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Rake's Wager
Miranda Jarrett
The Rake's ReformCassia Penny runs a fashionable gaming house in Regency London. Her inspired style has always set the fashion…which is just the sort of talent Richard Blackley needs.Blackley is a self-made millionaire, determined to establish himself as a proper London gentleman. When Cassia loses a wager, he collects by demanding her services to refurbish his decrepit estate–but finds her beauty the most gracious adornment his home could have.Now, as she transforms the old house, she transforms Richard, as well. The unlikely pair are drawn together–until an old secret from Richard's past reappears. Will it tear them apart…or unite them forever?
Praise for bestselling author
Miranda Jarrett
“Miranda Jarrett continues to reign as the queen of historical romance.”
—Romantic Times
“A marvelous author…each word is a treasure, each book a lasting memory.”
—The Literary Times
“Ms. Jarrett always delivers a memorable story peopled with memorable characters…. You can always count on Ms. Jarrett to gift us with something intelligent, new and vibrant.”
—Romantic Times
Acclaim for Miranda Jarrett’s previous titles
The Golden Lord
“Sexual tension runs high. There are…secrets to be kept, mysteries to be solved and a traditional ending in which sharing truth wins true love.”
—Romantic Times
The Silver Lord
“The characters and plotting are very good and deftly presented.”
—Affaire de Coeur
The Very Daring Duchess
“A vibrant, passionate story, richly told. The Very Daring Duchess will sweep you away to an eighteenth century world of power and danger.”
—USA TODAY bestselling author Jo Beverley
The Captain’s Bride
“Deliciously entertaining, Miranda Jarrett’s The Captain’s Bride blends a swift, rollicking romance between two unlikely characters with a richly textured understanding of the seafaring life.”
—New York Times bestselling author Mary Jo Putney
Star Bright
“Ms. Jarrett’s ability to always draw the reader into a fast-paced tale peopled with likable and realistic characters and a thrilling plot is a crowning achievement.”
—Romantic Times
Rake’s Wager
Miranda Jarrett
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
Chapter One
Woodbury, Sussex, England
1806
C assia Penny sat with her spine pressed tight against the ladder-back chair, her fingers squeezing her handkerchief into a soggy linen knot in her lap. The cheap black bombazine for grieving cut into her throat and wrists, the cloth so hot and wrong on this early spring day that she could feel the sweat inside her gown trickling down her arms and between her breasts and along the backs of her knees above her garters. Though she kept her head high like her two sisters on either side of her were doing, her eyes burned from weeping, and it would take next to nothing to make her cry again.
She was only twenty, yet she felt as if part of her life had died, too. Nothing would ever be the same again, not for any of them.
Mr. Grosse, the solicitor, sat at her father’s now empty desk, using one finger to square the stacked papers of the will into tidy precision.
“I regret to say that your lives must change, ladies.” He heaved a mournful sigh appropriate for the day. “Though that should come as no real surprise, considering your father’s vocation.”
“We know our father was a country vicar, Mr. Grosse,” Amariah said, each word clipped sharp, the way they always were whenever anyone dared cross Cassia’s eldest sister. “We are humbled and awed by the legacy which he has left behind on this earth, and the reward that is certainly now his in heaven.”
Unimpressed, Mr. Grosse looked at her over his glasses. “Alas, Miss Amariah, such good works accumulate little interest in the bank, and your father’s generosity made it impossible for him to save.”
“Father was a kind, good, fine gentleman, Mr. Grosse,” Cassia protested, rising to her feet, “and I—we—won’t hear you say otherwise!”
At once Bethany’s hand found Cassia’s arm, gently pressing her back into her chair. “Mr. Grosse is only stating the truth, Cassia. Father never did worry about acquiring worldly goods, just as we never expected him to leave much of an estate.”
“But we never expected him to die this soon, either.” Cassia sank back into her seat, once again fighting back her tears. Father had been only forty-five; who would have guessed that so great a heart would stop so suddenly, there while he pulled the first spring weeds in the kitchen garden?
“That is why we’ve already begun to plan our future, Cassia.” Amariah’s smile was sad, true, but also filled with a confidence that Cassia couldn’t share. “Father always trusted us to find our way through life, and we shall.”
