Almost Perfect (6 page)

Lucien’s stomach clenched again. Having Eleanor as a mother-in-law would be as distasteful as shouldering the burden of Sir Roland as his father-in-law.

Jonathan Percy, Westmorland’s bastard, lounged casually at the third table. A well favored lad, thankfully resembling his mother rather than his long-faced father, Percy had matriculated from Oxford with a degree in gaming skills instead of the expected one in religion. Vibrant green stripes decorated Percy’s bright pink waistcoat beneath his black coat. A dozen sparkling fobs decorated his watch chain, and his collar points reached almost to his cheekbones. His dark brown hair had been pomaded into artful curls about his face.

“I wondered how long it would be before we saw you in here, my lord,” Percy called to Lucien. “Come sit with us so I can pick your pocket. In the meanwhile I’ll tell you about the mare I’ve discovered. She’ll be an asset to my father’s stable.” The lad had a good eye for horseflesh and the delusion that he could augment his sorry allowance by raising and betting on his own horses.

The men playing with Percy all muttered at the invitation. The three, hard-eyed local squires well known to Lucien were just what Devanney promised, more than capable of keeping Percy honest. Beefy men all, they weren’t pleased at the thought of making room for another big man, or changing their game to accommodate a fifth hand.

“Another time, Percy,” Lucien refused. “You have the next two weeks to try to winnow a few coins from my purse. I warn you. Attempt it at your own risk. You’ve a better chance of losing another month’s allowance than you do of taking any of my coins.”

That made Percy laugh. “We’ll see who takes whose allowance.”

Lucien retreated to an empty table. One of Ryecroft’s bewigged footmen appeared to supply him with all he needed to start a game, including a cup of Devanney’s finest wine. Across the room Cassie’s father stopped his pacing and looked longingly in Lucien’s direction. Lucien lifted his glass in invitation.

“Care to join me, Conningsby?”

Sir Roland crossed the room swiftly, heated circles reddening his sagging cheeks. His ridiculous little nose almost quivered in anticipation. Coins clinked in the worn leather pouch he carried in his hand. The plebeian purse looked so out of place with Sir Roland that Lucien wondered for a moment if it truly belonged to the man. He instantly discarded the thought. Roland was first and foremost a gentleman, and as such he wouldn’t stoop to steal. At least not for so few coins as that purse could contain.

“Good of you, milord,” Sir Roland mumbled, taking his seat.

Lucien signaled for the footman to bring Conningsby a drink. The sooner Cassie’s father began to imbibe the easier it would be for Lucien to willfully lose to the man. Then when Roland was thoroughly drunk Lucien could return both the man and his full purse to his chamber.

“Not tonight,” the little knight told the footman, waving away the wine.

Lucien blinked, startled. He’d never known Sir Roland to refuse a drink.

Sir Roland’s lips twisted when he caught Lucien’s look. “Not drinking tonight,” he said, patting the bulge of his stomach beneath his blue vest. It was missing one of its silver buttons. “A little off my feed.”

“A pity, that,” Lucien replied smoothly, wondering if the wastrel was finally reforming his ways. He hoped Sir Roland’s changes didn’t come too late to do some good for Cassie and her sister.

Picking up the cards, Lucien shuffled then set the mixed deck in the center of the table, offering Roland the chance to cut. “You’re aware aren’t you that Lord Ryecroft limits our winnings to twenty pounds per person per night?”

Sir Roland nodded then cut the cards. As Lucien dealt, the smaller man shifted sideways to lounge in his chair, his legs crossed at the ankles. Setting an elbow on the table, Roland propped his head on his fist. His expression flattened. Lucien had once heard Conningsby say that he believed this posture exuded an air of merry nonchalance. To Lucien, the only thing Sir Roland’s posture exuded was cavalier arrogance.

Sir Roland smirked at Lucien. “What say you, milord? A game of Speculation?”

So Speculate they did, playing swift hand after hand, but not for long. Less than an hour later Lucien laid down his final winning hand, gnashing his teeth in frustration. He’d done everything he could to lose short of exposing his cards to Sir Roland, but Conningsby played like a man who’d never before seen a deck of cards. He lost more with every hand until all of that pouch’s twenty pounds now belonged to Lucien.

Across the table a stone cold sober Sir Roland reeled in his chair. His face blanched until he looked as if he might faint. He giggled, but it sounded more like a sob.

“I’m done for,” he said, his voice catching.

