"But of course-tomorrow, at Devonshire House?" Bernard almost licked his fleshy lips in anticipation.
Sebastian nodded, tried to laugh, but it had a hollow ring. "Why not? It'll be a dull enough affair otherwise, I'll lay odds." Flinging a comradely arm around Harry's shoulder, he strolled off with his friend.
"It looked like you lost a fortune," Harry remarked, giving his friend an anxious stare.
Sebastian shrugged. "I'll get it back, Harry, tomorrow.
"I told you, Gracemere's a bad man to play with."
Sebastian looked down at his friend and Harry saw a different light in his eyes. He spoke softly. "So am I, Harry, as Gracemere is going to find out. You'll see."
Harry's scalp prickled. He had never seen Sebastian look like that, never heard that note in his voice. He suddenly saw Sebastian Davenport as a dangerous man, and he didn't know how or why he should have formed such an impression.
29
"Gregson, when my brother calls you may send him straight up to the yellow drawing room. But I'm not at home to anyone else." Judith crossed the hall to the stairs the following morning, pausing to rearrange a display of bronze chrysanthemums in a copper jug on a marble table.
"Very well, my lady."
"These are past their best," she said, giving up on the flowers. "Have them replaced, please."
"Yes, my lady." Gregson bowed. There was an unusual sharpness in her ladyship's voice this morning, a slight air of irritability about her.
Judith ran up to her own sanctum, where she sat down immediately in front of the chess board. The problem set out was sufficiently complex to occupy her mind for the next hour while she waited for her brother. They would spend the greater part of the day training for the evening's play, separating at the end of the afternoon with time enough to rest and compose themselves before the game began.
It was a pattern they had established long since, on their travels, but it had been many months since they'd used it. Despite her anxiety, the immense value of the stakes, Judith was aware of the old familiar prickle of excitement, the surge of exhilaration.
Sebastian arrived before midmorning. He greeted her briefly, then shrugged out of his coat and sat down in his shirt-sleeves, breaking the pack of cards on the table. "Let's go over the code for aces. The movement you make for the spade is very similar to the one for the heart. I want to see if we can sharpen the difference." Judith nodded and picked up her fan.
They worked steadily until noon, making minor adjustments to the code of signals, then they played a game of chess until Gregson announced nuncheon. Marcus walked into the dining room to find his wife and her brother eating scalloped oysters and cold chicken in absorbed silence.
"If I didn't know you both better, I'd think I was interrupting a quarrel," he observed, helping himself to oysters.
"No," Judith said, managing a smile. "We were just absorbed in our own thoughts. How was your morning?"
Marcus began to regale them with a tale he'd heard at Brooks's, and then realized that they weren't listening to him. He paused, waited for one of them to notice that he hadn't finished the story, and when neither of them did, shrugged and turned his attention to his plate.
"Are you dining at home this evening, Ju?" Sebastian asked abruptly.
"No, at the Henleys'," she answered. "Isobels giving a dinner party before the ball."
"Oh, good." Marcus refilled his glass, smiling across the table at her. "I didn't like to think of you dining alone, lynx."
"Oh, I can usually avoid such a fate, if I wish to," she said with a lift of her eyebrows. "I'm not dependent upon my husband's company, my lord."
Ordinarily, the remark would have been bantering, but for some reason Marcus sensed a strain in the words, and her smile seemed effortful. Perhaps she had quarreled with Sebastian.
"Do you have something important to do this afternoon, Judith, or would you like to ride with me in Richmond Park? It's a beautiful afternoon," he asked at the end of the meal.
She shook her head. "Another day I'd come with pleasure, but this afternoon Sebastian and I have plans that can't be put off."
"Oh." He tossed his napkin on the table, concealing his hurt and puzzlement. "Then I'll leave you to them."
"Oh, dear," Judith whispered as the door closed softly behind him. "I didn't mean to sound so dismissive, but I couldn't think what other excuse to make."
"After tonight, you won't have to make excuses." Sebastian pushed back his chair. "Let's get back to work."
By five o'clock, they knew they had covered every eventuality, every combination of hands that skill and experience could come up with. They knew how Grace-mere played when he played straight, and Sebastian knew what tricks he favored when he played crooked. They now had in place their own system that would defeat the earl's marked cards.
"We've done the best we can," Sebastian pronounced finally. "There's an element of chance, of course, but there always is."
"He's a gamester who's scented blood," Judith said. "We know what that madness is like. Once in the grip of it, he'll not stop until he's at point non plus … or you are."
"It will not be I," her brother said with quiet confidence.
"No." Judith held out her hand. They clasped hands in silent communion that held both promise and resolve. Then Sebastian bent and kissed her cheek and left. She listened to his feet receding on the stairs, before going up to her room to lie down with pads soaked in witch hazel on her eyes, and a swirling cloud of playing cards in her internal vision.
Gracemere escorted Agnes Barret to Devonshire House some time after ten o'clock. They were early, but not unfashionably so, and spent an hour circulating the salons. They danced twice and then Agnes was claimed by a bewhiskered acquaintance of her ailing husband's. "I shall enjoy watching you pluck your pigeon later," she said softly as they parted. Her lips curved in a smile of malicious anticipation, and her little white teeth glimmered for a minute. Gracemere bowed over her hand.
"Such an audience can only add spice to an already delicious prospect, madam."
"I trust you'll have another audience also," she murmured.
The earl's pale eyes narrowed vindictively. "The sister as well? Yes, ma'am. I trust so. It will add savor to the spice.
"It's to be hoped she doesn't vomit over you again." Agnes's soft laugh was as malicious as her earlier smile, and she went off on the arm of her partner.
Gracemere looked around the rapidly filling salon.
There was no sign as yet of Sebastian Davenport, but he saw Judith enter with Isobel Henley and her party and his lips tightened. Since the debacle at Jermyn Street, he had continued to cultivate her as assiduously as ever, although always out of sight of Marcus. His motive now was simple. A beloved sister would watch her brother's downfall. Judith would suffer in impotent horror as she witnessed her brother's destruction, and the earl would have some small satisfaction for the mortification she had caused him. Marcus's pride would be humbled at the public humiliation of his brother-in-law, and Gracemere and Agnes would have Harriet Moreton and her fortune.
The earl made his way over to Judith. "Magnificent," he murmured, raising her hand to his lips. His admiration was genuine. Emeralds blazed in her copper hair and around the white throat. Her gown of gold spider gauze over bronze satin was startlingly unusual, and a perfect foil for her hair.
"Flatterer," she declared, tapping his wrist with her fan. "But, indeed, my lord, I am not immune to flattery, so pray don't stop."