“That was not in the rules.”
Claire was losing her first hand against Alice, so she threw her cards down. “I make the rules.”
“Come now, my pet,” Gorham said, “you already have a tidy sum to get you that cottage in Cornwall. Why you want to go to that godforsaken place is beyond me, but you can win a goodly sum playing each of the other ladies once.”
Claire looked around for Harry, but he hadn’t returned yet. She might have throttled him if he had. But no, Gorham was looking confused at her search of the room, so he did not know her secret. But Miss Royale might, and she might reveal Claire’s past to the room if she did not get her way.
Claire ground her teeth. “Very well. But I wish a different dealer than one of the players.” She did not trust any of them.
Mr. Anthony hadn’t departed yet, although his former mistress had left in the ship owner’s carriage with Madame Lecroix. He volunteered to deal for the other game.
Simone quickly lost her first piquet match to Ruby, who was a fast, daring player. She won the first of three hands with Claire, who was so angry she was not concentrating on her cards. After that, Simone lost the final two hands and decided Claire was memorizing the deck, since Simone could not spot any rough edges on the cards or extra markings. She lost all three hands to Alice, one on purpose. The baby needed that guinea more than Simone did.
Alice defeated Ruby, raising her odds with the gentlemen placing side bets on each game, and raising her confidence. Lord Comden stood at her back the entire time, bringing her tea and wine. Claire won over Ruby, but not easily. She said she wanted to play others, before taking on poor Alice again, who should rest. Or go to bed, although Claire did not quite say that.
Alice had rested through the afternoon and was wide awake. She smiled at Claire, who was at least ten years older. “I am quite ready, but if you need a nap, I can wait.”
Claire turned another shade of purple, which truly clashed with her red gown.
Ruby found a few more partners for piquet after she admitted losing her last two matches. She won two and lost two, to the actress and the pianoforte player. “It’s not so easy when you don’t have your own deck,” she confessed.
Sandaree lost all three of her piquet matches, even to Daisy, who had just learned the game that week. The others were even, markers passing back and forth.
While the piquet matches were conducted in silence except for murmurings from the gentlemen who watched and wagered, the
vingt-et-un
games proceeded with shouts and laughs, moans and hurrahs. The gentlemen yelled stay or take, sometimes both at once. Some of the women placed two markers when they thought they had a good hand. The ballet dancer placed all six of her remaining markers on one bet, so she could go up to bed. She was performing tomorrow, she claimed, and needed her rest. More likely she was tired after her tryst with Danforth, Simone assumed, looking to see if Sir Chauncey had noticed his mistress’s defection. He was keeping company with a decanter of cognac.
That pot was split between Sandaree and Simone.
Simone did not know Harry had returned until someone placed his fingers on the nape of her neck. She thought she’d know his scent and his touch anywhere, even if she forgot that nine and eight made seventeen. She lost that deal and he laughed. Then he shook his head to her silent question: No, he had not learned anything. He raised his eyebrow at the stack of red markers in front of her. She shook her head. No, she had not cheated.
They played on, until some of the women were down to their last markers. A few tossed those in, choosing to lose sooner rather than later. Mr. Anthony seemed to be giving better cards to Sandaree, Simone thought, but couldn’t believe a gentleman with his fortune would cheat. Danforth, who would, she was sure, was staying close to Sandaree now, showing more interest in his mistress, or in getting his hands on her markers, than he had since the first day.
Finally only five players remained: Ruby, Alice, Simone, Sandaree, and Claire. Twenty minutes remained on the mantel clock. Claire had yet to replay Alice at piquet, and a large crowd gathered to watch the two best players. The other three women played another round of
vingt-et-un
, which Sandaree won. They went to watch the piquet match, too.
Claire took the first hand.
Alice took the second.
The only sound in the room was Sir Chauncey’s snoring. Then the clock struck twelve.
“Damn,” someone said. “It’s a draw. All bets are off.”
Lord Comden helped Alice to her feet while Claire smiled graciously at all the congratulations and patted her pile of markers. She, Alice and Sandaree obviously had the most. Ruby had sixteen and Simone nine. Lord Ellsworth and Mr. Anthony counted the others. To no one’s surprise, Claire won.
