The Gamble (15 page)

“I can’t be away from London for more than two weeks,” Lord Winterdale said smoothly. “I have appointments that I cannot break.”

Not for the first time, I wondered what it was that he did all day long. He might be at his club drinking and gambling during the evening hours, but he was gone from the house for most of the day as well. What appointments did he have? His life was a complete mystery to me, while mine was an open book to him.

This was not a situation that augured well for a successful marriage.

Anna had been surprisingly delighted when I told her that I was going to marry Lord Winterdale.

“Oh good, Georgie,” she had said, clapping her hands. “Lord Winterdale is nice. I like him. He plays ball with me sometimes in the garden.”

I hadn’t known that.

“We will be going to stay at his house in the country. It is called Winterdale Park, and it is supposed to be very pretty. You will like to get away from the city, won’t you, darling?”

“Oh yes!” Anna said with enthusiasm. “May I bring Snowball with me, Georgie?”

“I don’t see why not,” I replied. “I am sure that Lord Winterdale won’t mind if we send for him.”

When Anna broached this subject to Lord Winterdale at dinner that evening, he gave her one of his rare smiles and said that she was welcome to bring any animals she wanted to Winterdale Park, that there was plenty of room.

Anna regarded him across the table, her eyes very big. “May I have a donkey, Lord Winterdale? I have always wanted a donkey, but Papa would never let me.”

“Certainly you may have a donkey,” he returned. “And since we are soon to be brother and sister, I think that you had better begin to call me Philip, Anna.”

She gave him her incredibly beautiful smile and clapped her hands with delight. “I would like that,” she said. She turned her head to me. “Did you hear that, Georgie? I may have a donkey!”

Ever since Anna had seen a picture book that featured a little Spanish boy and his donkey, having a donkey of her own had been one of her chief ambitions.

“What fun that will be,” I said.

Lady Winterdale’s autocratic voice interrupted our talk of donkeys. “I have spoken to Lady Jersey, Philip, and she has graciously agreed to attend the wedding ceremony and the breakfast. Her presence will do a great deal toward lending respectability to your union to Georgiana.”

“Thank you, Aunt Agatha,” Lord Winterdale—or Philip, as I now must call him—said. “I have also spoken to Lord Castlereagh, and he and Lady Castlereagh will attend as well.”

Lady Winterdale stared at her nephew in dumbfounded amazement. “The Castlereaghs?” she said on a note of displeasure. “I did not know that you were acquainted with the Castlereaghs, Philip.”

Lord Castlereagh was the foreign secretary for the government and Lady Castlereagh was a patroness of Almack’s. Together, they were two of the most powerful people in London.

“Oh, I have known Castlereagh for a number of years,” Philip said indifferently.

“You never told me that!” Lady Winterdale’s pointy nose quivered.

He gave her an ironic look. “I did not realize that I was required to inform you of all my friendships, Aunt.”

As usual, she was impervious to insult. “
How
do you know the Castlereaghs?” she demanded.

He hesitated, then obviously realized that she would not let him rest if he did not answer.

“It is Lord Castlereagh with whom I am acquainted, ma’am. As you know, I spent many years on the Continent during the recent war, and I was often in a position to collect information that Castlereagh found useful. Suffice it to say, he owes me a few favors. He will be at the wedding.”

I stared at my future husband in amazement. He had been a spy!

Catherine said, “If the Jerseys and the Castlereaghs are in attendance, Mama, people will hardly be able to say that there is anything havey-cavey about the marriage.”

Lady Winterdale transferred her look of displeasure to her daughter. “
Havey-cavey?”
she said. “Really, Catherine, I cannot imagine where you have learned such disreputable language.”

“I beg your pardon, Mama,” said Catherine, who did not look in the least repentant.

Not for the first time I remarked to myself on the change in Catherine, and I thought of those musical afternoons and the Duke of Faircastle’s eldest son. While it was wonderful to see her beginning to stand on her own feet, my fear for my friend was that her love was as one-sided as my own.

