Most Eagerly Yours (6 page)

As though they were in the schoolroom, Ivy’s hand came up. “Are we not forgetting one complication—Mary Wyndham Fox?”

“George Fitzclarence’s wife.” Laurel didn’t dare glance at her sisters.

“Oh, his wife has never stopped George,” Victoria said with an indifferent wave. “He and Mary are estranged. He stops home every now and again to get her with child, but he hasn’t even seen his newest son yet. However, Laurel, if your conscience prevents it, I shall press you no further.”

Ivy pulled up taller in her chair, seeming about to speak.

Laurel didn’t give her the chance. “No, I shall do it. . . .”

But if she knew little about society or the world, she knew even less about the art of flirtation. The only man, a neighboring landowner, who had ever shown an interest in her had immediately withdrawn his regard the moment he learned the size of her inheritance.

But, oh, dear. She, Laurel Sutherland, practical, ordinary, inexperienced spinster, was to go to Bath and seduce—she didn’t care how Victoria termed it; the meaning was the same—a
married
, debauched scoundrel.

With a resigned sigh she clasped her hands at her waist. “When would you like me to leave?”

“In a week. That will give us time to assemble a proper wardrobe for you. I will also arrange for your accommodations and provide you with ample spending money. Oh, and here, just in case.” Lifting her brocade reticule, Victoria pulled an item from inside and held it out to Laurel.

Laurel’s eyes widened as she reached out and closed her hand around the butt of a small silver percussion pistol.

“You should not need that,” Victoria told her, “but I would have you prepared for all contingencies. I leave you with one warning.”

Only one? Laurel pulled her gaze from the gleaming weapon and mustered a brave expression. “Yes?”

“Beware of George’s friends, and do not be fooled by genteel appearances. Many are individuals of the very worst sort, hardly fit to be called gentlemen. One is a rogue of particularly low morals and few scruples. I speak, of course, of the Earl of Barensforth.”

 

The cards shot facedown across the felt-topped table, spinning to rest in front of each player. A fourth round of vingt-et-un had begun, and although the dealer used two decks shuffled together, Aidan had no trouble keeping a mental tally of the cards already played as well as those likely to surface in the next few minutes.

He had arrived in Bath that afternoon. Despite the suddenness of his plans, he had managed to lease a town house in the Royal Crescent, at the northwest corner of town. Fitz was staying a short walk away in the King’s Circus town house he had inherited from his father.

Word of Aidan’s presence in the city had quickly spread, and invitations to numerous affairs had piled up on the silver post salver.

Tonight’s Assembly Rooms ball constituted the first of those affairs, and as he contemplated the faces circling the various tables in the cardroom, a troubling current ran under his skin. It was nothing he could put a name to, simply a sense that, within the banal normalcy of this typically masculine scene, something was . . . off . . . and therefore not normal at all.

Turning his focus to the game, he raised a corner of the card dealt him. Ace of diamonds. He added its count value—negative one—to the running tabulation in his mind and calculated the odds of what his next card would likely be. High? Low?

A low card was practically guaranteed, he decided. He pushed a five- hundred-pound chip, double the minimum wager for the table, in front of his card. To his left, Arthur Steele, who had recently inherited the title of Viscount Devonlea, patted his perfectly slicked-back hair and doubled his wager as well.

Lord Julian Stoddard, sent down from Oxford a month ago but apparently suffering little shame over the matter, did likewise. Besides healthy good looks and a savoir faire that ladies found universally appealing, the young Stoddard possessed a sharp eye and a deceptively quick wit, leading Aidan to agree with Julian’s smug assertion that this second son of a marquess would one day gamble his way to considerable wealth.

“From what I heard,” Stoddard said as he pushed his wager to the center of the table, “Babcock floated in the thermal waters for so long that he”—he paused, his gaze lighting on each of the others in turn before he gave a theatrical shudder—“he actually
stewed
. As cooked as a shank of boiled mutton.”

“Oh, I say, Stoddard.”

“Good God.”

“Really, Stoddard, must you?”

“I’m only passing on what I was told,” the young man said with a defensive shrug. Pushing his chair back a few inches, he stretched out his left leg and released a soft groan.

