Chapter 5
A Tell in Every Hand
Aubrey turned his collar up as he rounded the corner towards The Swan, and an icy gust of wind sliced through his thick coat.
Damn, but it was perishing cold. He regretted his impulse to walk when he might have ordered the carriage, but it had seemed so idle of him for such a short distance.
Besides, he’d hoped the fresh air might clear his mind after his meeting with Miss Marwick.
Your mind needs no clearing, he assured himself, though he’d been saying the same thing for hours now. Yet the woman bothered him and he did not know why.
Yes you do, you sly dog, so don’t play that card, remarked the snide voice of his conscience.
Well, all right, there was that. She was intriguing, and he was more than a little interested in her.
Though not what one could call a beauty, Miss Marwick was undoubtedly the most fascinating woman he had ever met.
Sharp and sweet by turns, he never knew what she would say next, and he had the growing sense that what one saw was the tip of the iceberg, and only what Miss Marwick wished to be seen.
Every time he felt he had a sense of who she was, she would withdraw and become prickly, as if punishing him for having discovered something she’d not wished him to know. But what that might be he could not fathom, for she was hardly forthcoming.
Aubrey pushed open the door to the pub and strode in, relishing the thick fug of warmth, tobacco smoke and the scent of ale and fried potatoes.
He found Alfie Marwick sitting at a quiet table in the far corner of the room, out of the main thoroughfare and apart from most of the other drinkers.
He had a glass of ale before him and nodded a greeting as Aubrey approached and offered him a smile.
“Mr Marwick. How do you do?”
“It’s Alfie, no need to stand on ceremony. What are you drinking?”
“I’ll see to it,” Aubrey said, catching the barman’s eye and ordering the same as Alfie. He tugged off his coat and threw it over the back of a chair, fishing in the pocket for the deck of cards he’d brought. Throwing them down on the table, he sat opposite Alfie.
“Well, what are we playing?”
“Piquet?” the young shaver said with a shrug.
“Perfect,” Aubrey agreed, for it was a game he excelled at, and he doubted the young man could beat him, no matter his sister’s warning. “Loser buys the next round.”
“Ooh, grandma, we are living dangerously tonight,” Alfie said with a smirk as he lifted his drink and took a sip.
His gaze then fell to Aubrey’s waistcoat, an elegant creation in dark red with gold embroidery.
It was one of Aubrey’s favourites; he had a penchant for colour and things that were a little out of the ordinary.
“A bold choice,” the lad added, the words choked as he tried not to laugh.
Aubrey eyed him with amusement, refusing to allow the brat to get a rise out of him.
Miss Marwick’s insistence that they were safe and comfortable had somehow given him the distinct impression that their lives were more precarious than either of them would let on.
Though he told himself that it was none of his business in the first place, and there was nothing he could do about it in the second, he wasn’t about to win money from someone who could ill afford to lose it.
Especially not when they’d just handed him over a diamond brooch that would have seen them secure for at least a decade, if not a good deal longer, without a murmur.
The improbability of that nagged at him.
If Alfie was half as wise as he made out he was, he would have demanded money for the jewel’s safe return.
Wouldn’t he? Maybe. Maybe not, if his sister was trying to establish herself in this town and make friends.
Avoiding a scandal might be worth any price.
They settled down to their game and Aubrey put his worries to one side, entertained by Alfie’s irrepressible grin, his easy manner. Did he seem just a little too relaxed?
Alfie played recklessly and with flair, bluffing and teasing Aubrey until he hardly knew what to make of him.
All the while his grey eyes, eyes so like his sister's, blazed with mischief, clearly delighting in his own cleverness as he lived up to Miss Marwick’s warning.
Despite his pride taking something of a battering, Aubrey found himself torn between amusement and something else, a disquieting notion that he was being had over.
It was a like waking suddenly from the bright colours of a dream as they turned to smoke, the harder you tried to grasp hold of the images, of what they meant, the quicker they slipped away.
“You play well,” Aubrey remarked dryly as Alfie took the final trick.
“I play exceptionally well,” Alfie amended with an arrogant grin, all challenge and charm.
