Fortune's Son (10 page)

Returning to the table, Philip handed a new pack of cards to the countess. “A rubber of nine, my lady?”

“Did I not say I prefer long play,
mein
liefer
?” she replied suggestively, and proceeded to shuffle the cards. In offering them back to Philip to cut, she leaned into him much closer than necessary, brushing his arm with ample breasts that threatened to spill from her gown.

“Do we play with or without honors?” Philip asked with an appreciative smile as he cut and then handed the cards back to her.

She languidly stroked a finger along his arm before starting the deal. “But of course,
mein
liebling.
While there is
always
honor in holding the king, I find myself very pleased in receiving knaves as well.”

“Shall we commence now?” Susannah interjected with a tight smile, turning over the first card before the countess could answer.

Lady Messingham's high queen determined she would proceed, and as play progressed, so did Philip's hyperawareness of her every look and gesture. He felt her growing sensitivity to him, even in their play. The tension was as palpable as a pulse. When their light banter ended in seconds of locked gazes, she would avert her face, or dismiss the moment with a laugh. Yet, more than once, he had caught her regarding him with a peculiar expression speaking more than simple speculation. No. He was not mistaken. Lady Messingham was neither the worldly jade she pretended to be nor as unaffected as she wanted him to believe.

The evening ended in triumph. Accurately interpreting every signal passed between their opponents, and applying Philip's strategy supplemented by his subtle cues, they played brilliantly. They had taken the vast majority of tricks, and due to Philip's skill at the deal more than their rightful share of honors.

Lady Messingham suppressed her outright jubilation until settling in the privacy of her carriage when Philip joined her under the pretense of escorting her home. Once inside, he closed the door and signaled the driver. She turned to face him, utterly basking in their victory.

She regarded him, breathless with delight, her unadulterated joy setting her aglow. “Did you see Lady Yarmouth's expression when we took the final trick? It was absolutely priceless!”

Her skin flushed and her eyes shone with excitement, much as he imagined she would appear in the throes of passion. Ensconced completely alone with her in such close quarters, Philip was barely able to think. Their earlier play had only intensified his ache, so in tune had he become to her every signal, word, and nuance in their exchanges. The experience had taken complete hold of him and he wanted her beyond his understanding.

Philip reached inside his coat pocket, remembering the prize they had won. The necklace was magnificent, three rows of shimmering stones with a brilliant teardrop diamond at its center. He held it before her eyes and she gasped at its splendor, evident even in the dimly lit interior of the carriage.

“Jewels fit for a queen… or at least for a king's mistress,” he said with a laugh. “May I?” he asked softly.

“Yes, indeed,” she answered. Breathy with anticipation, she turned sideways to grant him easier access. Philip placed the gems against her throat, stroking a few stray tendrils of hair from her nape before closing the clasp.

The feel of his warm breath caressing her nape as he closed the clasp shook her with a frisson she had long forgotten. The touch of his fingers against her skin sent her pulse skittering. He didn't release her, but moved his fingers gingerly from the clasp and bent his head to brush his lips against the sensitive flesh joining her neck and shoulder.

She closed her eyes, heightening the sensation, as his tongue began to trace her pulse and his mouth moved over her skin, tasting inch by inch, while his hands began a gentle exploration, tracing the path of the necklace to the diamond teardrop lying just above the cleft of her breasts.

She moaned softly as a thick cloud of desire descended, enshrouding her. “Priceless indeed,” he murmured against her skin. She had almost resigned herself to surrender, his gentle touch having torn down her defenses bit-by-bit, but the intimation of his words penetrated the thick fog of her desire.

Her eyes snapped open. “Pray remove the necklace, Philip.”

He abruptly ceased the caress.

“Remove the necklace,” she repeated icily.

“Why?” he asked, confounded.

“You helped me to win back my emeralds, for which I am grateful. The necklace is rightfully yours.
I, however, am not
.”

“I don't want the damned necklace!” His voice was hoarse and frustrated by unslaked lust. “Consider it a gift.”

“A gift?” she repeated. “You think to buy me, then? Like a whore?”

“I would hardly compare the jewels of the king's mistress with the trinkets of a whore.” He smirked, but his attempt at humor fell short of its goal.

“Well, I shan't be bought with shiny trinkets… or even with priceless ones.” She grasped the necklace and jerked it defiantly from her neck, breaking the delicate clasp.

“I suppose you would have accepted it readily enough from
him
,” Philip accused.

“From whom?” she demanded.

“From Pitt, of course. He spent the entire evening alternating between making sheep's eyes at you and endeavoring to impress you with his speeches.”

