“I hate this hat of yours, Amariah, hated it the moment I saw you in it.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Because you hate it, Guilford, I shall henceforth hate it, too.”

“Well, then, I’ll banish the wretched thing and please us both.” He flipped open the window and, before she could protest, sailed the hat out the window and into the night.

“Guilford!” Amariah shrieked with surprise. “I cannot believe you did that! Oh, that poor, old, ugly hat!”

“Let it grace some poor, old, ugly scarecrow in a field of rye,” he said grandly. “You, my fair Amariah, deserve something far more beautiful.”

He slid closer along the swaying seat, leaning over her so that all she could see was his face in extraordinary detail: the dark lashes around his blue eyes, the way his black hair curled….

She blinked, and smiled. “You’re going to kiss me, aren’t you, Guilford?”

Acclaim for Miranda Jarrett

“Miranda Jarrett continues to reign as the queen of

historical romance.”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub

“A marvelous author…each word is a

treasure, each book a lasting memory.”

—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 BOOKclub

Rake’s Wager

“A romp brimming with Regency style…

[Jarrett’s] just-right pace and likable characters

deliver a quick and enjoyable read.”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub

Princess of Fortune

“This story is a banquet spiced up with

period detail and well-paced drama.”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub

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 BOOKclub

The Silver Lord

“The characters and plotting are

very good and deftly presented.”

—Affaire de Coeur

The Duke’s Gamble
Miranda Jarrett

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

Chapter Sixteen

Afterword

Chapter One

Penny House

St. James Square, London

1805

I n the experienced opinion of Eliot Fitzharding, His Grace the Duke of Guilford, there were few things better contrived to reduce a sensible woman to blithering idiocy than a wedding, and the nearer the relationship of the woman to the bride, the greater the intensity of that idiocy.

This is not to say that his grace did not enjoy watching the idiocy, much the way that other gentlemen enjoyed a good sparring match in the ring. As a confirmed and practicing bachelor, he was free to watch the spectacle surrounding a wedding as the purest of spectators: emotionally uninvolved, financially uncommitted, with no other goal than to amuse himself.

Which was why Guilford was sitting alone in the back parlor of Penny House this evening, enjoying an excellent brandy while he savored the exhausted quiet after the storm of the wedding earlier that day. He didn’t mind in the least that he had the parlor to himself. Most nights, Penny House was like any other gaming club in London, vibrating with male bravado and high spirits, tempered by the despair of those who’d lost at the tables. Guilford had never seen Penny House as quiet as this, and he rather liked it. All the other guests had left long ago, and the servants seemed to have faded away for the night, too. The hothouse flowers were wilting in their vases, the fire nothing but gray ash and embers in the grate, and even the candles in the chandeliers had mostly guttered out, leaving the large, elegant room in murky shadow.

All were signs that would send most gentlemen to make their own farewells for the night and head for the door, as well. But Guilford never had been like most gentlemen, much to his late mother’s constant disappointment, and instead of leaving, he stretched out his long legs before him and settled himself more comfortably in his armchair. Why should he leave when the best show of the night still lay ahead?

A yawning maidservant shuffled wearily into the room, and with the long-handled snuffer, began to douse the last of the lit candles in the chandelier until, finally, she noticed Guilford.

“Your grace!” she cried out, adding a little shriek for emphasis. “Oh, your grace, how you started me!”

“Forgive me, sweetheart,” he said easily, his smile in the shadows enough to make the poor girl blush and fumble with the snuffer in her hands. Of course she’d recognized him; not only was he a peer, but he’d been a charter member of the club—as much from sheer curiosity as anything—and now served on its membership board. He’d also earned favored status because he cheerfully dropped the occasional large wager at the card tables, just to be agreeable.

“It’s—it’s me what should be asking forgiveness, your grace!” she stammered. “Truly, your grace!”

“Not at all.” He raised his glass to the girl by way of apology. “Frightening you was never my intention.”

Belatedly she remembered to curtsy. “Is there anything I might fetch for you, your grace? They’re banking the kitchen fires for the night, but if there’s something special you want, then I’m certain Mrs. Todd could—”

“But alas, not Miss Bethany.” He sighed dramatically. Bethany Penny was one of the three sisters who owned Penny House, the one who’d overseen the kitchen, the one who could rival the king’s own French cooks for her delicacy with spices, her wit with pastry. Of course, cookery fell within a woman’s natural sphere, a concept her older sister had always failed to understand. “However shall I survive without Miss Bethany’s roast goose and oysters?”

The maid looked at him uncertainly. “Miss Bethany will return to us, your grace. She’s only gone away for a bit on her wedding trip with the major.”

“Oh, the major, the major,” Guilford said darkly, indulging in a bit of brandy-laced melancholy. No matter what Bethany Penny had promised, she’d be like any other new bride, besotted with her husband and her belly swelling with his brat as soon as it could be managed. Then she’d be ruined—ruined!—as a cook! “I scarce know the man, but he can’t possibly appreciate the cook he’s gotten in his wife.”

“Beggin’ pardon, your grace,” the girl said, “but Major Lord Callaway is an excellent gentleman, and he loves Miss Bethany to distraction. You could see it in his eyes today when they wed.”

“The sweetness of her turtle soup will far outlast mere love.” Guilford sighed again. He appreciated the girl’s loyalty to her mistress, even if it were mired in mawkish sentiment. “But thank you, no, sweetheart. I need nothing more, and the kitchen may stay at peace. Go ahead now, finish your tasks.”

“Yes, your grace. As you please, your grace.” She nodded uncertainly, then bobbed another curtsy before she returned to snuffing the candles. When she was done, she backed from the room and gently closed the door, leaving him with only the dying fire for light. Somewhere off in the large house, a clock chimed twice, the sound echoing down the empty staircase.

Guilford smiled. The lights might be dimmed, but the stage was most certainly set.

And right on her cue, the leading lady of Penny House made her entrance.

The double doors swung open to reveal a woman silhouetted by the wash of light spilling from the room behind her. Even from no more than this silhouette, Guilford would have known it was her. Her height, the soft mass of hair piled high on her head and crowned with a nodding white plume, her very carriage as she stood there in the doorway: it could only be Miss Amariah Penny, and no one else.

“Your grace.” Her voice was charming yet firm, and still very much in her role as the grand mistress of Penny House, even at this hour and after such a day. “Might I ask if there is something wrong? Something amiss?”

“Indeed you might ask, Miss Penny,” he said, smiling though he suspected she couldn’t see him, “and I shall answer. Nothing is wrong, or amiss, especially now that you’re here to look after me.”

As always, she ignored the compliment. “Then might I inquire, your grace, as to why you are hiding in the dark and alarming my staff?”

“I’m not hiding,” he said, “I’ve merely been sitting here so long that the dark has swallowed me up.”

She made a little harrumph of polite incredulity. “Then perhaps sitting here has made you unaware that everyone else has left this house for the evening, your grace. Shall I call for your carriage?”

His smile widened as he gently swirled the brandy in his glass. She was still wearing the same gauzy gown she’d worn earlier for the wedding, with the silver threads in the deep embroidered hem glinting faintly like stray sparks above her feet. He was certain she didn’t realize that, with the light behind her, he also had a splendid view of her legs showing through her skirts.

“Everyone has left except for you, Miss Penny,” he said, “and for me. How could I be rude, and leave you alone under such circumstances?”

“Because my staff is tired, your grace,” she said, “and I wish to close the house for the night.”

“Then close it, and send your staff to bed.” He reached out and pulled another armchair closer to his. “Surely you must be weary, too. Come and sit, and keep company with me.”

She sighed, betraying the weariness she shared with her staff, but was too stubborn to admit. “You know why I cannot do that, your grace. This is a gentlemen’s private club for gaming, not a house for assignations.”

“But tonight I’m not here as a member of the club,” he reasoned. “I’m here as a guest at your sister’s wedding.”

She bowed her head, clearly perplexed, and didn’t answer. He couldn’t blame her, either, though she’d made this thorny little problem herself. Because the sisters lived on the top floor of Penny House, they’d already blurred the lines between their home and their trade. They weren’t really much different from a butcher living over his shop, except that their shop was a grand house on St. James Street, and the customers were a highly select group of gentlemen drinking and gambling away vast sums of money for their reckless amusement.

But the ever-ambitious Amariah Penny had taken matters another step by inviting those members who served on the club’s governing board to attend her sister’s wedding as guests, including them amongst the family’s oldest friends. Guilford was certain she’d done it only to strengthen the ties with those who helped her make Penny House the exclusive club that it was. That was how her unladylike mind seemed to work, always looking for an advantage to improve Penny House and increase profits, but now she’d have to face the consequences.

“You can admit you’re tired, you know,” he said, patting the chair beside him. “Any other woman would.”

Her head jerked up, any weariness banished. “But I’m not like any other woman, your grace. Now I’ll have your carriage brought—”

“Did you know there’s a wager in the book at White’s that predicts you’ll be the only Penny sister not to marry?” he asked, dragging his question into an lazy drawl. “Not because you’re lacking in beauty or grace—for you most certainly are not, Miss Penny—but because you’re far too wedded to this club for any man to wish to play second.”

“When my sister tossed her wedding bouquet today, your grace, it was my choice not to try to catch it.”

“I noticed,” he said wryly. “Everyone did. You kept as far away as possible from the other shrieking maidens vying for the prize on the staircase, your hands locked behind your back as if in iron manacles.”

“And what is so very wrong with that, your grace?” she demanded, her voice warming with a tedious missionary fervor. “Nearly all the profits my sisters and I earn from Penny House are given directly to charity. That was my late father’s wish, and I mean to follow it always. Each time that you gentlemen amuse yourselves at our tables, you are helping feed and clothe and shelter the poor in ways you’d never do directly.”

“No,” Guilford said dryly, not in the least interested in the poor or how they dined. “I wouldn’t.”

“Well, then, there you are, your grace,” she said, as if this were explanation enough, which it wasn’t. True, she was a clergyman’s daughter, but, in Guilford’s opinion, her soul was as mercenary as they came. “Why should I wish to marry for the sake of one single man when I can do so much more good for so many others by being here?”

“Because you are a woman, my dear,” Guilford answered, offering his own perfect explanation. “No matter how much you wish it, you can’t do everything by yourself, and most especially you can’t save the entire world. You can’t even save the lower scraps of London. Of course, charity work is an admirable pastime for a lady, but a home, a husband and children must surely come first. It’s in your blood, your very bones. Not even you can deny nature, Miss Penny.”

“Is this part of the wagering at White’s, too, your grace?” she asked suspiciously. “That I am somehow…unnatural?”

“Not exactly unnatural, no.” With his eyes accustomed to the half-light, he’d no trouble seeing her, but he still couldn’t tell if she were angry or amused—not that it would make any particular difference to him. “I do believe ‘virago’ was the term that was used.”

She gasped, and to his satisfaction, he realized he’d finally struck home.

“They dared call me a virago?” she repeated with disbelief. “A virago?”

She charged into the room and straight to him, the heels of her slippers clicking across the polished floor. He could feel her anger like a force in the darkness, her blue eyes wide and her gaze intense, her mouth set in a line of furious determination. He’d known her for nearly a year now, ever since she’d appeared in London from nowhere to open Penny House, yet this was the first time he’d seen the ever-proper, ever-capable Miss Penny lose both her composure and her temper.

It was even better than he’d dreamed.

“A virago, your grace!” she said again, as if she couldn’t say the hateful word enough times. “What—what ninny dared call me that?”

“How the devil should I tell?” Even though he’d given her leave to sit, she showed no intention of doing so, which made him suppose he must stand, too. With a sigh he rose, stretching his arms a bit as he now gazed down on her. “I don’t know everything.”

“Oh, yes, you do,” she said quickly. “At least you’d know that.”

