“…can’t find the key. Oh, here it is.” There was a step in the corridor outside the door, then the scrape of the key in the lock, and an instant later Jenny entered, pushing Percy in his chair in front of her. “Miss Lottie, here you are. We looked for you at the pump room.”
“I beg your pardon. I was…er, I got distracted, I’m afraid.”
“Wandering on the beach again, I expect, and look at the color that wind has whipped into your cheeks!” Jenny grinned. “I’ve never seen you look so well. The fresh air is good for you, after so many months cooped up indoors.”
It wasn’t the wind’s doing. That was the flush of panic on her cheeks, but the less Jenny and Percy knew of their sudden financial troubles, the better. She’d find a solution, so there was no point in worrying them, was there? “How was the bathing this afternoon?”
“Wonderful! An ingenious contraption, the bathing machine. My bather today was the most enormous man I’ve ever seen. He was the size of a small barouche-landau, with arms as thick as tree trunks, like this.” Percy made a circle with both hands, his hazel eyes wide.
Jenny laughed. “I don’t think they were quite that big, Mr. Percy. Big enough, though.”
“Very well, perhaps not as big at that, but he plucked me out of my chair and plopped me into the bathing machine as if I weighed no more than a walking stick.”
Lottie’s gaze met Jenny’s over Percy’s head. They were both thinking the same thing: that Percy had grown so painfully thin this winter he wasn’t much heavier than a walking stick.
“I’ll fetch our tea, shall I?” Jenny disappeared into the tiny kitchen, calling out as she went. “I got those delicious currant scones you like from the bakery for today’s tea, Mr. Percy.”
“You’re an angel, Jenny.” Percy wheeled himself closer to the settee, rose on shaky legs and collapsed onto the cushions next to Lottie. “My mouth is already watering.”
But despite his cheerfulness, there were lines of fatigue etched around Percy’s eyes, and his cheeks were pale. “Perhaps it would be best if you had a brief rest first, Percy.”
Not surprisingly, Percy opened his mouth to argue. He despised being treated like an invalid, but the protest never made it past his lips. Instead, he sank back against the pillows. “Perhaps half an hour wouldn’t hurt.”
“No, indeed.” Lottie fetched a blanket from the back of his Bath chair and draped it over Percy, whose eyelids were already fluttering. “I’ll ask Jenny to hold the tea.”
Jenny was, as usual, one step ahead of her. By the time Lottie reached the kitchen Jenny was wrapping the scones in a cloth.
“He seems more fatigued than usual.” Lottie took the cup of tea Jenny offered her and took a seat, her heart suddenly heavier than an anvil.
“Rest is good for him,” Jenny said briskly, joining her at the table. “He sleeps better here. The sea air keeps his lungs clearer, so he gets proper rest.”
“Do you think that’s all it is?” What if he was deteriorating again? What if he had another one of those awful attacks he’d had at the end of April, and?—
“I think time will tell, Miss Lottie, and you worrying yourself to a thread isn’t going to help matters. Mr. Percy wouldn’t want that.”
“No, I suppose not. Perhaps I’ll go for a brief walk.”
“Very well but take this with you.” Jenny plucked one of the wrapped scones from the plate and handed it to Lottie. “You need to eat something. You’re wearing away to nothing.”
“Percy’s right. You are an angel, Jenny.” Lottie took the scone with a grateful smile. “I’m just going to take a wander down the promenade. I’ll be back before he wakes.”
But instead of heading south toward the Grand Parade and the Old Steine, she crossed over North Street and headed directly west, toward the corner of King’s Road and Cannon Place, the wind coming off the channel plastering her skirts to her legs.
Once she reached Russell Road, she stopped.
There was no reason to go any further. She could see it clearly from here. It wasn’t as if one could miss it. It was a sprawling place done in an extravagant pale gold stone that shimmered in the late afternoon sunlight, just as the proprietor no doubt intended.
It was no accident, that stone. No mistake, that the merest glimpse of the place made one think of gold.
The club belonged to Mr. Armitage Hart, and he didn’t make mistakes.
If the gossips had the right of it, Hart was as wicked as the devil himself. Cold, calculating, and merciless, that was Armitage Hart. A rake, too, if the rumor she’d overheard at the circulating library about him breaking the heart of a young lady named Miss Reynolds was to be believed.
Still, one couldn’t deny Hart was a brilliant businessman. The proof of it was right in front of her, a monument to wealth and excess bathed in the last golden rays of the sun.
The ton that flocked to Brighton every year to take the waters and socialize in the pump room could now lose their fortunes amidst the elegant trappings of Brighton’s newest and most fashionable gaming establishment, Hart’s Ace.
Mr. Hart referred to his place as a gaming hell, but she’d been inside every gaming hell in London, and none of them were anything like Hart’s Ace. Gaming hells were squalid, dirty places tucked into the darkest corners of London, not this glittering prize perched on the edge of the sea.
