Charlotte stared at his retreating back, hurt morphing into frustration. How could he walk away from her in the middle of an argument? How could retreating resolve anything? Her brothers certainly had their flaws, but at least they always stayed to fight with her.
“John!” He stopped, but it took longer than she’d like for him to turn to face her. “We had a plan. Are we still going there?”
Argument or not, they had a job to do tonight.
***
Whist had lost its luster after the game with Lord Berridge. Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to get excited and that feeling seemed to permeate through the room. After much discussion, the house agreed to move the whist tables together to form one large one. There was a game that had recently arrived in London from Mississippi. Poker was played individually—John could not help her with it. Win or lose, it would be on her.
The dealer walked the table through the rules, answering questions and providing tips for wagering. Others stood back, watching, waiting for their chance to try this new game for themselves.
John sat across the table from her. He’d been rather silent on the carriage ride over, handing Charlotte the spare dress from his satchel and keeping his eyes averted until it was time to do up the buttons that held it together.
She’d tried to start a conversation a few times, but clearly the events at tonight’s ball—the dratted Dickey Rhinehurst—had put John in a mood that was not easily broken. Men.
She and John would have a conversation about how they should fight. Walking away from her in the middle of one was not an option she would tolerate. But that conversation was for another day, when the pressure of bankruptcy and Edward’s imminent wrath at their engagement was no longer weighing on them.
The practice round was almost over. They were about to dive into the game in earnest. John’s face was as grim as she’d seen it. Charlotte put a hand to her mouth, her thumbnail pressing against her lips.Are you well?
John blinked twice.Yes.
Everyone took back their chips, stacked them neatly, and prepared to play. The novelty of the game lent a fresh air to the atmosphere. While there were a handful of serious players, the majority were showing each other their hands, asking for advice, and laughing even as they lost.
To almost all who surrounded her, poker was fun. She struggled to find the same levity. She wanted this charade to be over. She wanted William safe and home. She wanted John to be relieved of this burden that weighed so heavily on him.
They had planned to take things slowly, to let the wins trickle in over time and in low numbers until they’d built up to what they needed while remaining more or less unnoticed. But that strategy was going to take weeks.
She was done with this. She didn’t want to wait weeks. Tonight, she would take more risks for better rewards.
She didn’t count on it all going wrong.
One lost hand quickly turned into another, and then another. It was as though all the things that she had learned about the people she was playing with no longer applied in this new game.
All the tells that she’d noted each night—the way Patrick rubbed his nose when he was about to lose, the way Fitzroy’s eyes widened when he was dealt a decent set of cards, the silly little whistle Brockford made when he was about to take a game-ending trick—these things that had been true for the past week were suddenly not true.
John kept indicating that it was time to leave. His expression was grim, and he kept shaking his head at the end of every round when it was time to join again or get out.
But she didn’t want to get out. If she left the game now, it would be at a loss and she couldn’t accept that, not with so much on the line. It would come good; she knew it. So, despite John’s disapproval, she tossed chips into the pot and gestured for another hand.
The cards were very, very bad. She would either need to fold immediately or bluff like her life depended on it. Or William’s.
Lord Brockford sensed her bluff. Called it. Her pile of chips shrank again.
Desperation gripped her. And anger. What a hellish, hellish night. Everything was slipping away from her: William’s freedom, John’s freedom, the chance of the two of them building a life together. She wasn’t proud of what she was about to do. It wasn’t the behavior of a Wildeforde. It wasn’t who she was, but neither was she the type to go down without a fight.
Her next hand was strong—two aces and a jack was a hand she could work with. She increased her bet, and then while everyone’s eyes were on the player next to her, she used her fingernail to create a single tiny nick in the top left corner of both ace cards and another nick on the top right for the jack.
Will had shown her a series of ways to cheat at cards. She’d demanded he reveal his secrets after he’d thrashed her repeatedly. It would take time to mark enough of the cards to be useful, so Charlotte became more conservative, playing with smaller amounts that could help keep her in the game longer. Then, once she had a fair sense of who had what hand, she could bet big when she knew she could triumph.
Nothing was going to get in the way of her winning.
***
Damn the woman. It had taken John the better part of a half hour to realize what Charlotte was up to. The marks she was making were subtle. But subtle or not, a skillful player was going to pick them up. The only reason it had slipped the notice of the men at the table was because they were so enthralled with this new game that they weren’t taking it seriously. But these were some of the most experienced card sharks in London, and she was playing as though she were in a Mayfair parlor with debutantes and grande dames.
But every time he indicated they should take their winnings and go, she stubbornly refused to meet his gaze. To keep the attention off of her, John used his memory to win more games than he’d like, casting aside his strategy of remaining beneath notice.
“I say,” Lord Hailson said as John raked in another round of winnings. “You’re having the Devil’s own luck.”