Simone was happy that Alice came in second with thirty-six and Sandaree third with twenty-eight. She was happier still when Sandaree asked Mr. Anthony to hold the guineas for her, after Lord Gorham exchanged them.
But Simone was doing calculations in her head, and something was not right. “There were eleven of us,” she told Harry. “So there should be one hundred and ten red markers. But I count one hundred and fourteen.”
The two gentlemen checked their score sheets. Then Miss Hanson’s banker came over to study the results. Then they called for Lord Gorham, who announced in funereal tones that there seemed to be a discrepancy.
When everyone gathered around, the banker stood by Simone, telling her that he admired a gal with a quick mind. He admired her bosom too, never taking his eyes off it. Harry stepped between them.
Lord Gorham looked five years older than he had five minutes ago. “Somehow the servants must have miscounted when they handed the markers out.”
Harry reached into his pocket for a peppermint drop. No one else believed Gorham, either.
“It seems Miss Alice Morrow and my dear Claire are tied for first place. I suggest a final playoff round.”
“I think someone ought to be disqualified,” Alice’s Lord Comden said, but Gorham glared at him.
“It was an unintentional error, easily resolved.”
Harry pulled another peppermint from his pocket. “For a, um, an upset stomach, don’t you know,” he told Simone when she gave him a quizzical look.
Sir Chauncey was awake and too hungry to wait for three hands. “I say let them cut the cards. No chance of miscounting, eh?” he asked, with a snicker. Claire worried she’d lose to the peagoose who let herself get pregnant, her own history aside, so she readily agreed. Simone thought Alice should demand the game she could win, but the young woman hastily agreed to the simpler solution, rather than offend their scowling hosts.
Lord Ellsworth called for a new deck. Alice cut first, a king. Lord Gorham groaned. The betting among the men grew louder.
For the first time in anyone’s memory, except perhaps Gorham’s, a bead of sweat formed on Claire’s forehead. Her card was a six.
“Supper is waiting in the dining room,” the marquis quickly announced, leading his lady off in that direction before she threw the deck, the clock, or the Egyptian mummy in the corner.
*
As usual, Simone went up to bed first, while Harry stayed behind with some of the hard drinking, hard gambling men who were not, it seemed, hardened romeos. Mr. Anthony, Lord Ellsworth, and Sir Chauncey sat in Gorham’s library, along with a few others whose ladybirds were on their way back to London, too tired or had a headache. That was not what they were paying the females for, but at least the brandy was good.
Danforth did not join them, either because he preferred his mistress—or Sir Chauncey’s—or disdained the company of bankers or bastards.
No one grumbled about the government, the condition of Europe, or the defeat of Napoleon. They discussed nothing but the cards, the coming horse race, and what a good cook Gorham employed, dammit.
Harry was thoroughly frustrated, and more so when he went up to his bedchamber and saw his beautiful governess propped up in bed with a book in her hands. A scrap of pink lace showed at her shoulders over the covers, and a long flame-colored braid lay atop the blankets. Lud, she was gorgeous. And she’d done exactly what he’d asked of her, created a stir. No one was going to forget they were here at the house party. He was never going to forget it, either.
He headed toward the dressing room to find his robe, which he intended to discard as soon as possible. Then he spotted Mr. Black and a pile of blankets on the floor by the hearth. “Ah, it was kind of you to bring the dog in here before Metlock carved him up. I feared he’d resign rather than share his bedchamber in the attic. And you’ve made Blacky a comfortable bed, too.”
“That’s not for the dog; it’s for you.”
“Me? What did I do? I thought we were beyond such—”
“We have gone beyond the line, that’s where we’ve gone. And we are not going any further.”
He could taste the sweet truth of that, and his own bitter disappointment. Not one to give up easily, he set out to change her mind. “Very well, my dear, we shall go back to sleeping on separate sides of the bed. Shall I fetch the fireplace poker?”
“That did no good before, did it? No, you are too much of a rake for me to trust in the same room, much less the same bed. I’d feel safer sleeping with Mr. Black than with such a hardened seducer.”
