Carla Kelly (5 page)

When the carriage arrived at the Norman and Saxon, Lord Ragsdale was in control of his parts again. The inn was full of other clients who must have had second thoughts about the weather, but he was able to secure a private parlor and two sleeping rooms. While he waited for the carriage to arrive, he tested his nerve on a pint in the tavern and watched a card game that, from the unkempt aspect of its patrons, appeared to have been in progress since shortly after Moses brought down stone tablets from Sinai. The ale went down smoothly, settling what, if anything, remained of his stomach's contents. The card game tempted him not at all.

He helped his mother from the carriage, quick to notice that she was not in the best of spirits either. “Poor dear,” he murmured as she leaned on his arm. “Too many bumps in the road?”

She nodded. “I always forget what a poor traveler I am. Please tell me there is a bed close by, John.”

He kissed her cheek, happy to play the competent son. “There is even a warming pan between the sheets, m'dear. You and Sally can keep each other company, snoring to your heart's delight.”

He helped her upstairs and then returned to retrieve Sally, who drooped on Emma's arm in the hallway outside the public room's entrance.

“Can I lend a hand here?” he asked, suddenly shy, and rendered more embarrassed when Emma nodded, relinquished her hold, and tried to disappear against the wall. He took a firm grasp on Sally's shoulder and pointed her toward the stairs, but she surprised him by stiffening up. “Yes, my dear?” he inquired, curious about her resistance.

She didn't say anything, but he followed her gaze into the tap-room, where Robert was standing over the gaming table, a pint in his hand. “I wish you would not let him play,” she said.

He laughed. “I am sure it is only a harmless game.”

“I mean it,” Sally replied, and he could almost feel her gravity. He took her by both shoulders then. “Sally, I'll get you upstairs, and Emma can make you and Mama comfortable. I promise to keep an eye on your brother. I am certain I can keep him from sitting down at a gaming table. How difficult can that be?” He attempted a joke because her anxiety disturbed him. “I am certain I outweigh my cousin, if it comes to that.”

She regarded him with a wan smile and allowed him to lead her up the narrow stairway and into the room where Lady Ragsdale still sat on the bed, the effort to move beyond her. Emma followed with the luggage. In another moment, the servant was skillfully, quietly in charge. He paused in the doorway until he was sure that all was well.

“I'll order dinner, Mama,” he said. “What would you like?”

“Soup and bread for the ladies, my lord,” Emma said firmly. “Nothing more.”

“And you?”

She seemed surprised that he would ask. She looked up from the floor where she was untying his mother's shoes. “Whatever you wish, my lord,” she replied, still without looking him in the eye as if she feared she was too much trouble.

He went downstairs to order dinner and noticed that Robert had not moved from his position by the gaming table. He watched the play intently, and Lord Ragsdale had to call his name several times to get his attention. Even then, he left the room reluctantly, with several backward glances.

“Faro is my favorite game,” he confided to his cousin as he allowed himself to be led from the room. “But vingt-et-un will do. Cousin, do you play cards?”

“Never,” Lord Ragsdale replied firmly. “I hate cards. I thought tonight that you and I would discuss your coming matriculation at Brasenose. It's my college, you know.” He looked at his cousin virtuously. “I went to some trouble to arrange your attendance at this juncture in the term, let me assure you.”

He could tell that Robert was disappointed to leave the game, but to his relief, his cousin followed him into the private parlor. Lord Ragsdale poured two glasses of sherry, but Robert was pacing between the windows. “Do sit down, cousin,” Lord Ragsdale advised. “We still have a half day's drive tomorrow, and you'll need all your constitution to meet your grandmother. Come, come now. Here is dinner.”

They ate in silence. Robert was no longer the attractive conversationalist of the afternoon, and Lord Ragsdale could only wonder at his cousin's restless air.
Well, if I must exert myself, I must
, he thought as he launched into a description of Brasenose and its illustrious traditions. Through it all, he harbored a very real suspicion that Robert's mind was elsewhere.

