CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
As soon as the first hand of cards were dealt, the atmosphere in the room shifted. All humour, all niceties, faded away. Only Horatio seemed unaffected, filling the air with mindless chatter, his drawling American accent undulating musically in the background.
There was no playing with paper tokens in this game. The money on the table was enough to pay for my university education several times over, and the other players seemed barely to register that fact.
When Mrs Finch had handed me the envelope full of bank notes that I was to wager with, I felt all the air temporarily leave my lungs.
“What if I lose?” I managed.
“Don’t,” she said.
Which was wonderful. Because sitting here between the man I couldn’t stop having bizarre pirate-themed romantic fantasies about, and a man who was potentially a murderer, it was also relaxing to know that I was gambling with a small fortune belonging to a woman whom I had come to fiercely admire, and which would in other circumstances probably be used to do something like fund an orphanage.
My life had taken a strange turn of late.
For the first couple of hands, I was tense, distracted. I folded early, feeling the numbers jumping around in my head, like fleas on a dog’s coat. I watched the money I had bet slip across the table, ending up in front of Edward Laing’s seat and I knew a moment of panic. All this time, telling people how clever I was, and at the first opportunity to prove myself I was going to fail.
No .
The voice in my head was firm. I watched carefully as the men around me discarded and drew their cards. I looked at my own hand, and for a moment I imagined myself back in Mrs Finch’s office, playing her across the desk. I remembered the confidence she had displayed in me, heard her telling me that I had a gift, and that I was using it to make a difference.
“Discard two,” I said, and my voice was steady. The numbers stilled, everything stilled, and it was as if I could breathe again. My focus narrowed down to the cards in my hand, the hands that the other players discarded. I kept a count, I calculated the odds.
And I started to win.
Just a small amount at first, but then more and more. Soon, I wasn’t focusing on the money, the extraordinary amounts that I threw about with abandon. The only thing I cared about was the sequence of the cards as I drew them.
Occasionally, when my calculations left too big a gap for chance, I found I had to play the men themselves. This was harder. I noticed Lord Covington had a habit of touching his eyebrow when he was thinking about folding, that Horatio’s small talk sped up when he was excited about his hand, and that Johnson’s lip curled when he was feeling pleased with himself. Edward Laing, though, was a complete enigma.
He wore the same expression of mild interest throughout the game, even though he won several large bets and then lost them to me. He had beautiful hands, I noticed, soft and well cared for, with neatly trimmed nails and a tasteful gold ring on his right little finger. They looked like the hands of an aristocrat.
Ash handled the cards as if it were a game of the kind that schoolboys played for a lark. He sent them skipping lightly across the table, moving to a music only he could hear. I knew his hands had callouses. I knew because I’d felt them against my skin.
My attention wavered for a moment. I lost. Refocused.
While I played in dogged silence, the others began to make conversation. Horatio was the source of most of the talk, as he shared his thoughts on everything from cheese to steam engines, to the migration patterns of Canadian geese. Keeping half an ear on him, I was impressed by the bizarre breadth and depth of his knowledge on so many seemingly unconnected subjects, including the upcoming social season.
“Queen Charlotte’s Ball!” he exclaimed, puffing his chest. “Got my daughter an invitation to that, and it was a trial, let me tell you.” He chewed on the end of the unlit cigar he had produced from his pocket. “But nothing’s too good for my girl. She wants something, she’s going to get it, and she’s got her heart set on the full experience. She’s going to steal the show, a real jewel she is, my Sadie. And she’ll look the part, oh yes siree – it’s costing a pretty penny what with the gown and the veil… My God! These English customs! Girl’s got to wear a veil!”
“Ridiculous,” Johnson muttered, folding his hand.
“The whole thing is always a sad crush,” Covington drawled, checking the bet. “Shouldn’t bother, if I were you. They’ll let anyone in these days.”
If his words were meant to insult Horatio, the man seemed not to feel it, only nodded eagerly. “Well, that’s what I said, but of course after we sent our Sadie over to a British boarding school it was bound to happen that she’d want to do the same as all her friends, and when she came to me in tears – in tears , Mrs Williams! – saying how she needed to be a debutante and be presented to the royal court if she was going to find an acceptable man to marry … how could I argue?”
Covington looked queasy. “Good God, man, you sound like a matchmaking mother hen.”
“Isn’t that what this whole season business is about?” Horatio waved the cigar in the air, bluff face suddenly shrewd. “I’m not above buying a title. Plenty of dusty English aristocrats who’d like a slice of the Peabody fortune.”
I wondered if this peculiar statement was a roundabout offer in Covington’s direction, and from the startled light in his eyes it seemed the thought had occurred to him as well.
“Of course” – Edward Laing broke in, his eyes on his cards – “there will be one less eligible bachelor in the running this season. I hear poor old Peregrine Archer passed away this morning.”
There was a moment of stunned silence.
“Archer is … dead?” Covington’s bored facade dropped away, leaving him looking shaken.
Johnson’s expression was grim, his mouth thinning further. “Bad end. Not that it’s exactly a surprise. Nevertheless, a shame. He was young yet.”
“His poor parents.” Horatio looked dazed, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. “I must send my condolences to his father.”
Ash didn’t react at all, but there was that unnatural stillness about him again, telling me that something was wrong.
Peregrine Archer. I tried to place the name.
“I’m sorry for your loss, gentlemen,” I said. “I take it Mr Archer was a friend of yours?”