“You’ll have to find it away from this cottage, Miss Amariah.” Mr. Grosse sighed again. “Sir Cleveland has already informed me that the new vicar will be arriving shortly. He will wish to reside here, as is due with his living. Sir Cleveland regrets the seeming haste of your eviction, but he—”
“He says he is most concerned for the spiritual needs of the congregation.” Again Cassia sniffed back her tears. “And he is most concerned, too, for that nephew of his who’s always wished to take poor Father’s place, the greedy piglet!”
“Cassia.” From Amariah that was warning enough. “Such talk does not honor Father’s memory.”
Hastily Cassia looked down to her lap, knowing that Amariah was right, the way she always was. It didn’t matter that this rambling cottage with its rose garden and duck pond had been the only home that any of them had known, or that they now must part and leave it forever. She needed to be strong and brave like her sisters, and look toward the future, not the past.
Even if she’d no idea what or where that future might be.
Mr. Grosse glanced around the library, noting the crates and trunks that were already swallowing up Father’s books and belongings. “Have you made provisions to remove your things and reside with another family member or friend?”
Bethany smiled serenely. “God helps those who help themselves, Mr. Grosse. Father shared his love of accomplishment and knowledge with us, and we intend to use those gifts to support ourselves.”
Mr. Grosse looked relieved to be spared the guilt of shoving the dead vicar’s daughters into the lane. “You have made plans, then?”
Amariah nodded, all brisk efficiency despite her new mourning. “I am considering an offer from Mr. and Mrs. Whiteside to serve as governess to their daughters at Rushington.”
“And Lady Elverston has invited me to be her special companion at Elverston Hall.” Bethany clasped her hands before her with becoming modesty, as if she couldn’t believe her good fortune. “She most kindly recalled both my play upon the pianoforte and the little suppers I’d arrange for Father and his friends, and she believes such talents would do well at Elverston.”
“How excellent,” Mr. Grosse said with approval. “And you, Miss Cassia? Have you determined your future?”
Cassia’s head bowed a little lower. She wasn’t accomplished the way that Amariah and Bethany were. The things she did best—dressing bonnets and remaking gowns into cunning new fashions, or arranging the Yule greenery in the church to look like a magical Sherwood Forest, or telling silly stories that made the young gentlemen laugh and cluster around her and beg for dances at the Havertown Assembly each month—were not the things that could earn her way in the world, at least not as an honest young lady of good reputation, as the Penny sisters had of course been raised to be.
But it had been more than enough while Father still lived, when she’d been his little popinjay and made him laugh until the tears had streamed down his cheeks when he should have been writing his sermons….
“Cassia will find something soon enough, I am sure,” Amariah said quickly, answering for her. “It is early days for us all, Mr. Grosse.”
“Indeed, indeed.” Mr. Grosse frowned down at the papers before him. “But I do have a certain revelation to make that might ease the immediacy of your situation. To be sure, it may not be the most welcome news, reflecting as it does upon your father’s integrity. But then we can keep everything within this room, among us and no further.”
Her heart beating faster at the thought of more bad news, Cassia inched forward to the edge of her chair. “A revelation, sir? About Father?”
“Yes, Miss Cassia.” He turned to another sheet. “Your father wanted this kept separate from the rest of the will, but I assure you that the inheritance is perfectly legal nonetheless.”
He cleared his throat, looking from one sister to the next. “Long, long ago, a grateful and repentant member of your father’s flock left your father his greatest single possession…a private, ah, social club in London.”
“A social club?” Cassia shook her head. “Father never cared for Society. What would he do with a social club?”
Mr. Grosse cleared his throat with a delicate, embarrassed cough. “There is little society at a London social club, Miss Cassia. That is the polite name. The other one for such a place is a—forgive me, pray—a gambling hell.”
“Father?”
“Yes.” Hastily Mr. Grosse looked back down at his papers. “But while most men would have sold such a dubious bequest, your father saw it as a gift from heaven, a way for him to make right from wrong. He allowed the house’s activities to continue, contributing all the profits to the welfare of orphans and widows, particularly those who had come to sorrow from gambling.”