“You’re granting me an inordinate amount of knowledge, Miss Penny.” Of course, he knew the name of the ninny who’d dubbed her a virago in the betting book at White’s; he knew, because the ninny’s name happened to be his own. “I’ll admit to being vastly wise and clever, but I’m hardly omniscient.”

She folded her arms over her chest and tipped her chin upward, so that she could still give the impression of glaring down her nose at him despite how he loomed over her. But he liked how she hadn’t the rabbity look of most women with copper hair, her brows and lashes dark enough to frame her blue eyes. “No one has ever called you a virago, your grace.”

“No one shall, either,” he said. “Considering how a virago must be female by definition.”

“A spinster, and a virago,” she said with disgust. “I should take myself directly to the middle of Westminster Bridge, toss myself into the river and spare the world the burden of my dreadful shame.”

He laughed softly, deep and low. “You’re not old enough for such a grim remedy.”

“No?” Her blue eyes glowed with fresh challenge as she took a step toward him—something that, under ordinary circumstances, he’d doubt she’d ever do. “I’m twenty-six, your grace.”

“Congratulations.” He’d already known she was past being a miss, and had grown into a much more interesting age for a woman. Dithering innocence had long ago lost its appeal to him, which was one of the reasons she fascinated him. “But I’ll win that battle, Miss Penny. I’m twenty-nine.”

“And what of it?” she scoffed, sweeping her hand through the air. “No one is telling you you’ve failed because you have chosen a life that includes neither a husband nor children.”

“Actually I’m told that rather often,” he said, remembering how shrill certain members of his family could become on his lack of an heir to his title. “Married life and children by the dozen are supposed to be good things for a peer, too.”

“But for different reasons.” She kept her head turned to one side, watching him warily from beneath her lashes. “I cannot fathom why you’re confiding any of this to me, your grace.”

“To show we have more in common than you might first think, my dear.” Had she any notion of how wickedly seductive that notion was right now? Perhaps he’d misjudged her; perhaps she was more willing than anyone had realized. “We do, you know.”

“Hardly, your grace.” Her mouth curved in a small smile of undeserved triumph. “You were born heir to a title and a grand fortune, while I came into this world as the daughter of a country minister. This leaves precious little common ground between us.”

“More than enough.” He shrugged extravagantly, taking advantage of the moment and the cozy half-light to ease himself a shade closer to her. “Vastly more.”

But instead of laughing as he’d expected, she folded her arms resolutely over her chest, a barrier between them. “I suspect you’re not being entirely honest with me, your grace.”

She was right, of course. He wasn’t being entirely honest. That wager in the betting book at White’s about wedding the formidably untouchable Miss Penny had been only the beginning. He’d made another, more private, wager with one of his friends, with odds—steep odds—for a much greater challenge: that no mortal man could successfully seduce her.

And Guilford—Guilford intended to win not only the wager, but to earn a welcome in the virago’s bed for himself.

“I wouldn’t say you’ve been entirely honest with me, either, Miss Penny,” he said, lowering his voice to the rough whisper that reduced most ladies to quivering jelly. “Which is only one more way that we’re alike, isn’t it?”

She frowned. “Your grace, I do not see how—”

“Hush,” he whispered. With well-practiced ease he reached for her hand where it clasped her other arm, slipping his fingers between her own to draw her hand free. “Consider the similarities, sweet, and not the differences.”

“What I am considering, your grace, is exactly how much longer I must listen to this foolishness before I summon my house guards.” Deftly she pulled her hand free, shaking her fingers as if they’d been singed by a fire. “I don’t believe you’ve met them before. Large fellows, of few words, but significant height and muscle, and quite protective of my welfare. I’m sure they’d be honored by the privilege of escorting you from this house.”

Undeterred, Guilford concentrated on flashing his most charming smile. “That’s harsh talk between friends, Miss Penny.”

She smiled in return, but with her it was all business and precious little charm. “Ah, but that is where you err, your grace. I am the mistress and proprietor of this house, while you are one of its honored members. Cordiality is not true friendship, nor shall it ever be otherwise between us.”

He winced dramatically, placing his hand over his heart. “How can I accept such cruel finality?”

“You stand on Penny House’s membership committee, your grace,” she said, reminding him gently, as if he were in his dotage. “Perhaps you should recall the rules of behavior for all members that you helped draft and approve, rules that make expulsion mandatory for any gentleman who oversteps. How very much we’d hate to lose your company that way, your grace!”

Guilford shifted his hand from the place over his heart to the front of his shirt, as if he’d intended all the time to smooth the fine Holland linen. “Ahh, Miss Penny, Miss Penny,” he said, coaxing. “You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?”

In the grate behind them, the last charred log split and collapsed into the embers with a hiss of sparks and ash.

“If you knew me as well as you claim, your grace, you’d know that if you tried to compromise me or anyone else on my staff, or even Penny House itself, I’d do exactly—exactly—that.” Amariah smiled serenely. “Now if you’ll excuse me, your grace, I’ll see that your carriage is brought around to the door.”

Guilford watched her go, the plume nodding gracefully over her head with each brisk step. She might have won today, but this was only the opening skirmish. He’d be back. He wasn’t going to let her get the better of him, not like this.

And no matter how she felt toward him now, he still meant to win that blasted wager.

Chapter Two

“F orgive me, Miss Penny, but are you certain you’ll be well enough on your own here tonight?” Pratt, the manager of Penny House, lingered still in the doorway to her private rooms. Below his old-fashioned wig, his narrow face was lined with worry as he watched Amariah light the candlesticks on her desk. “I can ask one of the maids to come sit up with you if you wish.”

As tired as she was, Amariah still smiled. “Thank you, Pratt, but I’ll be fine here by myself.”

He pursed his lips. “But, Miss Penny, if—”

“I told you, Pratt, I’ll be fine.” Amariah blew out the rush she’d used to light the candlesticks. “I need you far more as the club manager than as my personal broody hen.”

“Very well, miss.” Pratt sighed with resignation and bowed, a fine dust of white powder from his wig wafting forward. “Good night, miss.”

“Good night to you, too, Pratt,” she said softly. She really was fond of him, broody hen or not, and she certainly couldn’t have made Penny House the success it was without his experience and constant guidance. “And thank you again for all your extra work today with Miss Bethany’s wedding. Or rather, with Lady Callaway’s wedding. Oh, how long it’s going to take me to remember that!”

She laughed ruefully. It would be difficult for her to remember the change in her middle sister’s name and in her rank, too, just as she still occasionally forgot to call her youngest sister Mrs. Blackley instead of simply Miss Cassia, and she’d been wed to Richard for months. But in Amariah’s mind, they’d both always be just her two little sisters Bethany and Cassia, turning to her the way they had ever since their mother had died nearly twenty years before.

“You’ll remember, miss,” Pratt said, and bowed again. “Good night, miss.”

He closed the door softly, and for the first time in this long, long day, Amariah was alone. Finally she let the weariness roll over her, and with an extravagant yawn she dropped into the chair behind the desk, pulling the coverlet she kept there up over her shoulders as a makeshift shawl. She kicked off her slippers and tugged the white plume from her hair and the hairpins with it, rubbing her fingers across her scalp as her now-loose hair slipped and fell down her back. She pulled the chair closer to the desk, poured herself a fresh cup of tea from the pot that Pratt had left her, and with a sigh she turned to the pile of unopened letters and cards and bills that needed replies. Though the club had been closed yesterday and today for Bethany’s wedding, the work involved with running Penny House never seemed to pause.

Quickly she sorted through the stack of papers, dividing them into categories of importance. While handling her father’s correspondence for the parish and the rectory was hardly on the same scale as Penny House, it had prepared her for trade and bookkeeping in ways that most young women of her station weren’t. This was the special ability she’d brought to Penny House, balancing costs against expenses and remaining firm with tradesmen, just as Bethany’s gift with cookery had made the club’s suppers famous, and Cassia’s knack for finding treasures in secondhand shops had turned the huge sow’s ear that Penny House had been when they’d inherited it into the most fashionably appointed gaming house in London. The best part of all was knowing how much money they raised every night for charity, exactly as Father had intended. Running Penny House made Amariah feel like that ancient old rascal Robin Hood, taking from the rich to give to the poor.

Amariah smiled as she dipped her pen into the ink, remembering how the three sisters from the country had proved the doubters so completely wrong. But now marriage had reduced the three Pennys to one, and the never-ending work of running the club would be in her hands alone. There would be even more late nights and early mornings like this one for her, and resolutely she cracked the seal on the next letter, determined to make more headway before she went to bed.

But the harder she tried to concentrate on the sheet before her, the more the figures seemed to swim before her eyes, and the more, too, that her thoughts seemed determined to wander off onto the most unproductive path imaginable.

A path that led directly to the too-charming smile of His Grace the Duke of Guilford.

She put down her pen and groaned, rubbing her eyes with her hands. The duke was certainly not the first gentleman in the club to press his familiarity with her or her sisters, nor would he likely be the last, not with a membership made entirely of men from birth accustomed—and expecting—to have their own way.

Guilford, however, had taken her by surprise. Oh, he was worldly and witty enough for this kind of foolish, flirtatious game; there was no doubt of that. But until now he’d always been careful to keep most of his considerable charm reined in where she was concerned. He’d tease her, compliment her, tell her jests and banter with her, but that was all. No wonder he’d become one of her favorite gentlemen. He’d respected her and her role at Penny House. He’d understood why she must keep herself more pure and honorable than Caesar’s wife for the sake of the club’s viability, and why it would be so disastrous if she didn’t. On one occasion, he’d even come to Cassia’s defense when another guest had cornered her and made untoward overtures.

Now everything had changed. Of course, she’d try to give the duke the benefit of the doubt, and pretend the brandy had been speaking instead of him; but she could recognize a man half-gone with drink, and he hadn’t been like that. He’d behaved as he did simply because he’d wanted to, because he’d thought he would succeed, and she’d never be able to feel at ease with him again.

With a grumble of frustration she shoved her chair back from the desk and padded across to the window in her stocking feet, drawing the coverlet around her arms like folded wings. She pushed aside the damask curtain and gazed out over the club’s tiny enclosed backyard and across the slate roofs and chimneys of London. Though the stars still shone here and there in the sky, the horizon was beginning to pale with the coming dawn. All across the city, there would be hundreds of people whose workdays had already begun—bakers, milkmaids, fishmongers, stable boys, scullery maids—yet, as Amariah stared out over those rooftops, she felt as if she were the only one awake in the entire city.

You can’t do everything by yourself, Miss Penny….

Why had he waited in the dark like that for her, turning the back parlor into his own seductively cozy lair? How had he known exactly the way to ruffle her usual composure, teasing her with that nonsense about being a virago? He’d smiled down at her, his single dimple punctuating his face and his dark hair falling carelessly over his forehead; his deep, lazy voice made for sharing secrets and wooing women into madness.

Was that why she’d almost weakened when he’d taken her hand, almost forgotten everything she worked so hard for every day and night, almost traded it all away for what the Duke of Guilford could offer by the half-light of a dying fire?

She rested her spread fingers on the windowpane, the glass cool beneath her palm, and bowed her head. She was so tired that even her bones seemed to ache. Surely that must be what was making her think like this, casting empty wishes to the morning star for a gentleman she’d never have: weariness, and nothing more.

No matter how much you wish it, you can’t do everything by yourself….

“That’s the one,” said Guilford, tapping his knuckles on the jeweler’s counter for emphasis. “That will do the trick.”

“Ah, your grace, you do know what will please a lady.” Mr. Robitaille nodded, and ran his hand lightly over the surface of the bracelet’s rubies. As one of the most popular—and costly—jewelers here on Bond Street, old Robitaille himself knew a thing or two about pleasing a lady. The bracelet was a pretty trinket: rubies set like tiny red flowers, centered with pearls, and exactly what was needed to earn his place in the eyes of Miss Amariah Penny. In his experience, jewels never, ever failed.

