“Yes, Mama.” Althea followed her mother out to the carriage and sank gratefully onto the velvet seat. Ordinarily she considered that the disadvantages of being a duke’s daughter far outweighed the advantages, but being able to retreat into a well-sprung carriage was one of the few perquisites of wealth and privilege that she could say she truly appreciated.
The duchess was not alone in her low opinion of people who succumbed to such weaknesses as headaches. When they arrived home to encounter the duke leaving for the more congenial company at White’s, he took one glance at his drooping daughter, frowned, and shook his head. “You do not look at all the thing, Althea. I would not have thought that you would be overset by such a trifling excursion.”
“I am sorry, Papa.” Althea undid the ribbons and removed her bonnet that was now beginning to feel like a vise clamped on her head. “Perhaps it is the heat. The sun is quite bright today and ...”
“Nonsense, my girl. Beauchamps never pay attention to such minor discomforts. Or, if they are aware of them at all, they simply ignore them.” Without a backward glance, the duke took his hat from the footman and proceeded briskly down the marble steps.
“Yes, Papa. Of course, Papa. If you will excuse me, Mama, I believe I shall retire to my bedchamber.”
The duchess, already involved in giving instructions to the butler, nodded vaguely as her daughter escaped upstairs to the cool, serene surroundings of her blue damask bedchamber. There she gratefully accepted a cloth soaked in lavender water handed to her by her maid and pressed it against her throbbing forehead. Away from the pressure of her parents’ critical eyes, she let out a gentle sigh of relief and sank back into a chair, her eyes closed, her mind racing.
After some minutes like this, she rose, handed the cloth back to her maid, sat down at a delicate rosewood escritoire by the window, scribbled a hasty note, and addressed it to the Marquess of Harwood in Curzon Street.
“Jenny, would you be so good as to give this to Jem and ask him to deliver it for me? And instruct him to wash his face and hands before he goes.”
The maid directed a curious glance at her mistress, but took the note without comment. As far as Jenny knew, her lady was acquainted with no one in London, poor thing. In fact, she was allowed few friends in either the country or the city, her parents being such high sticklers as far as mingling with those of inferior station, “which is just about everyone,” the maid muttered to herself as she hurried down the stairs and out to the stables.
Jem was a sharpish looking lad with a twisted foot and a wizened face far too old for his sixteen years. The stable boy was a special protégé of Althea’s, for she had discovered him cold and starving one morning huddling in a ditch where his father, a tinker, had left him. Jem had fallen and broken his ankle, and his father, already tired of having an extra mouth to feed, had used this infirmity as an excuse to cast off the burden he had been forced to bear since Jem’s mother had died the previous spring.
Althea had taken the lad home and seen to it that he was fed and given a place to sleep in the stables until suitable employment was found. But the lad had found his own employment by demonstrating such an affinity with the horses who shared his quarters and such a willingness to put his hand to any task that the coachman and the grooms could find for him that they began to wonder how they had ever functioned without him. As for Jem, he considered himself to be in paradise and Lady Althea to be the angel who had put him there. There was nothing he would not do for her. Even being forced to wash his face and hands before hastening to Curzon Street was not too big a price to pay to be of service to his angel and deliverer.
Perusing Althea’s note, Gareth again asked himself if he were being made a bigger dupe than all the other poor fools he had scorned for selling their souls to please a pretty face. Did the lady in question truly wish to learn how to win a fortune, or was she cleverly maneuvering him into a compromising situation?
As he penned his reply, Gareth told himself that the risk he was taking added a little spice to a life that was threatening to become flat now that he had reestablished the family finances. Certainly nothing else besides the challenge of it was responsible for his agreeing to see the young lady, not her lovely face, her clever mind, or the intriguingly different personality he had been allowed to glimpse beneath the exquisite exterior of the
ton’s
latest incomparable.
Welcoming Althea into his mahogany-paneled library some hours later, Gareth scrutinized her carefully as Ibthorp, his butler, valet, and general factotum, took her blush-colored spencer and matching bonnet. But there was not an ounce of guile in the grateful smile she gave him as she took the chair he held for her at the small table he had set up.
