Fortune's Lady (24 page)

“Well, Cass,” he went on expansively, leaning back. “Let's go into Lancaster and get a room.” This was greeted with enthusiasm by the listeners. Cass raised her eyes to him then, and he felt the first inkling that all wasn't well. “Eh? What d'you say?”

“What exactly do you think this hand of piquet means, Riordan?” she asked quietly.

The room went still. Damn it, he thought, trust a woman to put a damper on things. “It means you're mine, o' course,” he said forcefully, and there was a masculine murmur of agreement around the table.

“I see. Does that mean I have no say in the decision?”

That flummoxed him. His wits were slow; he couldn't think of a speedy rejoinder. “Uh—”

“I assume you're thinking I'll come and live with you now,” she went on relentlessly.

“Well, exactly, that's certainly—”

“I dare you to play another hand,” she said, with a smile that ought to have warned him. “With me this time. If you win, I'll consent to be your mistress.”

He agreed, with misgivings. Damnation, he'd already won her once, why did he—?

“What if he loses?” asked Teddy.

“Yeah, what if he loses?” echoed Tom.

Cass smiled again, and Riordan felt a cold premonition in the pit of his stomach. “If he loses, he has to marry me.”

E
XCEPT FOR
the surreptitious scraping of a plate by a spellbound servant, there wasn't a sound in the room. Everyone stared at Cass as if waiting for her to laugh and admit she was joking. When it sank in that she was dead serious, Wally let out a whoop, and the tension broke. They all gathered around again, joking and jostling and slapping Riordan on the shoulders. He finally closed his mouth and tore his eyes away from Cass's gray and unnervingly sober gaze. He reached for his goblet with a sickly smile, found it empty, and looked around for the decanter in something bordering on panic. A laughing Viscount St. Aubyn filled his glass for him to the brim, and he drank it down in one huge gulp, spilling a lot down his neck. The wine was supposed to wet his throat and make speaking easier, but when he said, “Draw for deal,” it came out a dry, palsied croak. He drew an ace, Cass a nine. She cut, he dealt. They were facing each other, their knees almost touching. He spread the remaining cards on the table in the shape of a fan and looked at his hand. His face blanched. Too many goddamn sevens and eights. He watched Cass arrange her cards calmly, expertly, her manner a study in total composure; only a certain tightness around the mouth suggested that something more than a few pounds was riding on the outcome of the game.

She discarded three cards and picked up an equal number from the stock. He did the same, and elected to leave the rest face down. All he accomplished from the pick was to replace his sevens and eights with tens.

“Four,” Cass announced, to begin the calling.

“How much?”

“Forty-one.”

“Equal.” He let out a breath. Neither had scored for point.

“
Quatrieme.
”

“We say ‘Quart,' ” he corrected, unreasonably irritated.

“Quart, then.” She shrugged agreeably.

“Good,” he conceded.

“I also have a tierce. Three aces.”

He smiled. “Not good. Four tens. And three jacks.”

She shrugged again. “I begin with seven.”

“I begin with seventeen.” He felt a little better.

She led with four hearts: ace, king, queen and jack; after each trick she announced her score in a noncommittal tone. If she won the majority of tricks, seven or better, she would score ten, and Riordan began to hate and fear the light, uninflected sound of her voice. She led next with the ace, king, and queen of diamonds. Seven tricks. Ten points.

She led the seven of spades, and finally he won a trick. He took two more, then led his jack of clubs. She aced it. She led the king of spades for the last trick, and won.

“Twenty-eight,” she said, staring down at the pile of cards in front of her, lining up the edges with her long, slim fingers.

He blinked repeatedly and had to clear his throat. “Nineteen.”

All hell erupted. Everyone moved toward them to shout congratulations or condolences, kissing, shaking hands, patting and slapping. The noise came to Cass's ears as if through a tunnel. Even her vision blurred. The only thing she saw clearly was the look of shock in Riordan's eyes. He stared as intently as if he'd never seen her before—or as if she were a madwoman holding a razor to his throat. Someone dragged him to his feet, someone else pulled her chair back and urged her to hers, and then they were all drinking a toast.