“What pleases a lady is anything in this shop, Robitaille,” he said cheerfully, “which you know as well as I do. But what lady doesn’t like rubies, eh?”

Robitaille chuckled. “As you say, your grace, as you say. Shall I have it sent to Miss Danton, as usual?”

“I fear not.” Guilford frowned, trying to look serious as he heaved a sigh as deep as the ocean. “It’s a terrible tale, Robitaille. Charlotte Danton has thrown me over for the master of the Derby Hunt.”

“No, your grace!” Shocked, the jeweler drew back, the bracelet clutched in his hand. “I cannot believe the lady would abandon you!”

“Oh, it’s true,” Guilford said with another sigh. The real truth was that he’d tired of Charlotte at precisely the same time that she’d wearied of him, but because she’d been the one who’d abandoned their sinking ship first, he considered himself free of any further obligations, either of the heart or the pocket. No wonder he’d jumped at that wager involving Amariah Penny as a new diversion.

“I am most sorry for your pain and your loss, your grace.” Robitaille bowed his head in sympathy, as dutifully full of respect as any mourner hired for a burial. Almost as an afterthought, he looked down at the bracelet still in his hands. “Might I ask where the bracelet should be sent, your grace?”

“To Penny House, St. James.” Guilford smiled, glad to be done with the sighing and moaning over Charlotte. “To Miss Amariah Penny.”

“Miss Penny, your grace?” Robitaille’s mouth formed a perfect oval of surprise. “Miss Amariah Penny of Penny House? Oh, your grace, you amaze me!”

His wonder was so complete that Guilford laughed. “Do you think she’s unworthy of me, Robitaille, or that I am unworthy of her?”

“Neither, your grace, of course not,” the jeweler said quickly, “but Miss Penny is…a different sort of lady, isn’t she?”

“She’s some old parson’s daughter, she has hair as red as flame, and she’s clever enough to earn her own keep,” Guilford said, smiling as he recalled how upset she’d been with him last night. “I suppose that does make her a change from my usual fare.”

The jeweler laid the bracelet back down upon the silk-covered pillow on the counter, straightening the links with the tip of one finger into a neat line.

“She won’t take the bracelet, your grace,” he said definitively. “Not Miss Penny, nor her sisters, either. They won’t accept gifts from this shop from any of my gentlemen. They claim their position won’t permit it.”

“Hah, that’s nonsense, Robitaille,” scoffed Guilford. “I’ve seen how she decks herself out every night at the club, sparkling like a queen. She didn’t get diamonds and sapphires like those from her papa in the vicarage.”

Robitaille sniffed with disdain. “They’re all paste, your grace. I’ve seen her myself, from afar. Good paste, from Paris, but paste nonetheless.”

Guilford frowned a bit, unable to accept this. To him, genuine or paste looked much the same, but he did believe in the value of quality, and in paying for it, too. “Why the devil would she wear paste, when she could have the real thing?”

“Charity, your grace,” said Robitaille with a fatalist’s resignation. “She wants nothing for herself, nor did her sisters. I cannot tell you how many pieces have been sent to the ladies of Penny House, your grace, and exactly the same number have been returned.”

“But they haven’t been sent by me,” Guilford said, his confidence unshaken. “Miss Penny and I have always gotten on famously. You’ll see. This bracelet won’t come back.”

But the jeweler’s doleful face showed no such conviction. “As you say, your grace,” he said with the most obsequious of bows. “Thank you for your custom, your grace. I’ll have it taken to the lady directly.”

“Good.” And as Guilford turned away from the counter, he realized his pride had just made another, unspoken wager with Robitaille: that his bracelet would be the first accepted and displayed upon the lovely pale wrist of Amariah Penny.

It was the muted rattle of the dishes on the breakfast tray that first woke Amariah, followed by her maid Deborah’s tentative whisper.

“Good morning, Miss Penny,” Deborah said as she set the tray down on the table at the end of the bed. “Miss Penny? Are you awake, Miss Penny?”

Amariah rolled over in bed, shoving her hair from her eyes as she squinted at the face of the little brass clock on the table beside her head. She felt as if she’d only just fallen into bed, her head so thick and her eyes as scratchy as if she hadn’t slept at all. Surely Deborah had come too soon; surely it couldn’t be time to wake already.

“What time is it?” she asked, her voice scratchy and squeaky with sleep.

“Half past noon, miss,” the maid answered apologetically. “I know you must still be dreadful weary after the wedding and all, but Mr. Pratt said you’d have his head if he let you sleep any later.”

“Pratt’s right.” Groggy, Amariah kept her face still pressed into her pillow for another second more. It was time she woke; she usually rose at eleven, and now she’d lost that hour and a half of usefulness forever, never to be recaptured. “I would have his head.”

Somehow she found the will to push herself upright just as Deborah drew back the curtains to the window, letting the bright noonday sun flood the room, and with a groan Amariah flopped back onto the pillow, her arm flung over her eyes.

“Forgive me, miss, but Mr. Pratt said it’s the only way to—”

“I know what Mr. Pratt said,” said Amariah, marshaling herself for another attempt, “though knowing he is right doesn’t make it any more agreeable.”

“Forgive me for being forward, miss, but everything will be more agreeable after a nice dish of tea.” Deborah lifted the small silver pot and poured the steaming tea into one of the little porcelain cups, adding sugar and lemon. Then she tipped the fragrant liquid into the deep-bottomed dish and handed it to Amariah. “Your favorite pekoe, miss.”

“Thank you, Deborah.” Carefully Amariah took the saucer, her fingers balancing the worn, gold-rimmed edge. Painted with purple irises, the tea set was one of the few things the sisters had had from their mother, and for Amariah, using the delicate porcelain each morning was a small, comforting way to remind herself of her long-past childhood in Sussex.

Deborah shifted the tray to the bed, reaching behind Amariah to plump her pillows higher. “You see, miss, that Mrs. Todd cooked your eggs just the way that Miss Bethany—I mean, Lady Callaway—did for you, with them little grilled onions on the side.”

“Shallots,” Amariah said wistfully as she looked down at her plate. “They’re a special breed of onions called shallots.”

Deborah beamed. “See now, miss, isn’t that just like Mrs. Todd, knowing the difference, and knowing you’d know, too?”

Amariah smiled in return, but without any joy. Mrs. Todd, Bethany’s assistant in the kitchen and a master cook in her own right, had made an exact copy of one of her sister’s best breakfasts, but it wasn’t the same. It never could be, not without Cassia and Bethany to share it. Breakfast had always been the one meal the sisters had together, sitting in their nightclothes before the fire to laugh and gossip and plan their day before their work began in earnest.

Now Bethany and Cassia must be taking breakfast with their husbands, pouring their tea and buttering their toast, while she would be here at Penny House, with only—

“Miss Penny, miss?” The scullery maid standing before her was very young and very new, her hands twisting knots in her skirts and her face so pinched with anxiety that Amariah feared she might cry. “Miss?”

“What are you doing here, Sally?” Deborah scolded. “You’ve no business coming upstairs and bothering Miss Penny! Go, away with you, back where you belong!”

The girl’s eyes instantly filled with terrified tears. “But Mr. Pratt said—”

“What did Mr. Pratt say, lass?” Amariah asked gently, preferring to earn her staff’s loyalty through kindness, not threats. “Is something wrong?”

“No, Miss Penny. That is, it be this, Miss Penny.” Sally made a stiff-legged curtsy before she darted forward, a folded letter in her hand. “I was sweepin’ th’ front steps, Miss Penny, an’ found this there, up against th’ door, an’ Mr. Pratt said I must bring it to you at once.”

“Thank you for your promptness. You did exactly the right thing.” Amariah took the letter from the girl, her heart making a small, irrational flutter of hope.

Why would Guilford leave her a letter by the door, instead of handing it to a servant? Why, really, would he write to her at all?

“You’re new, aren’t you?” she said. “What is your name?”

“Yes, miss,” she said with another curtsy. “I’m Sally, miss.”

“Then thank you, Sally,” Amariah said, forcing herself to pause, and keep her curiosity about the letter at bay. “Continue to be so obedient, and you’re sure to prosper here. You may go.”

“Yes, Miss Penny.” The girl fled with obvious relief, leaving Amariah alone with the letter in her hands. Though the stock was thick and creamy, the highest quality made for the wealthiest custom, there was no watermark or seal to reveal the sender. That alone was proof enough that it hadn’t come from the duke, and enough to silence her foolish expectations; Guilford loved his title far too much ever to be anonymous by choice.

Still, the letter itself remained a puzzle. Only her name was printed across the front, in large, blockish letters written with an intentional crudeness to disguise the writer’s true hand.

“That’s a curious sort o’ thing, isn’t it, miss?” Deborah asked, purposefully lingering near the bed to watch. “Should I fetch one o’ the footmen before you open it, miss, just to be safe?”

“Whatever for, Deborah?” Amariah scoffed. “In case some sort of villainy should puff fright from the paper? I’ll grant that the writer must be a strange sort of coward to toil so hard at hiding his face and name, but I’m hardly afraid of his letter.”

With a flourish, Amariah slipped her finger beneath the blob of candle wax that served as the letter’s seal and cracked it open.

Mistress Penny,

Be Advised that you have a Great Cheat at your Hazard Table & that I will Unmask him to Public Shame & Disgrace if you do not Do so First.

A Friend of Truth & Honor

“I hope it’s not bad news, Miss Penny,” Deborah said as she began laying out Amariah’s clothes for the day.

“Not bad,” Amariah said, briskly refolding the letter. The message had been written in the elegant hand of a gentleman and a coward, and she intended to discover his identity as soon as possible. “Merely provoking. Please tell Mr. Pratt to send for Mr. Walthrip directly, as well as all the footmen and guards who have served in the hazard room within the last fortnight. I should like to address them all as soon as they have arrived. I will not have a gaming scandal at Penny House, especially not based on the whispers of some knave too timid to show his face.”

Two hours later, Amariah stood at the head of the large oval table, made of the most solid mahogany, normally used for the playing of hazard. While the tall windows were thrown open as they were each day to freshen the stale air left from the night before, the room never could quite shake its nocturnal cast, like some dandy caught after dawn in the harsh glare of morning. One by one, Amariah glanced at each of the faces gathered around the green-covered table: some old and wizened, some fresh and young, some she’d inherited along with the club itself, and all still dazed and rumpled from being called into work so early.

“I’m sorry to have roused you from your beds,” she began, “but my reason is a serious one. I received a letter this morning accusing us of harboring a cheat at our hazard table.”

“But Miss Penny, that is not possible!” Mr. Walthrip cried, his bony jaw jutting out with indignation over his tightly wrapped stock. He was the hazard table’s director and had been for at least twenty-five years, and he took his job so solemnly that Amariah was not surprised he was the first to object. “There is a precision, a nicety, to hazard that does not favor cheating!”

“Are you saying it’s impossible to cheat at hazard?” Amariah asked. “Or that it’s impossible to cheat at hazard at Penny House?”

Walthrip sniffed. “There is not a single game devised by man that another man has not found a way to fox,” he said, as stern as any judge. “But it would be difficult to cheat at hazard here at Penny House, miss, very difficult indeed.”

“That is true, Miss Penny,” Pratt said, nodding in agreement with the manager. “As you know, we have our dice made to our own specifications, as are our throwing-boxes, and no gentleman is ever permitted to introduce his own dice or box into the play.”

“Yes, yes,” Walthrip said, opening and closing his hands as if testing the dice even now. “The dice and the boxes are changed without warning throughout the night, especially if luck is favoring one gentleman more than others. We are open about everything, miss, as stated in the house laws. Nothing is ever done in secret or behind the hand.”