“How dare you make such an accusation after the way you conducted yourself with Lady Yarmouth!”

“Don't be ridiculous! You know that was all part of the game.”

“I do wonder about that, Philip, after the way she fondled you.”

“Fondled, is it?” He barked with laughter. “Now who's jealous?”

“I'm not jealous! Nor do I want the necklace. I've told you before, I won't be beholden to
any
man.”

“You know that's not what I intended.”

“No? Then precisely what did you intend?”

Lacking a better answer, he growled back, “I don't bloody well know! But I've come to doubt if you are worth the aggravation of finding out!”

“Then you needn't trouble yourself further. I have learned enough from our lessons to acquit myself sufficiently at the tables—without your help.”

“The hell you will! A bleating sheep to the wolves is what you will be if you are so ill-advised as to sit at any real gaming table without me.”

“Oh, I beg to gainsay you on that,
my
young
buck
! I've managed my life perfectly fine before your arrival and no doubt will survive your departure just as well.”

Her remarks only added fuel to his simmering fire of frustration. He dangled the necklace before her eyes and stuffed it back into his pocket. He then signaled the driver with a sharp rap of his sword hilt on the carriage roof.

“Just what are you doing?” she demanded, as the carriage came to a clattering halt.

Philip replied with stiff control, “You've done with my tutelage, and I've long since wearied of
your
games
.” He opened the door. “I go to find more
rewarding
company.”

His meaning was not lost on her as he leaped out of the carriage. “You are insufferable!”

“And you,
my
lady
, are nothing more than a bloody cock-tease.”

She gasped.

He growled.

They both signaled the driver, and the carriage door slammed shut.

Philip paid tuppence to a linkboy to light his way through the streets encased in blackness. With his right hand ready on his sword, he set his direction for the George and Vulture, absently reaching into his left pocket and fingering the necklace, wondering what price it might bring. He deliberated offering it first to Lady Yarmouth. Surely she would rather buy it back than suffer the king's wrath once the news was made known to him of her loss.

Although George II doted on his Hanoverian mistress, he was reputed as the most parsimonious of monarchs and the countess would wish to avoid an embarrassing explanation. Philip decided that after appraising his prize, he would send George Selwyn as his emissary to negotiate a price with the countess, not daring to meet with her himself after the way she had devoured him over the card table.

Still seething from the way this evening had ended, he detoured from his original destination in favor of Tom King's establishment, bent now on quenching his fever as well as his thirst at the only available venue for such late-night debauchery. Although the watering hole was notoriously dark and dank, it was, strangely, one of the few places in London where one might as easily encounter a duke as a fishmonger among the late-night frequenters. While its proprietor, Tom, tended the tap, his common-law wife, Moll, acted as procuress. The pair only managed to evade the law against running a disorderly house by the establishment's conspicuous lack of beds.

“Ye be looking fer Nell, I s'pose?” Moll King asked rhetorically when Philip entered the one-room tap.

“Is she previously… engaged?” He surveyed the room, squinting at the shadowy forms of groping couples. Although he had come for much the same purpose, tonight he was struck with a sudden distaste for the writhing and groaning in the back of the tavern. One did tend to avoid the darker corners at Tom's unless engaged in company, but the arrangement had never before seemed more than mildly incongruous.

Moll eyed Philip with something near contempt. “Nay, though she passed over several o' yer betters hopin' ye'd appear. Don't understand why the chit dangles after the likes of you when she could turn a pretty coin.”

Unlike most of the women working the tavern, Nell was employed as a barmaid, having left the George and Vulture for lusher and more lucrative pastures. Philip knew in time she would succumb to the life, but as yet she had refrained from doling out her favors. He had little doubt she'd yield easily enough to him without even turning on the full brunt of his charm.

“Tell her she need not wait any longer.” Philip grinned and located a table in one of the better-lit sections of the taproom.

“So, ye finally showed yer pretty face,” Nell said saucily, setting his tankard down with a slosh.

He placated her with a caress to her rump. “Surely it's not been so very long, Nell.”

She answered with a pout. “Nigh on a sennight I been waitin' on ye, though Lord knows why I does. There be gents aplenty every night what offers me pretty trinkets.”

“So dear Nell truly languishes for my company?” He pulled her unceremoniously onto his lap, her plump bosom close enough to his mouth to render his next words nearly unintelligible. Nell pulled away with a giggle and yanked up her bodice, mollified by his enthusiastic display.

“Enough o' that, or all the gents will be thinkin' me one o' them lightskirts. Hearken now,” she whispered, “I gets off in an hour. If ye bribe Betsy, what shares me pallet, we can have it all to ourselves.”

