Nat took another mouthful of ale as he silently congratulated himself. Once Sir Montague’s murder case had been successfully resolved, he thought that he would take Lizzie to Water House to meet his family again. She had known his parents when she was younger and had even been a friend to Celeste during his sister’s first London season, for Celeste and Lizzie were of an age. Perhaps Lizzie would be pregnant by the time they went to Water House. Perhaps she already was. She had not mentioned that she had had her courses in the six weeks since they had first made love. A beautiful,
dutiful
wife and an heir…Nat felt remarkably expansive. He gestured to one of the inn servants to refill his glass and the conversation turned to the murder case.
Nat’s good humor lasted for precisely two hours.
“Excuse me, my lord.” By the time one hundred and twenty minutes had passed Nat had consumed
several pints of the excellent local ale and was feeling very mellow. Then one of The Granby servants approached discreetly and slipped a note into his hand. It was short and to the point, clearly written in haste.
“Please come to the card room as quickly as possible. Lizzie is here and there is a problem. Alice Vickery.”
Nat frowned. He had been aware that The Granby was hosting one of its fortnightly assembly balls that night. When Sir Montague had died it had been suggested that the program of entertainment in the village should be canceled for the summer as a mark of respect, but Tom had promptly vetoed the idea because he wanted the income that the balls and other social events brought. Nat knew he was traditional in such matters but he realized that he was shocked to think that Lizzie would attend a ball only three weeks after her brother’s death. Disquiet stirred inside him. He knew that Lizzie frequently behaved unconventionally and chose to do precisely as she pleased, but surely that should all have changed now that she was his wife? He had thought that she had understood that and had settled down in her new role. Perhaps his earlier optimism had been premature. The mellowness that had possessed him was draining away now and he felt exasperated with himself for his complacence. Evidently he had imagined matters to be how he wanted them rather than seeing them as they really were. How foolish he had been to
picture Lizzie sitting quietly at home when she had never done such a thing in her life.
“Is something wrong?” Dexter asked, brows raised.
Nat crumpled the note fiercely in his hand. He looked at his friend’s face and then sighed. “Lizzie is apparently here at the assembly, in the card room, and Alice has asked me to join them. There appears to be some sort of problem, so I can only imagine that she is gambling.” He got to his feet.
“If Miles and Alice are present they will be keeping an eye on Lizzie,” Dexter said reassuringly, getting up, too.
Nat knew that Dexter was right but he admitted to himself that the last thing he wanted was for their friends to witness any discord between him and Lizzie. They were all so happy in their own marriages that he felt hopelessly lacking. Dexter and Laura had practically fallen in love at first sight, years before, and although the road to marriage had proved decidedly bumpy for them they were now incandescent with bliss. Miles was even more irritating because he had been the sternest opponent of marriage imaginable, had cynically denounced love as nothing more than a fig leaf to make lust appear more acceptable, and had even tried to blackmail Alice into marrying him so he could have her fortune to save him from debtors’ prison. Yet here he was now, the most sickeningly uxorious of husbands and desperately in love with his wife. It made Nat feel ill with envy because
he had a depressing feeling that he and Lizzie would never achieve the sort of deep understanding that was blossoming between Miles and Alice. True, he had married Lizzie under different circumstances, primarily those of finance—his—and reputation—hers—and as such they could not really expect to experience the dizzy heights of love. He had run through that sort of emotion in his salad days anyway, with Priscilla Willoughby, and had no inclination to suffer it again. No, he had wed Lizzie out of duty and desire. Yet despite telling himself that his reasons for the match was perfectly adequate, somehow he felt perfectly
in
adequate in the face of his friends’ wedded happiness.
And now it seemed that his wilful wife was already behaving very badly indeed, just as he had feared she would…
Nat quickened his pace from the taproom down the stone corridor, round a corner, through a doorway and into the Granby ballroom, his temper rising at each step as he wondered what on earth he would find when he caught up with Lizzie. A country-dance was taking place in the main assembly room. It was very calm and decorous. Nat looked around but he could see neither Lizzie nor Alice nor Miles. Alice’s note had mentioned the card room. Nat skirted the dancers and strode through the doorway, past the long table that groaned under the weight of refreshments. He could already see a crowd in the card room. They
were pressing close around one of the tables and a feverish atmosphere was in the air. As Nat and Dexter entered, Miles Vickery pushed through the throng toward them. Nat grabbed his arm.