Amariah leaned forward and ran her palm lightly across the green woolen cloth, marked with yellow lines, that covered the table. The room with the hazard table was the most popular in the club, and night after night, the game generated the most income. “Is there any way the table could be altered in some fashion to control the fall of the dice?”

“No, miss,” said Talbot, the most senior of the footmen. “Each afternoon the cloth is swept and secured fresh, and Mr. Walthrip tests it himself. There’s no bumps or lumps to favor anyone.”

“I would ask you to consider the very nature of the game, too, Miss Penny,” Walthrip said, leaning forward. “While one man throws, there are any number of others who lay their wagers on his effort. They are watching him like so many cats around a mouse, and if he were to attempt anything out of the ordinary—anything at all, miss—why, they would tear him apart for his trouble.”

“Then none of you have seen anything to catch your eye this last week or so?” Amariah asked. Once again she glanced around the room, and was gratified to see that none of the men looked uncomfortable with her question as they shook their heads in unison. “Nothing strange, or peculiar in any way?”

“Nothing,” Walthrip said with relish, also pleased by the emphatic response of those around him. “It’s the nicety of the game, miss, the veriest nicety.”

Amariah listened, and nodded. Because she herself knew little of the games that supported the club, she had to depend on the experience and wisdom of those in her hire to advise her. Everything Walthrip and the others had said made perfect sense to her, for which she was glad and grateful, too. Still, she could not put aside her uneasiness. Scandal of the sort the letter-writer threatened could ruin Penny House, where the members counted on her discretion as they amused themselves. If that trust were gone, then they’d go elsewhere, just as they’d come to her earlier in the year.

Pratt coughed delicately. “Might I ask if you’re at liberty to share the name of the accuser, Miss Penny?”

“I would if I knew it.” Amariah tossed the letter onto the green-covered table, and the men crowded closer to see it. “He signs only as a ‘Friend of Truth and Honor,’ though by doing so, he is neither.”

“He’s a gentleman,” declared Pratt, whose instincts in discerning true gentlemen from false were impeccable. “The paper betrays him.”

“I had thought that myself,” said Amariah. “All we can do now is to wait, and watch to see if any of the guests seems particularly unhappy with us, and then—what is it, Boyd?”

The crowd around the table parted to let the footman come through to Amariah.

“This just came for you, Miss Penny,” he said as he handed her a narrow package. “Mr. Pratt said to bring you any such at once.”

One glance at the package told her this had nothing to do with hazard. With an impatient little sigh, she undid the wrappings and flipped open the leather-covered jeweler’s box only long enough to pluck the note from inside. The card was thick, the coronet embossed so deeply that a blind man could have made it out. This was one correspondent who wasn’t the least bit shy.

My dearest Lady,

Odds being what they are at Penny House, I knew I’d need to sweeten my stakes before I begged your forgiveness for last night’s indiscretion.

G.

Guilford. She sighed, more with dismay than anything else. Did he truly believe that she’d change her mind for the sake of a piece of gimcrack jewelry? Had he that little regard for who and what she was? How could he so completely disregard what she’d said to him last night?

Without even looking at the bracelet nestled in the dark red plush, she shoved the card back inside the box, closed the lid and returned it to the footman.

“Have Deborah take that to my rooms for now,” she said. “Tell her that as soon as I’m done here, I’ll write the usual note, and send it back.”

She turned back to face the others. Nearly all the men were grinning, or rolling their eyes. Most of them had seen such gifts arrive before for her or her sisters, and just as promptly go back out the door again to their hapless senders. They understood. So why hadn’t the mighty Duke of Guilford?

She leaned forward, her palms flat on the edge of the table and her voice full of determination.

“Consider yourselves all to be on your guard,” she said. “You know what to do. Penny House cannot afford a breath of any scandal to tarnish its good name, and I know I can trust you to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

But could she dare say the same of Guilford?

Alec, Baron Westbrook, stood in the shadows of the wall across the street from Penny House and watched the members climb up the steps and into the club for a night of genteel gaming. Light from the scores of candles in the chandeliers streamed from every window, and even from here Westbrook could hear the happy rise and fall of all those well-bred male voices, happy to be eating rich food, drinking smuggled French wines, and winning and losing vast sums of money as if it were nothing but sand.

Westbrook stepped back farther from the street, pulling his hat down lower over his face. He knew all about Penny House. He’d been one of the first flock of members approved by the committee when the club had first opened. He’d joined, of course, and come to see what all the fuss had been over the three red-haired sisters holding court as if the place was their palace. He’d come, because it was the thing to do, and he’d played, because he couldn’t help himself, not where dice were concerned.

But after the first fortnight, he hadn’t returned. He’d found the place too oppressive, too genteel, even stuffy, to suit his idea of amusement, as if the Penny women really were true ladies, ready to slap your wrist for any behavior they deemed untoward. Why, he might as well be at home with his widowed mother, being criticized for wasting his life and his fortune.

Most of all, he’d hated how the forced gentility of Penny House had altered the gaming tables. There was none of the wild excitement that Westbrook craved most from gaming, the raucous, drunken revelry and the underlying edge of danger that was so at odds with his ordinary life. He preferred to try his chances in the lowest gaming dens, ones full of thieves and scoundrels and sailors on leave, than to suffer the rarified pretensions of Penny House.

The only trouble with the dens was that they expected a man to pay his debts at once. They didn’t make allowances for bad luck. They were chary with credit, even for a gentleman and a lord, and they hired bully boys with knives ready to extricate the losses from those who weren’t quick about it.

Blast Father for leaving him a title, but no estate to support it! If only Father hadn’t blown out his brains with a pistol and left his family penniless, then he wouldn’t be forced to grovel to Mama’s brother for every last farthing. Uncle Jesse was in trade, shipping and coal and tin and other vile, low activities, and though he would inherit it all once his uncle died, the old miser didn’t understand that a lord needed funds to match his title. Instead he whined about losses and reverses, squeezing every penny and actually suggesting that Westbrook might look into trade himself.

Westbrook watched another chaise stop at the club, the light from the lanterns flanking the entrance catching the gold-trimmed coat of arms painted on the chaise’s door. Westbrook didn’t have a carriage of his own; he couldn’t even afford to keep a chaise. Maybe one day, when his luck with the dice changed, or when Uncle Jesse finally went to the devil where he belonged.

When Penny House first opened, the sisters had been free with credit to the membership to encourage the play. But once the club had become so damned fashionable, they’d tightened up the lines again, and Westbrook couldn’t be sure what kind of welcome he’d receive.

But that was going to change, wasn’t it? Scandal would do that, and no scandal was bigger in a gaming house, high or low, than cheating. Cheats made everyone anxious, uneasy, ready to point a finger at everyone else. The fashionable world would shift to another club, the wealthiest gentlemen would go elsewhere for their entertainment. The sisters would welcome a gentleman like him in their doors, and they’d be happy to give him credit to keep him there.

He took one last look at the brightly lit club. Not yet, not tonight. But soon he’d be back inside, with credit to spare as he sat at the hazard table.

And this time, he meant to win.

Chapter Three

T hat night Amariah came early to the hazard room, standing to one side of Mr. Walthrip’s seat at his tall director’s desk where she could see the table and all the players gathered around it. There were also twice as many guards in the room tonight, tall and silent as they watched the players, not the play, and Amariah was glad of their presence. She’d never before entered this room at this hour of the evening, choosing instead to come only when it was near to closing and the crowds had thinned. From the club’s opening night, Pratt had advised the three sisters that it was better for them to avoid the hazard table at its busiest. He’d warned them that the hazard room was not a fit place for ladies, even at Penny House, and how 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.

Finally seeing it for herself, Amariah had to agree with Pratt. Special brass lamps hung low over the table to illuminate the play, and by their light the players’ faces showed all the basest human emotions, from greed to cunning to avarice to envy, to rage and despair, with howls and oaths and wild accusations to match. Only Walthrip, sitting high on his stool, remained impassive, his droning voice proclaiming the winners as his long-handled rake claimed the losers’ little piles of mother-of-pearl markers.

Tonight fortune was playing no favorites, with the wins bouncing from one player to the next, yet still the crowd pressed like hungry jackals three and four deep around the green-topped table. It was a side of these gentlemen—for despite their behavior now, they were all gentlemen, most peers, among the highest lords of the land—that Amariah had never seen, and as she studied each face in turn, it seemed that any one of them could be capable of writing the anonymous letter, just as any of them might be tempted to cheat the odds in his favor. She’d always considered herself a good judge of a person’s character, and now she watched closely, looking for any small sign or gesture that might be a clue. She was also there as much to be seen as to see, for the same reason she’d had Pratt double the guards: she wanted the letter writer to understand she’d taken his charge seriously.

Absently she smoothed her long kid gloves over her wrist as her glance passed over the men. Could it be Lord Repton’s youngest son, newly sent down from school and working hard at establishing his reputation as a man of the town? Was it Sir Henry Allen, gaunt and high-strung, and rumored to have squandered his family’s fortune on a racehorse who’d then gone lame? Or was it the Duke of Guilford…?

Guilford! With a jolt, her wandering gaze stopped, locked with his across the noisy, jostling crowd. He was dressed for evening in a beautifully tailored dark blue coat over a pale blue waistcoat embroidered with silver dragons that twinkled in the lamps’ diffused light. While most gentlemen looked rumpled and worn by this hour of the night, he seemed miraculously fresh, his linen crisp and unwilted, his jaw gleaming with the sheen of a recently passed razor. He didn’t crouch down over the table like the others, but stood apart, the same way she was doing. His arms were folded loosely over his chest, and his green eyes focused entirely—entirely!—on her.

Fuming in silence at his audacity, she snapped her fan open. Of course he’d sought her out, not just in Penny House, but in this room; there’d be no other reason for him to be here at the hazard table. She knew the habits and quirks of every one of the club’s members, and Guilford never ventured into the hazard room, neither as a player nor as a spectator. For a man who prided himself on his charm and civility, the wild recklessness of hazard held no appeal, and it would take a sizable reason for him to appear here now.

A reason, say, like the bracelet she’d returned earlier this afternoon.

As if reading her thoughts, he smiled at her, a slow, lazy, brazenly seductive smile that seemed to float toward her over the frenzy of the game.

To her mortification she felt her cheeks grow hot. Gentlemen gawked and gazed at her all the time at Penny House—she was perfectly aware that being decorative was a large part of her role as hostess—but somehow, after last night, it seemed different with Guilford. It felt different, in a way that made absolutely no sense, as if they were sharing something very private, very intimate between them—something that, as far as she was concerned, did not exist and never would.

She made a determined small harrumph, and raised her chin. She couldn’t believe he’d look at her in such a way in so public a place as this, with so many others as witnesses. Not, of course, that any of these gentlemen were ready to witness anything but the dice dancing across the green cloth. She and the duke might have been the only ones in the room for all the rest might notice. Guilford knew this, too, just as he’d known she’d be here, and his smile widened, enough to show his infamous single dimple.

Indignation rippled through her, and the fan fluttered more rapidly in her hand. Hadn’t he understood the note she’d returned with the bracelet? She’d been polite, but firm, excruciatingly explicit in offering no hope. Had he even read it? She shook her head and frowned in the sternest glare she could muster, and pointedly began to look away.

But before she could, he nodded, tossing his dark, wavy hair back from his brow, and then, to her horror, he winked.

It was, she decided, time to retreat.

“I am returning to the front parlor,” she said to the guard behind Mr. Walthrip. “Summon me at once if anything changes.”

With her head high, she quickly slipped through the crowd to the doorway and into the hall, greeting, smiling, chatting, falling back into her customary routine as if nothing were amiss. Down the curving staircase, to her favorite post before the Italian marble fireplace in the front room. Here she was able to see every gentleman who came or went through the front door, and here she could stand and receive them like a queen, with the row of silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece behind her.

