This was not so easily done, however. In the subsequent round the marquess was burdened with an extraordinarily poor hand and during the one following that his mother’s increasingly provocative remarks to Lady Althea about her son’s status as the Bachelor Marquess distracted him to such a degree that before he knew it, Gareth and his mother had lost the rubber.
Amazement gave way to interest in his opponents’ success and Gareth soon became oblivious to anything but the cards. The lovely young woman across from him ceased to exist as anything but a strategist to be beaten. He cleared his mind and senses of all extraneous thoughts. His bored distaste for the fashionable crush around him vanished as the electricity of competition energized him. Here were opponents worthy of the name, opponents who changed this particular game from an enforced filial duty to a sport.
In fact, the intensity of the play was having the same energizing effect on other players at the table, all of them except the marchioness, whose constant flow of pleasantries began to dry up as it slowly dawned on her that no one was responding to them, or even listening. She surveyed her companions at the table in dismay. Here she had cleverly arranged an introduction between one of the
ton’s
most elusive yet eligible bachelors and the reigning incomparable of the Season, and for all the effect it was having she might as well have brought together two aged grandmothers. Her son and Lady Althea were completely oblivious to each other, oblivious to everything but the cards in their hands. The marchioness sighed audibly. Her rouged lips drooped in disappointment, but no one paid the least attention.
In truth Gareth had never concentrated so much on one woman in his life; he had certainly never spent so much time or effort trying to divine what she was thinking. This single-minded focus paid off, and during the next hand he was at least able to keep Althea and her grandmother from capturing all the tricks, though he suspected that his own handful of trump cards had as much to do with his success as anything else.
In the succeeding hand, however, rapid and careful calculations enabled him to capture the lead with a two of spades and he began to hope that he had recovered from the shock of being seriously challenged by females and had come into his own again. Gareth even allowed himself a tiny smile of triumph when Althea, caught off guard by such a bold move, glanced up at him with an expression of both admiration and dismay. Obviously Lady Althea Beauchamp was not accustomed to being bested at cards either.
This moment of inattention on her part cost Althea and her grandmother the game, or so Althea told herself. It would have been too annoying to believe anything else, but the marquess was certainly a skillful player and one who seemed to be as skilled as she was at remembering what cards had been played by whom and figuring the odds quickly.
As he captured the lead in another game, Althea even began to be concerned that she might lose. They battled on, neither one allowing the other to gain anything but the smallest lead, and what Gareth had intended to be only a hand or two of cards played to humor his mother into leaving the ball early turned into one rubber after another.
As the crowd in the card room began to thin, the marchioness allowed herself a small smile of satisfaction. She might not have succeeded in initiating any conversation between her son and the incomparable of incomparables, but at least she had maneuvered them into each other’s company for a goodly amount of time and her son was no longer looking daggers at her for having done so.
In truth, the Marchioness of Harwood could not think of a time when she had managed to keep her son at a fashionable event for such a lengthy period of time. If only the Beauchamp girl would stop looking at her hand and concentrate on making herself agreeable to her handsome son.
Gareth’s mother scrutinized Althea critically. The young woman was frowning meditatively at the cards in her hand without sparing a thought for what the wrinkles in her forehead did to her charming countenance. Any young lady who knew what she was about would have been smiling over her cards at the marquess and making a play with those exceptionally fine eyes. But the young woman in question did none of that. The marchioness shook her head sadly. Such imperviousness to her son’s obvious attractions was almost unnatural. She was going to have her work cut out for her to bring these two together.
She cast a warm, approving smile in Althea’s direction. “My dear, you play exceptionally well for one so young. I fear that means you have been buried in the countryside and away from company that can appreciate your beauty and charm for far too long a time. Is she not a most enchanting player, Gareth?”
“Too enchanting.” Gareth raised a rueful eyebrow as he surrendered yet another trick to Althea and her grandmother.
“That is high praise indeed, my dear, for Gareth is a connoisseur of these things and very critical. We are quite honored that he deigned to play with us at all, are we not, Gareth?” She winked playfully at her son who, ignoring her completely, gathered up the trick and led the next one.