He was interrupted by a soft tap on the door. It was Emma come to fetch the soup. “Let me help you,” he insisted as she struggled with the heavy tray.

“I can manage,” she replied, even as he took it away from her. “Truly I can.”

He nodded, feeling oddly useful, even though it was only a dinner tray. “Well, perhaps you will allow me to redeem myself.”

Emma looked at him quickly and then looked away. “I don't mean to be trouble,” she said softly as she opened the door for him.

He could think of no reply to such honesty, so he made none and was rewarded with a second frightened glance and a perceptible drawing away from him, even though they stood close together at the room's entrance. As he came through the doorway first, carrying the tray, he experienced the odd feeling that perhaps Emma Costello cared no more for the English than he loved the Irish. It was a leveling thought, and one that he had not considered before.

He left the tray, kissed his mother good night, and started for the door. He thought Sally was asleep, but she called to him, her voice hesitant, as though she, like Emma, wondered what he would think.

“Cousin, please. Please make sure that Robert does not play cards tonight,” she urged.

He smiled at Sally and then bowed elaborately, winking at her on the way up.

“She means it, my lord,” came Emma's distinct brogue. Her voice was firm, hard even, as though she spoke to a child, and not a bright one either.

He stood in the doorway, his hand on the knob. “I can't say that I care for your impertinence, Emma,” he snapped.

“Then I apologize for it,” she replied promptly. “But please, sir …”

He closed the door on whatever else she was going to haver on about and returned to the parlor to find it empty. His mind filled with odd disquiet, he hurried downstairs in time to prevent Robert from sitting at the gaming table.

“Come, lad, we're off to an early start in the morning, remember?” he said, nodding to the other gamesters. “You'll excuse us, I am sure.”

“Really, cousin, I think that wasn't necessary,” Robert protested as Lord Ragsdale followed him up the stairs. “I was only going to sit for one hand.” He stopped on the stairs, and his voice took on a wheedling tone. “I promise to be in bed before you get to sleep if you let me go back down.”

“No, and that's final,” Lord Ragsdale insisted. His head was beginning to ache again, compounded by the uneasiness that grew on him as he regarded his cousin Robert.
So you will be no trouble
, he thought as he removed his clothes and pulled on his nightshirt.
I think I begin to understand your parents’ eagerness to get you out of America. How deep in gambling debt were you there? And why is this my problem now?

It was a subject to ruminate on. Tight-lipped and silent, Robert undressed and threw himself into bed alongside his cousin. He broke the long silence finally. “I think you are perfectly beastly to deny me one last game before I enroll at Brasenose.”

“I think I am nothing of the sort, cousin,” John replied. “Go to sleep.”

He lay in silence then, wondering if Robert would respond. He stared at the ceiling, listening to Robert's breathing turn regular and deep. Relief settled over him, and he relaxed into the mattress. He hung on another half hour, listening to Robert, and then allowed sleep to claim him too.

If he had been under oath in the assizes, he could not have told a jury what woke him up early that morning. One moment he was asleep, dreaming of nothing, and the next instant he was wide awake and sitting up in bed. The room was in total darkness. Holding his own breath, Lord Ragsdale listened intently for Robert's breathing. Nothing.

Cautiously, he reached out his hand and felt the other pillow. “I could strop that boy,” he said out loud as he fumbled for the candle, more alert than he had been in years.

He was the room's sole inhabitant. After the moment of panic passed, his next thought was to return to sleep. Robert's spending habits were none of his concern. He had promised to accompany his mother and cousins to Oxford, and surely that charge did not involve wet-nursing a young man of some twenty years. His own mother had assured him that the cousins would be no trouble, and truly, they would not be if he lay down again and returned to sleep. Besides, he reasoned, half the world's troubles were caused by people too eager to meddle in others’ affairs. So what if Robert gamed away all his money? How could that possibly concern him? He blew out the candle.