“But one would hate to deprive poor Betsy of her bed.” Philip's lips curled into a raffish grin. “I've a better notion. Why not invite her to join us?”

“A randy one you surely be this night!” She snatched herself away with another peal that strangely grated his nerves. Curiously, the same artlessness he once found charming had lost all of its appeal. In his mind, a low, throaty chuckle beckoned him as a siren's song.

Annoyed with himself, he shook off the fancy and turned back to Nell. “An hour then, my dove?”

But after a number of tankards and before the clock chimed the hour, rather than throwing the giggling Nell's skirts over her head and filling his hands and mouth with Betsy's bounty, Philip left the tavern just as he had arrived… restless and empty.

“My dear, the whole town is raving about your card game at the Selwyns's! Frau Walmoden was simply beside herself that you got not only what she intended as a delicious new cicisbeo, but her treasured diamonds as well!” Jane was breathless and her eyes alight for the latest
on-dit
.

“They say she absolutely trembles at the thought of telling the king. He's such a volatile little man, you know. Freddie says that in a true fit of pique he snatches off his peruke and kicks it about the room!”

“Can you envision it, Jane? The king in such an infantile tantrum?” Susannah laughed hollowly and Jane perceived the forced effort at mirth.

“What is it, Sukey? You appear blue-deviled when I'd have thought you'd be looking like the cat that got the canary after such a night. You must show me this necklace! I'm told the diamonds are of the first water.”

“Oh, but they are! Or were,” Susannah lamented.

“What do you mean… were?” Jane's expression was horrified. “Don't say you've lost them!”

“No such thing. They were never truly mine to begin with.”

“But I heard it straight from Albinia Selwyn. Her mother has been mourning her loss for days, and need I warn you, you've no friend in
that
quarter, my dear.”

“Mrs. Selwyn? What do I care about that malicious woman? She set me up, you know. She and the countess were confederates to gain my emeralds. If it were not for Philip—”

“Philip, eh? It seems you are on quite intimate terms now. I suspected as much.” Jane smiled slyly.

“It is
not
what you think, Jane!”

“The lady doth protest much!” Jane chuckled. “I shan't judge you. As long as you both maintain discretion, who is to know?”

“As I said—it's not what you think and besides, it's unlikely I'll ever see him again.”

“You don't say he stole the necklace!”

“Lud, how you do jump to conclusions! No. He offered it to me and I refused it. The necklace is in his hands because he rightly won it.”

Jane pressed a hand to her friend's forehead. “Are you febrile? Or is your mind disordered of a sudden? Why on earth would you refuse a diamond necklace?”

“Mayhap my mind
is
disordered. I certainly haven't the lucidity of thought I had a month ago.”

“It's him, isn't it? You do want the young rogue.”

Yes. She did, she thought deprecatingly. Here she could have almost any man in the peerage, including the prince himself, and she pined over a penniless adventurer. “He hasn't a farthing, Jane,” she said, “and besides, I won't be beholden to a man. The necklace would have bound me to him.”

“Twaddle! Many women accept gifts from men without a second thought.”

Sukey retorted without thinking, “Indeed. And what does that make them?”

Jane's expression lost all humor. She wished at once she could take back the words.

“You think me equal to a common whore, Sukey?”

“Jane, you know that's not what I meant!”

“No, it's precisely what you meant, just not what you meant
to
say.
”

“I never meant to imply…” Susannah raised her hands helplessly.

“That since I accept gifts I'm a whore, Susannah?” she replied caustically. “I have done what I deemed necessary to provide comfort for my family and still move in the highest circles. I am one of Princess Augusta's closest confidantes and
she
will one day be queen.

“And look at the prince who will one day be king—he lives rapaciously out of the hand of Bubb Doddington and his ilk, repaying his cronies with political appointments and sinecures. Whores. The House of Commons has half its members on the Lord Treasurer's pay, or in some lord's pocket.

“Just look around you! Have you lived among us for so long, inured to the reality that we are all no better than whores? Our fathers and their lawyers are no better than pimps in arranging our marriages. God knows Hogarth rightly lampoons the practice. Need I say more?”

“Jane—” she implored.

Jane's lips formed a rigid line. “Think of me what you will, Sukey, but I am not ashamed. Just remember, my dear, when you place yourself on such a pedestal, someone may be tempted to kick it from under you. Now, good day to you,
Lady
Messingham.
”

Lady Jane Hamilton swept defiantly out of the room, leaving Susannah feeling more alone than she had ever felt in her life.