“Ah, good evening, my lord!” she called, raising her voice so the elderly marquis could hear her. “I trust a footman is bringing your regular glass of canary?”

“The lackey ran off quick as a hare the moment he saw me,” the white-haired marquis said with a wheezing cackle, seizing Amariah’s hand in his gnarled fingers. “You know how to make a man happy, my dear Miss Penny. If my wife had half your talents, why, I’d be home with her twice as often!”

“Double the halves, and halve the double! Oh, my lord, no wonder you’re such a marvel at whist!” Amariah used the excuse of opening her fan to draw her hand free from his. It didn’t matter that the marquis was old enough to be her grandfather; the same club rules applied. “What a head you have for ciphering!”

“Dear, dear Miss Penny, if only I could halve my years for your sake!” The marquis sighed sorrowfully as he took the glass of wine from the footman’s tray. “Here now, Guilford, you’re a young buck. You show Miss Penny the appreciation she deserves.”

“Oh, I’ll endeavor to oblige,” Guilford said, bowing as the old marquis shuffled away with his wine in hand to join another friend.

“Good evening, your grace,” Amariah said, determined to greet Guilford like any other member of the club. “How glad we are to have you join us. Might I offer you something to drink, or a light supper before you head for the tables?”

“What you might offer me, Miss Penny, is an explanation, for I’m sorely confused.” He smiled, adding a neat, self-mocking little bow. “Did you intend to refuse my apology as well as the bracelet?”

“I refused the gift, your grace,” Amariah said. They were standing side by side, which allowed her to nod and smile at the gentlemen passing through the hallway without having to face Guilford himself. “I gave you my reasons for so doing in my note.”

He made a disparaging little grunt. “A note which might be printed out by the hundreds, as common as a broadsheet, for all that it showed the personal interest of the lady who purportedly wrote it.”

“I did write it, your grace,” she said warmly. “I always do.”

“Following by rote the words as composed by your solicitor?”

“Following the words of my choosing!” she said as she nodded and smiled to a marquis and his brother-in-law as they passed by. “What about my words did you not understand, your grace? What did I not make clear?”

“If you didn’t like the rubies, you should just say so,” he said, more wounded than irate. “Robitaille’s got a whole shop full of other baubles for you to choose from. You can go have your pick.”

“Whether I like rubies or not has nothing to do with anything, your grace,” she said. He was being purposefully obtuse, and her patience, already stretched thin, was fraying fast. “My sisters and I have never accepted any gifts from any gentlemen. It’s not in the spirit of my father’s wishes for us, or for Penny House.”

“It’s not in the spirit of being a lady to send back a ruby bracelet,” he declared. “It’s unnatural.”

“For my sisters and me, your grace, it’s the most natural thing in the world,” she said. “If a gentlemen does wish to show his especial appreciation, then we suggest that a contribution be made instead to the Penny House charity fund.”

Again he made that grumbly, growl of displeasure. “Where’s the pleasure in making a contribution to charity, I ask you that?”

Her smile now included him as well as the others passing by. She’d long ago learned to tell when a man had realized he was losing, and she could hear that unhappy resignation now in Guilford’s voice. But she wouldn’t gloat. She’d likewise learned long ago that it was far better to let a defeated man salvage his pride however he could than to crow in victory. That was how duels began, and though she doubted that Guilford would call her out for pistols at dawn over a ruby bracelet, she could still afford to be a gracious winner.

“You will not take the bracelet, then?” he asked, one final attempt. “Nor anything else in its stead from old Robitaille’s shop?”

“I’m sorry, your grace,” she said generously. “But I shall be most happy to accept your contribution to our fund.”

He sighed glumly. “You may not choose to believe me, Miss Penny, but you are the first lady I’ve ever known to send back a piece of jewelry.”

“I’ll believe you, your grace.” She smiled, and finally turned back toward him. “Life is full of firsts. I suppose I should feel honored that one of yours involved me.”

“I hope only the first of many,” he said. “For both of us.”

His glumness gone, his face seemed to light with enough fresh hope that she felt a little twinge of uneasiness. Whatever was he thinking? She hadn’t promised him anything.

Had she?

At once she shoved aside the question as small-minded. It was only because she was still so weary from yesterday’s wedding and the possibility of a cheating scandal that she’d let herself even consider such an unworthy possibility. Guilford had just conceded; she should be using this as an opportunity to benefit Penny House, not to suspect his motives.

“If you wish, your grace, I would be glad to show you exactly how the funds we raise are distributed and employed,” she said. “It would be my pleasure.”

He raised his brows with a great show of surprise. “You have forgiven me, then, even if you returned my peace offering?”

She wished she didn’t have this nagging feeling that he was saying more than she realized. “Is there a reason why I shouldn’t, your grace?”

He bowed his head, contorting his features to look as painfully contrite as any altar boy. “I’ve always heard it’s divine to forgive, Miss Penny.”

“It’s more divine not to sin in the first place, your grace,” she said, trying not to laugh. “Though I shall grant you a point for audacity, trotting out such a shopworn old homily for a clergyman’s daughter.”

He looked up at her without lifting his chin, his blue eyes full of mischief. “I always try my best, Miss Penny, especially for you.”

“More properly, your grace, you are always trying,” she said, unable to resist. They were falling back into their usual banter, the back-and-forth that she’d always enjoyed with Guilford. Maybe last night really had been no more than a regrettable lapse; maybe they really could put it past them. Because he’d always been one of her favorite members—and an important figure on the club’s membership committee—she’d be willing to shorten her memory.

He laughed, his amusement genuine. “Let me truly repent, Miss Penny. Explain to me these charities, and I vow I’ll listen to every word, and then make whatever contribution you deem fitting.”

“The price of that bracelet would be more than enough, your grace,” she said, feeling the glow of expansive goodwill. “But I’ll do better than a dry explanation. Tomorrow is Sunday, and, of course, Penny House is closed. If you wish, I’ll take you to one of our favorite charities, and show you myself what we have accomplished.”

“What an outstanding idea, Miss Penny!” he exclaimed, ready to embrace this plan as his own. “I shall be here tomorrow morning with my carriage.”

She paused for a second, then decided not to take the obvious jab back at him. Whether or not the duke chose to spend his Sunday mornings in churchgoing was his decision, not hers. She’d accept his money for her good works, true, but she knew better than to overstep and try to save his soul as she emptied his pocket.

“Later in the afternoon would be more convenient for me, your grace,” she said lightly, without a breath of reproach. “And perhaps hiring a hackney might be less obtrusive.”

“We’ll compromise, and take my chaise,” he said with a sweep of his hand. “That’s plain enough.”

Of course, it wouldn’t be, not with a ducal crest bright with gold leaf painted on the door. Then again, Guilford wouldn’t know how to be unobtrusive if his life depended upon it.

But she’d be willing to compromise, too. “Thank you, your grace,” she said. “I’ll be delighted to ride in your chaise.”

“And in your company, Miss Penny, I shall be…” He paused, frowning a bit as if searching for the perfect word. “I shall be ecstatic.”

He bowed, then turned away and into the crowd of other members before she could answer. Apparently that was farewell enough for him tonight, or perhaps that was how he’d chosen to save a scrap more face. Amariah only smiled, and shook her head with bemusement as she began to greet the next gentleman. Good, bad or indifferent, there’d be no changing the Duke of Guilford, and resolutely Amariah put him from her thoughts until tomorrow.

Guilford pushed the curtains of his bedchamber aside to look out the window, and smiled broadly. Sunshine, blue skies, and plenty of both: the gods of good luck and winning wagers were surely smiling on him today. Despite the romantic plays and ballads proclaiming that dark mists and fogs were best for lovers, he’d always found a warm, sunny day put ladies more in the mood than a chilly, gray one. With a cheerfully tuneless whistle on his lips, he turned around and let his manservant Crenshaw tie his neckcloth into a knot as perfect as the rest of the day promised to be.

“A splendid day, isn’t it, Crenshaw?” he declared, his voice a little strangled as he held his chin up and clear of the knot tying. “Would that every Sunday were so fine, eh?”

“As you wish, your grace,” said Crenshaw, his standard answer to all of Guilford’s questions for as long as either of them could recall. With puffs of wispy white hair capping perpetually gloomy resignation, Crenshaw was a servant of such indeterminate age that Guilford couldn’t swear if the man were forty or eighty; all he knew for sure was that Crenshaw had been a part of the family since before Guilford had been born. Guilford had inherited him along with his title when his father had died, and he expected Crenshaw to be there waiting each morning with his warm shaving water and razor until either he or Crenshaw died first. And Crenshaw being Crenshaw, Guilford wouldn’t bet against him to outlast the whole lot of Fitzhardings.

“It is what I wish,” Guilford said. “Not that I have any more say in the weather than the next man. Is the chaise around front yet?”

“I expect it any moment, your grace.” Crenshaw gave a last gentle pat to the center of the linen knot, like a nursemaid to a favorite charge. “Shall I expect you to return to dress for the evening, or will you be going directly to Miss Danton’s house?”

“No, no, Crenshaw, I am done with Miss Danton, and she with me,” Guilford said, without even a trace of rancor. “May she ride to the hounds happily into the sunset, and away from me. Today I’ll have another fair lady gracing my side—Miss Amariah Penny.”

“The lady from the gaming house, your grace?” Holding out Guilford’s coat, Crenshaw’s amazement briefly overcame his reticence. “One of those red-haired sisters, your grace?”

“The same, and the first and the finest of the three,” Guilford said with relish as he slipped his arms into the coat’s sleeves. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d anticipated an engagement with any lady this much. “I shall return when I return, Crenshaw. I can’t promise more than that. There’s the chaise now.”

He grabbed his gloves and hat, and bounded down the staircase. He had always liked Amariah Penny, liked her from the first night he’d met her. He’d first visited Penny House for the novelty of a club run by ladies, but Amariah was the reason he’d returned. It wasn’t just her flame-colored hair and well-curved figure—his London was full of far more beautiful women—but her cleverness. She was quick and witty in the same ways he was himself, and because she always had the right word at the ready, she was vastly entertaining. You’d never catch her relying on a languid simper to cover her ignorance. She smiled wickedly, then came at you with all guns blazing, and Guilford had never met another woman like her.

Yet before this week, he hadn’t thought of her as anything beyond her place at Penny House. He wasn’t certain why; perhaps he just hadn’t wanted to tamper with a perfectly good arrangement between them. The wager had changed that. It was almost as if he’d been granted permission to consider her in bed instead of just the front room of Penny House, and now he could scarce think of anything else. He wanted to see the whole expanse of her creamy pale skin, and learn every exact place she had freckles. He wanted to explore the body her drifting, constant blue gowns hinted at, and discover the lush breasts and hips he suspected were there. He wanted her to laugh that wonderfully husky laugh just for him, and he wanted to hear her moan with the pleasure he’d give her.

Most of all, he wanted to learn if she could amuse him in bed as much as she did each night in the parlor at Penny House. No wonder he couldn’t think beyond such an enchanting possibility.

What was she doing now, at this very moment? Was she making herself ready for him, just as he had for her? He pictured her sitting before her looking glass while her maid dressed her hair. With the delicious torment of female indecision, she’d be choosing her gown, her stockings, her hat, all with him in mind, and he couldn’t help but smile.

The chaise was waiting at the curb, its dark sapphire paint scrubbed and shining. Gold leaf picked out his crest on the door, and more gold lined each spoke of the wheels, like spinning rays from the sun. As he’d ordered, the windows were open and the leather shades rolled up and fastened, leaving the interior open to the breezes and light. He didn’t want Amariah feeling trapped, or too confined; he wanted her comfortable and relaxed against those soft leather squabs, and wholly susceptible to his charm.

