“Madam.” He turned and, with a cool smile, deflected the fire in her enraged eyes before dropping the linen scrap into her insistent hand. Turning back to the table, he nodded to Monmouth, who stood ready with the coin for the toss. “Heads,” he called as his hand, of its own volition, drifted to the embroidery threads inside his waistcoat pocket. Goodness and good sense.
Darcy won the toss of the coin. He shuffled the deck and offered Sayre the cut. That formality performed, he began dealing out the cards in tierce until each of them had received his dozen. Laying the last aside, Darcy retrieved his hand, and quickly touting up his ruff, sequences, and kinds, he chose his discards, closed his fan, and regarded Sayre with a raised brow.
Across the table, with the purse and sword dividing them, Sayre arranged his hand in a heavy silence that was dutifully observed by all the gentlemen dispersed about them. He licked his lips; bit the lower and then the upper before breaking the quiet that had descended upon them.
“Blank.” He coughed and then repeated himself. “B-blank.” Trenholme groaned softly in the background, eliciting a sharp command from his brother to “shut his jobbernowl.” Darcy nodded his understanding and marked down Sayre’s 10 points in compensation for his unusual lack of court cards. His opponent studied his cards with an assiduous eye and, with jaw set as stone, discarded cards and reached for replacements in the stock. One, two…Darcy betrayed no surprise in Sayre’s decision to replace half of his hand, but with a steady, disinterested regard, he waited for him to arrange his new cards. When they were finally ranked to his satisfaction, Sayre reached for the next two cards in the stock and, as was his privilege, noted them and set them back down. Relaxing somewhat, he leaned back into his chair.
“Darcy,” he invited with a fine show of noblesse oblige, indicating the depleted stock. Darcy pushed his discards over to join Sayre’s and snapped up three from the stock. Briefly noting their value, he set them atop the others in his hand, and lifting the last card, he committed it to memory and placed it back on the table.
“Your bid?” Darcy’s modulated voice still carried across the room and seemed to echo off the bare shelves.
“Forty-eight.” Sayre looked keenly up at him after laying out his ruff of spades. The attention of the room shifted from the cards on the table back to Darcy.
“Fifty-one,” he returned, displaying the diamond-pipped cards.
“Fifty-one it is,” breathed Monmouth. “Gentlemen, you are both down for five points.” Darcy gathered up his cards and waited for Sayre’s next play.
“Six cards, ace high,” Sayre announced and splayed them out in front of him.
“One quart,” Monmouth announced. “Four points to Sayre for a total nine.”
“The same.” Darcy pulled out his sequence for Sayre’s perusal. His Lordship’s gaze flashed expertly over the cards. A brow twitched.
“No winner,” Monmouth reported, “but a quint for Darcy for fifteen points, making a total of twenty. Gentlemen?”
“A quatorze of queens.” Sayre threw down each royal lady as if she were at fault for his previous deficiency.
“Of jacks.” Darcy displayed his cards.
“To Sayre.” Monmouth looked at Darcy with concern and put Sayre down for 14 more points. “Twenty-and-three.” His Lordship’s smile was more of relief than of triumph, and he hurriedly pulled out an additional ternary for 3 more points. “Twenty-and-six then.” Monmouth touted up Sayre’s points. “To Darcy’s tw ——”
A disturbance at the door drowned out Monmouth’s announcement, and the sight of Norwycke’s ancient butler entering into the room brought Sayre to his feet. “What is it now?” he growled before he’d had a clear view of the man. Then, “Good God, man! What the devil has happened!”
At Sayre’s first protest, Darcy had risen and swung around his chair, alert for any eventuality. He now stood by Fletcher, and the two of them exchanged warning glances as the old retainer stumbled farther into the room. The man was a fright. His neckcloth, half undone, dangled down over his thin chest, and his powdered wig was aslant. His rheumy eyes were stricken with fear and, oddly enough, thought Darcy, sadness.
“My lord…my lord,” the man gasped.
“Yes! Speak, man!” Sayre thundered.
“I could not, my lord! Served you, your father, grandfather…all my life. Could not betray —”
“Betray! Who betrays me?” Sayre’s voice raged and echoed against the library’s walls, wavering between anger and fear, and caused the ladies to demand what was the matter.
The old man swayed in the face of his master’s fury. “The servants, my lord. They will not take up your defense at the castle gate. Some” — he gulped — “some have said that they’ll not defend the evil within from the righteous anger without. Give up the child, my lord, I beg you!”
“Oh, my God!” cried Trenholme.
“Child? What child?” roared Sayre. The question was taken up by the rest of the room as they rushed to Sayre, but Darcy swiveled around, intent on a quite different object.
“Fletcher! Where is Lady Sylvanie?”
While the whole of the room formed a clamorous circle about Sayre, Darcy and Fletcher scanned its shadowy recesses in search of the lady. Several of the candles, he noted, seemed to have been extinguished, casting the edges of the great old room into darkness.
“There, sir, at the door!” Fletcher’s clear voice galvanized him into action, and soon both men were circling the other distraught, fearful guests in a bid for the door. That achieved, they stepped together into an empty hallway, lit in only one direction by a few feeble candles. Which way had she taken? “Mr. Darcy, I fear —” his valet began.
“Yes, into the darkness. Come!” Darcy plunged forward, Fletcher beside him, racing into the deepening shadows. They quickly reached a juncture with another corridor sunken almost completely in night. Another decision! “Listen!” Darcy commanded and endeavored to quiet his breathing and the beat of blood through his veins. Faintly, the tapping sound of a woman’s slippers disturbed the unearthly somnolence that seemed to hang in the air. “There!”
“She is making for the older portion of the castle.” Fletcher’s whisper echoed eerily as they turned in pursuit of the sound. “She’ll be the very Devil to find if —”
“Then we must enlist the aid of Providence,” Darcy said over his shoulder as he took the hall at a rapid stalk, his ear cocked against the tapping of his quarry.
“I have, sir, and regularly since we arrived at this…place.”
As most men born to privilege, Darcy had long become accustomed to the presence of servants about their duties in even his most private apartments; therefore, the utter lack of any of that class in their traversal of the castle impressed him as singularly ominous. The old butler had spoken the truth. Little — if any — aid in defense of Norwycke could be expected from Sayre’s people, and once emboldened by the numbers outside, they were more than likely also to take up the hunt for Lady Sylvanie and her companion. He and Fletcher must reach them first or who knew what outrage might be committed to haunt the halls of Norwycke and the consciences of its inhabitants and guests?