Pamela Aidan - Duty and Desire

“Too deep for this hand,” Monmouth drawled and passed. Chelmsford followed. Sayre bit his lip and hesitated for a few moments, but finally his fist closed around his coins and he met Darcy’s five. Manning’s gaze flicked between Darcy and Sayre. Five coins joined the pile, but no more. With no one bidding, the hand was ended. Darcy carefully turned his fluxus faceup on the table. He felt rather than saw Fletcher’s startled response, but it was nothing to the reaction of the others.

“Good Lord, Darcy, a damned perfect hand!” While the others exclaimed over the cards, Manning looked at Darcy speculatively and then glanced beyond his shoulder at the lady.

“But one, Manning,” Darcy corrected him, solidly meeting his gaze.

“But one.” Manning accepted the revision and set about gathering up the cards for the next round. Sayre fell back in his chair, his eyes trained on his sister, while Trenholme whispered heatedly in his ear. Darcy leaned back and motioned to Fletcher, who removed a purse from his coat pocket and proceeded to take possession of his portion of the winnings. Monmouth leaned around him and snorted. “Anticipating so good a night that you’ve brought your valet along to hold your purse, have you?” The question was tinged with disfavor.

Darcy suppressed a grimace at the gibe. Deciding instead to take the offensive, he returned dryly, “Been long away from London, Tris? It is all the crack to bring one’s man to the table. Lord ——— ’s valet even arranges his cards for him.” Monmouth’s visage darkened at the pricking, telling Darcy that his shaft had hit a mark he had suspected only after reading Dy’s letter. “A pit of vipers,” he’d said, “knaves, rascals, and simpletons.” Well, Dy had certainly had it right. He usually did, confound the man!

“Darcy, we’re waiting!” Sayre had dismissed his brother and now winked at Darcy broadly. “Your lady, sir!” At Darcy’s questioning frown, Sayre motioned behind him. “Honor your lady, Darcy, so we can get on with it!” Darcy shot a glance at Fletcher, who returned it with widened eyes but no suggestions. With all the room’s eyes upon him, he stood and turned to Sylvanie. Her hand rose languidly from her lap and slipped softly into his.

“You win me honor, sir,” she said in a voice that invited him to more than possession of her hand.

“Your servant, my lady.” Darcy clasped her fingers briefly and bowed over her hand but offered her no more personal a salute. A disappointed groan was voiced among the gentlemen as he took his seat, but the complacency with which he met their dissatisfaction discouraged further comment. Manning began dealing the cards for the next hand.

As the evening progressed and play became more intense, Darcy’s winnings increased respectably. He did not win every hand, but overall he was more than ahead in the number of coins Fletcher was required to scoop up from the table. He also managed to send his valet on various “errands,” but each time Fletcher returned with nothing more to report on the rumoured missing child or the activities of Lady Sylvanie’s serving woman, who seemed to have vanished. If they were to discover anything, it appeared it would have to be from Sylvanie, and that fell to him alone.

One by one, the other men at the table dropped from play in favor of flirtation with their ladies or observation of the contest, which was now reduced to Sayre, Manning, and Darcy. Trenholme would sit with them occasionally, but his anxiety over his brother’s losses and his animosity toward his half sister soon sent him back to the board for another glass, followed by an increasingly uneven pace about the room. Finally, Manning called for a break, to which Darcy gladly agreed. He rose and stretched in an attempt to work the stiffness from his muscles. Lady Sylvanie, who had risen during the last hand and refreshed herself with a turn about the room, came for him and drew him to the window out which he had gazed earlier. The moon was now up, and shone full and stark, every bit the stern mistress the ancients had imagined her.

“The moon is full,” the lady observed softly. “Even she is with us tonight.”

“Lady,” he began, adopting a laconic tone, “what could the moon’s interest be in tonight’s all-too-mortal diversion? We are merely men playing at cards.”

“Men do nothing ‘merely.’ You will come to understand that…in time,” she responded.

“But you desired that I see the moon full. Why? Is there some significance in it?” he pressed her. If she regarded it as an omen, a signal for action, he had to know.

“Have you never heard that the full moon blesses lovers caught in its beams, Mr. Darcy?” She laughed throatily. “But I had forgotten, such unmathematical a notion you probably dismissed years ago!”

This romantic turn was not getting him anywhere! “I have heard no mention of Sayre’s sword, my lady. Perhaps it is your notions that will be disproved tonight!” He flicked a finger at the linen scrap on his lapel. Lady Sylvanie’s lips pursed in momentary displeasure, but she set her countenance to rights with a tight smile.

“He has not yet lost deeply enough, but it will not be long.” She spoke with conviction as she looked into his eyes. “You see how Trenholme paces and worries him. He will put down the sword within the hour.”

Darcy searched her face for some indication that she hid a darker secret behind her eyes than credence in the contents of a linen-bound charm and the force of her own will. The woman before him did not shrink from his examination. “Come,” she whispered finally, “Sayre is about to begin.”

After escorting the lady back to her seat, he took his own and reached for the cards, nodding to Sayre and Manning, who sat in readiness to receive them. The luck went very badly for Manning in the first two hands. As he played, he continually shot narrowed glances at Lady Sylvanie and then back at his hand, his jaw set stiffly. Finally, after betting heavily on a fluxus only to lose it to Darcy’s chorus, he threw down his cards, invited Darcy and Sayre to “cut each other’s throats, if that was their purpose,” and withdrew to the more agreeable pastime of allowing his wounds to be dressed by the amiable Lady Felicia.

“It is just the two of us now,” said Sayre. He reached for a new package of cards and shoved them toward Darcy, who took them but made no move to free them from their wrapping.

“Should you wish to cry ‘Draw!’ I would not object,” Darcy offered. Hearing him, Trenholme sat down heavily in Manning’s seat and in a whisky-soaked slur implored his brother to agree, but Sayre would have none of it.

“Draw, Bev? When has a Sayre ever cried ‘Draw’?” His Lordship replied in disdain and turned his back upon him. A murderous look crossed Trenholme’s face at his brother’s rebuff. He lurched unsteadily out of the chair and departed to smolder in anger in a dark corner of the room.

“Now then, Darcy” — Sayre’s smile was as false as his good cheer — “no more talk of leaving the table with the winner undecided.” He indicated the much-diminished pile of coins thay lay about him. “I believe I have the wherewithal to mount a successful campaign. But as the hour is advancing and the ladies are tiring, I will bow to the necessity of bringing the issue to the point. I propose a different game and higher stakes. What do you say, sir?”

Darcy hesitated. His winnings were substantial. With no more than the ready cash of his quarterly portion added to it, he had no doubt he could bring Sayre to his knees, but to what purpose? Sayre’s ruin might be Sylvanie’s objective, but all Darcy really desired of him was the sword. The sword! That was the solution! Darcy glanced at Lady Sylvanie. Her eyes, urging him to accept Sayre’s proposal, decided him. He would act and, with that action, end this charade on his own terms.