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“But what of that story you told my sister, about how you’d stolen some poor gentleman’s house away from him?”
“I didn’t steal it, Miss Penny. I won it.” Standing on the stairs, their eyes were nearly level. He wasn’t smiling now, and with a shiver Cassia thought again of a pirate. “Luck has been very good to me, and like every good mistress, I don’t treat her lightly.”
“Then surely you would wish to play tonight of all others, Mr. Blackley.” She tried to smile, but what had worked so effortlessly with Lord Russell seemed forced and false with Richard Blackley. “In honor of Penny House’s opening, that is.”
“Or else I will not be welcomed back?” His gray eyes seemed cold, almost ruthless. “If I do not play and promise to lose, like every other good little titled gentlemen of breeding and no brains here tonight, then you won’t speak on my behalf again, will you?”
“I didn’t say that!” she protested, but he hadn’t waited for her answer, and had already passed her on the stairs. “Mr. Blackley, please!”
She grabbed her skirts to one side and hurried after him, dodging between other men gathered on the stairs. By the time she reached the top, he had disappeared into the noisiest and most crowded of the gaming rooms, the one with the hazard table. Although the gentlemen in the doorway stepped aside for her, she hung back.
Pratt had advised all three of the sisters never to enter this room, at least not when a game was at play. It was, he’d warned, not a fit place for ladies: with such substantial sums being won and lost each time the dice tumbled from their box, the players often could not contain their emotions, or their tempers.
And from what she could glimpse from the doorway, Pratt had been right. The gentlemen stood two and three deep around the oval mahogany table, covered with green cloth marked in yellow. The low-hanging fixtures cast a bright light on the top of the table, and strange shadows that distorted the faces of the players. Mr. Walthrip presided behind a tall desk to one side, the only man who kept his silence. Everyone seemed to freeze and hold their breath as one while the dice clicked and rattled in the box in the caster’s hand. But as soon as the dice tumbled onto the green cloth, the men erupted, shouting and cheering and swearing and striking their fists on the top of the table so that even Cassia, who did not know the exact rules of the game, could tell who had won, and who had lost.
Then she saw Richard Blackley, leaning into the circle of light to toss a handful of pearly markers onto the table. All around him men exclaimed and pointed, making Cassia realize the wager must be sizable indeed. The dice danced from the box to the table, and two other piles of markers were pushed to join Blackley’s. Another roll, and the pile became a small, pearly mountain before him, while the other men applauded, or simply stared in uneasy awe.
The caster was losing, his luck as sour as Blackley’s was golden. The man’s face gleamed shiny with sweat, his collar tugged open, and this time he was holding the box in his hand so long that others began to protest. At last he tossed the dice, and as soon as they stopped, the long-handled rakes again shoved the markers toward Blackley’s mountain. He looked down at it and frowned, then turned toward Walthrip.
“I withdraw,” he said, loudly enough that everyone heard. “I am done for this night.”
“But you can’t!” cried the caster with obvious panic. “You’ve only begun! You must let luck turn, and give us try to win back what we’ve lost!”
“True, true,” another man beside him said, glaring at Blackley. “No gentlemen leaves the table when he has won so deep.”
“Hear, hear!” called the heavy-set man standing beside Cassia at the doorway. “It’s not honorable this way! A gentleman doesn’t quit when he’s ahead!”
But Blackley didn’t care. He bowed toward Walthrip, ignoring the others. “I believe the bank here gives its winnings to the poor, at the ladies’ request. You may add my winnings to that gift for the night.”
He stepped back from the table and away from the furor he’d just created, and sauntered through the crowd to the door as if every eye in the room and the hall outside weren’t watching him. He came through the door, and stopped before Cassia.
“You said you wouldn’t play,” she said, her chin high, challenging him back. “You said—”
“I lied,” he said. “But that was what you wanted of me, wasn’t it?”
