Chapter Three
P ol managed not to wince as he listened to Amanda Riese murder yet another perfectly delightful tune. Their usual music lesson had been postponed until after dinner, since the viscountess and her daughter had gone visiting this afternoon. Like the music lessons, making afternoon calls was part of the girl’s preparation for her first Season.
If the viscountess hoped to find Amanda a husband after she was presented, then she had better not be permitted to play the pianoforte. Or perhaps somewhere out there was a potential suitor with cloth ears, or ears that were merely painted on?
When it came to music, Amanda’s own ears were merely decorative, and Pol would have sympathized with her if she was prepared to admit to the defect. But no, Rieses were perfect in every way, and therefore, Amanda was musically talented and played the pianoforte with grace and style.
That, in any case, was what her mother and brother told the girl, though Pol noticed Oscar usually managed to find an excuse to leave the room, and often the house, before Amanda played.
Lady Riese saved her criticisms until Amanda was out of earshot, and applied them all to Pol. In vain did he explain that Amanda was just not musical. “What nonsense, Allegro,” she insisted. “Amanda must be able to play creditably when she makes her debut, and you are here to see that she does. Try harder.”
“Miss Riese,” Pol said to her when she finished the piece and turned to him with a broad and satisfied smile, “you played all the notes in the correct order.”
Her face fell and then her eyes sparked irritation. “You did not like it. But I did it all correctly. You said so yourself.”
“If you wish to impress when you play in public,” he said against growing evidence of her ire, “you will need to play all the notes, in the correct order, and with the correct duration for each note. Some notes linger.” He had explained all of this to her before, but not recently. Perhaps today she would be willing to hear what he said. He leaned over her and demonstrated. “Some go quickly by. Watch me.”
He sat next to her on the piano stool and played the piece, naming the notes as he did. Then he played it again, this time counting out loud so she could hear how some notes were left to linger on the air while others tripped quickly one after the other. If Amanda was unable to appreciate the music enough to hear what she was doing wrong, then she would have to learn by rote how to do it right.
Amanda grimaced when he was done. “But how am I to know what to do with which notes?” she whined.
Pol ignored the tone. Fortunately, he had not been charged with amending her personality. “Look at the music,” he advised. “See this?” He explained, for perhaps the thousandth time, the shape and duration of a whole note, a half note, a quarter note and so on.
Perhaps it would work. She had, after all, learned the bar system well enough to actually play the notes. At least she seemed to be listening.
Lady Riese’s harsh voice thundered, “Why are you sitting next to Amanda?” Pol leapt to his feet.
“We were reading the music, Lady Riese,” he explained, keeping his stance and his voice humble.
She looked down on him, frowning. Pol was not a short man, but Lady Riese was an enormous woman—tall and broad. Her son was built on the same gargantuan lines and bore the same thick crop of black hair and steely-grey eyes. Amanda, fortunately for her, took after her deceased father, in a female version of the fair-haired, blue-eyed good looks Pol’s own father had also had. Pol had to assume he took his dark hair and eyes from his Italian mother.
“The viscount has gone out, Allegro. Go after him and make sure he comes safely home,” the viscountess ordered.
Not the job of an assistant steward, a secretary or a music teacher. But Pol would not argue. In Lady Riese’s opinion, Pol was here, at Three Oaks Manor, to do anything Lady Riese wanted him to do. Teach Amanda. Supervise the household. Assist the land steward. Organize dinner parties. Run after Oscar and bring him home when he was too drunk to know the way.
“Yes, my lady,” Pol replied. Any other response would be futile and unacceptable. “Miss Riese, try that piece again, keeping in mind what I said about duration.” He bowed to both ladies. Lady Riese had not said where Oscar had gone, which meant Oscar hadn’t told her or his valet. Or perhaps he had, and she wasn’t prepared to name the place in front of her daughter. He must be whoring, drinking, or gambling, or all three.
All three, Pol decided. It was Thursday evening, so Oscar would be at the Crown and Pumpkin. “The fee for entry is one pound, my lady,” he said.
He met her glare, careful to show nothing on his face but polite attention. He’d be damned if he’d spend his own money cleaning up after Awful Oscar.
“Do I not pay you, Allegro?” Lady Riese demanded.
“You do, my lady. As music teacher to your daughter, secretary to your son, and assistant to your steward.” A calm and polite answer.
He waited, maintaining a calm silence while she glared at him.
“Very well. Take one pound,” she grumbled.
He should have asked for money for a drink and something to eat. No. That might have been pushing the old bat too far.
Once he arrived at the Crown and Pumpkin, he paid his fee, checked that Oscar was at the tables in the room set aside for gambling, and ordered a glass of red wine of better quality than anything Oscar had in his cellars.
Oscar was, of course, absorbed in his game, his drink, and the two scantily clad women who were dancing attendance on him. He gave Pol one glance and then ignored him. He was winning. If only he applied himself to his estates with the same devotion he applied to his vices, Pol’s job would be a lot easier! Not that Oscar’s mother would cede control into her son’s hands.
Pol moved around the room, watching the play, talking to those who appeared interested in conversation, and all the time he surreptitiously watched Oscar. His cousin was losing, now. Losing to a person Pol felt he should recognize.
The other player was a short, slender man whose face was obscured by the unfashionably long hair that fell around it. “Do you know the lad?” asked the man with whom he had been talking. “The one playing with Riese?”
“I don’t think so,” Pol said. “Yet there’s something familiar about him.” Something odd, too. Something that set every pore of Pol’s skin alert and heightened his senses. If the player had been a woman, Pol could have given a name to his reaction, but he’d always been attracted to women, not to boys.
“I’ve not seen him here before,” his companion commented, “but I’ve met him. Le Gume. That’s what he calls himself, anyway. It seems an unlikely name, but there you go. Many names are unlikely, I’ve found.”