Realizing that all her efforts were fruitless at a table where the rest of the people insisted on playing cards, the marchioness eventually subsided and continued on with the game. But it had not been an entirely wasted evening. Her son and the Season’s most eligible heiress had been introduced, and the next time she and Gareth encountered Lady Althea Beauchamp there would be no excuse for him not chatting or dancing with her. Then the Marchioness of Harwood could begin her campaign to repair her fallen fortunes and social standing in earnest.
Chapter 6
Surprisingly enough, both Gareth and Althea, if they had been asked, would have agreed with the marchioness. As two highly intelligent people who not only took card playing seriously, but appreciated the opportunity it offered to exercise that intelligence, they welcomed the test of competing against another person who possessed similar gifts. The discovery of such an equal was all the more surprising given the location—a ball where neither one had looked forward to anything more than social drudgery. But they were not allowed to ignore their larger surroundings by losing themselves in the game for long. Even though they had managed to play several rubbers, reality intruded all too quickly for both Gareth and Althea in the form of Althea’s cousin, the Honorable Reginald Cathcart.
Beautiful to behold in a coat so exquisitely cut that it had cost his valet and a manservant considerable time and effort to help him into it, his cravat so intricately tied that it had taken the better part of two hours and a pile of rejected neck cloths to accomplish it, Reginald sauntered into the card room and strolled over to Althea’s table.
His appearance in the card room was not in the least accidental. When commanded by the Duchess of Clarendon, as he had been, one obeyed as expeditiously as possible. Ordinarily, Reginald avoided his aunt whenever possible, for she always seemed to think of something for him to do the minute she laid eyes upon him.
He had come to associate an encounter with the Duchess of Clarendon with a considerable expenditure of effort, something Reginald did his best to avoid at all costs, unless it involved his tailor.
But he had allowed his attention to wander this evening as he had been critically surveying the latest crop of young misses through a slender gold quizzing glass. He knew he would have to pay the price for this lapse when he heard his name pronounced so close to his left shoulder that it was impossible to pretend not to have heard it.
“Reginald. Reginald, do pay attention.”
“Aunt.” Reginald had stifled a sigh as he turned to see the duchess moving purposefully toward him. “You never fail to look exquisite each time I see you.” With a sinking heart he executed the graceful bow that had made him famous throughout the ballrooms of the
ton.
“You set an example of taste and style that makes you the despair of aspiring fashionables.”
“Thank you, my dear. You always were the most discriminating of young men.” The duchess glanced down with some satisfaction at the magnificent sapphire and diamond bracelets that matched her earrings, necklace, and the aigrette in her tocque à la Berri. “It is most fortunate that I encountered you, for you can be of great service to me at the moment.”
“I am delighted. You have but to name it.” Reginald cursed himself silently and thoroughly for not having kept a weather eye out for the duchess from the moment he had entered the ballroom.
“Althea and her grandmother have disappeared into the card room.” The slight compression of the duchess’s artfully tinted lips suggested that this was not the first time such a thing had occurred. “Dearest Althea is so solicitous of her grandmother that she forgets the purpose behind our presence here. Do be a dear boy and find her for me.”
“Very well. I shall not return without her.” The steely glint in the duchess’s eye did not bode well for her daughter, and feeling like a traitor, Reginald headed off in the direction of the card room. If Althea was not at her mother’s side, there was a good reason for it. She must have escaped in order to protect herself from being bullied into doing something she did not wish to do. Reginald had grown up with his cousin and knew that despite being a person of decided opinions and fierce independence, she was no match for her strong-minded parents, especially her mother.
He took his time as he threaded his way through the crowd, stopping to compliment a preening dowager here, a blushing young miss there, and generally making himself agreeable in the way that had earned him his reputation as a most affable young man about town.