Her fingers tightened around the blades of her fan. “You said you wouldn’t take luck for granted.”
“I like to think I soothed whatever feathers I ruffled with my offering to Bona Fortuna. Sufficiently generous, don’t you think?” From his pocket he drew one of the markers, a flat, narrow fish carved from mother-of-pearl, and pressed it lightly to his lips. “Good night, Miss Penny, until we meet again tomorrow evening.”
He smiled, and before she could stop him, he tucked the fish-shaped marker into the front of her gown, the mother-of-pearl cool and shockingly sleek against the skin of her breasts.
Then he turned, and was gone.
Chapter Four
B ethany poured more breakfast tea into Cassia’s cup as she read the newspaper over Amariah’s shoulder.
“That part about the decorations of the club is very fine, Cassia,” she said. “‘The club’s furnishings, arranged by Miss Cassia Penny, are most original and witty, and are sure to inspire much imitation in homes that pretend to set the fashion for the ton.’ That should make you proud, shouldn’t it? Imagine setting the fashion for the ton!”
But Cassia only sighed, her shoulders hunched with misery inside her calico wrapper, and dropped another spoonful of sugar into her tea with a glum plop. “Oh, yes, please find something to make poor dear Cassia proud about last night. Distract her from the discussion of that wretched pirate’s antics.”
“Overall, I think we did rather well nonetheless.” Amariah turned the page, scanning the columns for more news of the club’s opening. “To be sure, it seems to have been an uninspiring night for gossip and scandal, but we have made everyone talk of us.”
“Listen to this part,” Bethany said eagerly. “‘For the first gentlemen of London who are weary of the older refuges of amusement to be found in this city, the refinement of Penny House will offer a gracious new destination after an evening’s perambulations.’ I wish we could have that copied out and posted on the front door, the way they do at the theaters!”
Amariah frowned over her teacup. “We do not wish to be compared to the theaters, Bethany. White’s and Brook’s, and perhaps Almack’s—those should be our proper rivals.”
“Not our rivals, Amariah, but our inferiors. We mean to conquer, not rival.” Bethany set the teapot down in the center of the table, dropped back into her chair, and folded her arms over her chest. “Father always expected the best from us, and I do not see any reason for us to settle for less now.”
Amariah made a huffy, noncommittal sound in her throat, and turned back to the paper.
But Cassia felt too tired to be so feisty. It had been close to dawn before the last of the club’s guests had been ushered unsteadily out the door, and later still before she and her sisters had found their own beds. Even then she hadn’t slept, tossing and turning as she played over every word she’d exchanged with Richard Blackley.
Now it was nearly noon, with the sun streaming in through the windows of this third-floor parlor that was their sanctuary. Below them, the scullery maids were already busy tidying the public rooms, the kitchen staff was preparing the meats and pastries for the evening’s guests, and Pratt was meeting with Walthrip and the others to review last night’s gaming. Even the sisters’ gowns were being made ready, brushed clean and hanging to air so they’d be ready for another night of curt-seying and smiling and charming with a determined purpose—something that only Cassia had been unable to do last night.
Now she sat back in her chair and braced her hands on the edge of the table, tired of waiting for the reprimand that she knew was coming.
“I’ve seen the story in the paper, Amariah,” she began, “about me and Mr. Blackley and the hazard room and his—his attentions. I know how I very nearly ruined everything last night. You don’t have to pretend you’re keeping it from me.”
“Your evening, Cassia—” Amariah folded the paper and set it beside her plate, smiling with grim purpose. “I wish I could pretend it away. I did wish to make Penny House the talk of all London, but not precisely in this way.”
Bethany shoved back the drooping cuffs on her dressing gown, and leaned closer across the table. “Inspiring a rascally Caribbean planter to make outrageous wagers is one thing, Cassia. But then letting him stuff a marker down the front of your bodice, for all the polite world to see—oh, that was not well done.”
“He surprised me!” Cassia protested. “I never expected he’d venture such a thing!”