“I wish to thank you again, my lord, for agreeing to help me, and for allowing yourself to be put out at a moment’s notice. I cannot think where I came by the brazen effrontery to ask you for your assistance. It must have been desperation. I did take all precautions to ensure that no one knew of my destination, but I thought it best to bring Jenny, here, along with me, so if by some unlikely chance it should be discovered that I visited you at your lodgings you would not be compromised.”
Gareth glanced at her in some surprise and the corners of his mouth twisted into the hint of a smile. The woman had read his thoughts to perfection. Such omniscience in a card player was dangerous indeed. Undoubtedly that was why she was already a formidable opponent, though she was naive in the extreme to believe that bringing a maid would protect the reputations of young ladies who visited gentlemen in their rooms.
“You appear to have thought of everything, Lady Althea. Now”—he seated himself opposite her and dealt out four hands—”I thought I would go through one game, playing each one of the hands in turn and explain as I go. From playing against you, I know that you are already aware that winning is merely a matter of memory and mathematics. Remembering what cards have been played, deducing from that the cards remaining, and figuring on the possible combinations of those remaining cards is the essence of the game. What you may not possess, and what I hope I can help you with, is a larger strategy for winning the sums you wish to win. The key to all of it, however, is never to put your opponents on their guard and never to betray, by so much as the flicker of an eyelid, what you have in your hand. I am sure you have heard that the true gamesters wear broad-brimmed straw hats, not only to shade their eyes from the light during long hours of play, but to hide their expressions from the rest of the players at the table.”
“And what of this ‘larger strategy’? How did you develop it?” Her eyes fixed on the marquess, Althea leaned forward, listening intently.
Gareth could not help smiling at the picture she made. In her eagerness to learn everything, she had so far forgotten herself as to prop her elbows on the table and rest her chin in her hands so that she looked like a little girl begging to be told a fairy tale. And he had the oddest, almost uncomfortable urge to gather her in his arms, hold her close, and pour out his life’s story to her: the lonely upbringing isolated on the estate near Newmarket while his parents pursued their separate amusements in London, his disgust with their vain and useless lives, his enlistment in the cavalry that brought with it the glories and horror of war in the Peninsula, being forced to sell out and return home when his father died a ruined man, the struggle to keep his home from falling into total disrepair while he risked every spare guinea he had to win a fortune, and all the while being forced to endure the endless complaints of a mother he had always despised for her monumental selfishness.
“Ah, er, what?” He came to with a start as he realized that she was waiting for an answer.
“I asked you about your larger strategy,’ “ Althea prompted him as she cocked her head to study his long angular face with its thick, dark brows, high, bridged nose, and prominent cheekbones. It was the face of a man tested by experience, a face full of character. At the moment, however, he was looking at her in the oddest way, a half smile on his lips and a faraway, almost dreamy expression in his eyes. What was going on in that quick, intelligent mind of his? Was he doing as he had instructed her to do, hiding his thoughts behind a vague expression?
“Oh, yes, my strategy.”
Althea’s eyes narrowed. If she did not know better, if Reggie had not told her of the man’s steely self-control in even the most highly charged moments at the gaming table, she would have said that a self-conscious flush stole across his lean face.
“Well, er, my strategy for the most part has been to retain as much control of every situation as possible, beginning with a modest amount of risk and then accumulating my winnings slowly and steadily.”
“But Reggie says that you are known to wager fabulous sums on the turn of a card without even blinking an eye.”
“Reggie says?”
It was Althea’s turn to blush as he cocked a quizzical eyebrow at her. “Yes. He says that it is common knowledge that you are a very cool customer, indeed, and that you do not possess a nerve in your body. A man does not gain a reputation like that by taking only modest risks.”
Gareth was unprepared for the warm sense of gratification her words brought him. So she had been discussing him at some length with her cousin, had she? Good. Lady Althea Beauchamp had lately been occupying far too large a place in his thoughts for his own comfort, and it would have been most disconcerting to think that he had made any less an impression on her.
“Yes. Reggie has told me about some of your wagers.”
“Ah, but those were after I had gained a reputation and a fortune. I could afford to lose, and my reputation had become such that people wagered foolishly against me just to be able to claim that they had. But when I could not afford to lose, I assure you I was as meek and quiet as a lamb.”