“To the bride and groom!” shouted Teddy Everton, raising his glass high.

Cass drained her wine numbly, welcoming the heat that spread through her a second later. Then she shuddered, watching from the corner of her eye as Riordan's hand shot out in another desperate grab for the decanter.

“Why don't we do it now?” Tom suggested when the uproar died down a little. He half-lay on the table, one elbow propped against a congealing platter of roast pork. “Leave now, I mean, for Gretna Green.”

“Right-ho!” seconded Wally, pounding Riordan on the back. “If we left now, we could be there by morning. You'd be married before dinner!”

Rude shouts and laughter greeted this proposal. “I'll supply fresh horses and a coachman!” Wade chimed in. Cass looked at him in astonishment. He was definitely intoxicated—his face was red and perspiring and he swayed a bit on his feet—but there was a calculating glint in his bloodshot eyes that outshone the drunkenness. What was his game? she wondered distractedly, then understood. Of course—he
wanted
her to marry Riordan; that way he thought she could find out all his secrets.

The insistence that they leave now, tonight, grew almost violent, and she was reminded of a pack of hounds snapping at the backside of a hapless fox. She hazarded a glance at Riordan. He was looking at her again—not with shock now but with a kind of reckless, swaggering challenge. She put on her most insouciant expression, trying to match his in carelessness. Their gazes held while he swallowed yet another glass of claret and belched loudly. He turned toward the waiting company. Cass's breath caught at the top of her lungs.

“Whoever's going with us, let's get on the bloody road.”

New cries, more congratulations, as chairs were pushed back and the party surged out of the dining room into the hall. Riordan continued outside, feeling an urgent need to relieve himself, and half a dozen men followed him out. The ladies drifted upstairs or into the drawing room. What was she supposed to do now, Cass wondered—pack? She started up the stairs uncertainly, noticing Wade speaking to a couple of servants in the hall. She stopped when he called out and then joined her, taking her arm and leading her into an alcove off the second floor hallway. The sun had almost set, she saw through the window; the sky was a luminous strip of orchid over the dark trees of the park.

They leaned back on separate walls, facing each other. She tried to replicate his conspiratorial grin. “Well, well! This's a bit more than we bargained for,” he said, slurring his words only slightly. “You sure you're game?”

“Oh, I'm game—only I doubt very much that there will really be a wedding, Colin.”

“Don't be too sure—his honor's at stake now. Y'know, C'sandra, watching you tonight, I could almost believe you're really attracted to him.”

“Attracted to Riordan? Don't be ridiculous.”

“Maybe not consciously. But I remember the first time I saw you—he was kissing you and you were punching him in the jaw. Love an' hate. 'S a dang'rous combination.” He tried to fold his arms across his middle, but they came unfolded immediately; she realized he was drunker than she'd thought.

She sent him a pitying glance. “I assure you, in this case there's no love. Only hate.”

He smiled and raised his brows, unconvinced but unconcerned. She could not figure him out. “Well, it's too bad in a way if you do marry him, 'cause he'll wanna keep an eye on you, and we'll have to meet clandesh”—he giggled—“clandestinely.”

She nodded, not certain if that was good or bad. Seeing him publicly had offered her a measure of protection against his strange advances, but now that safeguard would be gone. “True, but I'll be able to get much more information if I'm living in his house.” She looked out the window again, watching two swallows soar past. This was the oddest conversation she'd ever had. She was playing too many roles at once, and sometimes she suspected Colin was playing one, too. For a second she tried to imagine herself marrying Riordan tomorrow morning. It was impossible.

She looked up to see a footman coming toward them along the hall, carrying her bag. “I had Ellen pack your things,” Wade explained when she looked startled. “Well.” He took her cold hands and grinned down at her. The wine had stained his teeth purple; she could see all the tiny lines around his eyes and mouth. “Have a wonderful wedding trip, Cass. I'll find a way to get in tush—in
touch
with you after you're back in London.” He kissed her hands wetly, then raised his head to look at her mouth. She felt a stab of dread. But he only smiled a little regretfully and dropped her hands. Then he took her elbow and led her unsteadily back down the hall toward the staircase.

