The Marquess’ Daring Wager Read online

  Kingston cuffed Charlie again and said, “What would you know about it? The likes of you are not even allowed to play the game.”

  “Just because a thing ain’t allowed, don’t mean it ain’t done,” Charlie said. “There’s secret spots in some interesting neighborhoods where one might have a glass of ale or two and partake of the sport.”

  “That’s impossible,” Kingston said.

  “It ain’t,” Charlie said. “There’s them taverns what don’t lean on the building behind them. There be a small bit of land between ’em and everybody in the vicinity is good about keeping it quiet.”

  Kingston appeared dubious that taverns in London had worked out a way to get round the edict that only the highly placed were allowed lawn bowling.

  Richard leaned forward. “If I can get closer to the jack than he does, why should I bother moving it?”

  “Cause it’ll irk him,” Charlie said in supreme confidence. “I seen it done a hundred times. A fella’s going along well, then his opponent makes a mess of things, then the fella gets irked and jumpy and nervous. He loses his confidence.”

  “Confidence,” Richard said softly. “Of course, confidence is everything in a battle.”

  Charlie looked cheekily up at Kingston and said, “What would your own advice be, mate?”

  “I am not your mate!” Kingston cried.

  “It will be a tricky business,” Richard said. “On the one hand, I am in the process of slowly wearing down Lord Blanding’s dislike. On the other, I cannot allow him to win so much money just now. I must both win and keep him happy.”

  “There’s only one thing to do,” Charlie said. “You got to compliment his skill while you trounce him.”

  “Yes,” Richard said, “I’ve been doing a lot of complimenting already. He pretends to dislike it, but I think he’s becoming rather fond of it.”

  “And you might want to sharpen up your skills,” Charlie said, peering out the window. “The old blighter has been out there practicing for over an hour.”

  *

  Sybil had not yet had an opportunity to inform her father of the conclusion she had come to—Lord Lockwood had come on a wager to win him over. Now, everybody in the house was out on the green for the bowling tournament between the two gentlemen. Lady Hugh, as always, had ensured their comfort—a large tent had been erected and plentiful chairs placed under it, along with a table of lemonade, biscuits, and tea cakes.

  Behind the tent, all the servants of the house had come out to watch the play. Sybil had looked on in amusement as Betty scolded a young boy over something—no doubt he’d said something cheeky. Another servant very helpfully cuffed the boy, though Sybil did not think the little reprobate looked at all sorry. It was not a minute more before she divined what the boy had been up to, as he surreptitiously slipped a biscuit out of his pocket that she was certain had begun the day on the table laid out for the guests.

  The bowling green was a flat expanse of close-clipped grass, with ditches running along either side. Lord Lockwood had won the honor of rolling the jack and had rolled it directly into the right-hand ditch half-way down the lane. Lord Blanding had appeared supremely satisfied as a footman ran to center the jack on the rink.

  Lord Blanding had chosen blue as the color of his bowls, leaving Lord Lockwood with the red. Her father rolled his first bowl and everybody clapped, as it came within a half yard of the jack.

  Lord Blanding made a short bow to the onlookers and then stepped aside for Lord Lockwood to take his turn.

  *

  Two hours later, Sybil fanned herself and wished, whatever was to be the outcome of this cursed game, it would end.

  Her father had challenged nearly every end he’d lost, his condemnation of Lord Lockwood’s strategies severe. Lord Lockwood went on merrily enough, seeming not particularly affected by it and confoundingly complimenting Lord Blanding’s skill in the middle of her father’s tirades.

  Poor Lord Hugh had been forced to make the calls and while he may have wished to make every call in favor of his friend, he could not easily do it with so many onlookers. He could, and did, express his sorrow over the methods Lord Lockwood chose to employ, even if they were not strictly against the rules.

  They had finally come to the last end, with ten wins in favor of each gentleman. It would be the deciding end, and Sybil dearly wished her father to win it. His pride was at stake, and perhaps his health too—he was very red in the face just now.

