Mary Balogh: The Double Wager

Ridley, convinced that his employer must be in the midst of some kind of seizure, complied with his orders. He pulled out one crumpled card after another and smoothed them on top of the ledger on which he had been laboring when the duke had entered his room.

"The Countess of Raleigh invites you to a musical soiree on May fifth," he began, glancing doubtfully at Eversleigh.

The duke looked back, considering for a moment. "Music?" he asked suspiciously. "What music, James?"

Ridley consulted the card again. "The main artiste is the Italian opera singer Signora Ratelli," he said.

The duke picked up his quizzing glass and began to twirl it slowly by its black riband. "My dear boy, would you show some sense?" he said. "Put that back where it came from."

Ridley did so, the expression on his face and the rigid set of his spine conveying his indignant disapproval.

"Lord and Lady Manning request the pleasure of your presence at a masquerade ball to be held on May eight," Ridley read with stiff formality.

"Hmm." Eversleigh pondered awhile, the quizzing glass still turning in hypnotic circles. "I would not be able to check for pimples," he muttered quietly to himself, though his eyes still rested absently on his disapproving secretary, "and I do draw the line at spots. No, throw it away, dear boy," he said decisively.

"Your aunt, the Countess of Lambert, requests the pleasure of your company at a come-out ball for her daughter, the Honorable Althea Summers," Ridley began, but with a hasty glance at his employer, he moved to throw it in pursuit of the soiree and the masquerade.

The quizzing glass fell still at the end of its riband. "Are my ears failing me, James?" Eversleigh asked. I missed the date of that one."

Ridley pulled the card toward him again and glanced at it. "May eleven, your Grace."

Eversleigh appeared to be doing some mental calculations. "All the new little girls of the Season will be there on display, I suppose, James?" he asked faintly.

"Undoubtedly, your Grace," Ridley replied. "It is a come-out and early in the Season. If you will forgive my saying so, sir, it is not at all your sort of do." He coughed delicately.

"Ah," the duke said, nodding slowly and fixing his employee with a keen eye, "but there is family duty, you see, James. My aunt, you know. Althea, did you say?"

Ridley glanced again at the card and nodded.

"Is she the pasty one with the yellow hair? Or is she the one whose body falls in a straight line from her armpits to her thighs?"

Ridley squirmed in some discomfort. "I believe the Honorable Althea Summers is blond and rather tall and, er, slim," he said.

"Hmm, she is both of those people, then?"

Ridley did not answer.

"Accept the invitation," Eversleigh decided, pushing himself with apparent effort into an upright position again.

"Your Grace?" Ridley stammered.

"James?" The duke's eyebrows rose; his right hand was closing around the handle of his quizzing glass again.

"Yes, your Grace."

Eversleigh walked unhurriedly from the room.

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The Tallants had arrived in London, all of them with marked reluctance. Giles was the only favored being who was allowed to ride his horse during the five-hour journey from Roedean. Miss Manford, with a rare display of firmness, had insisted that Henry behave like a lady and ride in the carriage. Her voice. had become quite breathless, her hands had flapped in the air as if she were conducting A particularly rebellious orchestra, and her head had nodded until a veritable shower of hairpins had released wayward strands of mouse-colored hair, but she had won her point.

Henry, dressed in an unfashionable muslin dress of laded green, a rather wrinkled gray cloak, and a brown bonnet that looked as if the parrot had been in the habit of rising it for a perch, sat sullenly in the carriage for the first few miles until a natural ebullience of spirits restored her to cheerfulness.

In fact, it would have been difficult for anyone to remain sullen and dignified for long in that coach. Miss Manford sat demurely except when, every few minutes, she panicked and imagined that some vital possession had been left behind.

"Oh, children," she cried, slapping her gloved palms against her cheeks, "my workbox. I stood it on my bedside table and forgot to instruct the footman to bring it down. How ever will I mend Philip's stockings when he puts his heels through them?"

"Calm down, Manny," that young gentleman replied. I think I have a hole in my breeches from where the infernal thing has been rubbing against my hip for the past hour."

"Oh, bless you, dearest boy," she sighed in relief. "And Jo please watch your language in front of Sir Peter and Lady Marian."

"Damn your impudence!" said a high, cross voice.

"Oh, dear me," wailed Miss Manford. "What are we to do about Oscar?"

Philip and Penelope were rolling around in unholy glee.

Miss Manford's hand suddenly flew to her mouth and her eyes grew round with horror. "Oscar's pink blanket!" she exclaimed. "It was in the schoolroom. You know, children, that he will never fall asleep with any other cover over his cage."

"Oh, Manny darling, will you relax and enjoy the scenery?" Henry chided, laughing lightly. "Brutus has it under him on the floor. And really he is being remarkably quiet when one considers that he has not been exercised today. Brutus!" she yelled suddenly, throwing herself forward to wrestle determinedly with the happy canine who was cheerfully chewing away a large corner of the blanket.

For the next few minutes pandemonium broke loose in the narrow confines of the ponderous old carriage. Penelope pounced on the hind quarters of the dog and tried, in vain, to drag him backward. Philip threw himself astride the dog's forepart and attempted, equally in vain, to lift him off the blanket. Henry tugged at the offending article and scolded the dog. Brutus, delirious with happiness over this new game, wagged his tail vigorously, wriggled ecstatically under the combined weight of the twins, and managed to bark loudly in Henry's face while keeping a firm hold on the frayed pink blanket. Miss Manford's hands flapped ineffectually while she chanted, "Bless my soul!" to a God who would have been deafened had he been foolish enough to listen. Oscar stumped up and down the floor of his cage, shrieking "Gosh-a-gorry!" to anyone who cared to take note.

"I say," said Giles, lowering his head from his horse's back and peering cheerfully through a window, "a spot of bother, is there?" It said a lot for the normal behavior of the family that he did not seem unduly alarmed.

It was a flushed, disheveled, and tired family and its entourage that finally disembarked from the carriage in the driveway of Sir Peter's house in Cavendish Square.

Lady Marian Tallant was never afterward to know how she kept her dignified composure under the onslaught. She tried to administer a graceful hug on each of the twins and lay a cool cheek next to theirs, but each of them squirmed away, threw a "Hello there, Marian," in her direction, and proceeded to busy themselves with removing the pets.

"You won't mind having Brutus here, will you, Marian?" yelled Penelope.

Philip's hind quarters were poking out the doorway as he tried to coax his pet out of the warm interior of the coach.

"Brutus?" she asked with a bright smile.

"The twins' dog," Henry explained.

"A dog," she said, clapping her hands with delicate pleasure. "Little Timothy will be so pleased." Then her face paled as what looked like a ragged pony padded out onto the driveway and proceeded to shake himself awake. All five members of the Roedean group tensed for a moment and emitted a collective sigh of relief when it became obvious that Brutus had not taken a fancy to Marian, or to Peter, who was hovering in the background asking Giles for details of their journey.