The little knight came to his feet, turned without offering any show of farewell and staggered like the besotted man he wasn’t out of the card room. Lucien stared at the table and the measly twenty pounds strewn across its surface, no less devastated than Sir Roland.

He’d done his best to serve Cassie and failed. He couldn’t offer to return these coins to her father, not without offering unbearable insult. Nor could he slip them to her. Not only would the insult be just as grave, but doing something like that hinted at an intimacy that he couldn’t afford and wouldn’t indulge, not with her and not at this party.

Now what?

“Cassie, where are you?”

Eliza’s gentle call startled Cassie out of her doze. Seated in the bedchamber’s single, wing chair, she stretched, surprised to find herself waking. She hadn’t expected to sleep, not with the way her head had been throbbing.

When Philana and Eliza had come to check on her just before the evening meal began, the pain had been unbearable. Cassie had swiftly sent them away, wanting only quiet. Eliza departed reluctantly, murmuring in worry. Philana sent Betty with a potion guaranteed to ease Cassie’s every pain. The concoction proved so foul that Cassie managed to down only half of it. Philana hadn’t mentioned that it would make her sleepy. Had Cassie known, she’d have undressed and gone to bed before taking it. Now, her head still throbbed, the ache only a little abated, and her neck pinched from sleeping in an awkward position.

“I’m in the chair, Eliza,” she said, squinting as her sister relit the candle.

“Is your head any better?” Eliza asked.

“It is,” Cassie lied.

There was no sense telling the truth. Nothing Eliza said or did could ever ease what pained Cassie. Why, oh why, hadn’t she done a better job of hiding her purse? She should have known Roland would look for it. After all, a man who gambled away his daughter wouldn’t be disturbed by committing minor thievery. Eliza had been right to chide about coddling Roland. If nothing else, tonight’s long quiet hours left Cassie knowing she wouldn’t be free of her headache until she confronted Roland. She needed to speak her mind to him, no matter how improper, unmannerly or messy that outpouring might prove.

Eliza placed the flickering candle onto the washstand then made an impatient sound and put her hands on her hips. “You’re still dressed! Why didn’t you send for Betty to help you into bed?”

“No scolding,” Cassie replied with a little laugh. “If I’d expected to fall asleep I’d have called for Betty. So is your evening finally over?”

“It is, the last dance danced now that dawn is almost upon us,” Eliza replied, glowing despite the late hour. Or was that early hour?

“Have you seen Papa?” Cassie asked, probing to see if Eliza had any inkling of what their father had done last night.

Eliza shook her head. “Not since before we dined. He said he wasn’t feeling well and retired. It wasn’t drink this time, Cassie. He seemed in control of all his senses. He really didn’t look well.”

Cassie sagged back into the chair in angry, hopeless defeat. That Roland hadn’t been drinking didn’t inspire any hope, not when what Eliza described was a man who’d lost everything he’d stolen.

At the center of the room Eliza threw off concerns over their father and turned a quick circle, laughing. “Oh, Cassie, I’m so sorry you had to miss the rest of the ball,” she cried, her voice alive with excitement. “The music went on and on, every new dance better than the last. Lord Ryecroft was my partner twice while Colonel Egremont escorted me three times. I think they may both be forming an affection for me.”

Despite the shadowy room Cassie watched a coquette take the place of her sister. Cassie’s mouth opened to warn against letting her heart fix on either man. Before she could speak Eliza put her hands on her hips and turned an annoyed look on her sister.

“Why didn’t you ever mention you knew Lord Graceton?”

“Why would I?” Cassie replied, losing herself to the image of Lucien’s charming, crooked smile and the feeling of his arms around her. “We met so long ago and our acquaintance lasted for only a few brief months. In all truth I’d forgotten him.” That was another lie. A girl didn’t forget her first love or her first heartbreak.

Eliza pulled off her gloves then began to loosen her hair, putting her hairpins into her mouth as she worked. “Hmph. I can’t imagine ever forgetting that man,” she said from around the pins. Her hair fell, fair and curling, to the middle of her back.

Going to the dressing table, Eliza set aside the pins. “Lord Graceton’s quite attractive, although not as handsome as Lord Ryecroft, and he certainly hasn’t forgotten you.”

Cassie’s heart did the most amazing thing at Eliza’s words. It was true. Lucien hadn’t forgotten her and, rightly or wrongly, Cassie liked that very much.

Coming to sit on the side of the bed nearest to Cassie’s chair, Eliza began to remove her shoes and stockings. “You do know that Philana is quite set on convincing Lord Graceton to marry you?”

