Duchess By Night (Desperate Duchesses #3)

Duchess By Night (Desperate Duchesses #3) Page 53

“Indeed,” Jem said, rapidly passing out cards. “Now, Cope, in the game of primero each man has two cards. You may look at yours.”

Harriet looked. She had two queens, which struck her as a very nice hand.

“We shall go about the table. Your choice is to pass, in which case you must discard and draw. Stake, by putting some money down, or bid,” Villiers said. “I, for instance, will bid one hundred pounds with a forty-seven.”

“Who has forty-seven?” Harriet asked, confused.

“No one,” Jem put in. “Villiers wants you to think that he has it.”

It took a few minutes to catch the rhythm of the game, but quickly thereafter Harriet realized that the bets were much larger than she had realized. For example, Castlemaine staked, and unless she was mistaken, what he put down was the right to provision the pursers. For all England.

Villiers raised an eyebrow, but passed.

Jem bid a huge amount of money against the contract and it was Harriet’s turn again. She looked at her hand. She was starting to know Jem’s face. He didn’t have all those points he was pretending to have. So she could win. But—but provisioning the pursers? She knew nothing of pursers. On the other hand, it was clearly a lucrative contract. And perhaps they would play again.

She won.

“You throw your heart into the game in a reckless fashion, Cope,” said Castlemaine, looking slightly displeased.

Villiers leaned forward. “Cope is young but not foolhardy, Castlemaine, and there is play to go this evening. Perhaps more importantly, his estate could certainly manage the pursers, many times over. He is my relative.”

And so it continued, with laughter and the occasional bawdy insult. From what Harriet could hear of the other table, the play—and the bets—were the same. Large. Powerful.

They took a break between hands and she leaned toward Jem. “This Game…”

“Centrally important to the governing of England,” he said. “And so much more interesting than hanging about in Parliament and getting hoarse shouting at each other.”

“But what if someone wins who—”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll take that provisions contract off you next round. Castlemaine knows I mean to have it.”

“Is that legal?” Harriet asked.

Jem looked surprised. “Why in the bloody hell wouldn’t it be? Of course it is.”

Another hand. Harriet was starting to enjoy herself. All the hours she’d spent in Judge Truder’s court, reading the eyes of men who were accused of crimes—and the eyes of those doing the accusing—were coming in very handy. She knew when Jem was lying. Within two hands, she knew Castlemaine well enough to guess whether he had a good hand, and though Villiers was tricky, she managed to beat him as well.

But now Villiers was looking tired. “I’m afraid I’ll have to call it a night, gentlemen.”

The provisions contract was still in Harriet’s hands, and she’d won four hundred pounds from Castlemaine as well. “Does the money actually come from you?” she asked frankly.

“Discretionary funds from the Crown,” Castlemaine said. “The king would love to attend the Game himself, but that wouldn’t be effective. I’ll post back immediately tomorrow morning and tell him the outcome. I admit that he’ll likely be surprised to hear that such a young gentleman has taken over the provisions contract, but given what I’ve seen of your play, I have no doubt but that it’s in good hands.”

Harriet thought with a little shudder about the king’s reaction to hearing that the Duchess of Berrow now owned the contract. “Pray do not write him yet,” she said. “Why doesn’t the king stage his own Game?” she asked.

“Difficult to beat a king resoundingly,” Jem said. “Especially an irascible one.”

“I never knew there was a Game like this,” Harriet said.

“There’s always a Game, behind every government,” Jem said. “Sometimes it happens in the king’s own bedchamber, and sometimes in an anteroom. And sometimes at Fonthill.”

“Often at Fonthill, it seems,” Harriet remarked.

He bowed, and went to speak to his other guests.

So she left.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Leaving the Audience Forever

H arriet couldn’t sleep. Even though she didn’t care to admit it to herself, she had thought Jem would come to her bed. She was leaving the next morning…Didn’t he want to make love again?

And yet how could she call it making love?

She finally got herself to sleep by making a list of all the wonderful things she would do with Eugenia during her visit, from finding kittens (there were always kittens in the barn), to having tea with the Froibles’s little girls, to playing dress-up with all those Elizabethan gowns in the attic.

Harriet was having a wonderful dream, one of the best of her life. She was on her back, boneless, and Jem was kissing every inch of her. His mouth was open and his tongue was caressing her, soothing her until she craved more, until she was murmuring with—

Until she woke up.

“What are you doing here?” she gasped. Her nightgown was up to her armpits. He was sprawled out next to her, stark naked. “How did you get into my room?”

He stopped kissing her ribs just long enough to say, “I walked in.”

It was such a laconic, Jem-like thing to say that her heart thumped. His fingers were trailing up her ankle.

“And now,” Harriet said, with a little squeak—

“I’m going to make love to you.”

“We have to talk. I need to talk to you about Eugenia.”

“No. We need to make love.”

She pushed away his fingers and sat up. “It’s very kind of you, Jem, but I think I would feel more comfortable if you listened to what I said.”

He groaned and his fingers fell from her thighs.

“Eugenia needs the companionship of other little girls,” she told him.

He pulled a pillow over his head.

“I know you loathe the idea,” she said sympathetically. “But you needn’t send her away to school. If you would send her with me for visits now and then, I would invite children to my house. There are very nice girls just down the lane.”

He said something but it was muffled by the pillow. Years of marriage had taught Harriet a great deal about men, however, and she kept talking. If he really had something to say, he would remove the pillow.

“Eugenia thinks you have her locked in her rooms, as if she were some sort of prisoner. One of the maids told her the house was full of monsters.”

The pillow flew to the ground. His eyes were blank. But she couldn’t shelter him; she couldn’t.

“Apparently she was frightened by the monsters, but now she says she’s more frightened by rats.”

“Damn it!” Jem growled, throwing himself off the bed. He walked across the room to the hearth, bent over, and picked up a log.

Harriet watched the lean powerful line of his body. “She could visit me,” she said. “There are often kittens in the barn. The family down the road has three little girls. I’ll invite them over for tea. She can learn to ride a pony.”

“A tea party? I could—”