Chapter Ten #2
The players placed their bets, and the few onlookers peering over the table only reduced the candlelight further, better disguising the quick, subtle movements of Henry’s hands as he dealt out the requested cards.
If he had done it correctly, Uncle Nigel had a hand which would avail him nothing once the cards were revealed—and Mr. Woodhouse had gotten the ace he had needed to clinch the game.
A terrible queer silence fell as the players at last revealed their hands. Uncle Nigel had lost another hundred pounds. His losses this evening amounted to most of what he had wrested from Mother. Probably he’d come calling again, hands outstretched, vague threats coating his poisonous tongue.
Henry intended to have him refused at the door.
Mr. Woodhouse chuckled to himself as he pushed his cards back toward the center of the table. “I’ll take my money now, Marsden.”
Uncle Nigel’s jaw twitched. Henry thought he heard the faint grind of the man’s teeth. “I haven’t got quite so much blunt on me,” he said in a rough, sulky tone. “You’ll have to accept my vowels.”
“You’ll forgive me,” Woodhouse said in a snide little voice, “but due to some rather nasty rumors I’ve heard of late, I’d prefer a bank draft.”
Henry froze in the act of scraping together the cards once more. That was tantamount to suggesting that Uncle Nigel did not—or could not—pay his debts; an outrageous thing to suggest in the man’s own home, even if it were true.
“I say, Woodhouse,” another gentleman blustered. “That was rather uncalled for, don’t you think?”
“You’ll have your damned bank draft, Woodhouse,” Uncle Nigel snarled, his thin mustache twitching over his lips. He shoved himself out of his chair, yanking at the snowy fabric of his cravat as he rose.
Hell. He’d almost certainly be headed straight for his study.
Henry’s heart skittered through a rapid succession of panicked beats. “Surely there’s no need for that,” he said as he attempted to position himself before the door, striving to rid his voice of its strained tone. “Such business can wait, can it not?”
“I won’t have my honor impugned in my own home,” Uncle Nigel gritted out. “Woodhouse can take his damned bank draft and leave.” He elbowed Henry aside and threw open the door.
Too late. It was too damned late to avert the brewing catastrophe. He could only hope that Grace had made short work of what she’d come to do and would be safely ensconced once again with the ladies.
To conceal the pronounced trembling of his knees, Henry sat heavily back in his chair, holding his breath as he listened to Uncle Nigel’s footsteps grow distant and tried to give the appearance of lending his attention to the conversation which had resumed around the table.
His stomach curdled, pitched and rolled. His very skin itched with nerves.
“Thief! Thief!” The outraged shout from the upper floors made Henry leap up from his chair. Grace had been discovered. It was over. He had dragged her into his mess, and now—and now—
He was not the only one who had leapt to his feet. A flood of gentlemen rushed past him toward the stairs, eager to get a glimpse at what had caused the commotion. Down the hall, a door cracked open. Aunt Alicia’s voice, tremulous and uncertain, wavered in the air. “Nigel, whatever is the matter?”
“Someone has invaded my office,” Uncle Nigel shouted down. “Send for a constable!”
Henry braced his hand upon the door jamb. Someone, he’d said. Someone—not Grace. Not Miss Seymour. Alone now in the card room, he let himself breathe a sigh of relief.
A faint tapping sound came from the window behind him.
Startled, Henry turned to see Grace standing there outside on the terrace gesturing to him animatedly. Faster than he could have imagined, Henry flew toward the window, his trembling fingers fumbling with the latch.
“Pull me up,” Grace hissed as she stretched her arms up toward him. “And do be quick about it.”
Henry grabbed her arms and yanked. “What the devil have you done?” he asked. “How did you get out there?”
“Oh, well—” She wheezed as the sill caught her in the midsection. “I heard footsteps approaching. There wasn’t time to lock the door, and there was nowhere suitable to hide, so I went out the window. Thankfully, there was a convenient tree.”
Out the damned window! “Are you mad? You could have been killed.” A strange feeling replaced the sting of defeat that had settled in the pit of his stomach; half fury, half worry. “You said you didn’t bloody climb!”
“I said I didn’t do it well,” she snipped back as she plucked a handful of leaves from her hair, which had gotten a bit mussed.
“And I didn’t. My petticoat is torn, but it won’t be noticed by anyone but my lady’s maid.
” She tossed the handful of leaves out the window and closed it up again.
“Now go,” she said as she headed for the door.
“You must join everyone else as soon as possible. Make yourself seen. You mustn’t be missed.
” Without a backward glance she scampered soundlessly out of the room and disappeared.
How had she been so damned calm? Henry’s heart raced, and his palms were slick with sweat.
His stomach roiled in a manner which suggested he was in imminent danger of casting up his accounts.
But he could only follow where Grace had led, considering she had far more familiarity with such ruses than did he.
In the chaos of the moment, it was a simple enough task to slip in with the rest of the crowd milling about and clogging up the staircase.
He needed to make himself seen. Henry nudged his way through the crowd, heedless of the shoulders he bumped. “Uncle Nigel, what has happened?” he called out above the din.
“A damned thief has gone out the window of my study,” Uncle Nigel snarled back as he struggled to make his way down the stairs once more.
“I say, Marsden,” Woodhouse said from his position upon the stairs just a few up from Henry. “I hope this is not some sort of story concocted to get out of paying your debts.”
Uncle Nigel’s face went red as a cherry, then proceeded to purple like an overripe plum. “I need a damned constable,” he roared. “And would the lot of you get off of the bloody stairs!”
The crowd receded in a wave toward the ground floor, first in a trickle and then in a rush as it became clear that Uncle Nigel didn’t particularly care who he shoved in order to pass. Little murmurs of discontent washed around above the crowd, clucks of disapproval interspersed with grumbles.
“Is anyone missing from our number?” Uncle Nigel shouted above the crowd as he cast his gaze about suspiciously. “There may well have been a burglar in our midst this very evening.” For a long, fraught second, Uncle Nigel’s gaze landed upon him. “The Seymour girl,” he gritted out through a sneer.
“Hmm?” Grace rounded the corner, smoothing at her skirts.
In the few moments she’d been gone, she had managed to repair her hair to its prior perfection.
“Has something happened?” she asked sweetly, blinking those large green eyes in a perfect imitation of innocence.
Her nose twitched. “I heard a terrible commotion while I was in the retiring room.”
A muscle jumped in Uncle Nigel’s cheek. He wanted to accuse her, Henry knew. But he could not work out how Grace might have gone through a window on an upper floor only to reappear within the house mere minutes later and none the worse for the wear.
Henry wasn’t certain he would have believed it himself, if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.
Uncle Nigel’s suspicions—whatever they might have been, however true they were—could not stand up against the guileless picture Grace presented. His shoulders slumped; his head drooped. With one hand, he waved away Aunt Alicia, who hovered near him in a fret.
As she sidled up to her sister’s side, Grace caught his eye—and winked.
Relief swept over Henry in a crashing wave. She’d done it. She’d done it, and they had made it through this fraught evening with no one the wiser.
They were safe. For now.