Marcus watched her fumble in her reticule and thought perhaps she was looking for her handkerchief. Such an offer would be sufficient to bring tears to the eyes of the most grasping female.
"I don't have anyone to defend my honor, Lord Car-rington, so I must do it for myself." She turned. In her hand was a small, silver-mounted pistol, and it was pointed in the most workmanlike fashion at his heart. "You have insulted me beyond bearing. Davenports are not whores. Even highly paid whores."
Carrington was vaguely, aware that his jaw had dropped and his mouth was hanging open as he stared in shocked amazement, his eyes riveted to the small, deadly muzzle pointing at his chest. "Don't be ridiculous," he said, swallowing hard. "Put the gun away, Judith, before you do something stupid."
"I am an excellent shot, I should tell you," she said. "I'm not about to do anything stupid. Indeed, I consider putting a bullet in you, my lord, to be one of my more sensible notions."
"God in heaven," he whispered, trying to order the turmoil raging in his brain. For some reason, he had the unshakable conyiction that Judith Davenport was more than capable of pulling the trigger. "I intended no insult," he tried. "Not to you or to your family. The manner in which you and your brother live led me to assume
you wouldn't be averse to an unconventional but nevertheless convenient source of income. You don't live like a woman of virtue, ma'am, however skillful you are at the masquerade. You and your brother lead a raffish, hand-to-mouth existence in the shadows of the gaming tables. Can you deny that?"
Judith didn't attempt to do so. "That doesn't justify offering me such a dishonorable proposal. My circumstances are not of my own making. You can know nothing of them."
Marcus swallowed again. His mouth was very dry. He wondered if he could cross the space between them before she pulled the trigger. He couldn't. He watched, mesmerized, as she squinted down the barrel, extending her hand with the pistol straight in front of her. The sharp report and the flash of fire from the barrel were simultaneous. The smell of cordite hung in the muggy air. He waited for the pain, but there was nothing. He followed the direction of her eyes, between his feet. The bullet had dug a neat hole in the ground, directly in the middle of the space between his boots. It was no accident.
"I decided you weren't worth hanging for," Judith said coldly. She dropped the pistol in her reticule. "I'll send the twenty guineas to your house as soon as I return to my lodgings."
Marcus cleared his throat. "In the circumstances, I am prepared to forgo the wager."
"I always pay my debts of honor," she said. "Or did you think that I was without honor in that respect also?"
He waved his hands in hasty retraction. "It was only a suggestion. One quite without merit, I realize."
Judith glared at him for a minute, then she turned and marched away through the trees.
Marcus let out his breath on a slow exhalation, run-
ning his hands through his hair. He had assumed she received such proposals often enough. She lived by her wits, it was only to be expected that she might use her body, too. But what had her brother said? Something about his sister's eccentric principles. Presumably, he'd just been given a lesson in them.
Sweet heaven, what an exciting partner in passion such a woman would make. Perversely, he found he had not the slightest intention of giving up his pursuit.
"Good God, what's happened to send you into such a temper, Ju?" Sebastian looked up from the chess board as his sister banged fuming through the door of their living room.
"I don't think I have ever been angrier," she said, drawing her gloves off her trembling hands. "Lord Car-rington has just had the… the unmitigated gall to offer me a carte blanche." She tossed her gloves onto the sofa and pulled the pins loose from her hat.
Sebastian whistled. "What did you say?"
"I shot him." She pulled the pistol from her reticule and hurled it onto the sofa.
Her brother reached over and picked up the weapon. The smell of cordite was acrid on the muzzle. He spun the chamber. It was empty. "Well, you certainly shot something," he observed. "But somehow I doubt it was the marquis. You've the devil of a temper, but I don't see you as a murderess."
Judith bit her lip. Sebastian could always bring her down to earth. "I shot between his feet," she said. "But I frightened him, Sebastian. He really thought for a minute he was about to meet his maker." She chuckled suddenly, relishing the memory. "Pour me a glass of sherry, love. It's been a most trying morning, one way or an-odier."
Sebastian filled two sherry glasses from the decanter on the sideboard. "What were the terms of the carte blanche?" he asked with a bland look. "Just as a matter of interest, of course."
When she told him, he whistled once more. "If it weren't for Gracemere, it might have done very well for both of us."
"You would sell your own sister?" she exclaimed.
"Oh, only to the highest bidder," he assured her solemnly.
Judith threw a cushion at him, then bent to examine the chess problem positioned on the board. Chess was a way of sharpening their wits, particularly before an evening's gaming.
"Of course, if anyone suspects for one second that we're not what we seem when we get to London, we'll never be able to move in Gracemere's circles," Sebastian said, serious now. He sipped his sherry. "You've inadvertently given Carrington the wrong impression. I think, m'dear, that it may be time to cultivate higher necklines and a pious air."
"And what will you cultivate, brother?" She regarded him over the lip of her glass.
"Oh, I shall be a most serious student of foreign parts," he declared. "I shall have traveled extensively and be most amazingly knowledgeable, and most amazingly boring, as I prose on and on about the flora and fauna of exotic places."
Judith chuckled, imagining her good-humored, insouciant sibling in such a guise. "You'd have to forsake striped waistcoats and starched cravats, and play whist for penny points."
"Well, that I don't think I could manage," he said.
"Not if we're to have enough to pay our expenses." He came to look at the chess board with her. "Can you see it? White to move and mate in three. I've been looking at it for half an hour and can't get beyond queening the pawn. But then it's stalemate."
Judith frowned, considering. What if the pawn knighted, instead? She ran through the consequences in her head. "Let's try pawn to queen seven."
Sebastian moved the pieces, following the logic now on his own, bringing the problem to solution. "Clever girl," he said, toppling the black king with a fingertip. "You've always been able to see farther than I can."
"At chess, but you're better at piquet."
Sebastian shrugged, but offered no disclaimer. "Shall we have nuncheon?" He gestured to the table.
Judith wrinkled her nose at the dull and insubstantial repast laid out by their landlady. "Bread and cheese again."
"But we're dining with the Gardeners," he reminded her, cutting into the loaf. "And supper at the Duchess of Richmond's ball should be more than palatable."
"And I daresay the Most Honorable Marquis of Car-rington will be present." Judith sat down and dug a knife into the wedge of cheese. "I don't seem to have done too well at disarming him, do I?" She frowned. "Threatening to shoot a man isn't very flirtatious." She took the cheese off the knife with her fingers and absently popped it into her mouth. "Oh." She was suddenly reminded. "I have to settle a debt of honor. I owe Carrington twenty guineas."
4
It hardly seemed possible that Napoleon and his army were gathered a stone's throw from the city, Judith thought, as she and Sebastian joined the receiving line that night, slowly progressing up the wide shallow staircase, to be announced to the Duchess of Richmond standing at the head.