Reaching the card room at last, Reginald paused in the doorway to scan the tables for his cousin and her grandmother. Finally locating them in the farthest, most quiet corner of the room, he was beginning to make his way toward them when his jaw dropped in astonishment, or dropped as far as his high, starched collar points would allow. His quiet, bluestocking of a cousin was playing cards with none other than the scourge of the Brooks’s card room, the misanthropic avoider of
ton
functions, the Bachelor Marquess.
Faced with such a titillating bit of information, it was almost impossible for Reginald to maintain his carefully cultivated air of blasé indifference. Indeed, it took several deep breaths before he could muster the strength to approach and deliver his message in an appropriately offhand manner. “Ah, Cousin, here you are. My aunt has sent me to retrieve you from this wasteland of chance and fortune and return you to your proper sphere of admiring suitors where you are sorely missed.”
Althea scowled a most unladylike scowl and sighed audibly. “Yes, Reginald. But I must finish this rubber first.”
Gareth quickly stifled a grin. No professional beauty would have allowed herself to be caught dead with such an unattractive expression on her face and he liked her the better for it. As she deliberated longer and longer over each play, he began to suspect that she was not a little reluctant to obey her cousin’s summons and he could not help being intrigued. Perhaps there was more to this incomparable than met the eye. But whatever else she was, she was an angel with cards.
At last there was no avoiding it. Althea played her final card, captured the final trick, and won the rubber. As she rose to follow Reginald back to the ballroom she turned toward Gareth and his mother. “Thank you both for a most enjoyable game.”
“We must play again soon, my dear.” Quick to seize an opportunity to throw Lady Althea and her son together again, the marchioness smiled warmly and reached over to squeeze Althea’s hand.
“I would like that.” Althea smiled shyly back at the marchioness in a way that forced Gareth to reexamine his opinion of the Ice Princess yet again. Away from the watchful eye of the Duchess of Clarendon and free from her crowd of admirers, she seemed almost ingenuous. Could it be that she was reserved rather than cold, diffident rather than disdainful? It was such an interesting thought that Gareth found himself mulling it over and over again in his mind as he escorted his mother back to the detested rooms in Hanover Square and then made his way to Brooks’s in search of more serious play.
Perhaps it was the fatigue of spending more than the usual amount of time with his mother; perhaps it was the constraint he had felt playing against females that now made him tired and stupid. Whatever the cause for it, Gareth found that the subsequent games he played at his club were decidedly inferior to those he had just experienced in Lady Nayland’s card room.
For some reason the players at Brooks’s that evening lacked the éclat and brilliance of true gamblers, or perhaps his fatigue was making him play mechanically and that was affecting both his partner and their opponents. Whatever it was, the play was decidedly flat and utterly lacking in challenge; despite his own lack of strategy he found himself taking trick after trick with such regularity that he became thoroughly bored with it all in a very short space of time. At last he laid down his cards in disgust and rose to go in search of more excitement.
“What? Leaving already, Harwood? The night is yet young.” Lord Lincolnwood stretched his long legs in front of him and downed another glass of port.
Gareth stifled a yawn. “Devilish flat tonight, Linky. It is time for me to find some more enlivening diversion.”
Lord Lincolnwood grinned. “We could triple the stakes, if you like. But perhaps that is not the sort of excitement you are seeking. Doubtless the lovely Maria Toscana can stir those jaded pulses more than the chance to win or lose a fortune at play. A passionate woman, Maria, if she is only half as electric in person as she is on stage.”
Gareth shrugged. “Here I can do nothing but win. Where is the excitement in that? At least the lady’s temper is more uncertain than the cards are tonight. I shall test my skills there and see how my luck holds after days of ignoring her.”
“You are a devil, Gareth. If you do not have care you will lose her to a more constant cicisbeo.”
“Not I. The beauteous Maria and I have a purely business relationship. I keep her liberally supplied with pin money and buy her whatever baubles her heart desires. These are the only expectations she has of me, and I only ask one thing from her in return—satisfaction. It is the best kind of relationship. The rules are well understood by both parties, and since they were clearly stated at the outset, there are no misunderstandings, no tears or tantrums.”