Aidan noticed the silver- handled walking stick leaning against the edge of the table. “I say, Stoddard, rather young for one of those, aren’t you?”

“Sprained ankle. Had a bit of a riding mishap last week.”

“Give it a good soak.” Devonlea flashed a nasty leer. “Just not at the Cross Bath.”

“What I can’t help wondering is how Babcock could have remained all alone in the bathhouse after everyone else left.” Aidan raised a glass of port to his lips and waited for an answer.

“If you ask me, he’d been drinking and dozed off, perhaps in the corner of one of the dressing rooms.” Captain Geoffrey Taft considered his cards and tossed in the table’s minimum wager of 250 pounds. “Then upon waking, he stumbled into the bath and drowned.”

A retired naval officer who presented the very picture of stodgy English tradition with his serviceable suits and stoic, unflappable demeanor, Captain Taft had nonetheless scandalized the
ton
two years earlier. His wife had died, and months short of the proper mourning period the man had taken up quite openly with a much younger woman no one had ever heard of.

Her name was Margaret Whitfield—
Mrs.
Whitfield, though Aidan doubted she had ever been married. Like Fitz’s mother, Dorothea Jordan, the petite and pretty Mrs. Whitfield had once made her living as an actress, but
un
like Dorothea Jordan, the stages this woman had graced were accessed through back doors in seedy alleyways. Apparently, Geoffrey Taft had wandered into a playhouse one night and come out smitten.

No one in society would know that, of course. Aidan knew only because he’d done a little checking up on Mrs. Whitfield. Taft had been a friend of his father’s and, quite simply, Aidan liked the man and hadn’t wished to see him cuckolded. So far, much to Aidan’s surprise, he had not been.

“So Babcock was an inebriate,” he commented to no one in particular.

“No more than any of the rest of us,” Devonlea said with a laugh. He gestured at Aidan’s hand. “Are you sticking?”

Aidan glanced at his ace and four of clubs and increased his stake by another five hundred. Deciding to play the ace as a one rather than an eleven, he bought three more cards and raised his wager accordingly.

As each of the other players bought cards, twisted, or stuck, he analyzed their facial expressions. Taft appeared tense, whereas Devonlea and Stoddard leaned casually back in their chairs. Henri de Vere, the dealer for this round, dealt his own final cards.

Aidan considered de Vere something of an enigma. Like Claude Rousseau’s father, de Vere had served as a spy during the wars, but he had chosen to aid the British and European forces rather than Napoleon’s. It was even rumored that de Vere provided Wellington with information that facilitated Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, though de Vere had never confirmed or denied the claim. Still, his service record made him a hero in both the British and French courts, and instead of channeling this favor to his advantage, he chose to live quietly in relative obscurity.

The Frenchman turned his cards over one by one with a dramatic flair to reveal four cards totaling twenty-one. The other men around the table sighed in defeat.

“Well, Barensforth?” Lord Devonlea gestured at Aidan’s cards, still facedown on the table. Unlike either de Vere or Taft, Devonlea, a man whose expenses generally exceeded his income, left little to wonder about. Only a year or two older than Aidan, he was nevertheless a gentleman of the old school, with deeply entrenched Tory philosophies and a strict belief in the separation of the classes.

In other words, Arthur Steele, Viscount Devonlea, was as colossal a snob as could be imagined, but otherwise harmless and thoroughly predicable.

He also happened to be George Fitzclarence’s brother-in-law.

Remaining mysteriously silent, Aidan again reached for his port. In the past hour he had contrived to part with a considerable sum, a circumstance he loathed, not merely because losing grated against his competitive instincts, but also because the effort to lose taxed his brain to an even greater extent than winning did.

Yet ceaseless victories would raise suspicions and eventually lead some clever opponent to realize it wasn’t mere luck that filled Aidan’s pockets at the gaming tables. No, it was important to temper his successes with occasional failures . . . but damned if his pride didn’t sometimes ride roughshod over his good sense.

To the accompaniment of muttered oaths and exclamations of reluctant praise, he revealed his hand.

De Vere’s lip curled, yet with good- natured censure he observed in his lightly accented English, “A five-card trick beats my hand. Damn you again, Barensforth.”