“Lord Archer,” Johnson corrected, almost absently. “He was Baron Ely.”
“One of Peabody’s dusty aristocrats.” Covington reached for his drink with a hand that wasn’t quite steady. He gave a humourless laugh, too loud in the quiet room. “There’s a man who’d have been happy to accept … what was it? A slice of the Peabody fortune .”
“This is no way to speak of the dead,” Johnson snapped. “I thought the pair of you were friends.”
Covington laughed again, knocking back a generous gulp of brandy. “After a fashion. Though lately, he’d been hanging about with some strange sorts. Anyway,” he continued petulantly, “there’s no need to act as if you care. Perry owed money all over the place – probably to everyone at this table, in fact.”
Perry .
The name hit me like a bullet. All of a sudden I was back in that library, the first time I’d heard Ash speak. “ I don’t want Perry to die. ”
Peregrine Archer was Ash’s brother. I was sure of it. In fact, I’d bet money that the letter Ash received had been informing him of his brother’s death. My eyes flew to his face now, but his expression remained neutral. I wondered how Laing had known about it beforehand. And was it only a coincidence that he was bringing it up here and now?
“I certainly didn’t mean to spring the news on you, gentlemen,” Laing said. “My understanding was that Lord Archer had been ill for quite some time. He sustained an injury, I believe.”
“Attacked in the street!” Johnson exploded. “Shot by a common criminal!”
“Oh, goodness,” Laing murmured. “How terrible.”
“A reminder to us all to be on our guard,” Ash’s voice broke in, his tone bland. “Crime is ever-present in this city. Still, let us remember there is a lady present.”
“Yes.” Horatio still sounded upset. “Quite right. It’s a damned shame is what it is, but there, as Ash says, it’s a dangerous world. A dangerous world.”
He shook his head, and in a much more subdued mood, we returned to our game.
It seemed I was not the only one to be distracted by this information, and Laing had no trouble at all in winning the next two hands. My mind was spinning as I tried to piece together what I knew and to see how it all added up. Did Laing know that Ash was Perry’s brother? Had he brought up his death to rattle him? Why? But Ash hadn’t seemed rattled, so perhaps Laing had no idea of the connection at all. Perhaps he’d mentioned the news to shake the other three men… He had certainly been more successful there.
Attacked in the street. Shot by a common criminal…
A thought occurred to me then. Could Laing be connected to Peregrine Archer’s death? Or was I seeing connections where there were none? There were too many possibilities, too many unanswered questions, and it was no good filling the blanks with useless conjecture.
I pushed the thoughts aside. Right now, I had one thing to concentrate on – winning this game. Whatever Laing was planning, he wouldn’t use that pile of money in the middle of the table to do it. I sat up straight in my chair and felt determination course through me. It was time to end this.
Covington was the first out. He seemed fully recovered from the shock about Perry, and merely shrugged, stretched like a cat in his seat, pouring himself another huge glass of brandy, seemingly bored by the entire experience.
Johnson fell next, trying to bluff on a pair of fours, getting sloppy as the pressure intensified. He cursed, low and wicked under his breath, while Horatio blustered once more about there being a lady present. I couldn’t care less about the language. It was close now, the end of this fraught game – I could feel it. A bead of sweat ran down my spine, as I fought to keep myself steady.
We played on for a while – how long I don’t know. It could have been thirty minutes; it could have been hours. My focus narrowed down so far that I felt as if the only thing that remained was the numbers. I was getting tired, I realized. The wine and the late hour crowded in on me. I felt my mind lagging the same way a runner might at the end of a long race, desperately fighting to hold back the exhaustion long enough to cross the finish line.
Finally, after a particularly frenzied round of betting, I beat Horatio, who had, I knew, been certain he held the winning cards.
“Well played, my dear,” he said, but I noticed that his face was pale and his eyes lingered a long moment on the stack of bank notes that were now in front of my place at the table. I felt guilty, but reminded myself that everyone at the game tonight had plenty of money to lose. The main thing was to stop Laing from winning it – and in that mission I was unfortunately far from done. A small fortune sat before us that could easily be used for nefarious purposes. I resisted the urge to wipe my damp palms on my skirts. There could be no signs of weakness.
Now, it was only Laing and I left. It all came down to this. As far as I could tell, he hadn’t been cheating. He hadn’t needed to – he played impeccably and seemed to have no tells whatsoever. Still, I had a sense of him now. I’d spent the evening collecting an endless stream of information, each piece of numerical data forming a fuller picture. I knew which hands he favoured, the likelihood that he would draw or stay. I had been paying close attention.
And there were always patterns if you looked hard enough for them.
We battled on, hand after hand, as the night drew on.
And then, like the loosening of a knot inside me, I knew the precise moment that I had him.
I looked down at the pile of money in front of us, at the not-so-small fortune, and my voice was utterly calm when I spoke.
“Call,” I said.
There was a beat, and then Laing fanned his cards out on the table.
“King-high flush,” Ash announced, and I thought for the first time that tension had crept into his voice. It was a very strong hand.
I allowed myself a moment, a dizzying moment of lightness, and then I laid my own cards down. Three sixes and two queens.
“A full hand,” Ash managed, sounding slightly winded. “Sixes over queens, the lady takes the pot.”
My eyes raised and I looked straight into Laing’s face. I had been expecting anger, frustration, disappointment, but what I saw instead surprised me – a look of greedy excitement that chilled me to the bone.
And it was directed straight at me.