CHAPTER
fifteen

P
HILIP PROCURED A SPECIAL LICENSE FROM THE OFFICE
of the Archbishop of Canterbury, which allowed us to be married at any convenient time or place without prior publishing of banns. We set the date for three days after we got the license, and I spent the intervening time getting Anna and Nanny ready to accompany us to Winterdale Park in Surrey after the marriage. They would be making their home there permanently, while after two weeks I would be returning to town with Philip.

“I have business in London that I cannot neglect, and if we wish to avoid any further gossip, you had better come back with me,” he told me during the fifteen minutes that we spent together discussing our immediate future. “If people think that I have married you in a hurry and then dumped you in the country . . . well, you can imagine what they will say.”

I was intensely curious about this mysterious “business” of his, but I didn’t feel as if I could ask him what it was. He kept his life so secret, was so guarded against trespassers, that I knew if I asked him about it, I would be snubbed.

We were going to be married, and all I knew about him was that something terrible must have happened to him to cause him to become the guarded, wary man that he was. I thought that my only hope was that hint of sweetness that I had caught a glimpse of once or twice. If only I could reach through the layers of distrust he had thrown up around himself, and find that sweetness, then perhaps we could have a marriage.

* * *

It was raining on the day that I was wed. A bad omen, I thought, as I dressed in the white-silk high-waisted evening gown with puffed sleeves and long white gloves that I was wearing for the big occasion. The gown was complemented by a veil of fine white lace, which was attached to a small pearl tiara. The veil hung down my back almost to my waist. I had a bouquet of white roses to carry and a string of pearls to wear around my throat.

I was perfectly calm. In fact, I was amazed by how calm I was. I smiled and joked with Catherine, who was my bridesmaid, and I helped Anna arrange her hair in the way she liked the best.

The earl’s apartment was at the very end of the passageway on the second floor, and there was a small staircase that went downstairs from those rooms to the anteroom on the floor below, so Philip did not have to pass by my room on his way downstairs. Consequently, I was not aware of when he descended to the first floor.

We were all starting to feel slightly restless when Lady Winterdale finally opened the door of my room and announced that the guests had arrived, the minister had arrived, and it was now time for us to make our own appearance.

Catherine came to straighten the folds of my veil. Anna ran on ahead of us, excited by the party atmosphere and eager to show off her new frock. I picked up my bouquet and walked out into the passageway in front of Catherine.

The wedding breakfast was to be served in the upstairs drawing room, and the wedding was to be held in the downstairs drawing room. Down the great circular stairway we went, to the green-marble hall, where I could hear the sound of voices coming from within the opened doors of the drawing room.

It was then that my heart began to hammer.

We reached the doorway to the drawing room. Catherine and Anna went in, and I followed.

The room seemed surprisingly full, but the only person I had eyes for was the man who was standing by the fireplace. He was dressed, as I was, in evening clothes, and as I came in our gaze met briefly across the width of the room. Something flared in the deep blue of his eyes that made my breath hurry even faster.

Anna ran up to him and said shyly, “Do you like my new dress, Philip?”

He looked at her. “It is very pretty, Anna,” he said. “You look lovely.”

She smiled with radiant pleasure.

Then Lady Winterdale said majestically, “Now that everyone is here, I believe we are ready to start.”

Philip and I took our places in front of the clergyman and the others arranged themselves behind us. The clergyman, whose name was the Reverend Halmark, opened his book and in a pronouncedly nasal voice began to read the centuries-old marriage ceremony from the Prayer Book, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the sight of God . . .”

The room was very quiet, and I felt as if all my senses were more acutely tuned than they had ever been before in my life. The scent of the roses from my bouquet filled my nostrils, and I could feel the warmth of Philip’s body beside me right through the fine silk of my dress.

The clergyman looked at Philip and in his nasal voice began the ritual question, “Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife . . .”

My heart thudded in my breast.
Thy wedded wife
. Could this really be happening?

Through the drumming in my veins I heard Philip answer firmly, “I will.”

