Lady Alex's Gamble
Lady Alex's Gamble
by Evelyn Richardson
Belgrave House
www.belgravehouse.com
Copyright ©1995 by Cynthia Johnson
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Lady Alex's Gamble
by Evelyn Richardson
CONTENTS
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* * * *
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Evelyn Richardson
The rain drummed ceaselessly against the window, as it had for days, its incessant rhythm broken only by intermittent gusts of wind that rattled the leaded window-panes, forcing the lady watching by the bed to clutch the paisley shawl even more tightly around her shoulders. The man on the bed stirred and moaned and the lady bent over to apply a damp cloth to his sweating brow.
He was a handsome young man with dark auburn hair, finely penciled dark brows, a broad forehead, patrician nose, and generous mouth, but the puffy skin around his eyes and lines of dissipation running from nose to mouth spoke of a dissolute life that was beginning to rob him both of his looks and his youth.
He moaned again and twisted his head from side to side under the damp cloth. "Damn you, Alexander, be still," the lady muttered fiercely. "I must do this to cool the fever." She dipped the cloth in the basin of water, wrung it out, and applied it again to his forehead. "For if you die, I shall murder you," she added rather illogically. It was just like Alexander to land them in the basket, she thought angrily to herself. And it was just like him too to leave her, his long-suffering twin, to sort it all out.
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With the exception of a complexion unmarred by the effects of drink, late nights, and an unhealthy predilection for every other son of debauchery. Lady Alexandra de Montmorency was the spitting image of the man in the bed. She had the same thick dark auburn hair, delicately arched brows over eyes of such deep green as to be almost emerald. It was an interesting face rather than a beautiful one, the high-bridged nose and generous mouth giving it far too much character to be acceptable in a society where pale blond beauties with retroussé noses and simpering rosebud lips were all the rage. However, no one who had seen Alexandra de Montmorency was likely ever to forget her. Like her brother, whose six-foot form lay sweating under the covers, she was tall and long-limbed, but slender, and she moved with what in a man would have been called athletic grace. Such assurance in movement and bearing could be a trifle unnerving in a woman and had been known to intimidate the shorter, less confident men she had encountered at the rare assembly she attended in Norwich. But in truth Alexandra did not care. Since her father's death, she had had her hands too full of more important things to waste her time on balls and other such frippery affairs. And truth to say, one man was already causing her enough headaches to keep her from wishing to waste her time worrying about the impressions, negative or otherwise, that she might be making on any others.
Alexander de Montmorency, Earl of Halewood, had come into his inheritance a scant four years ago, but in that short time he had managed to gamble it into nonexistence. At first 6
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his twin sister had not been aware of his ruinous propensities, but of late, she had begun to sense that the gay and reckless lad she had grown up with had somehow changed. The generous, fun-loving nature of youth had slowly disappeared, to be replaced by a wildness and a desperation. As a boy Alexander had always included his friends and family in one lark after another; now he seemed heedless of their very existence. More and more frequently he returned home drunk and angry, to apologize briefly—if he apologized at all—before going off again.
Alexandra could never say precisely when the change had come about. Certainly he had gotten in with a bad set of fellows at university, where he had begun to gamble so much that he was forever at odds with his father over money. The old earl, who had enjoyed a riotous and misspent youth of his own, had not been so upset at the gambling as he had been unable to understand how any son of his could lose so consistently at games of chance.
"It is not that he does not have a head for faro," her father used to complain to Alexandra, "it's that he does not have a head for anything—whist, piquet, loo, macao, or even hazard—not that one needs much head for that. I cannot understand it, a child of mine ... "—and he would shake his head in genuine perplexity.
Certainly their mother's death, three years before their father's, had not been the cause of Alexander's decline, but it had increased its velocity. The countess had exercised the same steadying influence over her eldest son as she had over his father. Gentle and beautiful, she had run the household so 7
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smoothly and easily that no one was aware of the organization and hard work that had gone into it. Unfailingly kind, she never criticized, but set such an example of love and charity that people could not help but follow her lead, while her sense of humor and her delight in life had kept her from seeming sanctimonious. She had been universally loved and her eldest son had adored her.
Alexandra sighed. Perhaps if she had been more like her mother her twin would have remained the passionate, but essentially good-hearted youth he had been. But it was no use repining. Certainly she had always longed to be as good and beautiful as the Countess of Halewood, but somehow Alexandra had fallen into scrapes as often as her brother had. As a child she had been as adventurous as he, and with her twin to support and encourage her in every whim, she had gone from one escapade to another. Then too, she did not possess her mother's gentle nature, being more like her father: loving and kind, but passionate and unwilling to live a life that tamely accepted everything without questioning or understanding it fully.
