Goldie took her seat with the dignity of a dowager empress settling into the ancestral throne. "I'm sorry, but I couldn't help overhearing your conversation. I hope you don't think it forward. of me, but there are ways to cut the cost of a time tour. Considerably. You can even turn a tidy profit on occasion. If," she smiled, "you're ... mmm ... willing to bend the rules a little? Nothing genuinely illegal, mind you, just a tad ... exciting. I've tried it dozens of times, myself, or I wouldn't recommend it."
She sipped her wine and waited, smiling politely.
Her mark blinked a few times, taking in Goldie's expensive Victorian-era tea-gown and glittering jewelry.
He blinked a few times more, swallowed loudly enough to be heard two tables away, then went for it. "What ways?"
Goldie leaned forward slightly, just touching Sam's hand with well-manicured fingertips. Diamonds winked from one ring, sapphires from another. "Well, as you know, we uptimers are legally forbidden to bet on sporting events downtime-boxing, horse races, that sort of thing-because we might be able to find out the results in advance. ATF considers that an unfair advantage,"
She allowed a tinge of aristocratic disdain to creep into her voice and glanced derisively in the direction of Primary, with its Bureau of Access Time Functions tax collectors, luggage-searching busybodies, and officious bureaucrats.
Sam grunted once. "So I've been told. Our guide said we'll be watched to keep us from doing any betting while we're in London. Interfering, high-handed..."
Goldie let him rant at length, then brought the conversation around toward her intended direction again. "Yes, I know all that, dearie." She patted his hand. "As I said, I've done this dozens of times. It's very simple, really. You find out the winners of whatever race you want to bet on, then give that information and your money to one of the downtimers hanging around the station. Many of them pick up odd jobs at the last minute for Time Tours as baggage handlers, so it's really a very simple matter to arrange. The downtimer places your bet and collects your winnings. You give him a small cut, and voila! You've helped defray expenses, at the very least. And best of all, you split the earnings downtime, so you can either convert it to uptime money the ATF can't touch or buy a few trinkets to bring home as souvenirs."
Goldie lifted her wineglass, tilting it so that the endless light in the Commons glittered on the jewels adorning her fingers. Come on, Sammie boy. Go for it. Not that any downtimer'll come near your lovely bankroll. She smiled politely and sipped wine as though the outcome of his decision meant nothing whatsoever to her. Hook him, then tell him the idiot downtimer wandered through a gate and Shadowed himself, went ` Poof!" money and all. Complain to management if you like, but of course, it's your word against mine and there's that matter of admitting an attempt to place an illegal bet ....
Sam wiped his brow one last time with a wilted handkerchief, then said decisively, "I'll do it! I will. Tell me how."
Goldie set her wineglass down. "As it happens, I've already made arrangements with a gentleman to place a bet for me this trip. He can place a bet for you, as well, on the same race. The wagering stands at ten-to-one. I'm placing ten grand on it. This time next week, I'll have a cool hundred thousand more in my retirement fund."
Sam, his face flushed now with excitement rather than nerves, reached for his coat pocket and pulled out a fat wallet. Goldie salivated and swallowed while toying idly with her wineglass to keep her fingers from trembling in anticipation of all that lovely money.
"How much..." Sam was muttering. "How much to risk? Oh, hell, here. Have him bet it all."
The man handed her British pound notes which added up to five thousand dollars, American. Goldie smiled again, her predatory heart singing. Then a shadow fell across the table. They both glanced up. Goldie widened her eyes in astonishment.
"Kynan Rhys Gower!"
"I come, lady, as I promise. The bet, lady. Do I hear right? I make bet for this man, too?"
Goldie blinked once, owl-like, aware that her lips had fallen into a round O of surprise. Then she forcibly recovered her composure. "Why, yes, that's right, Kynan. I just didn't realize you'd come early to collect my stake."
"I prompt, lady. Place bet good. All bets." He winked.
Then he plucked the money from nerveless fingers before she could part lips to protest. Kynan bowed and kissed her hand gallantly, then bowed to Sam, who was beaming, clearly impressed by the charade. Goldie didn't know what to do.
But if Kynan Rhys Gower thought she'd let him out of her sight, he was a greater fool than she thought.
The Welshman bowed again and started to leave.
"If you'll excuse me," Goldie said hastily, "Kynan and I have business of our own to finish."
"But--"
"Don't worry, we'll be on the tour together. I'll catch up to you at the Britannia Gate, Sam."
Goldie fled after the Welshman, who had already vanished around a corner of Victoria Station's cobbled, twisted "streets" of shop fronts, cafes, and pubs. She spotted him ahead and picked up speed.
"Kynam!"
The Welshman ducked into a pub and vanished in a wooden-floored room with air so thick from cigar smoke and alcohol fumes, it was as though a marshland miasma rose from dozens of beer mugs, brandy snifters, whisky glasses, and stinking black stogies. Goldie stood glaring from the threshold until her eyesight adjusted, but there was no sign of Kynan Rhys Gower.
"Has anybody seen Kynan Rhys Gower?" she demanded of the crowded room at large.
"Headed toward the loo, love," someone sang out.
Grim-faced, Goldie stormed into the men's room, not caring a fiddle for the shocked men who grabbed at open flies and cursed her in scalding terms when she started searching stalls.
Kynan was not in the "loo."
She emerged, color rising high in her cheeks from sheer ire.
Then someone came past, saying, " ... won't believe it! Biggest domestic screaming fight I've ever seen! Yelling cat and dog, they are, her waving a fist full of money at him, and the poor schmuck trying to explain it was for her he'd got himself swindled ... ."
Goldie cursed once aloud, explosively, earning curious stares from several 'eighty-sixers hanging on this gossip.
"Something wrong, Goldie?' Rachel Eisenstein asked, her brow furrowing slightly.
"Not a thing!"
Rachel shrugged and turned back to the storyteller. "Think it'll require stitches before they're done?"
Goldie stormed away from the terminal's head physician and the rest of the gossipers yammering about her money.
That ... that honor-bound, incompetent, downtime rat! . .
He'd given the blasted money back to Sam's wife!
She beat a dignified, hasty retreat toward her moneychanging shop, seething inside as she tried to come up with some other scheme that would net her a big gain over that mongrel cur, Skeeter Jackson.
Goldie slammed shut the shop door so hard, the bell jangled wildly against the glass. She stalked behind her counter and indulged in at least five minutes of unrestrained, sulky cursing where nothing but her glittering coins and jewels could hear.
Then, drawing several savage breaths, she added Kynan Rhys Gower to the list of names she owed serious paybacks. And then-caution overcoming wrath--she carefully struck his name off her list again. For reasons personally painful to recall, Kynan Rhys Gower was under Kit Carson's personal-and far-reaching-protection. After what Goldie Morran had suffered as a result of Kit's wrath, she did not want to find herself on the losing end of another deal with Kenneth "Kit" Carson, world-famous time scout and land-shark businessman.
Goldie muttered under her breath. "Damn meddling scouts, guides, and downtimers, one and all." She turned her savage anger toward a more productive target: Skeeter Jackson. She had to know what he was up to. After that blitzkrieg attack by those boys she'd hired, he'd gone virtually underground. Goldie tapped long, manicured nails against the glass countertop, noticed the rings she'd borrowed from her inventory. She replaced them in the glass case with a snort of disgust, then reached thoughtfully for the telephone. She might not have won this battle, but the war was far from over.