“I won’t. Or not much,” he blustered. “I’ve told you, a man has to play a bit, Portia, or he’ll look demmed fishy. I was with some friends—Twinby has an uncle who’s trustee of a bank. Might be a loan there. Couldn’t not go with him, could I? And it turned out excellently. See!” He began pulling money out of his pockets and heaping it on the table. Some coins rolled off to spin on the floor.
Portia flung herself after them before they disappeared into some chink in the floorboards. She scrambled to her feet, found the tinderbox, and made a light for the candle. The growing flame reflected merrily off a heap of gold coins.
“See,” said Oliver proudly. “Isn’t that a pretty sight?”
She couldn’t deny it. “Yes. Oh, yes. I don’t think it’s wise of you to have played, Oliver, but this will be a help. If the worst comes about, this money will allow us to get by for a long time.”
“Such dull stuff. With all this, we’ll be able to enjoy London!”
“Oliver!”
His smile was brilliant. “Don’t turn Puritan on me, Portia. Look at it.” He sank his hands in the pile of gold. “I left the house with only thirty guineas, and I come home with all this.”
Portia swallowed. If he’d left with thirty guineas he’d taken nearly all their small stock of money. He had said he needed a few, and she’d agreed. It had never occurred to her that he would translate a few into thirty.
“You could have lost the thirty,” she pointed out, forcing herself to speak mildly.
“But I didn’t. My luck’s changed!”
Oh lord. It was like the first smell of putrefaction. The shock of losing so badly had made him swear off gaming, but now he’d had this taste of success, could she stop the rot? Portia’s hands shook as she gathered the money into a towel. She had to admit that it made a remarkably heavy bundle.
“Don’t I get any of that at all?” he asked plaintively.
“How much do you want?”
“Fifty perhaps. A man has to have money in his pocket.”
Portia wanted to remind him that he was deep in debt. No matter how many coins in his pocket, they were not truly his. But she could see there was no point now. She counted out the fifty. “We must keep the rest safe for necessities, Oliver.”
“Of course we must.” He grinned and flicked one of the golden coins. “After all, there’ll be more where this came from.”
“Oliver!” Portia protested, seeking the words to turn him from this course.
He shook his head, almost glowing with new hope. “Perhaps we won’t need a loan from anyone. People win thousands at the tables every night. Now my luck’s changed, we can get Overstead back the way it was lost.”
Portia started to argue, but he ignored her and began to struggle out of his clothes. She returned to her own bedroom clutching the bundle of coins. So much gold should be a comfort, but she felt only despair.
She had truly thought that Oliver had learned that gaming was the road to ruin, but this success had changed everything.
Perhaps that was the purpose of it.
For all she knew he had fallen into the hands of a rascal who would tease him on with small winnings until he became over confident and lost all. It was a well-known trap for the unwary, and they called the practitioners of the art “hawks.” An appropriately predatory name.
She thumped the bundle down on a chair. Why could Oliver not see what was happening?
On the other hand, what was there left to lose? Clearly Oliver was making such a good pretense of prosperity that the new hawk was not aware that his prey had already lost all.
She wished she could announce it in broadsheets all over London.
Previously Portia had not hidden any of their money, but now she knew she must. She didn’t feel comfortable about it, for it was Oliver’s, but she wasn’t sure she could trust him not to gamble away every last coin.
Oh, but it was a form of madness she dealt with here.
She studied the room with despair. Her simple iron bed and plain armoire offered no cunning place of concealment.
Then she looked at the fireplace.
It had a simple wooden surround much like the one in Maidenhead. When she inspected it, it too had a gap all around between the wood and the wall. A test showed that a guinea would just fit into that gap and not be able to fall farther.