“What’s happening?”
“Lizzie is playing Three Card Monte with Tom,” Miles said tersely. “He challenged her for the Scarlet Diamonds.”
“What?”
Nat froze.
“Tom challenged her,” Miles repeated. “He said the diamonds should have been his because he was the elder. Lizzie said their mother had expressly left them to her but she would play him for them, the best of three games. So far they have won one each.”
Stifling a curse, Nat cut his way through the crowd about the table. Lizzie looked up as he pushed his way to the front. She was wearing a concoction of silver net, scandalously low cut, and her auburn hair was piled up in a diamond clasp on the top of her head. She looked ethereal and fey. Her green eyes were smoky and slanted and when she saw Nat her mouth curled in the smile that always did strange things to Nat’s insides, turning them molten with lust. There was a champagne glass by her elbow and she looked more than a little cast away for her cheeks were flushed pink and her eyes glittered. The Scarlet Diamonds, a necklace that the late Earl had given to his wife when first they were wed, lay sinuous and gleaming on the table between her and Tom.
“Good evening, my love,” Lizzie said brightly. “I hope you are enjoying your wedding night.”
“I’ve come to take you home,” Nat said. He clamped down on his anger. He was very conscious of the silence in the room, of everyone watching them, but more than anything else, he was aware of Tom Fortune’s triumphant, mocking gaze. So Tom had not been content with relieving him of a draft for twenty-five thousand pounds earlier in the day, Nat thought savagely. Tom’s greed was uncontrollable. He always wanted more.
Lizzie’s eyes had narrowed at his words. “But Nat, darling,” she said, “I am having
such
a lovely time! You cannot make me go home now!”
“Don’t spoil sport, Waterhouse,” Tom drawled. “Can you not afford a trifling twenty grand for a necklace now that you have Lizzie’s money—and more besides?” His dark, insolent gaze told Nat exactly how much he would disclose if he was pushed and Nat felt a bolt of fear. He had thought the matter of the blackmail settled, but now he realized just what a fool he had been; blackmailers were never satisfied and if Tom breathed a word of Celeste’s disgrace…Suddenly Nat’s ordered world lay teetering on the brink of disaster again.
“I don’t see why you assume I will lose, Tom.” Lizzie pouted. She shuffled three cards with expert precision, two black and a red queen, and laid them facedown on the table. “You know I have the luck of the devil.”
“When it comes to cards, perhaps,” Tom said, smiling at her, his eyes empty of affection, “though not, I think, in your choice of men.”
Nat made an uncontrollable movement of anger and Lizzie’s bright green gaze rested thoughtfully on him for a moment before it flickered back to her brother.
“Find the lady, Tom,” she goaded, “and the diamonds are yours.”
Nat’s body was tight with tension. Tom looked up at him again, malice in his eyes. “Find the lady indeed,” he murmured. “A relative of yours is she, Waterhouse?”
Nat felt Miles shift beside him and felt rather than saw the quizzical look his friend bent on him but he kept his eyes fixed on Lizzie now. Her face was pale, her eyes narrowed on the cards as she waited for Tom to choose. Her fingers tapped her half-empty champagne glass.
Tom put out his hand and turned a card. It was the seven of spades. Lizzie gave a delighted little squeal and clapped her hands. “I win!”
There was a smattering of applause from their audience.
“You’re worse than a card sharp,” her brother said sourly, vacating the table. “How the hell do you do these tricks?”
Lizzie picked up the necklace and fastened it around her neck. It rested on the upper curve of her breasts, where it flashed fire and ice with each breath
she took. Nat dragged his gaze away with difficulty and caught the look of challenge in Lizzie’s eyes.
“Who’ll play me next?” she demanded, looking around. Once again the smile curved her lips and the lust kicked Nat hard in the groin. How could Lizzie make him so angry and yet so hot to have her? It was not a comfortable feeling and yet he could not resist it. It was as though she infected him with her own madness, driving him far beyond the rationality that normally governed his life. Well, if he had to play by her rules this time then so be it.
