An Angel for the Earl (4 page)

“And I am Kerry to my friends and fellow fiends, Lucinda. No, Lucy, that's better. Ah, Lucy Faire, how clever. Let's have another drink to toast the partnership.”

* * *

“Demby, do you believe in ghosts? Angels, devils, any of those spirit things?”

The earl's loyal servant removed the decanter from Lord Stanford's limp fingers without spilling more than a drop, so low was the level of brandy remaining. “No, my lord,” Demby grumbled on his way to fetch a pot of coffee, “but I do believe in the demon in the bottle.”

Chapter Four

“I'll never touch another drop of liquor,” Kerry swore, clutching his throbbing temples. Demby's hands, all four of them, were shaking worse than usual as he held out a tray with some noxious brew guaranteed to cure the earl, if it didn't kill him first. The motion of the tray was making Kerry seasick, and the rattling of the cup was hammering stakes through his eyeballs. “God, I need a drink,” he groaned.

“No, my lord, you need a clear head for tonight. Remember?”

His lordship couldn't remember his name right then, only a recurring nightmare about the most beautiful woman who never existed. He shook his head, a definite mistake. When the walls stopped revolving, he grabbed for the cup before Demby sloshed the entire contents onto the carpet. “Tonight. Right, the game. I still have fifty pounds, don't I? And my lucky gold piece? Don't worry, Demby, we'll come around.”

“We'd better, my lord.”

* * *

A few recuperative hours later, Lord Stanford was on his way to hell. Gillespie's gaming hell, to be exact. He eschewed Whites and his other clubs, where too many members held his vouchers, and the exclusive gambling dens where the stakes were too high for his present circumstances. Gillespie's was perfect: respectable enough that he'd find enough gentlemen mixed in with the cardsharps and ivory-tuners, not so refined that every player was already a creditor.

The rooms were dingy, dark, and overheated. The smell of stale wine and stale bodies hung over the tables, mingling with clouds of smoke. Fevered eyes and feral smiles greeted the earl as he passed by the roulette wheels, the dicing tables. He wouldn't want to spend eternity here, Kerry thought with a grin, but for tonight Gillespie's was ideal.

He played at vingt-et-un for half an hour or so, winning some, losing less. He did better at the hazard table, steadily increasing his rolls of house markers, wagering conservatively, and moving on as soon as his luck shifted. The roulette tables never interested him before, but this evening he placed a rouleau on red. And won, doubling his bet. He left both wager and winnings on red, and won again. And a third time.

The other gamesters were quiet, waiting to see what he did. The croupier was watching with raised eyebrows. Kerry started to move his stacks of markers over to the black box, when he chanced to look up. “Lucy?”

“Milord?” the dealer was ready to spin. Lucy was shaking her head. He left the chips where they were.

“Lucky, I meant to say. Red has been lucky for me.”

“Number twenty-seven, odd, red.”

Dazed, Lord Stanford gathered his considerable take onto a tray a waiter provided and followed Lucy into the shadows. She was in that same carmine gown that could have been painted on her. For some reason he found himself standing in front of her, shielding the view from the sight of the hardened libertines at the tables.

“What the bloody hell are you doing here?” he demanded in a harsh whisper.

“You could at least mind your tongue in front of a lady,” she replied, not even looking at him but gazing over his shoulder around the room in wide-eyed innocence.

“This is no place for a lady!”

“Nor a gentleman with hopes of salvation,” she reminded him.

“My only hope is to win a fortune, which I cannot do with you here to distract me.”

“Are they really enjoying themselves?” She waved one hand at the scowling gamblers hunched over the hazard table. Kerry refused to see that her hand passed through his shoulder, leaving a slight vibration.

“Yes, and I would be, too, if you'd just go spread the gospel to some other poor soul.” He turned his back and purposefully strode into Gillespie's second parlor, where smaller groups of men were gathered at card tables. Kerry sat at the faro table, determined to ignore what he didn't like. His concentration was off though, and he lost. Faro was too much a game of chance anyway. He stood and looked around and, right on time, spotted Lord Malverne, his quarry.

Malverne was well-to-pass, a heavy gambler, and none too needle-witted, by all accounts, although he won with enough frequency to keep him coming back. Sitting with him were two younger men, green but eager to lose the tidy bundles in front of them. No need to worry about taking vowels at this table. Kerry asked if he could sit in, and the youngest of the players, Wilson-Todd's cub, Kerry thought, nodded eagerly.