“You’ve met him before?” Pol asked, wondering why the name, too, tickled at his mind, as if trying to attract his attention.
“That I have. Lost to him, too. He’s good enough to be a professional, Allegro, and perhaps he is, but I’ve not seen him here before.”
A professional card player. Pol resisted the urge to leap into action. Oscar would never agree to leave the tables at this time of night. And how much could he lose, after all? The Crown and Pumpkin had a top limit for IOUs, and the estate was prospering in Pol’s care. Still, the situation bore watching.
Over the next two hours, the honors went back and forth. The pile of gambling tokens in front of Le Gume grew steadily larger, but each time Oscar came close to running out, the luck went his way, and he won a few hands.
It was clever play on the part of the young man. When he wanted to encourage Oscar to keep playing, he simply made the wrong choices. Not that the young man cheated. He was simply in control of the game, and Oscar wasn’t. Oscar was completely outclassed.
The climax of the evening, then, was unexpected. Le Gume put everything he had in the middle of the table and won the lot. Le Gume should have taken his winnings and left. Hell, Oscar should have walked away, but the fool demanded a rematch and enough time to buy more tokens. With a graceful wave of his hand, Le Gume invited him to do so. The coat sleeve fell away, and Pol’s attention was riveted to the delicate wrist suddenly on display. He shook his head. What was wrong with him?
Oscar had left the table. Pol followed, keeping behind him so he wouldn’t be noticed. Oscar was not to be trusted. He put his head together with the innkeeper’s nephew, who was the cashier for these gambling nights. Another mean-minded villain, and one of Oscar’s sycophants. Pol couldn’t hear what they said, but when the cashier produced a new pack of cards and Oscar unwrapped it and shuffled it, he knew what they were planning to do.
From the shadows, Pol watched Oscar slip several cards up his sleeve and then the cashier called another man over to watch the cash box while Oscar and the cashier returned to the table. Pol followed behind, knowing what was about to happen but unsure how to stop it.
If he spoke up and accused his cousin of cheating, Oscar and the cashier would deny everything. And no one would believe a poor relation over a viscount, especially a viscount who was the landlord of three quarters of the local residents.
The chances were one card would not make a difference. How could Oscar know what other cards would be dealt? That question was answered when the cashier replaced the house dealer at the table.
Pol could not let it pass. He stepped closer and opened his mouth, but before he could speak, he felt hard hands grasp his arms. “Not a word, Mr. Allegro.” The person who spoke was behind him, but the prod in the back reinforced the command. Was it a gun?
The men holding his arms hustled him into another room and let him go. He turned to see the innkeeper shutting the door behind him.
“You wouldn’t want to interfere, Mr. Allegro.”
“Lord Riese is about to cheat, and your dealer is helping him,” Pol declared.
“Well, you see, Mr. Allegro, Lord Riese owns the inn,” said the innkeeper. “We have a deal, him and me. He don’t put the rent up and he don’t cheat the locals, and I don’t object when he fleeces some stranger. Not that I’d get far if I did object, nor you neither, if you don’t mind me saying so, sir. Catch him red-handed, and Lord Riese’ll swear he’s innocent.”
Pol grimaced. The man was not wrong.
The innkeeper pressed his point. “Yes, and a dozen witnesses will swear to it right alongside him. He owns this town, sir, and most of the people in it. You’ll finish up with no job and no home neither, and I’ll lose my business, so you’re not going back into that room until you swear to me that you’ll keep your mouth shut.”
Dammit. The man was right, but Pol hated it. Hated how Oscar used people and abused his position and hated that nobody was able to call him to account.
The innkeeper must have thought he needed further persuasion. “I’ve heard of this Le Gume,” he said. “He hasn’t been here before, but he has been all over the countryside. Winning wherever he goes, too. He’s a hardened gamester, for all he looks like a boy behind that beard.”
Something about the last few words struck a chord, but Pol could not decide what his mind was trying to tell him. “I’ll not call Riese on his cheating,” he said. Not this time. Not yet anyway. Not before he had Gran safely away.
The innkeeper nodded to the two men who still held Pol, and they released him. Pol nodded in acknowledgement. They could take it as thanks if they wished.
When he returned to the gaming room, the players were about to show their cards. At a glance, Pol could tell that Le Gume had bet everything he had on this last hand. You should have walked , Pol thought. Le Gume showed his cards. Oscar couldn’t keep the gloat from his face as he placed his cards one by one before him and immediately began raking the tokens toward him.
Le Gume gaped, and then his eyes flashed, and he demanded, “What is up your sleeve, sir?”
The silence that filled the room, as all the bystanders stared at the gamester, lasted only a moment before Oscar roared. “How dare you! Do you know who I am?” He cast down the tokens he was holding and pushed to his feet. He continued his rant as, his fists clenched, he rounded the table.
Pol brushed past Le Gume, whispering, “Run. I’ll try to slow him down.”
The gamester hesitated, but sent a sweeping glance around the room and must have realized he had no allies here. He scrambled backwards, turned, and shot out the door.
He? Up close, Le Gume smelt of violets, and the scent made all the other pieces fall into place. The slight figure, the slender wrists, the unlikely beard. And yes, the way his hips moved as he—rather, she —ran. Le Gume was a woman.
More determined than ever that Oscar would not get his hands on the gamester, Pol turned and stumbled after her, pretending to be drunk. “I’ll catch him,” he shouted to Oscar. Then he lurched into the side of the door, tripped over his own feet, and crashed into Oscar.
Back on his feet again, he helped his cousin to rise and brushed him down, apologizing all the time. Oscar’s impatient scorn was worth it. Le Gume, whoever she was, had got away.