Then the Reverend Halmark turned to me and began to speak. When he stopped, I repeated Philip’s “I will” in a voice that was mercifully steady.

From behind me I could hear Anna whisper a question to Catherine.

Philip produced a ring from his pocket and turned to me. “I, Philip Robert Edward, take thee, Georgiana Frances, to my wedded Wife . . .”

Those words again
, I thought.

Once more Anna whispered something and the sound of her voice steadied me.

I repeated my part after Philip and then he took my hand into his and slipped a circle of plain gold upon my finger.

The familiar shock went through me at his touch.

The nasal voice informed the small gathering of people that we were now man and wife, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Philip leaned down and kissed me chastely upon my cheek.

The shock went through me again.

Philip and I signed the marriage register, then Catherine and Philip’s groomsman signed as witnesses. A few moments later, I found myself following Lady Winterdale up the great staircase to the second floor, where the wedding breakfast was to be served.

Anna crowded in beside me. “Are you married now, Georgie?” she wanted to know.

“Yes,” I said numbly. “I rather think that I am.”

Lady Winterdale, in her usual lavish fashion when she was spending her nephew’s money, had ordered a splendid wedding breakfast. There was an array of fruits and cakes and tartes, as well as more substantial dishes like ham and turkey and lobster. Champagne flowed, and the wedding cake was laid out upon a table between the two front windows, waiting for me to cut it.

I couldn’t eat a thing. I talked to Lady Jersey, or rather she talked to me, and I tried not to resent the way her curious eyes darted back and forth between me and Philip, as if she was trying to visualize the wanton acts that had brought about our unlikely union.

Lady Castlereagh, who was known for her arrogance, was surprisingly pleasant to me, talking rather didactically about the paintings she had seen the day before at the Royal Academy.

My new husband and the gentleman who had been his groomsman, a middle-aged, fair-haired man whom I had never seen before and whom Philip had introduced as Captain Thomas Greene, talked with Lord Castlereagh.

Anna ate a great deal of cake.

It was a little past noon when our guests took their departure. We had decided earlier in the week to leave right after the wedding for Winterdale Park. Neither Philip nor I had come right out and articulated our reasons for this decision, but I knew that I did not wish to spend the first night of my marriage under the same roof as Lady Winterdale, and I suspected that Philip felt the same.

The rain had ceased by the time we were ready to leave, but the sky was still heavily overcast. We were using three carriages to transport us into Surrey: the big coach was carrying all of our baggage as well as Betty and Philip’s valet; the town chaise was carrying Anna and Nanny and me; and Philip was driving the phaeton.

Nanny stared at me as the chaise pulled away from in front of Mansfield House, worry in her little raisin-dark eyes.

“You don’t need to ride with us, Miss Georgiana,” she said. “Anna will be fine with me. If you wish to ride with his lordship, then you do that. You can always come back into the chaise if it comes on to rain.”

I did not want to tell her that I had not been invited to ride with my husband, so I said merely, “I shall have plenty of opportunity to be with his lordship, Nanny, and I really do not desire to get my new pelisse wet should it begin to rain suddenly.”

The worry did not leave Nanny’s eyes. She knew very well that I did not care about getting wet.

We left London at two in the afternoon and it was after six by the time we arrived at Winterdale Park near Guildford in Surrey. I had been prepared by Catherine for what I would see, but even with the warning, my first sight of my new home was startling.

Winterdale Park looked like it should be sitting on the corner of a Venetian piazza, not in the middle of the English countryside. Catherine had told me that the present house had been built by her great-great-grandfather to replace the Elizabethan house that had formerly stood upon the site. Her ancestor had been in love with Italian architecture, she had said, and so he had imported the Venetian architect, Giacomo Leoni, to build his new house for him.

“Lord-a-mercy,” Nanny squawked as we rolled down the drive and pulled up in front of the mansion’s main entrance. The house itself was built of very red brick, but the entrance front was a central pedimented section done in stone, which stood out starkly against the red brick on either side. “This house looks foreign,” was Nanny’s disapproving comment.