Exasperation shot through Cassie; just as she expected Philana persisted. “Philana can intend anything she wants, but that doesn’t mean what she wants will happen. A peer doesn’t marry the daughter of a bankrupt sot,” she said, speaking without considering that she wasn’t the only daughter of a sot in the chamber.

Cassie watched in remorse as her sister’s expression flattened into despair.

“It doesn’t matter how much any man might come to care for me, does it?” Eliza asked, her voice trembling. Tears glistened, clinging to her eyelashes. “No decent man will offer for my hand. Perhaps I should have gone with Lord Bucksden,” she finished, sounding beaten and exhausted.

Cassie bolted to her feet. “Don’t you ever again say that! You shouldn’t even think such a thing.”

Eliza looked up at her, shaking her head. “How can I help but think about it? If I’d told him yes we wouldn’t be in this horrible predicament. He’s a rich man. He would have supported me. That would have given me the opportunity to support you and Papa until you found a way to restore the estate.”

Kneeling before Eliza, Cassie took her sister’s cold hands. “I’d rather hang than let that odious man touch so much as your sleeve.”

“That’s what frightens me most,” Eliza said in a small, sad voice. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, Cassie.”

Her heart aching, Cassie forced a smile onto her lips. “Nothing will,” she lied. “Now enough of this maudlin pap. Stand up and I’ll help you with your hooks.”

As Eliza came to her feet Cassie’s anger at their father doubled. Her sister shouldn’t even know that gentlemen supported their mistresses much less have to regret that she hadn’t accepted Lord Bucksden’s scandalous proposition. Roland hadn’t betrayed his daughter just once, he’d done it twice. What Roland lost tonight had doomed Eliza to a shamed and impoverished future in England, rather than a new life in America. There, she might have married a good, decent man who knew nothing of their past.

Cassie’s eyes narrowed. Eliza would go to America. Whatever it took she’d find a way to give her sister that new life.

By the time Eliza wore her nightdress she was almost asleep on her feet. “Turn around, Cassie and I’ll do you,” she offered, yawning.

Cassie did so. “Undo my hooks then loosen my corset so I can remove it by myself. I want to see to Papa before I retire, to be certain he isn’t really ill.” She didn’t want to see Roland, she wanted to cut out his heart.

“As you will,” Eliza murmured. After unfastening Cassie’s gown, then releasing her corset strings, Eliza slipped into bed, forgoing her prayers.

“Good night, Cassie,” Eliza said.

Cassie threw a shawl over her shoulders to hide her loosened garments, saying Eliza’s prayers for her, asking God to grant her sister happy dreams. Then, creeping from their room, she closed the door and started down the quiet corridor.

Dawn’s rosy light, the newborn sun misty with the remains of last night’s rain, slanted through the wide windows at the corridor’s end. There was no one about to notice her, the house guests having just found their beds. It would be another hour before Ryecroft’s servants left their own cots.

Cassie made her way down the stairs to the floor below hers. When she reached Roland’s bedchamber door she neither stopped nor knocked, she simply turned the knob and stepped inside. The musty room was dim, dawn a single golden stripe slipping through a gap in the closed draperies. Framed by the open bedcurtains Roland sprawled on the mattress, fully dressed and snoring. He cradled one wine bottle in the crook of his arm. Another emptied bottle lay on the floor near her satchel at the bed’s end.

Her mouth tight, Cassie crossed the room to her missing bag. Yanking it open, she found exactly what she’d expected and dreaded. The false bottom was gone, the compartment it once concealed, empty. Outrage soaring past the point of containment, Cassie returned to the bed and gave her father’s shoulder a sharp shake.

Roland grunted in surprise. He jerked upright so swiftly that Cassie stepped back as startled as he. His hair stood straight up on his head. Snowy stubble covered his chin. Deep rings hung beneath his eyes.

“What? What?” he cried.

“What, indeed,” Cassie snapped. She crossed her arms to keep from using the empty wine bottle on him the way she’d used the urn on Lord Bucksden. “You took my satchel and the coins it contained. You went into my chamber and took what I needed to save us! I want to hear you explain why you did this to Eliza and to me.”

Cassie half expected him to command her out of his room. Instead, his eyes glistened with moisture. Toying with one of his waistcoat buttons, he said in a little-boy voice, “I thought if I wasn’t drinking it would be different for me at the tables.” His voice faded into a whisper. “I didn’t expect to lose.”