“And to think, it seemed Lady Luck had abandoned you tonight.” With a snap, Devonlea summoned a waiter to replenish his brandy.

“Dev, old boy,” Aidan said, “our dear Lady Luck may run off for the occasional fling now and again, but rest assured she never stays away for long. Seems the old girl cannot resist me.”

Aidan drained his port and splashed another measure into his glass from the bottle at his elbow. In keeping with his reputed ability to drink all night without falling into his cups, he pushed smoothly to his feet. This was only his second glass since his arrival in the cardroom, but a few clever sleights of hand had made it appear to be his fifth or sixth. “Gentlemen, it has been a pleasure.”

He sauntered over to another table, where he hovered for the next twenty minutes conveying subtle signals to aid Fitz in his game of loo—a twitch of his brow, the quirk of his mouth, a deep or shallow sip of his port. If his own profits tended to run audaciously high, the opposite could be said of George Fitzclarence, evidenced by the dwindling stack of chips at his elbow. Aidan sought merely to give Fitz a fighting chance.

Aidan lingered long enough to ensure that ample spending money found its way into the man’s pockets. It wouldn’t do for Fitz to run out of cash and suddenly decide to cut short his visit to Bath. Aidan needed him here, performing whatever ill deeds the Home Office wanted investigated.

Stepping out into the centrally located octagon room brought to Aidan a shock of noisy bustle that contrasted sharply with the hush of the cardroom. Returning greetings, shaking and kissing hands as he went, he proceeded through to the ballroom.

A reel was presently under way, a colorful flurry of youthful energy. Tiers of seats lined the walls, from where the elders and infirm and those not lucky enough to have found partners looked on. Overhead, five massive cut-glass chandeliers blazed at full brilliance, and lively hearth fires warded off the March chill.

As Aidan made his way through the long room, scanning faces and taking mental notes, a number of bright-faced young ladies in colorful silks waved their dance cards under his nose. He stopped to offer a compliment here, chuck a curl there, and chat a moment with their fathers. In every case he left behind a trail of blushing disappointment.

“My lord, a word if you please.”

Ah. Smile in place, he came to an abrupt if somewhat reluctant halt. Lady Amanda Beecham’s tone matched the frosty diamonds glittering around her slender neck. A sliver of white blond eyebrow arched in disdain as she regarded him.

They stood not far from the orchestra. The lady slipped her hand into the crook of his arm and drew him behind the carved Oriental screen that concealed the musicians from their audience. In the relative privacy, she slid her hand from his elbow and let it fly open-palmed against his cheek.

The violinist missed a note. Although the blow left a rather commendable sting, Aidan merely tilted his head and frowned in puzzlement.

“That, my lord, is for ignoring my notes.”

In point of fact he hadn’t ignored them at all. He had dutifully read each carefully penned, scalding condemnation of his character and then tossed it into the hearth.

He also might have mentioned that by Amanda’s own decree, their affair had never been meant to last more than the fortnight her husband had been away from home, and that had been more than a month ago. Aidan had believed their liaison long over.

His work for the Home Office didn’t allow for more than brief affairs. When he took up with a woman, he always made certain it was someone who shared his aversion to permanent attachments. That typically meant married women of less-than-spotless virtue. He was neither Lady Amanda’s first paramour nor her last, and he suspected tonight’s outburst had more to do with her frustration in a loveless marriage than with his own conduct.

Ah well, this was not the first time one of his affairs had ended with the imprint of a feminine hand across his cheek, and he could think of several that had begun that way as well.

Amanda leaned in close and hissed, “I am not some old cloak to be worn when one feels a chill and cast off when the sun returns. How
dare
you?”

The question, it seemed, was rhetorical. She swept away without having secured an answer. Aidan adjusted his cravat, shot his cuffs, and exchanged an apologetic look with the musicians.

He shrugged off the interlude and returned his focus to the assembly. For the most part these well- heeled individuals were here on holiday, seeking cures for their minor ailments and hoping to acquire a feeling of youthful vitality. As for the young people . . . they were here because their parents were, and they seemed intent on making the best of the situation.