He climbed into the carriage and settled back with a happy sigh as the footman latched the door after him. This wouldn’t be like the night at Penny House. This would be his domain, not hers; he wasn’t about to grant her that advantage again. With the same tuneless whistle, he picked a white flower from the little vase bolted to the wall of the carriage and tucked it into his top buttonhole. He’d never known any woman this long before he’d seduced her—that is, excluding the cooks and relations and young daughters of old friends who were by nature unseducible—and he found the novelty of their situation at once intriguing and exciting.

The chaise had barely eased into the street when a rider on horseback came up beside them, the man reaching out to knock his fist imperiously on the side of the chaise.

Guilford pulled off his hat and thrust his head through the open window, the breeze plucking at his hair. “What, Stanton, will you raise the dead?”

“The dead are pretty well raised by this hour, Guilford,” drawled Lord Henry Stanton, “else all the knocking in the world won’t raise ’em further.”

“Very well, then, you’re raising the hair on all the living.” Guilford sighed impatiently. True, he’d been friends with Stanton since school, good friends and companions in considerable mischief over the years, but seeing him here, now, took a little of the luster from Guilford’s afternoon. Even a minute stolen from the time he wished to spend with Amariah was too much. “What are you doing here now, anyway?”

Stanton ignored him, his heavy-lidded eyes making a swift survey. “A carriage instead of your usual nag, and a posy on your chest?” he observed. “The lady will be pleased you made the effort for her.”

“The lady will be better pleased if I arrive on time.” Guilford knocked on the chaise’s roof to signal the driver to begin, but Stanton only followed, matching his horse’s gait to that of the horse in the traces.

“True enough, Guilford,” he said. “Rumor has it that Miss Penny is the very devil for promptness.”

That made Guilford smile in spite of himself, imagining how indignant Amariah would be to hear her much-practiced goodness linked to the prince of all badness. “You shouldn’t call her the devil anything, considering her father.”

“No?” asked Stanton, a leading question if ever there was one.

“No,” Guilford said dryly. “Not that I ever said I was even seeing Miss Penny today.”

“You didn’t have to say a word.” Stanton winked, and tapped a sly finger to the brim of his hat. “If you didn’t want the whole town to know, then you shouldn’t make your assignations in the middle of the crush at Penny House. Westbrook told me.”

Now Guilford’s sigh came out as more of a groan. “What I choose to do and where I do it are not any of your affair, Stanton.”

“Where the luscious Miss Penny’s concerned, Guilford, I’m afraid they are.” He leered through the window. “As I recall, there’s a substantial wager between us resting on the well-rounded backside of the lady.”

“I haven’t forgotten, Stanton,” Guilford said, “and I still mean to win. I’ve planned every detail. After a drive through the park, a supper in a private room at Carlisle’s, a few bottles of the best of that cellar’s wines, I could be claiming your stake before dawn.”

“Carlisle’s, you say.” Stanton raised a skeptical brow at the mention of the fashionable tavern. “And here I’d heard your itinerary was a tour of almshouses and beggar’s haunts.”

Blast Westbrook for having such excellent ears. “Oh, the day’s only begun,” Guilford said with as nonchalant an air as he could muster. “Good deeds will only put her into a more agreeable humor.”

“Oh, indeed,” Stanton said, and grinned to show exactly how little credence he gave to Guilford’s theory. “But tell me, Guilford. Do you really believe the steps of some wretched almshouse would be the proper place to tumble her?”

“Stanton, Stanton.” Guilford clucked his tongue in mock dismay. “Am I truly that low in your estimation? Ah, to show so little regard for Miss Penny’s sensibilities!”

Stanton drew back, feigning great shock in return. “Are you defending the lady’s honor before you’ve even warmed her bed?”

“What if I am?” Guilford shrugged elaborately. “You know my ways, Stanton. I’d much rather play the gallant than the rake. Better to leave a woman sighing your name than cursing it.”

He’d always liked women, and they had liked him in return, a satisfying exchange for all parties. He was also quite sure he’d never been in love, at least not the way the poets described, but the liking had been quite fine for him.

And he did like Amariah Penny and her creamy pale skin.

“She won’t be as easy as your usual conquests,” Stanton insisted. “She’s her own woman. She owns that whole infernal Penny House. She doesn’t need you, or anything you can give her.”

“That’s only because she doesn’t yet know what I can give her.” Of course, that didn’t include ruby bracelets, but he’d conveniently forget that slight for now. “She’ll learn soon enough.”

“You’re smiling like a madman,” Stanton said glumly. “Next you’ll be telling me you’re too damned gallant to stomach the wager.”

“You only wish it were so, Stanton.” Even if he weren’t so intrigued by the stakes, he still wouldn’t back down. It was the principle of the thing, not the money. Any man who set aside a bet like this one would become the laughingstock of White’s, and his friends would never let him forget it. “If you wish to call it off, that’s one thing, but I’m not about to do it. How daft do you think I am?”

“You tell me.” Stanton sighed with unhappy resignation. “Let the wager stand, then, and the terms with it. You have a fortnight to bed Miss Penny, and to collect reasonable proof that the deed’s been done.”

“Oh, you’ll know,” Guilford said, looking down to adjust the flower in his buttonhole. “As you observed yourself, all London hears everything that happens at Penny House.”

“And I’ll be listening, my friend.” Stanton gathered the reins of his horse more tightly in his hand. “I’ll be listening for every word.”

Amariah crouched beside the bench, her hand holding tight to the girl’s sweating fingers. “Not much longer, lass, not much more.”

The girl cried out again, her face contorted with pain. She’d already been in hard labor, her waters broken, when she’d thumped on the kitchen door, and there’d been no time to take her to a midwife. Amariah had had her brought inside, here into her sister Bethany’s little office down the hall by the pantry, and while the bench might not be the most ideal place to give birth, it would be far better and more private than the street or beneath a bridge.

“The midwife should be here any minute, Miss Penny,” said the cook, Letty Todd, as she rejoined Amariah. “Though from the looks of things, any minute may be a minute too long.”

“We’ll manage, Letty.” Amariah felt the force of the young woman’s pains as she tightened her grasp. She couldn’t be more than fifteen or sixteen, scarcely more than a child herself, and her worn, tattered dress and the thinness of her wrists and cheeks bore mute testimony to how cheerless her life must be. Though Amariah didn’t know the girl’s name or situation, she did recognize her as one of the crowd of poor folk that came to the back door each day for what might be their only meal of the day. A scullery maid ruined by the master’s son, a sailor’s widow, a milkmaid deceived by her sweetheart: Amariah didn’t care what misfortune had brought the girl to this sad state, nor had she asked. All that mattered was that Penny House offer this young woman the haven she’d so desperately sought, and that she and her baby be treated with kindness and compassion.

“Ooh, it’s coming, miss, it’s coming!” cried the girl frantically. “The baby, miss, the baby! Oh, God preserve me!”

Amariah had attended enough births in her father’s old parish to know that the girl was in fact close to delivering. But her experience had been as an observer, not as a midwife, and as she shifted between the girl’s bent, trembling knees, she prayed for the skill and knowledge that she knew she didn’t have.

“Listen to me, dear,” she said. “At the next pain, I want you to take the biggest breath you can and push.”

“I—I can’t!” the girl wailed. “Oh, help me!”

“You can,” Amariah said firmly. “Take a deep breath, and then try to—”

“Forgive me, I came as fast as I could!” Quickly the midwife tossed her shawl over the chair and draped one of the clean cloths over her forearms. She was brusque and efficient, and ready to take charge. “Don’t fear, duck, we’ll see you through. If you’ll just hold her knee for her here, miss.”

Gratefully Amariah obeyed, and at once was caught up in the drama of the birth. As she’d thought, the baby crowned and slipped into the midwife’s waiting hands within minutes of her appearance. A boy, loud and lusty, and as the kitchen staff cheered his arrival, the new mother wept with mingled joy, exhaustion and despair as the midwife put her new son, wrapped in a clean dishcloth, to her breast for the first time.

“I’d nowheres t’ go, Miss Penny,” she whispered through her tears. “But you an’ t’other Miss be so kind t’ us in th’ yard each day, I thought I could…I could—”

“You did exactly the right thing coming here,” Amariah said softly, brushing her fingertips over the baby’s downy head. “We’ll find a safe home for you and your son once you’ve recovered. Now rest, and enjoy him.”

“Sammy,” said the girl. “His name be Sammy. Sammy Patton.”

“Sammy, then.” Amariah smiled. “Welcome to this life, Sammy. And may God bless you both.”

She helped the midwife bundle the soiled linens, closing the door gently to let the new mother sleep. Yet even as she washed her hands and arms, the image of the new baby lingered, his tiny wrinkled fists ready to take on a hard life, his pink mouth as wide and demanding as a little bird’s, ready to announce his hunger and indignation to the world.

“Miss Penny?” Pratt stood before her, even more anxious than usual. “Miss Penny, his grace is here for you.”

“His grace?” Amariah stared at him, her thoughts still on the new baby.

“His Grace the Duke of Guilford, miss.” Pratt nodded, as if confirming this for himself as well as for her. “I have put his grace in the front parlor.”

“Guilford!” Oh, merciful heavens, how had she forgotten so completely about him? Swiftly she tore off her bloodstained apron and ran toward the stairs, smoothing her hair as best she could, then flung open the twin doors to the parlor.

“Good day, your grace,” she said with a sweeping curtsy. “Forgive me for keeping you waiting, but I had an unexpected emergency that needed my attention below stairs.”

She smiled warmly, but Guilford only stared, his expression oddly frozen.

“Good day to you, too, Miss Penny,” he said at last. “It would appear that I’ve caught you at an, ah, inopportune time. Shall I wait for you to recollect yourself?”

“I won’t make you wait at all, your grace,” she said, puzzled. “I’ll just send for my bonnet, and I’ll be ready.”

He shook his head, for once seemingly at a loss for what to say. “I shall be glad to wait, you know. Perfectly glad.”

“But there’s no reason for it, your grace,” she began, then caught him looking down at her dress. It wasn’t the usual kind of admiring gentleman’s look, but a silently appalled and beseeching look, and quickly she turned toward the glass over the fireplace to judge for herself.

She was still wearing the plain gray wool gown she’d chosen for morning prayer, now rumpled and wrinkled and stained where her apron hadn’t covered her enough. She wore no jewelry, and her hair, though mussed, was still drawn back tight in a knot at the back of her head.

It wasn’t much different than how she usually looked for day, but Guilford wouldn’t know that. Whenever he saw her, she was always dressed in one of her blue Penny House gowns, fashionably cut low and revealing, with white plumes pinned into her curled hair and paste jewels sparkling around her throat. How she looked for the evenings was as much a part of the club as the Italian paintings on the wall or the green cloth covering the hazard table upstairs, and no more a part of her, either.

She glanced back at him with that pathetically woeful expression on his face. Of course, he was wearing his same habitual coat, so dark a blue as to be nearly black, a green-flowered silk waistcoat draped with a heavy gold watch chain and cream-colored trousers, all chosen to please himself and without a thought for where they were going. Had he truly expected her to match him, and dress in the gaudy blue silk and paste necklace for calling on almshouses?

“I’m perfectly content to wait,” he said again, adding a coaxing smile. “Take as long as you wish. I understand how ladies can be, you know.”

“Oh, I’m sure you do, your grace,” she said, smiling in return. She understood him, too, and likely a good deal better than he either realized or wished. “I suppose I am a bit untidy. I’ll take those few minutes to refresh myself, and be back before you miss me. Shall I send for Pratt to bring you refreshment?”

“That excellent fellow has already tended to me.” He gathered the glass from the table beside him, raising it toward her like a toast. “Hurry back, sweetheart. And mind that I’m most partial to the color blue on a lady like you.”

“I’ll take that into consideration, your grace,” she said as she backed from the room.