“We must not be surprised by anything the gentlemen do,” Amariah said, running her fingers along the creases of the newspaper. “That was what Pratt told us, and now we have seen the proof. Though I suppose much of this is my fault, Cassia, for letting the man stay.”
Cassia poked at the toast, working a hole through the crust. “At least he gave all his winnings to the bank.”
“Which of course we cannot keep,” Amariah said. “I had Pratt return Mr. Blackley’s money to him at the Clarendon early this morning.”
“You did?” Cassia rose, clutching her napkin in one hand. “You sent all that money back? Why, he must have won hundreds—nay, thousands of pounds!”
“He was very lucky.” Amariah took up her cup again, sipping delicately from one side. “There was no question of keeping it, Cassia. If we did, the man would think he had a right to you, as if he’d bought your services and your person like a common trollop.”
Cassia turned away, going across the room to stand at the window so that her sisters wouldn’t see her flush. As boldly as Richard Blackley had behaved toward her last night, as improper as his conversation had been, Cassia didn’t feel he’d intended her to be his—his trollop.
She couldn’t exactly explain why or how, and she certainly couldn’t tell it to Amariah and Bethany, but there’d been something more between her and Richard, something she’d sensed rather than understood. He’d already proved himself to be a ruthless man, perhaps even a dangerous man, and even without Pratt’s judgment she was certain that Richard had not been born a gentleman. Yet he hadn’t made her a blatant offer, as Lord Russell had. He hadn’t tried to put his arm around her waist or steal a kiss like some of the other gentlemen.
All he’d done was try to get her attention and keep it, whether by outbidding her for the painting or playing hazard because she’d wished him to. He had smiled at her, teased her, challenged her so she wouldn’t forget him. He had looked at her in a way that none of the others had, a way that had made her feel on edge with low excitement, almost as if she had a fever. Even when he’d given back his winnings, it had been to ensure that he could return to Penny House and see her again.
She slipped her hand in her pocket, finding the fish-shaped marker that she’d hidden there. She should have tossed it down the stairs after him to show her scorn and outrage, but instead she’d kept it as a souvenir, a memento. He had risked a small fortune to be able to see her again, and now, with her sisters, she’d soon learn the price that she must pay for wanting to see him.
“Surely we will not admit Mr. Blackley again,” Bethany said behind her, the muffled clank of silverware showing she and Amariah could go on eating their breakfast. “Not after the trouble he caused last night.”
“No, no, Bethany,” Amariah said. “We must admit him, and even consider him for possible membership. The other gentlemen will expect to see him there, to have another chance to win back their losses.”
Cassia listened, and held her breath. So he would be back. She would see him again. Inside her pocket, she turned the little fish over and over again between her fingers.
“But what of his behavior toward Cassia?” Bethany asked indignantly. “I know that profit is the goal of Penny House, but surely you don’t intend to let his attention go unchecked?”
Amariah tapped the folded newspaper. “I have already sent letters to the editors of these papers, telling them that while we appreciated Mr. Blackley’s generosity, we have returned his winnings to him, and advised him of the propriety that Penny House expects from its guests. There was also a pretty bit about us three being as virtuous as Caesar’s wife that I’m sure they’ll print.”
At last Cassia turned to face her sisters. “And what of me, then?” she asked with gloomy resignation. “Shall I be banished to the garret to keep from shaming us all again?”
“That’s stuff and nonsense, Cassia, which you know perfectly well.” Amariah twisted around in her chair to see her. “It was hardly your fault. I told you before this wouldn’t be the same as the Havertown Assembly, and I doubt there is a man like Mr. Blackley to be found in all of Sussex, nor one so dashingly handsome. He was far outside of your experience.”
Cassia hung back, feeling both contrite and rebellious at once. “So I will be put in the garret, to keep from Mr. Blackley’s experienced path.”