The other youngster dropped out shortly, the stakes quickly growing too high for his resources, and his seat was taken by a cit with mended cuffs. He did not last long, nor the sideburned lieutenant who went down heavily for three hands, nor the grinning sot who wagered his whole roll on one hand, and lost. Young Wilson-Todd, Chas he called himself, was holding his own, while Kerry and Malverne were steady winners. Bystanders started to gather in a circle around the table, making side bets, some of which Kerry covered, extending his own winnings.

At a pause for a new player to take his seat and a fresh deck to be opened, Kerry took a sip of the excellent sherry at his elbow. He choked on it. Across from him, right behind Malverne, stood the flame-haired Lucy.

“Go away!” he shouted.

The tulip about to take up his hand rose in his seat. “I say, if you feel that way—”

“I told you, women do not belong here!”

The foppish gentleman in his yellow cossack trousers started to sputter. “I say, are you insultin' my manhood, sir?”

Kerry noticed him for the first time. “Who in tarnation is talking to you? Sit down and mind your own business!”

The dandy gulped, Adam's apple bobbing, but he stayed in his seat as directed. Malverne looked to Wilson-Todd, shrugged, and commenced the deal.

No one was staring at Lucy. Kerry couldn't believe it. He watched all the faces, those checking their cards, those making bets behind the chairs. Not a single slobbering smile was fixed on her half-naked chest, not one ogling eyeball was admiring her silk-draped legs.

“Your bet, Stanford.”

They didn't see her, ergo she didn't exist. Kerry dragged his eyes away from the creamy white skin of her shoulders and concentrated on his cards.
He
didn't see her, therefore she didn't exist. Then why was the tobacco smoke taking on a burning pitch odor?

He lost that hand badly, and the next, trying not to consider the odds of red coming up four times in a row on a roulette wheel. Tarnation, he had to get himself in hand. He couldn't afford to lose from lack of concentration. By all that was holy, he couldn't afford to lose, period.

The next rounds went better as the deal progressed around the table, other players taking hands in the game, the bets getting larger, the pots in the center growing. Chatter died down as the ante rose. Wilson-Todd mopped the sweat beading on his forehead, another chap turned his jacket inside out for better luck, and a third player believed that serious gaming demanded serious drinking. He was seeking inspiration in a bottle of Blue Ruin. Malverne kept fussing with the lace at his collar, nervously picking at the picot at his shirtsleeves. 'Twas his deal and his call. “Match.”

“Raise.”

“Fold.”

“See your raise.”

Kerry fingered the yellow-boy in his pocket and raised the bet again. So it went, in near silence, until only Malverne and Stanford were still playing for an enormous pot. Kerry's turn came again. His hand was good, not great. Pulling out of the game now would end his hopes for a big coup this night; staying in could cost him much of his holdings. Was Malverne bluffing? Kerry stared across the table, trying to look into the older man's eyes. What he saw was Lucy, leaning over the old roué's shoulders, her breasts practically spilling out of her gown into the dastard's lap.

“Hell and tarnation!”

“That's what I keep telling you, my lord.”

Kerry looked around. They were all staring at
him,
not at her. Malverne was smiling. “Your call, Stanford.”

The earl started to say “I—” but Lucy interrupted. “Did you know he has three aces?”

Kerry threw his cards down and jumped to his feet, his chair crashing to the floor behind him, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. He didn't care. “Blast it, that's cheating! You may think I am steeped in depravity, but I consider myself a gentleman and I will not play in a rigged game!”

At which Lord Malverne jumped up, threw down
his
hand—the three aces and two others which fell out of his sleeve—and ran out of the room before anyone knew what was happening or could stop him. Besides congratulations on his canny insight and gratitude for keeping them all from being gulled, Lord Stanford was also unanimously awarded the pot, and a considerable share of the cash Lord Malverne had left behind in his haste. That loose screw wouldn't dare show his face at Gillespie's to collect his booty, nor anywhere else in London, for that matter.