But now it was outrage that sent her marching up the stairs to her private rooms to change, her heels clicking fiercely on the treads of the steps. For an intelligent man, the duke was behaving like a first-rate dunce. This was the other night after the wedding all over again. Did Guilford really believe her memory was this short? She’d asked him to join her today for educational purposes, not to amuse him, and she knew she’d made her intentions perfectly clear.

Quickly she shed the soiled gown, washed, and brushed her hair, then stood before the other gowns that hung in the cupboard. She didn’t possess the vast wardrobe that Guilford seemed to believe. Beyond the dramatic gowns for evening that she and her sisters wore for their roles at Penny House, there wasn’t much that would meet the stylish standards of a duke. The only one that might do was a soft blue wool day gown with a ruffled hem, complete with a matching redingote with more ruffles across the bust, and a velvet bonnet in a deeper blue—an ensemble designed by her fashionable sister Cassia, and the one Amariah wore when she and her sisters went driving in the park together. She touched her fingers to one of the ruffles and smiled, imagining how pleased Guilford would be to see she’d obeyed his request.

Then she resolutely turned to the gown beside it. A serviceable dove gray with dull pewter buttons, high necked and as plain as a foggy day: a dress somber enough for a poor neighborhood. Amariah’s smile widened with fresh determination as she reached for the gown and drew it over her head.

Guilford wouldn’t be partial to this color, or the sturdy plainness of her gown, either. She didn’t care, or rather she did for the opposite reasons. At least she knew how to dress unobtrusively and suitably when the situation called for it.

And as for her so-called reputation as a virago: ah, for a virago the gray gown would be entirely appropriate!

Chapter Four

“H ere I am, your grace,” Amariah said, tugging on her glove as she stood in the doorway to the hall. “You’ve been most kind to wait for me, and now, you see, I’m ready whenever you please.”

Guilford turned, the easy, welcoming smile already on his face for her, and stopped short.

What in blazes was she wearing now? A nun’s habit? A winding cloth? Sackcloth and ashes?

“You are ready?” he echoed. As rumpled and unappealing as her dress had been earlier, he would have taken it over this without a second’s hesitation. The gray shapeless gown and jacket were bad enough, burying all semblance of her delightfully curving body in coarse gray wool, but she’d scraped her hair back from her forehead so tightly that she’d lost every last coppery curl, and then tied a dreadful flat chip hat over a white linen cap. She looked like the sorriest serving girl fresh from the country, or worse, perhaps from some sooty mill town.

What had happened to the delicious Amariah Penny? And how could he possibly take her into Carlisle’s dressed like this?

“Have you changed your mind, your grace?” she asked sweetly. “You know I won’t think an iota less of you if you’ve decided you’d rather retreat than accompany me.”

One more look at that awful gray gown, and he very nearly did. Yet there was something in her eye—an extra sparkle of triumph—that stopped him. He couldn’t forget that Amariah Penny was no ordinary female, and she wouldn’t rely on ordinary female wiles, either. If she thought she’d shed him simply because she’d made herself as ugly as possible, why, then he was ready to prove her wrong.

“Nothing could make me abandon you, Miss Penny,” he said with as gallant a bow as he could muster—which, coming from him, was impressively gallant indeed. “Abandonment is not a word I acknowledge when it comes to a lady.”

“Of course not, your grace,” she said as he joined her in the hall. A footman was holding the front door open for them, and she sailed on through. “I must thank you again for offering your chaise today, your grace. It will make everything so much easier and more pleasant.”

“The pleasure is mine, Miss Penny,” he said, then stopped short with surprise for the second time that morning.

There stood his chaise where he’d left it, standing before the carriage block, the blue paint shining in the sun. But now Amariah’s man Pratt was there at the curb, too, directing three Penny House servants who were loading wicker hampers, covered with checked cloths, into the chaise.

His chaise.

She glanced over her shoulder at him, adjusting the flat brim of her hideous hat, and he caught that extra sparkle of a dare in her eye again. “I trust you are in a charitable humor today, your grace.”

“Charitable?” he said indignantly. “You’ve turned my chaise into a dray wagon! What in blazes is in those baskets, anyway?”

“Food,” she said as if it were perfectly obvious. “The places we are to visit are always in need of food for hungry folk, your grace, and I try to provide what I can. Come, there’s still plenty of room for us inside.”

“Well, that’s a blessing,” he said glumly as he followed her down the steps. How could he begin to seduce her when they’d be packed cheek to jowl with her wretched baskets like a farmer and his wife on market day? If he saw any of his friends with her like this, he’d never hear the end of it.

“Indeed it is a blessing for those we benefit, your grace,” she said, clearly refusing to hear the sarcasm in his voice. “We all do what we can, don’t we?”

He didn’t answer. He’d wager a handful of guineas that if it had been after dark and she’d been standing with him inside the club, wearing one of those handsome blue gowns, then she would not only have understood his other meaning, she would have laughed aloud.

“Here you are, your grace, seat yourself,” she continued as she climbed into the crowded chaise, “and I’ll tuck myself into this little place. I’ll grant you it’s snug, but we shall manage.”

“Snug, hell,” he muttered crossly as he squeezed his long legs into the small space she’d allotted to him. “Snug is what we’d be if you were beside me, not with this infernal basket wedged between us.”

She smiled, tipping her head to one side. Sunlight filtered through the woven brim of her hat, dappling her face with tiny pinpricks of light. “The basket won’t be here for so very long, your grace, and I promise you it will do such a world of good that you’ll feel infinitely better about yourself, much better than from the simple sensation of my skirts brushing against your leg.”

He smiled in return, thinking of what might have been if she weren’t being so damned perverse.

“It wouldn’t have been the brush of your skirts, Miss Penny,” he said, “but the pleasant warmth of your thigh pressed against mine. Nothing simple about that, I can assure you.”

“How wonderful it must be for you to have such confidence in your opinions, your grace!” she exclaimed wryly. “To be able to give your assurance as easy as that—why, I almost envy you!”

“Except that envy is one of the seven deadly sins, and you, as a parson’s daughter, would never, ever dream of sinning.”

“One must have goals, your grace,” she said serenely. “Likely yours has been to experience every one of those seven sins for yourself.”

“Not at all,” he declared. “I’m not even sure I could name the seven, let alone describe them on a comfortable, given-name basis.”

Her smile widened as she held up her hands, ticking off each sin on a finger. “Envy, pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony and sloth. Those are the seven deadly ones.”

He frowned. He wished he hadn’t asked; he didn’t like realizing that, at one time or another, he had in fact been guilty of most of the seven. Come to think of it, he was practicing at least two of them at this very moment, sitting with her in his luxurious chaise with the crest on the door.

“There are more than seven sins?” he asked warily.

“Oh, yes,” she said, too cheerfully for comfort. “There are the sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance, as well as the sins of the angels. I don’t have fingers enough for them all.”

“At least there’s no sin in that,” he said with a heartiness that he didn’t quite feel. He was on shaky ground here, and they both knew it. “I suppose I should know better than to banter about sins with the vicar’s daughter.”

“At least bickering isn’t a mortal sin, your grace,” she said. “Not even on the Sabbath.”

“I suppose not.” He turned toward her, or at least as far as he could in the crowded seat. “Look here, why don’t we speak of something more agreeable than all this hellfire and damnation?”

Amused, she leaned back against the seat, an almost languid pose that was much at odds with her prim dress.

“Sins alone don’t earn damnation, your grace,” she said. “It’s only if you don’t show repentance that you’ll run into trouble when you die. But if you’d rather not speak of the state of your soul, I’ve no objection to finding a new subject.”

“Very well,” he said, more relieved than he’d want to admit. “What shall it be? The weather? The crowds in the street around us? Where we shall dine this evening? What member is cheating the club at hazard?”

Surprise flickered across her face, only for an instant—she was very good at hiding her emotions—but enough for him to know what he’d overheard between two servants last night was true.

“Wherever did you learn such a thing, your grace?” she asked with forced lightness. “A cheat at the Penny House table?”

He smiled, the advantage back in his court. “You’re not denying it.”

“Because it’s too preposterous to deny,” she declared. “Our membership consists of only the first gentlemen in the land. How could I suspect one of them of cheating?”

“Because gentlemen hate to lose, perhaps more than other men,” he said. “Because gentlemen can be desperate, too. Because if you are as pathetically trusting as you wish me to believe, then I must report you to the membership committee at once, before you let some villain steal away everything from under your nose.”

Bright pink flooded her cheeks—an angry, indignant pink, not a blush at all. “That will not happen, your grace. You have my word.”

He smiled indulgently. “You can’t simply wish away a scandal, my dear.”

“I’m not,” she said tartly, “and I’ve taken action to stop it. You should know me well enough by now, your grace, to realize that I am not too proud to ask for assistance if I need it.”

“And you in turn should know me well enough to come to me if the troubles rise around your ankles.” He reached his hand out across the back of the seat so it almost—almost—brushed hers. “It’s far better to reach out for a lifeline than to let yourself drown.”

She shifted away from his hand. “How fascinating that you regard yourself in that way, your grace.”

“Oh, I regard myself in a great many ways, Miss Penny,” he said, “and you should feel free to do the same.”

“You can play at being my Father Confessor all you want, but I still won’t invent a scandal simply for the sake of telling it to you.”

“Even if it’s no invention?” he asked softly. “Even if it’s true?”

“No,” she said, raising her chin a fraction in a way he recognized as a challenge. “Especially because it’s not.”

He sighed, willing to concede for now. She’d confide in him eventually, anyway. Ladies always confided in him, and they’d have the entire rest of the day together. “You’re a stubborn creature, Miss Penny.”

“You’re back to that virago nonsense again, aren’t you?” She narrowed her eyes a fraction. “Why is it that when a man holds firm, he is steadfast, but when a woman does it, she’s stubborn?”

He laughed. Oh, she was good, virago or not, and his admiration for her rose another notch. “I’ll stand corrected. You, Miss Penny are steadfast, not stubborn.”

“I suppose I should thank you for that,” she said. “Or didn’t you intend it as a compliment?”

“I did,” he said. “And well deserved it is, too. I can offer more if you’d like.”

“I’m sure you could.” Her mouth curved wryly to one side. “But I’ve a better suggestion for conversation, your grace. Let us speak of you.”

“Of me?” He hadn’t expected that. “An agreeable enough subject, so long as we keep from my sins. Perhaps I’ll begin by telling you how much I enjoy your company.”

She leaned forward, toward him, her elbows on her knees and her hands clasped.

“Bother that,” she said. “I already know you enjoy my company, else you wouldn’t have asked for more of it this afternoon. I want to learn something new about you. Tell me of your childhood—your first pony’s name, your favorite tree to climb, the vegetable you found most loathsome to eat in your nursery suppers. What manner of boy were you, anyway?”

“My manner was ill-mannered, truth be told,” he said, laughing. “I was the only boy after four girls, the heir to my father’s title that everyone had long abandoned hope of ever living to see. I arrived seven years after my youngest sister, a complete surprise that set every church bell in the county to pealing. I was so petted and coddled that it’s a wonder I wasn’t completely spoiled for anything useful.”

She grinned wickedly. “Some might disagree with you, your grace.”

He returned her grin, relishing its warmth. Women didn’t generally ask him about his childhood, and it rather pleased him that she had. “Perhaps I am spoiled. But I had a deuced fine time as a boy, I can tell you that. I spent most of the year in the country, at Guilford Abbey, getting into whatever mischief I could.”

“That’s in Essex, isn’t it?”

“Devon,” he said, the pride clear in his voice as he let himself sink into a hazy, happy recollection of the past. “‘Devon is Heaven,’ my father used to say, and there was no finer place for any boy. I had a new pony every summer to match my height as I grew, a whole pack of dogs that trooped along with me and a boat to sail in the duck pond. I went hunting and fishing with my uncles and my sisters’ husbands, played out the American war in the orchards with my cousins and ate my fill of sweet biscuits and jam with the servants at the big table in the kitchen.”