And without a doubt she had done her share of questioning her twin's behavior after her father died. Alexandra had not hesitated, as he gallivanted off to this race meeting and that mill, to point out that fences needed mending or the tenants'
cottages wanted repairing. She had not meant to nag, but her brother had seemed to live as though the entire estate existed for nothing more than to finance his mania for betting on anything and everything. Alexander would often exclaim testily, "Oh come off it, Alex.
I
am the Earl of Halewood, not 8
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you. Nor are you my mother." She had been aware she was making a bad job of it, but she had not known how else to go about it other than to pester him when there was no money for the servants' wages or household expenses. For a while things had improved when Alexander, whose temper had been deteriorating rapidly, seemed to take a turn for the better. He had set about at last to pay the servants and attend to the immediate necessities. She'd soon found out, however, the real reason for his renewed optimism. One night he came to her bedchamber; it was so rare that he consulted anyone about anything, so rare that he was even home before midnight that she had been quite astonished. When she happened to look up and see him lingering awkwardly in the doorway, the book she had been reading had slid to the floor with a bang.
"Alex," he began carefully, tentatively, "may I come in?"
"Why of course."
He sat down heavily on a chair in front of the fire and stared into the flames for a moment before glancing up with a half-guilty, half-pleading smile. "I have been rather, er, ah ... rather unfortunate," he began, looking so much like the old Alexander who had just gotten into some scrape or other that she could not help but smile in return. She had missed him, the fun-loving Alexander of her childhood. "You never wear Mother's diamonds, do you?"
"Why no," she replied, mystified as to what he thought she'd do with them, when he knew she hardly ever went to assemblies, and certainly wasn't about to have a Season at her age.
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"Good. May I borrow them?"
"Borrow them?" she had asked stupidly, not even trying to imagine what her brother would do with the elaborate necklace, matching bracelets, and earrings.
"Well, you see, as I say, I have been rather unfortunate lately and I, er, need to raise a little wind so I thought perhaps I could take them to Goldfarb in Norwich and he could give me something to help me out of my, er, difficulties."
"You must have been very unfortunate indeed," she had responded dryly.
Alexander flushed. His twin sister always made him feel inadequate. She sat there looking at him coolly as though
he
had been the fool, but he had not. Nimrod could not have failed to win. Alexander knew the horse's owner and had talked to the lads who exercised it. That horse had been the sure thing that was going to win him back his gaming debts. How was he to guess it would wind up close enough to another horse in the race so as to be kicked up in such a freakish way that it came in last? It was not Alexander's fault, merely the last in a run of unbelievably bad luck that had plagued him lately. Alexandra had no right to look at him so scornfully. He might not have as much in the cock-loft as his clever twin did, but he was not half-witted.
"Just how unfortunate were you?" his sister probed.
"Oh, nothing serious," he assured her airily. "It's only a question of a few thousand pounds."
"How many thousand?" Alexandra was not going to make this easy for him.
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"Well, about ten," he admitted unhappily.
"Ten! You lost ten thousand pounds in a card game!" Even Alexandra's iron self-control deserted her at the mention of a sum that could have kept the household running for several years.
Her brother hunched his shoulder defensively. "There's no need to shout, Alex. Plenty of fellows drop that and more in an evening. I am not so stupid as all that. This was on a horse—a sure thing. I know the owner and the trainer..."
"And you thought that with one large bet and an enormous amount of luck you would be able to win back enough to pay off your other debts. I see." And she did see now. That was why he had been more attentive to them all lately, not because he had stopped gambling, but because he had felt sure of winning.
"Please, Alex." He was begging now, smiling in the endearing way he had as a child when people had been unable to deny him anything.
Alexandra steeled herself against the beseeching look in his eyes. If it were only her welfare that were involved she would not have been so hard on him. He couldn't help it, after all. Gambling was in their blood; he just happened to lack the cleverness and the discipline that had won their father a fortune and allowed him to retire to the country and raise a family. However, Alexandra had the others to think about. She hesitated.
"Please, Alex, it's the last thing I'll ever ask. I've already borrowed so much against the estate that those plaguey 11
Lady Alex's Gamble
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bankers will not lend me another penny, cheeseparing lot that they are."
"What? You've mortgaged Halewood? Alexander, how
could
you? Do you think of no one but yourself?"
"Now, Alex, calm yourself. Everyone does it. The estate will make it back in no time. Halewood has some of the best farmland in—"
"Alexander"—his sister's voice was dangerously quiet—
"you will sell this necklace and the rest of Mother's jewelry, pay back the creditors, and you will
never
risk our livelihood again. Do you hear me?"