1
"You are not at the Cholmondley ball, Jack?"
The Marquess of Kenwood eyed his questioner steadily. Since he was sitting in the lounge of White's Club, well into his cups, his boots crossed at the ankles on the table in front of him, surrounded by
a large group of similarly idle gentlemen, it seemed perfectly obvious to him that he was not at the Cholmondley ball.
"No," he said.
The newcomer sniggered. "Afraid old Cholmondley might find you closeted somewhere with his wife,"
he said, "andcut up nasty?"
The marquess raised a quizzing glass to his eye. Not that he saw the other with any great clarity even with its aid. Having spent a rare and thoroughly congenial evening at the club with male companions in order to celebrate the birthday of one of them, he was, he freely admitted to himself, at least three parts foxed. Three parts out of four, that was.
"Lady Cholmondley?" he said. "She must be all of three weeks in my past, Hartley. Where y' been?
To the Orient and back?"
"There have been five or six since then,'' another gentleman said—the one who had loosened his neckcloth and slung it up onto one shoulder for greater comfort. "Molly Haines.Annette what's-her-name.That little dancer."He counted them off on his fingers and frowned in concentration."The one with the orange curls."
"Sally Strange," someone else said.
The Marquess of Kenwood raised his half-empty brandy glass to his eye and squinted through the liquid.Pretty colors.
"How d'youdoit, Jack?" one inebriated and portly member asked enviously.
"What?" someone else said in the bored accents of a truearistocrat."You don't know how to do it, Maurice? And you in your thirtieth year?"
Poor Maurice became the instant victim of a loud burst of bawdy guffaws.
"No, really," he persisted. "There can't be a libertine in all England to rival Jack."
No one appeared to object to Maurice's choice of word. It was clearly an enviable thing to be a notorious libertine.
The marquess regarded his boots modestly and took another sizeable swallow from his glass. "Can I help it if I was born irresistible to the fair sex?" he asked of no one in particular. He yawned until his jaws cracked."Women!They're the only thing that makes life worth living." His words sounded strange to his own ears. They were rolling themselves together around his tongue.
"I daresay there ain't a female in all England who could resist Jack if he set his mind to having her," Maurice said admiringly, addressing the company at large.
The Queen of England, the marquess thought dully, wondering if his boots really had moved farther away. But they couldn't have—his feet were still attached to them. It was a long time since he had been this foxed. He was going to suffer in the morning. And Carter was going to poker up andlookdisdainfully along that sharp nose of his.A pox on all valets.An arrogant breed.
"Oh, come now," Elwood Rittsman said. He sounded damnably sober. "No female? ThatIsa little hard to believe. Even Kenwood must suffer failure on occasion."
The marquess raised his quizzing glass again and finally found Rittsman through it. He seemed to recall that he had always detested the man. Big and brawny enough to be a prize pugilist, Rittsman nevertheless was sneaky in the ring. He had a habit of dancing around his opponent, just out of range of any really bruising fist, until he could do something to distract the other's attention. Then he used his own left—a punishing and unfair blow. The marquess knew. He had suffered an enlarged and painful nose not a year ago in just that way.
"No female," he said with theatrical clarity, working his tongue carefully around the words.
''Oh, I say.'' Someone, even at this late hour, had a voice of enthusiasm. "Do I smell a wager?"
The word was like an instant tonic to the flagging energies and clouded brains of a dozen late-night revelers. Everyone came happily alive. A few gentlemen who had not even been part of the group strolled over from other corners of the room. A wager—any wager—was the very lifeblood of the gentlemen's clubs, the one diversion that could revitalize even the most jaded of temperaments.
A wager?Who was wagering about what for what?Devil takeit—Lord Kenwood lowered his quizzing glass and looked ruefully at the inch of brandy left in his glass—but he was drunk. Not foxed. Not in his cups.Drunk, pure and simple.But that wager had to do with him. And that snake, Rittsman.
"A wager," he told his glass firmly, nodding his head.
"A wager," Rittsman said coolly.
Someone snapped his fingers and sent a waiter running for the betting book, quill pens, and inkwell.
