Was that true? He might be correct on the first part, but—“I’m not doing what is expected now.”
Kit laughed. “That is a fact.” He drained his tankard. “Come, let’s see if they will let us in the game.”
“Do you really think you can win tonight?” The stakes were whether or not they reached Ireland. The thought made her anxious.
“If not, there will be another game.”
Her father had often made the same claim. For the first time, Elise wondered why her papa couldn’t just stay at Wiltham and find his games in Ireland. What drove him to insist upon traveling the world?
Neither she nor Kit were wearing gloves. He’d grabbed her hand many times during their time after the crash, but this time it was skin on skin.
And she noticed.
His hands were callused, but then, he wasn’t afraid of manual labor. So different from the lords and gentlemen who had wooed her in London.
Yet, there was an uncommon grace to his hand as well. The fingers were long and well-formed. His hold confident. The grip exactly right.
Pulling out a single coin, a measly pence, from his leather purse, Kit set it on the table, a sign he wanted in the next round. He didn’t act embarrassed about his offering.
The game was vingt-et-un.Her father had played it with her and her sisters for hours. They’d used twigs from the garden as money. Elise rarely won. The stakes here seemed just about as modest. No wonder the pence had been accepted.
She reminded herself that all they had to do was earn the fare to take them to Liverpool. She could be hopeful.
Another woman also watched the game. She sat at the trestle table next to the game table. She was older than Elise and had brought knitting. No one seemed to find that odd. Kit indicated that Elise should sit at the table with her and still watch everything that was going on.
When the round finished, a player in front of Kit decided to leave. He offered his place to Kit, who took it with a nod.
“You aren’t coming in with much,” a grizzled man remarked as Kit pushed his coin forward.
“With her by my side for luck, I don’t need much,” Kit answered. The men at the table openly looked over to Elise. She glanced down modestly, feeling a rush of heat to her cheeks. She was the decoy, was she not?
“Aye, you are a lucky one,” the man said. The play began.
Kit won the first round and the third.
He did know when to play and when to pass. He seemed to remember what cards had been played and suspect which ones would appear. That was the way Gwendolyn played. Her memory never lost track of the cards.
Kit’s little pile of coins grew and then ebbed. New players joined in, others left. They had enough for their fare, but he kept playing. Did he really need her to be a “distraction”? She didn’t think so. She was also beginning to suspect that he liked gambling more than he wished to admit.
Elise had been exchanging pleasantries with the village woman when it was Kit’s turn to shuffle. Her interest in the game had been beginning to drift at that point. She barely noticed what was happening at the table next to her. Instead, she was thinking she might take herself out to the barn to see if the hay was as clean as he claimed. She was tired. However, recent events had taught her she would be wise to wait for Kit. She was about to ask if he was nearly done playing when she noticed from the corner of her eye an unusual sight.
He was shuffling the cards...with her father’s signature style. Her father had always bragged about the shuffle. It was unique to him. She and her sisters had all tried to master it without success.
Kit had it right.
The cards cascaded from one hand to the other. And then, he deftly flipped them, one section over the other. Her father had even been able to position cards so that he knew when they would come up. Gwendolyn had accused him of that. He’d just laughed.
Across the table from Kit, the grizzled player said, “That is a neat trick.”
“Easiest way to shuffle them, I assure you,” Kit answered.
That had always been her father’s answer.
Elise stood. OldJohn. He’d taught Kit this method. John had.
And her father’s name had been John. Captain Sir John Lanscarr.
An idea struck her so outlandish and impossible, and yet, what if it was true?“Who is John?”