  Sybil had risen from her chair to come closer to watch. Her father rolled his ball and it came wonderfully close to the jack. She squeezed Poppy’s hand and said, “If Lord Lockwood purposefully moves the jack again, I shall hate him forever.”

  Behind her, a deep voice said, “Lady Sybil?”

  Sybil’s heart began to pound as she looked everywhere near the green. She knew very well that the voice behind her was Lord Lockwood’s. But how could it be? He had been ten feet in front of her only a moment ago.

  Lord Lockwood did not stay to say anything further but walked confidently back to the green.

  “Goodness,” Poppy said. “He understands your sentiments, I think.”

  Chapter Eight

  Lord Lockwood picked up his bowl and rolled it down the green with abandon, it cresting the left side bank and landing in the ditch.

  “Dead!” Lord Blanding shouted. “The bowl is dead!”

  And so the play went on, but not for very long. Lord Lockwood rolled his other three balls exceedingly bad, one more of them into the ditch and the other two nowhere near the jack.

  Though Sybil was pleased that her father was moments away from winning the game, she had a perverse feeling of guilt. Surely, Lord Lockwood was not trying very hard. He’d played well all along, and now he appeared to have no skill at all.

  She could not help but conjecture that his sudden loss of dexterity was connected to her vow that she would hate him forever if he moved the jack again.

  “That is it!” Lord Blanding said. “The bowls have been measured, though it was hardly necessary for this go round. I have won the match.”

  The onlookers politely clapped, though everybody who had watched the last end would know that they had witnessed something exceedingly strange. All along, Lord Lockwood had played admirably, and then quite suddenly his game had collapsed. His last shot could have been done better by a child wearing a sleeping mask.

  The losing gentleman sportingly bowed to Lord Blanding and seemed not as disappointed that he’d lost the wager as one might expect.

  Sybil was at war with herself. Of course, she wished her father to come out victorious, and so he had. Though, she could not like the idea that Lord Lockwood had thrown the game. He had thrown it, had he not? She could not escape the notion that he would not have done it, had he not overheard her.

  He should not concern himself with her opinions! It was very wrong of him.

  Lord Blanding, apparently, had no such qualms about winning, however he’d accomplished it. He accepted congratulations all round, and then approached Lord Lockwood.

  “What say you, Lockwood? I suppose you’ll not like to tell your father you’ve been trounced on the green?”

  “I shan’t mind at all, Lord Blanding,” Lord Lockwood said smoothly. “I am certain he will find much amusement in it. The duke regards wagers of this kind to be the height of recklessness.”

  “Does he, now?” Lord Blanding said. “I reckon he’s stuck to his card games, then.”

  This, Sybil knew, was wandering dangerously close to the long-ago card game that still irked her father.

  “Indeed,” Lord Lockwood said. “He is excellent at cards and wins often, much to the dismay of his challengers. I have been at the losing end of the table more than a few times. But what can one do? Fair is fair.”

  Lord Blanding paled. Sybil could hardly believe her ears. Lord Lockwood was intentionally baiting her father with hints of the past. He was taunting her father about the infamous card game with the duke. To men
tion both the duke’s skill and any notion of fairness!

  It was the antithesis of sportsmanlike behavior. She should have known Lord Lockwood did not do anything so noble as to throw the match in any consideration for her feelings. Whatever had caused him to do so badly, it had not been her overheard remark. More likely, he’d thrown it as part of his continuing efforts to win over Lord Blanding.

  Sybil felt her color rise, though nobody who noticed it would have been able to account for it. Once more, she was ashamed that she had, even for an instant, considered herself to be more important than she actually was.

  Lady Hugh intervened before things could go any further between the two men. “Gentlemen, we all do thank you for an afternoon’s entertainment. Now, I suggest we go in to change for tea.”

  *

  “It was unavoidable,” Richard said, as Kingston brushed his coat.

  Charlie sat on the floor, polishing his master’s boots with an enthusiasm that threatened to wear through the leather if it were carried on too long. “It looked avoidable, that’s all I’ll say about it.”