“Oh, hush, you little goose,” Amariah scolded gently. “You did exactly the right thing with such a man, not shrieking at him or slapping him like a fishwife. You were the model of restraint, when I know you’d prefer to flay him with the lash end of your temper.”
Cassia didn’t answer. There wasn’t really a need to, considering.
“But next time, you won’t be taken by surprise, will you?” Amariah was smiling, but she was also watching Cassia so closely, making sure there was only one response. “Whether with Mr. Blackley or some other gentleman, you will make certain matters do not progress quite so far, won’t you?”
“No, Amariah, I won’t be taken by surprise again,” Cassia said, as meekly as she could.
“I didn’t think so.” Amariah’s smile returned to its customary serenity. “Which is good. There will be plenty of new gentlemen tonight who will expect you to bring them the same kind of extraordinary luck.”
Cassia smiled, and for the first time since Richard had come toward her from the hazard room, she felt her shoulders unknot and the anxiety begin to slip away.
She hadn’t spoiled everything. She hadn’t shamed her sisters.
And the odds were excellent that she’d see Richard Blackley again tonight.
Bethany nodded, flipping her braid over her shoulder. “I am not quite sure why, but these gentlemen do seem to love us the more for being virtuous in an unvirtuous business. La, how many times last night did I have to tell of how we traded the vicarage for St. James Street!”
Amariah sighed, spreading another glistening blob of jam on her toast. “One old gentleman told me that we’d have twice the number clamoring for admission if only we could have our portraits taken and shown, the three of us together. Can you fancy such a thing?”
“Not yet, perhaps,” Cassia said, pacing slowly back and forth as she thought aloud. “But what if we hired an open carriage and went riding in Hyde Park? That is where all the ladies go to take the air, and to be admired. We might as well do so, too.”
“But not today,” Bethany said quickly. “I have so many things still to do in the kitchen that I can’t—”
“Yes, today!” Amariah smiled, and struck her open palm on the edge of the table for emphasis. “This is the perfect day to show that we are calm and at ease, as unruffled as can be by last night.”
Cassia glanced at the window again, at the sunshine and watery blue sky over the slate roofs and chimney pots. It wasn’t the sweet-smelling green fields of their old home in Sussex, but to put on her best hat and ride in an open carriage, to be perfectly idle and do nothing but admire the passing scenery—that would be a rare, wondrous treat.
“Might I come, too, Amariah?” she asked, her voice rising with hope, almost pleading. “Even after last night?”
“Must you ask?” Amariah’s blue eyes were bright with determination, and amusement as well. “After last night, Cassia, I’d be a fool—a wicked fool—to leave you behind.”
Three copper-haired visions shouldn’t be hard to find, even in London.
Richard kept his horse at an easy pace as he rode through the park, weaving among other riders and carriages. He paid little attention to the trees or the newly blooming flowers, and even less to the women who smiled at him from beneath their broad-brimmed hats. He was hunting for quarry much more specific than that, and for a few coins the footman at Penny House had told him exactly where to begin his search. A flame-haired beauty, riding with her sisters in an open carriage, should not be so difficult a needle to find in this haystack, even if Hyde Park was larger than many sugar plantations he’d known.
But in the end it wasn’t her hair that led him to her, but the sound of her laughter coming from the other side of a stand of yews, merry and bubbling and unmistakably hers. Quickly he guided his horse through the trees to the next graveled path, and there she was.
“Miss Penny,” he said, drawing his horse close to the carriage. “I’ve found you.”
She smiled at him, the remnants of her merriment still showing on her face. “Gracious, Mr. Blackley. And here I’d no notion I’d been lost!”
“Lost to me,” he said. “I need to speak to you.”
“Then speak away, Mr. Blackley.” She sat back against the dark leather seat, lightly twirling the handle of her parasol so it spun behind her. She was dressed plainly, even demurely, in a plain white muslin gown with a matching short redingote buttoned over it, more like the country parson’s daughter she claimed to be than the proprietor of a gambling club. “I am found, and listening.”