His eyes were closing again when an ugly thought tunneled through the fog of sleep.
What if it is your money he is gaming, you idiot?
He sat up again and lit the candle once more, holding it high as he looked around the room. Everything looked as he had left it. He glanced closer at his overcoat, slung over a chair back. He was certain he had placed it around the chair before taking off his clothes.

He was on his feet in a moment, pawing through his overcoat. His hands clutched his wallet, but it was much thinner than he remembered. He swore as he opened it and found nothing beyond a couple directions and a toll chit.

Lord Ragsdale looked at Robert's dressing case. It had been rifled through too, as if the owner were looking for something tucked away. He found a leather case containing a variety of legal papers that looked as though they had been crammed back inside in a hurry.

This is going to be a nasty scene
, he thought as he shoved his night-shirt into his trousers and pulled on his boots. He didn't stop to look for his eye patch as he ran his fingers through his hair and wrenched open the door.

To Lord Ragsdale's surprise, the innkeeper stood before him on the landing, breathing hard as though he had taken the flight of stairs two or three at a time.

“What on earth is the matter?” Lord Ragsdale said, wincing as the landlord took one look at his ruined eye and gulped.

“My lord, you had better come downstairs at once. I don't think you'll like what's going on. I know I don't, but it's not something I can prevent.”

“What can you be so lathered up about?” Lord Ragsdale said as he followed the man down the stairs. “I think my young cousin is spending my money, but that's my business. I intend to give him quite a scold, rest assured.”

The landlord stopped on the stairs and looked him in the eye. “He's gone beyond your money, my lord, way beyond. Please hurry.”

If anything, the taproom was more crowded than before, even though it was hours after midnight. The same group of gamesters sat at the table, with the addition of Robert and the waiting woman.

Lord Ragsdale barely noticed his cousin, who waved him a greeting and moved to pull up another chair. His eye went immediately to Emma Costello, who stood in her nightdress behind his cousin's chair. She was as pale as her flannel shift, her auburn hair flaming around her face, her eyes burning like coals into his own. She swallowed once, and he thought she would speak, but she said nothing and did nothing but stare at the opposite wall. Her face was wiped clean of any hope, or of any expression at all.

He wrenched his glance away from her and stared hard at the gaming table. There was a document on it, with a seal and ribbons, and folded in half as though it had just come out of the leather case upstairs. He looked at Emma again and back at the document, and he was filled with more anger than he would have thought possible, considering that this whole affair was probably none of his business.

He was so angry he could not speak. The man sitting next to Robert nudged him. “Your draw, laddie,” he said, and then grinned at Emma and smacked his lips.

“Touch that card, Robert, and I will thrash you until your backbone breaks through your skin.”

Did I really say that?
Lord Ragsdale thought as he crossed the room in two steps and stood leaning over his cousin's chair.

To his further amazement, Robert merely looked at him and shrugged his shoulders. “Cousin, I am in debt and nothing else will do but Emma. I have her papers here, and I can do as I like. It's legal. Everyone's agreed.”

He turned back to the table and reached for the card. Lord Ragsdale slammed his fist down on his cousin's hand, shoved him out of the chair, and sat down in Robert's place, his face inches from his opponent. “I'll make you a better deal,” he said, each word distinct in the suddenly silent room. He picked up the indenture papers. “Look here, did he show you how this indenture has less than eighteen months to run?”

The other men at the table crowded close. The smell of rum breath and tobacco made him want to flee the room, gagging, but he looked at each man in turn, hoping for a measure of intimidation from his unseeing eye. “How much was he going to ask for?”

“Two hundred pounds to settle up.”

“Against an eighteen-month indenture?” Lord Ragsdale leaned back in his chair to escape the fumes, and laughed. “Well, I have …” He paused.
Absolutely no money
, he thought as he stared daggers at his cousin.