  Kingston, having his hands fully occupied, used his shoe to knock Charlie on the head. “If your master says that losing a bowling match was unavoidable, you are to understand that there are reasons too far above your intellect to comprehend.”

  Richard lounged on a chair, with his feet up on a stool. “Anybody’s intellect could comprehend it,” he said. “If I were to win the match, I’d lose Lord Blanding. Compliments, as it turned out, were not enough to keep him cheerful. And then, Lady Sybil was heard to espouse her very determined opinions on moving the jack. So, I found I must weigh the good opinion of Lord Blanding and Lady Sybil against a hundred pounds.”

  “I wouldn’t give a hundred pounds to have the king himself think well of me,” Charlie said, looking aggrieved.

  Kingston looked down at his rascally assistant. “It is what’s called a noble gesture. You will not know anything of the finer feelings of a gentleman, as I am certain you were raised by wolves.”

  “Nobody, not wolves or otherwise, raised me,” Charlie said defiantly. “I done raised myself.”

  “And have been picking pockets ever since, I’ll wager,” Kingston said.

  “It’s them what is picking pockets. Them what run the workhouse. They’ll steal your whole life from ya, without so much as a thankee. Where else is a fella expected to work for free, survive on bowls of gruel full of the creepy-crawlies, and have the pleasure of rats crawling atop your thin blanket in the night? A fella is meant to go on with it until he collapses with the consumption and then it’s blinkers out and thrown into a pauper’s grave. I saw the what’s what and scrammed out of there at my earliest convenience.”

  Richard had thought as much about Charlie’s origins and it had led him to be more indulgent of him than he might otherwise be. He’d had his fair share of late-night debates on the system of workhouses. Some of his acquaintance were of the opinion that there was a class of society who could not be bothered to take care of themselves and must be forced to work for their daily bread. A workhouse destiny was in their very blood.

  Richard was of a markedly different opinion—there but for the grace of God go I.

  Charlie bent over his master’s boots and gave them a few good swipes of blacking. “I expect my dear mother and I were accidently separated while I was a babe and that’s how I ended up there. I’ll wager she’s spent her life looking for me and is torn up over it. For all I know, she’s a baroness and I’m the long-lost heir.”

  Kingston might have been counted on to chide Charlie for his presumption in naming his unknown mother as a baroness, but the boy’s description of his early life and the story he told himself to account for his missing mother seemed to make a deep impression. He gently tapped the boy’s head with his shoe and said, “There now, never mind. You’re not in the workhouse now.”

  “And not going back if you can convince Kingston to put up with you,” Richard said. “In any case, this afternoon I had to come down on the side of losing a hundred pounds. I did make one grievous error, though. I was attempting to humor the gentleman through his rather ungentlemanly glee over winning, when I mentioned cards. I should not have mentioned cards.”

  “What’s wrong with cards?” Charlie asked. “I like a game of lottery tickets meself.”

  “There is nothing wrong with cards,” Kingston said, “though lottery tickets is a lowbrow sort of entertainment as there is no skill in it. The world is aware that there has been a longstanding gambling dispute between Lord Blanding and the duke, though the nature of it is not well understood.”

  Charlie laid his blacking cloth on Richard’s gleaming boots. “I’m all ears.”

  “You rascal!” Kingston said. “Do not presume to be owed any explanation whatsoever. I do not even know the particulars myself, nor would I be so bold as to inquire.”

  Richard laughed and said, “Ah, but the lad is so bold as to inquire. Very well. My father says Lord Blanding threw around accusations of cheating and then hung about the house for three days, hinting at a duel, though he never had the gumption to come right out with it. Neither my father nor the Duke of Dembly had any intention of meeting the fellow at dawn and were well satisfied to see the back of him. He was ill-tempered then and he is ill-tempered now. They say the Cornwall air imparts a certain lead to the head. For all that, I have a fondness for the fellow.”

  “And so Lord Blanding carries the grudge to this day,” Charlie said, with no little admiration in his voice. “The gentleman knows how to stick to it, then.”

  “That, he does,” Richard said softly.