He grabbed a chair.
“I’ll play,” he said.
A ripple of shock ran around the group of onlookers and Lizzie’s eyes widened in surprise.
“I did not think you approved of gaming,” she said.
“I don’t,” Nat said. He sat back, undid his jacket and loosened his cravat.
Lizzie took a long gulp of the champagne. Nat watched her throat move as she swallowed. The diamonds danced and glittered about her neck. She picked up the pack of cards and started to shuffle it again.
“Basset?” she said.
“Piquet.”
Lizzie shrugged one white shoulder. “Whichever you prefer. The stake?”
“You,” Nat said. “You coming home with me. To our bed.”
Again the group of onlookers rippled with scandalized shock and some moved away, Dexter, Miles and Alice amongst them. Lizzie looked up at Nat, her eyes wide and very bright with the excitement and wildness he had come to recognize. “You’ll lose,” she warned.
“No, I won’t,” Nat said.
Out of the corner of his eye Nat could see that Alice was clasping Miles’s sleeve and speaking to him urgently. Miles’s face was grim, but after a moment he shook his head and they left the card room, Alice throwing one troubled, backward glance at Lizzie. Nat felt the tension tighten within him, straining the muscles across his shoulders, drawing the material of his evening jacket taut. His entire attention was riveted on Lizzie, on the way the silk and net of her gown clung to each line and curve of her body, on the provocative rise and fall of the diamonds at her breast, the slender flick of her fingers as she dealt the cards. Their gazes locked. Hers was vivid and excited and challenged him so that the blood burned fierce within him.
“You have always been a poor card player,” she taunted.
“I have been an indifferent one,” Nat said. He held her gaze with his, intense, direct. “Perhaps I will surprise you.”
“You frequently do.” Lizzie bent her head over her cards and promptly won the first two
parties.
Nat won the third, then the fourth and the fifth. He could
see that after a lapse in concentration Lizzie was trying very hard now, her lower lip pressed between her teeth. Most of their audience had wandered away now in search of fresh entertainment. There was only Lizzie and him left, swept up in their tight little circle of mutual tension and desire. The longer the game ran the more his lust drove him. He was determined to win, and to have her.
“You should not have drunk all that champagne,” he said. “It undermines the concentration.”
Lizzie shot him an irritated look. “You should drink more and then perhaps you would not be such a stuffed shirt.”
“Why the necklace?” Nat said. “Why gamble something that is so important to you?”
She flicked him another look over her hand and put a card down. “Why not? What does it matter?”
“It’s worth twenty thousand pounds.”
Her head was bent, the candlelight playing on the golden, bronze and red strands in her hair.
“It isn’t always about the money,” she said.
“No,” Nat said. “It’s about the fact that your mother gave it to you and that you value inordinately anything that connects you to her.”
She shot him a very sharp look at that. For a moment she looked afraid. Her hand stilled on the cards. “How do you know that?”
“Because no matter what everyone else says of her, you have always idolized her.”
He saw Lizzie swallow hard. Her lashes hid her expression from him. “I miss her.”
“So why gamble away something of value that she left to you?” Nat persisted. “It makes no sense.”
Lizzie slapped a card down onto the pile and leaned forward, her green eyes pinning him with their anger. “Sense! What sense is there in loss? I lost my mother—am I supposed to value a necklace in her place?” She sat back, the anger leaving her as swiftly as it had poured out. “I lost both my parents,” she said. “I lost Monty. None of them were perfect, but they were more valuable than this.” She touched the necklace with her fingertips and it caught the light and blazed with rainbow colors.
“Is that why you came out tonight?” Nat asked. “Because you felt lonely and you wanted to gamble to pass the time?” He could not understand her and with a moment’s surprise and pain he realized that he never had. He had never really tried; she had just been Lizzie and he had indulged her moods and had laughed at her wildness, but now everything seemed different because she was his wife, and he was baffled as well as dazzled by her. Everything that should have been simple—their marriage, his life—suddenly seemed intolerably complicated.