“It was built by an Italian,” I told her.

Nanny scowled. She didn’t hold with Italians.

Lord Winterdale—Philip!—had given the reins of his horses to one of the footmen, who had come out of the house to greet us, and now he came to open the door of the chaise so that we could alight.

Anna got out first and looked around shyly. Winterdale Park was a much larger, much grander house than anything she had ever seen before.

“It’s so big,” she said to Philip in a very small voice.

“I know,” he returned gently. “But Catherine tells me that there is a very pretty apartment in the back of the house looking out on the gardens that you and Nanny will like very much. The gardens are very pretty as well, and you will be able to watch your donkey grazing on the lawn.”

The mention of the donkey perked her up considerably.

I thought of what he had just said—
Catherine tells me there is an apartment
.

He must be almost a stranger to Winterdale Park himself, I thought. He should have grown up here, he should have had the normal life that a boy of his class expected to lead. That life hadn’t happened, however. At the age of eight he had been cast out into the ugly world of gambling hells and loose women.

What kind of moral guidance had he had? I wondered. Exactly how ruthless was he capable of being? I knew that he had wanted revenge on his aunt, and he had certainly been willing to pay a huge amount of money to get it.

Yet he was kind to Anna.

I didn’t know him at all, and I had just irrevocably tied my life to his. It was a distinctly sobering thought.

* * *

Philip had sent his steward, Mr. Downs, ahead of us to Winterdale Park in order to make certain that all was in readiness for our arrival. Upon Philip’s orders we were spared the traditional lineup of servants on the front steps, but Mr. Downs met us in the front hall along with the butler, Clandon, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Frome.

I spoke civilly to the two chief servants of the house, but when I went to introduce Anna I could barely get her attention she was so busy staring at her surroundings.

The magnificent formal marble entrance hall of Winterdale Park rose through two stories, with an array of classical statues set in niches on the first-floor level. The architecture was definitely Mediterranean in spirit, with the white walls and white plasterwork ceiling, the marble floor and intricately carved marble chimneypieces over two fireplaces all contributing to an impression of light and space.

One felt that if one stepped outside, one would see the canals of Venice, not the misty green verdure of England.

Mrs. Frome, the housekeeper, spoke to me. “Would you like me to show you to your room, my lady? Or would you like a tour of the house?”

“I think we will go to our rooms first, Mrs. Frome,” I said.

“Certainly, my lady. And when would you like dinner served?”

Being called by a title was making me feel very strange, and instinctively my eyes went to Philip. “When would you like to eat, my lord?” I asked.

“Seven,” he said decisively.

I turned back to Mrs. Frome. “Seven,” I repeated.

“Very well, my lady. Now, if you will come with me, I will be happy to show you to your rooms.”

“You ladies go along with Mrs. Frome,” Philip said easily. “I want a word with Downs here first.”

Obediently, the three of us trailed off after Mrs. Frome, down the great hall, past a vast marble-floored room that looked like a grand saloon from an Italian palazzo, to the grand marble staircase that went up to the second story.

When we reached the bottom of the stairs, the housekeeper said, “Would you like me to take you to your own apartment first, my lady? As his lordship requested, I have put Miss Anna and Mrs. Pedigrew upstairs on the third floor.”

I said firmly, “I would like to see Miss Anna’s apartment first.”

The housekeeper’s face was inscrutable. “Certainly, my lady.”

The three of us followed her upstairs in silence. Anna looked worried, and I knew the size and magnificence of the house was intimidating her.

We reached the third floor. “The nursery faces the front of the house,” Mrs. Frome said, gesturing to her right. She turned the other way, however, and went along the passageway to her left. She stopped in front of a door toward the end of the corridor, and held it wide for us to precede her in.

The first thing I saw was a simple red brick fireplace with a white wood mantel. There was a picture of a King Charles spaniel hanging over the mantel. I looked around and saw that we were in a sitting room. The walls were painted a pale yellow and the chinz-covered furniture looked old and worn and comfortable.