He didn’t waste any time getting to what had bothered him all day. “Why in blazes did you return that money to me?”
“Because it was yours, Mr. Blackley.” The smile remained, but the last trace of her earlier laughter had vanished. “You won it fairly, and it was yours to keep.”
“But I meant it as a gift,” he said. “For that infernal charity of yours, the paupers, or widows, or stray dogs from the riverbed.”
He’d hoped she’d laugh again, this time for him, but she didn’t. “You are perfectly free to give away every last farthing to whatever charity you please, Mr. Blackley, but you cannot do it through the Penny House bank. Unless, of course, you lose properly.”
“That doesn’t make a bit of sense,” he said. “And I still don’t see what in blazes—”
“Because your generosity appeared to expect in return a favor from my sister, Mr. Blackley.” Cassia’s older sister—Anne? Alice? Annabelle?—said, the other one nodding in agreement beside her. “Because you put her in an untenable situation for a lady.”
“A favor?” How the devil had he overlooked the other two sisters there in the same carriage, sitting on the seat across from Cassia? “I did it because you’d made it clear as day that I wouldn’t be let in again if I didn’t make a profit for your blasted charity scheme. I can’t help it if I won. If I wanted to see your sister again, I’d have to pay up.”
“That’s not what Amariah intended, as I tried to explain to you last night,” Cassia said, leaning forward on the seat. “She wished to remind you that we are a gentleman’s club, and nothing more. She meant that it’s not proper for you to be so—so familiar with me there among so many gentlemen.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Richard said. He hadn’t done anything worthy of this damned lecture. And he didn’t see Cassia herself complaining. “I didn’t—”
“None of us wish to be compromised, Mr. Blackley,” Amariah said. “As the owners of Penny House, we must be most careful of that, or risk ruining the club’s reputation before we’ve really begun.”
“Well, we’re not at Penny House now, are we?” Richard swung down from his horse, holding the reins as he walked beside the carriage. He lifted his hat to Cassia. “Come stroll with me, lass, and we’ll talk alone.”
Her eyes widened as she looked down at him. “Here? Along this path?”
“It’s easier than climbing up the elm trees, but I’ll do that instead if you wish,” he said. “Your sisters can follow in the carriage, ready to drive over me if I become too familiar.”
“You won’t,” Cassia said, sliding her parasol shut and gathering her skirts to one side before she climbed out. “I won’t allow it.”
He liked watching her move, purposeful and direct and without any fussiness. The soft muslin was blowing close against her body and legs, not nearly as demure as he’d first thought.
“Cassia, I’m not sure this is wise.” Bethany’s face was tight with worry as she laid a gloved hand on Cassia’s knee to stop her. “To be seen with this gentleman so soon after last night might be—”
“How am I supposed to apologize if I can’t speak to her?” He didn’t really believe he owed Cassia an apology, at least not for anything that had happened last night, but if an apology would coax her away from the others, he’d offer her a dozen. He held his hand out to help her down from the carriage. “Isn’t that true, lass?”
“I don’t think it’s true at all, Mr. Blackley,” she said without hesitation. “But I shall let you try regardless. Driver, stop here.”
“Only for a few minutes, Cassia,” Amariah cautioned. “Only for him to apologize. And mind, we’ll be directly behind you.”
Ignoring Richard’s offered hand, Cassia hopped down from the carriage and once again opened her parasol, tipping it back against her shoulder. Without looking at him, she began walking briskly away, ahead of the carriage’s horses. Her light cotton skirts swung back and forth with each quick step of her low-heeled shoes, accentuating her hips and bottom in a way that made him almost sorry to catch up with her.
“You didn’t come find me to apologize, Mr. Blackley, did you?” she asked without turning.
He figured he’d probably do better telling the truth, especially since she’d already figured it out for herself. “No,” he said. “I didn’t.”