“Me?” he asked again. “A seducer? I did not hear you complain or tell me to stop last night.”
Simone nodded. “Exactly. You are very good at what you do.”
He couldn’t find a spy or a blackmailer. “What was it I did? I kept my word. You kept your virginity.”
Now she put the book down and crossed her arms in front of her chest, denying him even that glimpse of pink paradise. “I did not keep my self-esteem. I am not blaming you entirely, you must understand. I do not trust myself any more than I trust you. To be completely truthful, I wanted you to make love to me.”
“And now you do not?”
“Now I want more, more than I could live with later. You prize honesty, Mr. Harry Harmon, well, here is the truth: You make me feel things I ought not. Your touch stirs my blood. Your kisses steal my wits.”
“You are saying the Devil made you kiss me back?”
“You are the devil, you know, for making me want you.”
“I suppose that is a compliment, but it sure as hell is cold comfort.”
She threw him another blanket.
Chapter Twenty
Damn, she was right. He was the one who had taken advantage of her innocence and inexperience. Hell, he was older, wiser, and should have used his head, as much as any man can use his senses with his nethers in a knot. He should have left her alone in her virginal purity, in her governess primness, in her big, soft, warm bed.
Damn, he’d do it again, make her moan with pleasure, cry out in passion, fall asleep in his arms. He’d take all she let him, give everything he had. He wouldn’t chance creating a child—the world had enough bastards, lud knew—but he’d teach her and coax her and, and damn, he was aroused just thinking about making love to her. Something about the woman set him on fire and burned his good intentions to a crisp. Burned his loins, hell, he never understood where his loins were until she smiled at him. Burned his brains.
What brains? Here he was sighing, his manhood stirring, over a hired female. She was at Gorham’s to make money; he was here to solve problems, not cause them for her or for himself. He did not have a place for her in his life, not now, not ever. She wanted a respectable future for her and her brother. He was never going to have one.
She would hate his world, hate him for dragging her into danger she did not understand, could never understand. He was a freak of nature as much as a two-headed chicken or an albino cow, only rarer. Only three other men shared his oddity: his father, his legitimate half-brother Rex, and his cousin Daniel. That was all, in the entire universe, as far as he knew. It was far too soon to know about Rex’s infant son.
If the boy bred true, he could blame luck and the Royce blood for making him recognize lies on someone’s lips. Maybe the babe could hear the truth like his grandfather, or see it in colors like Rex. Harry hoped the babe would be spared his own bad tastes of dishonesty, or, lud, Daniel’s rashes.
Simone would be horrified, the same as the Countess of Royce had been. His father’s legal wife had left the earl and her son, because she could not live with their difference from the rest of the world.
Not so long ago the truth of Harry’s birth, not his bastardy but his talent, would have seen him burnt at the stake, accused of wizardry or dealing with the devil. Even in this modern age, he’d be shunned, ostracized or imprisoned, locked in an asylum, feared by the innocent and guilty alike. No one wanted to believe he could see behind their words to the truth. Or taste it, which had to be more strange, more unbelievable.
He could hide the knack, hide the bitter taste with rum balls and peppermint drops, except the power of truth-seeing went with the responsibility to use it for the good of mankind. Almost as much a burden as the Royce gift, that altruism meant all the Royce men had a need to put their special skill to use. They were destined to serve the country that had given them a title, great wealth, influence, and, in Harry’s case, purpose and a way to repay the world for the opportunities he’d had.
He did not blame Lord Royce for his bastardy; rather he thanked the earl for providing for him, educating him, showing him what a gentleman was made of, for giving him the gift of the truth.
He was born to serve his country. All the Royce men were. National treasures, that’s what Lord Wellington had called them. Daniel might fight it, but he’d find a way to be of use, now that the Army was finished with him. England was not finished with Harry yet. He had a job to do right now.
A national treasure? Hell, he’d be a national disgrace if he couldn’t get his ballocks further than a governess’s bed.
So Harry did what he should have done the first night they’d arrived at Griffin Woods Manor. He went back to Gorham’s library where almost a dozen men were smoking and drinking and boasting of their successes, in business and the bedchamber. And he asked questions.