“So even the servants spoiled you,” she said softly, watching him from beneath the brim of that dreadful hat.

“Oh, they were the worst of the lot,” he said. “Cook always had a soft spot for me, and she was always baking me special little pies, carving my initials in the top of the crust.”

That made her smile. “So you wanted for absolutely nothing.”

“Not a blessed thing,” he agreed. “I was the happiest little rogue alive.”

“I hope you won’t forget that, your grace,” she said, glancing out the window as the chaise slowed. “Ah, we’ve arrived.”

Curious, he turned toward the window, as well; he’d been so caught up in his reminiscing that he’d no notion of how far they’d traveled. He looked, and saw, and his expression at once grew somber.

Could there have been a more different scene from the green Devon hills he’d been describing? They’d long ago left the neat, fashionable prosperity of St. James Square for a neighborhood in London that he knew he’d never visited before.

Here the houses were so old they seemed ready to topple into the street, ancient timbers and beams that somehow must have survived the Great Fire over a hundred years before. Broken windows were stuffed with handfuls of dirty straw, or simply left open and gaping, like a broken tooth in a drunkard’s smile. No reputable trades kept businesses here, but every other building seemed to house an alehouse or gin shop. Even on a Sunday, last night’s customers still sprawled on the steps, while a few desultory women with bodices open and cheeks painted with tawdry red circles tried to lure their first customers of the day.

Because the afternoon was warm, and the same sun that shone on the rich folk in their open carriages in Green Park also fell here, the street was also filled with dirty, barefoot children, cripples on makeshift crutches, babies wailing with hunger in their too-young mothers’ arms, mongrel dogs scrapping over an old mutton bone, and costermongers hawking fruit and vegetables too rotten for the better streets. The street itself was unpaved, with a deep kennel in the center filled with standing, putrid water, thick with dead rats and human filth.

His coachman would have seventeen fits when he saw that muck on the gold-trimmed wheels of the chaise.

Amariah was unlatching the door herself, not waiting for the footman. “Mind yourself, your grace. They’ll all ask you for something. But if you give one a coin, then fifty more will suddenly appear with their hands out, too, so I’ve found it’s best not to begin. They’ll only squander it on gin, anyway, which is why I prefer to give them food instead.”

Just as she warned, beggars of every age were already crowding around the door with their filthy hands outstretched like so many claws, pressing so closely that they rocked the chaise on its springs and made the horses whinny nervously.

“Hold now, Miss Penny, you can’t go out there with them!” he said, grabbing her arm to keep her back. “It’s not safe!”

She looked back at him over her shoulder, incredulous and a little disdainful at the same time, as she shook her arm free of his hand.

“Of course I can, your grace,” she said, looping one of the baskets into the crook of her arm, “and I do, every Sunday.”

“But consider what you’re doing, Miss Penny, the risk you are taking—”

“Being poor and hungry does not turn a person into a dangerous beast, your grace,” she said firmly. “But if you are too frightened for your own safety, then you may feel free to remain here.”

Before he could catch her again, she’d pushed the door open and hopped outside, holding the basket before her like a wicker shield as she made her way through the beggars. Now he realized they’d stopped before a woebegone little church, bits of stonework broken away like a stale pie crust and the once-red paint worn from the tall arched doors. The church’s pastor stood before one of these doors, smiling and holding it open for Amariah and her baskets.

“Your grace?” One of his footmen belatedly appeared at the door, his expression as confused as Guilford’s own must be. “If you please, your grace, what—”

“Damnation, take those infernal baskets down for Miss Penny!” He couldn’t let Amariah go alone, not into this mess, and with a deep breath he pushed past the footman into the crowd after her. The stench was appalling, and it took all his willpower not to cover his nose with his handkerchief. Who would have guessed other humans could smell as vile as the refuse beneath their feet?

“A penny, guv’nor, only a penny!”

“Please, sir, please, for me poor mum!”

“Sure, sure, a fine gentleman like yourself can spare a coin for a sufferer!”

Resolutely Guilford pushed forward, focusing on Amariah and not those jostling around him. With a horrible thought, he pressed his hand over his waistcoat, relieved to feel the comforting weight of his gold watch and chain still there. The timepiece had been in his family for generations, and he’d hate to have it nicked by one of these sorry rascals.

“Please, m’lord, please—”

“Not today, I’m afraid,” he mumbled. He told himself he was only following Amariah’s suggestion, but he still felt like some wretched miser with his pockets stitched shut. “I’ve no loose coins with me.”

Finally he reached the church, bounding up the worn stone steps and away from the beggars. His heart was pounding, and he could feel the unpleasant prickle of sweat beneath his shirt collar.

At least Amariah was beaming at him for his trouble, no inconsiderable consolation.

“Your grace, I should like to present Reverend Robert Potter,” she said in exactly the same easy, gracious tone she used when introducing foreign princes and other grandees at Penny House. “Reverend Potter is the vicar here at St. Crispin’s parish, and he sees that the food we bring from Penny House is given away to those who need it most. Reverend Potter, His Grace the Duke of Guilford. Lord Guilford is most interested in our charities, Reverend, and is accompanying me today to observe for himself.”

His hands clasped over the front of his plain black cassock, Potter nodded and smiled warmly. He was tall and thin, almost gaunt, but the kindness in his weathered blue eyes softened his entire face.

“I cannot tell you how honored I am to meet you, your grace, and to have you here at St. Crispin’s,” he said. “Would that more great lords were like you and Miss Penny, and took such a worthy interest in the sufferings of the unfortunate.”

Guilford cleared his throat and nodded in return, feeling like some sort of false play-actor standing on these steps. “Miss Penny can take all the credit,” he said. “She’s the one who brought me here.”

“She also seems to have brought more than the usual amount of food, your grace.” Potter watched with obvious approval as the footmen brought in the rest of the baskets from the chaise. “But how rare to have it delivered to us in a ducal carriage!”

Amariah looped her hand into his arm. “Come inside, your grace, and see everything that we brought.”

He let her lead him inside the church, cool and damp after the sun, and into a small hall to one side of the church itself. The bare walls were whitewashed, the worn planked floor swept clean, and three rows of long board tables ran the length of the room. As soon as the footmen set the baskets on the tables, two plainly dressed women and a boy in an uncocked black hat began unpacking them and arranging the food inside into wooden trenchers. There were no benches at the tables; after seeing the crowd outside, Guilford guessed they wouldn’t exactly sit and linger over their meal, anyway.

“As much as we brought, it won’t begin to be enough,” Amariah said as she, too, began to transfer apples from a basket to a trencher. “There are so many in London who are hungry, and they are quick to tell one another when they discover a place where charity food is to be had. As poor as this neighborhood is, I’d guess that more than half of those folk waiting outside are from other places, folk who’ve come here in hopes of being able to take away the hunger for even this day.”

One of the women carefully unwrapped a large roast goose with only a few slices missing from one side, a goose that Guilford recognized as having graced one of the sideboards at Penny House last night.

“That was left from us, Miss Penny, wasn’t it?” he asked, watching as the woman began slicing the meat free from the carcass. Their efficiency was making him feel uncomfortably idle.

“If from ‘us’ you mean from Penny House, then yes,” Amariah said, pausing to toss one of the apples lightly in her hand, like a red polished ball. “The members expect everything to be fresh for them each night, seasoned and served to exquisite perfection, and then, like naughty children, they scarce nibble at it before they turn to a new indulgence.”

“They’re entitled to their whims,” Guilford said, feeling he should defend his fellow members. “Especially considering what the membership is.”

“Well, yes,” she said, and smiled. “But I see nothing wrong in bringing what they choose to reject to others who are not quite so—so discerning.”

For the first time, he thought of how much must be wasted in a single night, of the plates of barely touched food that were whisked back downstairs, and thought, too, of how corpulent a good many of his friends and associates were, their well-fed bellies straining against their embroidered silk waistcoats. The prince himself had launched the fashion for excess; Guilford had heard it whispered that the waistband of His Highness’s breeches measured over fifty inches around.

“But those apples aren’t left from the club’s dining room tables,” he said. “You must’ve bought them just for today.”

“Ah, you are so vastly clever, your grace!” she said, and tossed the apple in her hand at him.

“You’d judge me clever, Miss Penny?” He caught the fruit easily in one hand, and flipped it back to her to cup in both hands. “At least I’m clever enough to know what became of old Adam after he took an apple from a lady.”

“Oh, but your grace, this fruit has no such conditions,” she said, laughing. “The apples, and the milk, bread, cider and cheeses all are bought with the profits from the gaming tables. We support these gatherings at St. Crispin’s, more at St. Andrew’s, and of course my sister Bethany’s own little ‘flock’ that gathers each day behind Penny House itself, and yet it’s only the barest beginnings. Are you lingering about with a purpose in mind, Billy Fox?”

“Aye, mum.” The boy who’d been helping grinned at her, tipping his head back to gaze boldly at her from beneath the crumpled brim of his scarecrow’s hat. “That’s how I rule me life. Purposeful, mum. Purposeful.”

“Purposefully impudent, I’d say,” Amariah said, but she laughed and tossed him the apple. At once the boy bit into it with hungry enthusiasm, heedless of the bits of apple and peel that now dotted his grin.

Guilford guessed he must be nine or ten—because he was so thin and wiry, it was difficult to tell—and while his clothes were as dirty and tattered as the others outside, at least he’d washed his hands before he began helping with the food. He had a choirboy’s blue eyes and golden curls combined with a born rascal’s cockiness, and Guilford liked him at once.

“I eat purposeful, too, mum,” Billy said between bites. “Nothing impudent ’bout that.”

“If the lady says you’re impudent, lad, then you are,” Guilford said, laughing, too. Strange that he’d just been speaking of his boyhood with Amariah, for this little rogue could have been cut from the same bolt of cloth as he’d once been himself. “You must trust me. I know from my own sorry experience. It’s not wise to cross Miss Penny.”

“Go on, guv’nor.” The boy looked at him sideways, his profile silhouetted against the angled brim of his black hat. “Miss Penny’s an angel o’ kindness an’ forgiveness, even t’ me.”

“Then you must not test your luck,” Guilford said darkly, glancing knowingly—no, purposefully—at Amariah. “Far better to keep her sweet tempered, and be safe. Here now, doff your hat and beg her forgiveness.”

Before the boy could react, Guilford reached out to sweep the hat from his head for him.

Beside him, Amariah gasped. “Don’t, your grace, please, please!”

But her warning came too late. With Billy’s hat in his hand, Guilford froze, painfully, horribly aware of how much he’d just erred.

The boy didn’t flinch, or duck away. He held his ground, staring back at Guilford as boldly as Guilford was staring at him, unable to make himself look away from what the hat’s wide brim had hidden. Where there should have been another bright blue eye, instead was only a grotesque, tortured mass of scars, the skin drawn tight over the empty socket like melted wax.

The boy thrust out his upturned palm toward Guilford. “That be ’alf a crown, guv’nor. I don’t let no one gawk at me for free, an’ for swells like you, the fare be ’alf a crown.”

“He’s not a swell, Billy,” Amariah said quickly, the warning in her voice clear. “He’s His Grace the Duke of Guilford.”

“What of it?” Billy shook back his blond curls, as if determined to hide nothing from Guilford. “If a cat may look at a king, why, then a duke may look at a Fox. Don’t that be so, Duke?”

“You call him ‘your grace’, Billy,” Amariah said as she took Billy’s hat from Guilford’s hand and set it back on the boy’s head, slanting it at the same shielding angle as it had been before. “And if you don’t start minding what comes from your mouth, you’ll find yourself transported to the colonies for being disrespectful to your betters.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.