.’

‘The other four being …?’

‘Dover, Hastings, Hythe and Romney.
 
Who is conducting this lesson?’

‘You, my lord.
 
But you shouldn’t miss things out.’

‘I stand corrected.
 
The Cinque Ports were required to supply the
Crown with ships and men on an annual basis.
 
In return, they received certain privileges – such as freedom from tolls
and custom duties and the right to hold their own judicial courts.
 
The first Charter outlining all this dates
from 1155.
 
The last one was given by
Charles ll in 1668.’
 
Another sideways
glance.
 
‘I trust you’re absorbing all
this?’

‘My memory is excellent, thank you. What else?’

‘Not so very much, really.
 
The last time Sandwich was called on for
naval service was in 1588 which was the year of …?’

‘The Spanish Armada,’ said Caroline triumphantly.

‘Just so.
 
In more recent times, what the town has lost in prosperity is more than
made up for in character.
 
It’s changed
very little since the plan of 1086 – that being the date of …?’

Caroline rolled her eyes and began to realise that
the Earl might actually have a sense of humour. ‘The Domesday Book.
 
Did you think I’d forgotten already?’

‘Merely checking.
 
The street lay-out remains largely medieval and there are a number of
buildings dating between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries.
 
But if you want to know more about corbels
and flying buttresses, you’ll need another guide.
 
My knowledge of architecture is limited to
the basic difference between Norman and Perpendicular.’

After they reached the road and the first houses
came into sight, Sarre guided her on to another pathway which he said was one
of several which marked the edges of the town and which eventually led towards
the river.
 
Numerous boats were moored
along the nearer bank and further upstream was a drawbridge giving access to
the other side.

‘The bridge is only about twenty years old,’
remarked his lordship.
 
‘I can remember
it being built. Before that, one had to cross the river by ferry.’
 
Then, pointing to an odd building comprising
two conical parts connected by an arch spanning the road, ‘The Barbican, on the
other hand, pre-dates it by over two centuries.
 
Tolls are payable there for every carriage, cart and cow wishing to use
the bridge.’

They passed beneath it into the town and Caroline
strolled along, admiring a row of black-and-white half-timbered houses
over-hanging the street.
 
She said, ‘I’ve
never been anywhere like this.
 
It’s
charming.’

‘I’m glad you think so.
 
In the sixteenth century, these houses and
others like them were probably occupied by Flemish Huguenots who came here to
escape religious persecution.’
 
He gave
her a half-smile.
 
‘Many of them, it may
interest you to know, were weavers by trade.’