Cassia pressed her fingers to her mouth. As worldly as Father was about some matters, he’d never countenanced any form of wagers or other games of risk and chance. Yet now it seemed that in London he’d owned an entire house devoted to exactly that. How ever had he kept such a secret for so long?
“Father owned a private gaming club, Mr. Grosse?” Amariah’s brows arched with disbelief. “In London? Our father?”
“I am afraid so, Miss Amariah.” Mr. Grosse shook his head. “I know such news much come as a great shock, after what—”
“Is this gaming club in a prosperous neighborhood?” Bethany asked. “If this is true, then Father must have viewed his involvement as being a latter-day Robin Hood—that he would take from the rich to help those less fortunate. I cannot imagine him doing it otherwise.”
Mr. Grossed glanced down, shuffling through the papers. “I believe the club is in St. James Street, a thoroughly respectable address for such a, ah, such a business. Its name is Whitaker’s, though who Mr. Whitaker is or was seems long forgotten. Oh, here we are—a view of the club from the street.”
He pushed an engraving across the desk toward them, and Amariah took it, tipping the sheet so her sisters could see as well.
“It’s quite a handsome facade, isn’t it?” Cassia volunteered, not quite sure what else to say. Accustomed as she was to how the vicarage nestled into the green Sussex hills, this town house seemed as welcoming as a cold block of ice, locked tight between its neighbors. The walls appeared to be stone, three floors high, and the tall, square windows without shutters made the front seem even more severe. A solitary gentleman in an old-fashioned cocked hat pointed his walking stick at the unwelcoming entry, four shallow steps and a plain front door.
“It is handsome,” agreed Mr. Grosse. “And from what I can gather, Whitaker’s was once a favorite of gentlemen of the highest quarter of society, even peers of the realm and officers of the Crown.”
Amariah looked up from the illustration. “But it is no longer?”
Mr. Grosse shrugged, hedging. “Not what it once was, no. As an absentee owner, your father let it deteriorate a bit over time. But the property itself is still sound, and finding a buyer should prove no difficulty, at a price that shall allay much of your current distress.”
“But were those Father’s wishes, Mr. Grosse?” Cassia asked, still looking at the grim stone house in the picture. “Did he wish us to sell this—this property of his, or were we to continue to let it do his good works?”
“Yes, Mr. Grosse, you must tell us that.” Now Bethany was perched on the very edge of her chair, and Cassia wondered if she, too, was daring to think the same thing. “‘Balancing the scales of our modern society’ was a favorite theme of his for sermons. If he had been granted such an excellent vehicle for balancing those scales, I scarcely think he’d want us to abandon it now.”
“Yes, yes,” Amariah said. “And if the neighborhood is as respectable as you say, we could reside there ourselves, too, and be self-sufficient. Surely Father would wish that for us, too. Oh, yes, Mr. Grosse, we must consider this from every angle.”
“I cannot say I agree.” Mr. Grosse frowned and shook his head, scattering a fine dust from his gray-powdered wig. “It is unusual enough for a country vicar to pursue such an endeavor, Miss Amariah, but for three virtuous young ladies to continue in such a role, to choose to live above such a den of despair and depravity—why, such a thing is not to be done, and I should counsel you most strongly against it.”
“Is it outside the law, Mr. Grosse?” Cassia asked. The town house in the picture wasn’t close to being her idea of a home, but surely she and her sisters together could make it into one. “Are women forbidden ownership of such clubs?”
“There is no legal reason against it, no, but for the sake of propriety, such an arrangement would be most irregular, most—”
“Is there more you are not telling us, Mr. Grosse?” Amariah ran her fingers lightly across the illustration, as if touching it would make it more real. “Is the house being used for other, more disreputable activities?”
“Good gracious, no, Miss Amariah!” The solicitor’s face flushed a shocked purple at her suggestion. “Gaming is all—and disreputable enough for a lady such as yourself!”
“The world can be disreputable, Mr. Grosse, even for ladies.” Amariah rose, shaking out her black skirts, and Cassia and Bethany quickly followed. “Would you please excuse us for a few minutes, Mr. Grosse?”