Aubrey returned the smile but that nagging sense of something not being as it ought to be gnawed at him. He’d swear the lad wasn’t cheating and certainly did not wish to think that of him. No, he’d won fair and square, albeit with a deal of gamesmanship, but nothing untoward.
He looked around and caught the barman’s eye, ordering another round.
“Well, now you know you are not playing a greenhorn, what about a proper wager?” Alfie waggled his eyebrows at him, leaning back as she shuffled the cards.
“What did you have in mind?”
“A guinea.”
Aubrey’s eyebrows rose. That was quite a sum.
He resisted the urge to ask what his sister thought of his gambling with difficulty but could not suppress a sense of disapproval.
Miss Marwick relied on this young scapegrace for the roof over her head.
He may well be clever with the cards, but Aubrey had seen the most seasoned gamblers lose everything when they became too cocksure and careless.
Yet he did not wish to offend the lad either. After all, he had won.
“Very well. A guinea it is,” he said as Alfie dealt the cards.
“You don’t approve of me, do you?”
Aubrey looked up from his first glance at a reasonable hand of cards to meet his eyes. “What gives you that impression?”
Alfie snorted. “You do. It looks like you’re sat upon thorns, desperate to give me a dressing down for spending my sister’s savings but not daring to cause offence.”
This was so close to what Aubrey had been thinking that he felt heat prickle up the back of his neck. All the same. “Well, are you?”
There was a look in Alfie’s eyes, there and gone, that gave Aubrey pause. There had been a glimpse of steel in that easy grey gaze, a flicker of light on a knife’s edge. “No,” he said crisply, daring Aubrey to pursue the subject.
Aubrey held his gaze, unsurprised when Alfie did not flinch or look away. “Very well, then.”
They played on, and Alfie won the game easily, in no small part due to Aubrey being thoroughly unsettled.
“Don’t worry, I’ll not ask for another go. Wouldn’t want you to accuse me of being a Captain Sharp,” the dreadful boy said with a grin that made Aubrey want to laugh as much as he wanted to shake him.
“Decent of you,” Aubrey said dryly.
“I’ll even get the drinks in,” he offered, ordering them another round.
There was silence until the innkeeper set them on the table. Not an uncomfortable silence exactly, but the easy camaraderie of their first meeting had taken a knock.
“Was your sister very disappointed to give the brooch back?”
Alfie looked up from his pint and shook his head. “Nah. Alice knows right from wrong. She wouldn’t have felt comfortable owning something she knew belonged to Miss Seymour.”
“That’s not precisely what I asked,” Aubrey pointed out. “It was a beautiful piece. She must have cherished it.”
Alfie shrugged, looking slightly uncomfortable for the first time that evening. “She likes pretty things. I’ll get her another.”
“Not like that one,” Aubrey said with a laugh, and was immediately met with that steely gaze that said otherwise. He stared at the lad in surprise and Alfie laughed suddenly, the indignation and challenge melting away.
“No, not like that one,” he said ruefully, but Aubrey felt he had touched a nerve, pricked at the young man’s pride. Why? Because he could not afford to buy another like it, or… because he could?
“She seems to like Little Valentine, and the ladies' club?” Aubrey ventured, wondering if he could learn a little more about Miss Marwick. “Is it very different from where you lived before?”
“Very,” Alfie agreed amiably, though offered no illustration of how it differed or where from.
“You lived in the city?” Aubrey pressed.
“Sometimes. We moved about a fair bit. What about you?”
“My family’s home is in Kent, but recently I’ve lived mostly in town. I’ve enjoyed spending Christmas here, though. It’s reminded me how much I miss the countryside, and there’s something about waking up every morning and seeing the sea that lifts my spirits, even on a dismal day.”
Alfie seemed to relax a degree upon hearing this.
“Yes. I love the sea too. I never realised until we came here, but it’s soothing.
Even when it’s thrashing about like it hates the world and everyone in it.
I don’t know, it’s just nice to know it’s there, though I’m glad enough that I wasn’t born a fisherman.
Those poor devils are mad, the weather they go out in. ”
“What about the sporting kind of fishing?”
Alfie shook his head. “Never tried it.”
“Perhaps I’ll take you one day,” Aubrey offered, rather surprised at himself.