The pang of guilt hit Percy with its familiar swift, sharp jab to the gut, as it always did when he thought of his daughter.
No, Percy wouldn’t be discussing Olivia or any of his family with Runt. He would only have to defend them—for they were absolutely in the right. Runt was determined to revisit the past. So, let them, and be done with it. “Where is Chippers?” Percy asked. This was the nickname for Lord Phineas Featherstone.
“Checking the betting books,” Runt supplied.
Percy plowed on with his line of questioning. “And Bongo?”Lord Jarvis Smythe-Vane.
“Oh, he didn’t come out tonight. His gout, you know.”
Percy hadn’t, but no surprise there. “And Tuppy?”Lord Harold Ponsonby.
“Tupping a wench upstairs, what else?”
Right.“And Bumpy?”Lord Basil Arbuthnot.
Runt jutted his chin toward a point behind them. “Passed out in a chair.”
Percy glanced back and spotted the unconscious man, a thread of drool hanging from his open mouth.
And that was the old Eton tribe accounted for.
To survive Eton, a boy needed a tribe, and they’d formed one based on their shared status as younger sons, spares to the heirs. With no expectations placed upon them, they’d been free to be useless to a one, and they’d run with it, Percy included. In fact, as the younger son of a powerful duke, he’d been their leader. And they were exactly who he would have become had he not sped off to the Continent and war on a wave of misguided foolhardiness. Reckless vainglory had its uses.
But Runt and his cohort weren’t the worst part of his past. Not even close.
Across the hazard table, the croupier caught his eye. “Your toss, monsieur,” the man called out in a light French accent.
Percy found a pair of dice in his hand and gave himself a mental shake. Tonight, he had an opportunity to send the worst part of his past to the devil. It was time to get on with it. “Stay if you like, Runt, but I have work to do.”
“Work?” Runt asked, as if startled by the very concept. “This is pleasure, old man.”
“For some.”
~ ~ ~
One hour later
Oblong green baize stretched ahead of Percy, a pair of dice rattling in his hand. Gathered round this hazard table stood a moneyed, bleary-eyed crowd breathless in anticipation of his next cast.
“Dingo,” whined Runt’s voice beside him, “haven’t you had enough?”
Percy smirked down at the man. When had Lord Percival Bretagne ever had enough of anything? Never once in his life had he been able to resist raising the stakes when the opportunity presented itself.
Again, he rattled the dice, this time for effect. Another thrill of anticipation shimmered through air dank with bodies long in need of a wash and a sleep. He opened his hand. “Blow on my dice for good luck.”
The ever-faithful Runt heaved a resigned sigh before doing as his old leader commanded. “Aren’t you happy with your winnings?”
“Happy?” Percy scoffed.
Happiness had become an abstract concept the day he’d engaged in his first battle on the Peninsula, acrid cannon smoke filling his lungs, rifle bullets whizzing past his ear, and the realization sunk deep into his bones that they weren’t playing toy soldiers. The stakes were infinitely higher, of life and death, and Death wasn’t playing around. In fact, judging by the broken, bloodied bodies strewn about the ground in twisted poses of which only contortionists and the dead were capable, it had become clear that Death was winning. Death always won. It was simply a matter of putting off the inevitable for as many seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years as one could manage and somehow make a difference in lives in the meantime.
How was happiness possible after one had come face-to-face with this reality?
Percy didn’t place much value in the concept of happiness. It only mattered what he did, not how he felt.Feelinghad only gotten him into trouble in the past.
But this . . . A wicked smile curled up one side of his mouth . . .Thiswas mindlessness, a state he could slip into only too readily. How he’d missed it. He let it take him into its embrace and suck him inside as he glanced down at his stacks of winnings. It did appear he might have enough to get management’s attention—and, from there, Montfort’s—yet . . . Percy wanted more.
Percy pushed his winnings, every last farthing, forward, eliciting a chorus of startled gasps, raucousyeahs!, and whistles that split the fuggy air. The only way to have enough—to haveeverything—was to risk everything.