Anger ate Cassie alive. She cocked a brow and glanced at the empty bottle that lay on the mattress beside him.

“It’s not what you think,” he protested. “I refused so much as a drop while I played. These happened afterward.”

“Is the whole sum gone?” Cassie demanded.

Her father gave a tiny nod, looking anywhere but at her. Cassie flinched. Somewhere deep within her she’d hoped he might still have some of the coins.

“How could you, Father?” she pleaded, her voice quivering, her lips trembling. “You knew how important that money was. You’ve squandered everything that should have belonged to your daughters. I thought with our safety at stake you’d control yourself this time.”

“’Pon rep, girl, it wasn’t like that,” Roland protested. “I was trying to be your father for once.”

Cassie’s anger soared higher than she thought possible. “Let me understand you. To you, being my father means you steal what belongs to me then lose it, and in losing it leave me vulnerable to the hangman’s noose?”

Horror flashed over Roland’s face, hollowing his cheeks. He slumped and rubbed at his head as if it ached. No doubt it did if he’d truly emptied both of these bottles by himself.

“Egad,” he whispered. “What have I done?”

Cassie frowned at him. He seemed so confounded. What piece of character did he lack that prevented him from predicting the outcome of his actions?

The corners of his mouth quivered. “If that’s what you think I intended, then I cannot blame you for despising me. I don’t suppose I can convince you that I truly sought to protect your reputation.”

“Try,” Cassie commanded.

His brow furrowed. “It’s that awful ability of yours. I couldn’t let you use it, not even to save us. We’re not the only people with relatives in America. If someone here accuses you of being a sharp, not even the ocean will be wide enough to shield you. People write. Before long Godfrey would know. He’ll throw us from his home. We’d be ruined.”

“As if you haven’t already ruined us by gambling away everything we own?” she snapped, her anger making her speak more harshly than any daughter should address her father.

Roland reached for Cassie as if begging her forgiveness. His hand dropped before he touched her. “I was only trying to protect you,” he said in that small voice, utterly serious.

Then hope flared in his eyes. “Perhaps if I speak to Lord Graceton and tell him what I’ve done he’ll give back the purse.”

Cassie staggered back a step on hearing Lucien Hollier’s title drop from her father’s lips. “Don’t you dare!” she cried.

The thought of her father revealing anything to Lucien mortified her to her core. Her father airing the dirty secret of their impoverishment to the man she’d once loved might seem as if Roland was again trying to profit off Lucien’s interest in her. Worse, what if Roland’s tale led Lucien to offer financial aid? The thought of pity replacing attraction in his eyes made the hangman’s noose far more attractive.

The light died from her father’s eyes. He gave a tiny, strained laugh. “You’re right. Wouldn’t do any good anyway. Why should he return it when he wasn’t the one who did anything wrong?”

Still reeling at the thought of Lucien learning just how deep Roland’s decline was, Cassie lost control of her tongue. “I can’t believe you gamed with Lord Graceton. Of all the men to think you could best! He’s four times the card player you are.”

Roland frowned. “Mayhap he was once but mourning seems to have changed him. He didn’t play at all well last night, missing wagers and not speculating when he should have. If I’d once had the hand for it I could have taken all and doubled our money. I would have had enough for one passage,” he finished, pleading for his daughter’s understanding and forgiveness. It was something Cassie could never give him.

“What do we do now, Cassie?” Roland asked.

“How am I supposed to know?” she retorted sharply.

Worry darkened his expression. He again fretted with his waistcoat button. “You will think of something, won’t you?”

Cassie’s anger flared anew. “Why must it always be me? Why can’t you think of something? It was a mistake to come here. I don’t know what I expected to accomplish by this. I’m going to bed.”

Turning her back on her father, she marched back to her own bedroom. After she’d donned her nightclothes she drew aside the bedcurtains. Eliza slumbered peacefully, her hair strewn across the pillow.

The need to keep her sister safe rode Cassie hard. This wasn’t just Roland’s fault. Eliza was right. Cassie should have confronted their father years ago instead letting pride drive her into pretense. Now that things were as bad as they could get, all holding on her pretenses would do was hurt Eliza as much as Roland already had.

But approaching Lucien about what her father had done, having to tell him what had happened only made Cassie’s stomach lurch. Last night, she and Lucien had danced as equals, simply enjoying each others’ presence and doing so unfettered by society’s judgment of her and her family. Any chance that would reoccur would end the moment Cassie mentioned money to him.