The picture of the cynical Marquess of Harwood as a mild, biddable creature was too much. Althea struggled to stifle a burst of laughter, which only ended in a most unladylike fit of coughing.
“Is that so unbelievable?” Gareth had never actually seen a lady laugh heartily before, or even struggle not to, and he found her naturalness more charming than the most seductive glances of the most practiced ladies he consorted with. There was something utterly endearing about her unaffected reaction and it made him suddenly wish to have Lady Althea Beauchamp as his friend.
And perhaps as something more,
an unbidden voice whispered to him. Ruthlessly he ignored it as he struggled to stifle an answering grin.
“Well, yes. You are rather daunting, you know. When I first ...” Althea shut her mouth with a snap as she realized that she was about to reveal her consciousness of his presence from the moment he had entered the ballroom at Lady St. John’s rout.
“ ‘When I first’ ... When you first what?” This was even more intriguing than her discussions with her cousin. After all, anyone who knew Gareth, or knew of him, would have been astonished to see him wasting his time on a card game with a young lady and her grandmother, so it was not unusual for Reggie to remark upon it to his cousin, who also happened to be the young lady in question. But it was obvious that Reggie’s cousin had been as aware and as conscious of the Marquess of Harwood as he had been of her from the very beginning.
A triumphant smile hovered at the corner of Gareth’s mouth. He was glad. The irresistible attraction that had drawn him to Lady Althea Beauchamp in the first place had been as unnerving as it was unusual, and it was reassuring now to discover that this awareness of her presence had at least not all been one-sided.
Althea gulped and straightened her shoulders. Beauchamps never hesitated. They never avoided an opponent, an unpleasant truth, or a problem, but tackled them head on.
“When I first saw you at Lady St. John’s rout,
was what I started to say. You entered the ballroom and looked straight at me as though I were the most despicable sort of worm.”
It was Gareth’s turn to chuckle. If the Marquess of Harwood as a lamb was difficult to picture, Lady Althea Beauchamp as a lowly invertebrate was even more absurd. But along with the chuckle came a most uneasy feeling that after years of despising the mating rituals of the
ton,
and cultivating a bored indifference to every beautiful new face or every clever ploy for his attention, he had failed to stifle his immediate response to one lovely face in particular, to one female who had done nothing to try to draw his attention to her. His mask of boredom had slipped and she had caught a glimpse of the person inside. There was little new that he could teach Lady Althea Beauchamp about reading an opponent’s expression; she had already charmed him into revealing too much about himself as it was.
Chapter 11
“You are no more a worm than I am a lamb; far from it. Judging by the disdainful expression I observed on your face at Lady St. John’s, I would say that it was the rest of us who were worms and you the goddess who deigned to notice a lucky few.”
“What? I?” Stunned, Althea tried to remember that night beyond the scornful look cast in her direction by the Marquess of Harwood. “All I was thinking of was escape.”
“Perhaps, but you stood there cold and aloof as though you had not the slightest interest in or concern for the poor supplicants clustered around you dying for one word from the incomparable’s lips.”
“Incomparable? I?” She seemed genuinely astounded. “No, it is only my fortune and my family that are incomparable. As to the rest of it, you are entirely correct, I was trying not to think of them, trying desperately to ignore their ogling eyes, their greedy expressions. I could have been a half-wit and they still would have clustered around me. To them I was not a person; I was a chance at a fortune and family connections. Why should I not act scornful? I scorn their motives and I scorn them for having those motives.”
The blue eyes blazed and her voice shook with passion. Gareth could not help feeling slightly ashamed at his gross misreading of the situation. His only excuse was that he had never before encountered a woman who did not look upon men as her playthings, to be enslaved by her beauty, used, and then tossed aside. Yet this woman seemed unconscious of her stunning physical appearance. Most women would have said
I
could have been ugly or I could have had a squint and they would have clustered around me,
as though not being thought beautiful were the worst fate that could befall a woman. But Althea had protested
I
could have been a half-wit.
Gareth hardly knew any men who considered it important to be clever, much less women, but it was obviously important to her. He found it not only unusual, but strangely attractive.