Kerry couldn't wait to get back to Stanford House to count his winnings. He even took a hansom cab, lest he be set upon by footpads. Once home, he made sure Demby was asleep, the rooms were all empty, the doors and windows all locked. Then he spread the gold, silver, and paper currency on his desk, ready to make his usual neat piles.

“They say 'tis easier to thread a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.”

Kerry groaned, then coughed at the fetid air. “Oh, no, not you again. You do not exist.”

“Don't be any more foolish than you have to be, my lord. Am I not sitting right here in your leather chair?”

She was, right where there had been no one an instant before. He was sure the door was still locked; he was sure she was still the most exquisite creature a tired, overwrought mind could conjure up. If he could give her such kissable lips, he wondered, why, by all the saints, couldn't he get her to keep them closed?

“Of course I exist,” Lucinda was repeating in some exasperation herself. “Well, for the next fortnight or so anyway. Which is not a great deal of time, after you have frittered away the last twenty-seven years. We absolutely have to come to some kind of accommodation here. Now, I've been taking notes.” She pulled a sheet of paper out of the wall. Kerry sat down and poured a drink. Then he pushed it away and lit a cigarillo instead.

Lucinda wrinkled her nose. “Filthy habit, that. Anyway, the way I have reasoned it, we need some guidelines. I mean, you don't seem to see anything wrong with your way of life, and
they
don't see much right with it.”

Lucy consulted her paper while the earl sat bemused. “I thought we'd start here, my lord. Do stop me if you recognize any of this…‘I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other God before me. Thou shalt have no graven images or bowing to other gods.'” She stared at the mounds of gold in front of Kerry, the coins he'd been idly trickling through his fingers. “So much for idolatry.”

“God damn!” he protested.

“‘Do not take my name in vain.' Humph. ‘Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy.'”

“I do. I went to church just a Sunday or two ago.”

“That was a month ago, and you went only to collect the money Mortimer Greenstreet owed you. Then the two of you went to a prizefight. The next Sunday you stayed abed all day, still castaway from the evening before. The one after that you stayed abed with—”

“Enough! So I don't pay lip service to the mumbo jumbo they serve up in church.”

“Hmm. ‘Honor thy father and mother.'”

“Got you there,” he said with a grin. “I wasn't the one who ran away from home.”

“No, but you never
go
home.”

“I am a good son,” he blustered, although he couldn't keep from glancing to his mother's last letter right there on the top of the nuisance pile.

Lucinda had no need to read his correspondence. “The way you honor your father by caring for his ancestral property, begetting an heir to carry on his line? The way you listen to a lonely old woman's cries for your attention?”

“Ma'am, m'father was a basket scrambler of epic proportions. He ran the property into the ground and saddled me with more debts than I can repay in a lifetime. And m'mother's a fishwife.”

“That's honor?” She went on before he could answer: “‘Thou shalt not kill.'”

“Ah-ha! I never—”

“What about that duel with Sir Swindon? He died of your gunshot wound.”

“He died of an infection, and he was a bounder anyway! He stole that opera dancer right out from under me, literally. And it was a fair fight. He had the choice of weapons.”

Lucinda consulted her list again. “Strange, it doesn't mention opera dancers anywhere. Oh, here. ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.'”

There was silence at the other side of the desk.

“‘Thou shalt not steal.'”

“There. I've never taken anything that didn't belong to me in my life, unless you're going back to some apples in the vicar's orchard when I was seven. You wouldn't hang a boy for that, would you, much less send him to hell?”

Lucinda gestured to the pile of tradesmen's bills, some of them years overdue. “What do you call that other than theft of services? How do you think the tailor and the baker feed
their
children? By letting them steal apples?”

His lordship had no answer. Lucy went on: “‘Nor bear false witness.' All that gossiping at White's can't be the truth. Even tucked away in Derby we heard how many a young deb's reputation was ruined by some careless bragging at the clubs. Are you going to tell me you never took part?”

“What, and bear false witness?” he asked impatiently. “What's next?”

“‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's—'”

“Uh-oh.”

“‘Wife, nor his house nor his fields.'”

“Well, there, I never coveted anyone's house or fields. Don't even see much good in my own acres, with farming such a dirty, unproductive business. And I can't help it if those old sticks keep marrying lasses twenty years younger than themselves.” Kerry leaned back in his chair with his head cushioned on his crossed arms. “There, I didn't do so badly, did I?”