She could feel Riordan's eyes on her before she saw him. As she reached the last step, he pulled her out of Wade's grasp into his own and draped a possessive arm around her shoulders. She was dismayed when he lurched against her, knowing his drunkenness this time was unfeigned.

Enthusiasm for accompanying them overnight to Gretna Green had waned considerably; only Wally, Tom, and their lady friends had the heart for it now. But the others saw them off with undiminished eagerness. All the men kissed Cass; Teddy Everton kissed her for so long and with such fervor that Riordan finally grabbed his coat and pulled him off. Then they were bundled into the waiting post-chaise with cries of good will and farewell, and in no time at all the carriage was rolling down Ladymere's smooth, tree-lined avenue toward the highway.

A single candle in a glass box lit the roomy interior, casting shifting shadows as the coach rocked along. It was curiously quiet for a while as all six passengers adjusted to their surroundings and, as much as possible, to their circumstances. Cass and Riordan were given the rear seat to themselves; the others sat opposite, arms entwined, grinning stupidly. But soon Wally discovered the wooden crate on the floor with twelve bottles of Wade's best claret inside, and the party began all over again. It was decided that they should dispense with the bothersome formality of passing the bottle around while each took a sip. How much easier if everyone had his or her own bottle—and how much more
sanitary
, noted Cora in fastidious tones, the first words Cass had ever heard her utter. And so they sat, except for Cass each holding a bottle of wine, toasting and laughing and singing. The night wore on and the jokes grew bawdier, the caresses exchanged in the opposite seat more starkly intimate. Finally the singing gave way to yawning, then snoring, with someone rallying periodically to tell another joke, sing another song, or put another hand inside a bodice, before lapsing back into inebriate oblivion.

The candle guttered. Cass leaned an elbow against the window and peered across the dark seat at Riordan, huddled in his corner. She knew he wasn't sleeping because she was aware of every time he lifted his bottle to his lips. She also knew precisely how many mouthfuls of wine he swallowed on each occasion. It wasn't lost on her that he was drinking like a man trying to forget he was en route to the gallows. Now he had the wine bottle between his thighs, thrusting up at a lewd angle. She stared at it, unable to look away, and for a moment her vague and deliberately abstract mind-pictures of the wedding night, should this insane parody of a marriage actually occur, became graphically real. An uncomfortable warmth crept through her and her palms went damp. Then he reached for the bottle, releasing her gaze, and she went back to staring out the window.

Three times she opened her mouth to speak to him; three times she closed it again. What was there to say?
What are we doing here, Philip, how did this happen? Touch me, I'm so scared.

Oh, why wouldn't he speak to her? She hated to see him like this; it tore her heart to shreds. She didn't know what it was that had made him stop drinking all those months ago, but it must have been something terrible. Now he was drinking again, and in a way it was all her fault. No, it wasn't, not really—but still, she couldn't shake a feeling of responsibility. She wanted to take the bottle from him and throw it out the window. What would he do? Was he violent when he drank? She'd seen no evidence of it so far. But she hadn't crossed him yet, either.

Warring with her guilt was an equally powerful sense of having been humiliated. Regardless of what happened tomorrow, the position she was in was degrading. She put her head in her hands and squeezed her eyes shut, remembering the evening, unable to think of something she could have done to change the outcome. It had all seemed so unreal, a night no one could take seriously. If she'd jumped up and run from the room at the first hint that two men were actually going to play cards for her, she'd have betrayed her carefully crafted image of the wild French hoyden. And she couldn't, she simply could
not
have let him win her like a sackful of guineas! She'd wanted to make the wager a little more even, and at the same time take him down a peg or two. She glanced at the dark, still, somehow sinister form in the opposite corner. She'd succeeded with a vengeance. But to back out now would only make things worse. If what Wade said was true and Riordan was honor-bound to marry her, refusing him would only add insult to injury—and make them both look even more foolish than they already did.