  *

  Sybil had dressed hurriedly and made her way to her mother and father’s room before they were to go down for tea. She was determined to inform her father that she suspected Lord Lockwood’s attentions to him were part of a wager made with the gentlemen of the pact.

  She found her mother at her dressing table. Her father was seated by a window, gazing down at the bowling green and the scene of his recent victory.

  “The audacity of that scoundrel to refer to the card game,” Lord Blanding said. “Does he think I’ve gone soft on the subject? Does he think I’ll ever go soft on the subject?”

  While Sybil had oft heard that particular card game mentioned, and both the Duke of Gravesley and the Duke of Dembly condemned over it, she had never heard the particulars. There had been hints that somebody might have cheated, but nothing more.

  “Papa,” she said, “precisely how did they wrong you? Of course I know it was grievous and to do with cheating, and you are quite right to have not gone soft over it, but I’ve never been told the particulars.”

  Lady Blanding quietly sighed. Sybil suspected her mother had often heard the particulars and, of course, she had been there to see it all herself. Lord Blanding, on the other hand, appeared invigorated.

  He jumped up from his chair and paced the room. “It was the most shameful thing in the world. Both of those old blighters were barely hanging on to their estates. Dembly was even tottering toward a mortgage. What do you suppose they did about it? Rein in their expenses and deploy careful management like any right-minded person? No, they brought a card sharp to Gravesley’s house and then lured the rest of us there with promises of shooting. Then, it would rain buckets, which was very convenient to their plan. Cassandra’s father was in attendance and saw it all, though the Dowager Duchess of Carlisle eventually stole him away from the scene.”

  “The dowager was the current duchess at that time,” Lady Blanding said, “and worried that the viscount was prone to wager too high for the size of his purse.”

  “A card sharp was brought there by the dukes?” Sybil asked in wonder.

  “Mr. Shine, if that is his real name,” Lord Blanding said derisively. “I’ve always kept an eye out for the fellow and will thrash him if I ever see him.”

  “Fortunately,” Lady Blanding said, “we have never seen him. I wonder if he hasn’t g
one to America. It would be a fitting place for him to peddle his unsavory talents.”

  “Once the deception was known,” Lord Blanding said, “I could do nothing but defend my honor. Oh, the hints I dropped about a duel! They were willfully ignored. I’d mention dawn and the two of them would flee the room! I’d talk of cleaning my pistols as soon as they arrived from Cornwall and one of them would begin talking of the weather! Eventually, I saw that I would not get satisfaction from either one of those scoundrels.”

  “We finally left,” Lady Blanding said.

  “Loudly, I might add,” Lord Blanding said, seeming satisfied that the volume of his departure had delivered an insult of some magnitude.

  Sybil was slightly confused about the events that had transpired. She understood that there had been a disreputable character there and that a scheme to cheat at cards had been uncovered. However, this was the first she’d heard of anybody hinting at a duel. She had been under the impression that one party threw down the gauntlet in some fashion, and then it was up to the other party to accept the challenge or be forever labeled a coward. She supposed she did not know as much about the procedure as she’d thought.

  “Mama, Papa,” she said, “I have a suspicion about why Lord Lockwood is here.”

  Both of her parents turned to Sybil, waiting to hear her views.

  “It is, of course, strange that he would push in where he has not been asked,” Sybil said.

  “Or wanted,” Lord Blanding muttered.

  “And then,” Sybil continued, “stranger still that he should make such an effort to be always in Papa’s way.”

  “Following me around the drawing room like a lost puppy,” Lord Blanding said. “An irritating lost puppy!”

  Sybil nodded. “I think it is because I told Lord Lockwood at the Hathaways’ ball that I could not allow him to add his name to my dance card. I told him my father does not sanction it.”

  “Does the reprobate have designs on you?” Lord Blanding sputtered, grabbing hold of the bedpost for support. “Designs on my daughter? I’ll throw myself into a grave and pile on the dirt with my own hands before I’ll allow it! No, change that—I’ll throw him into the grave and pile the dirt on him with my own hands!”