Rake's Wager. Miranda Jarrett

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СКАЧАТЬ London.” Finally Amariah smiled, and nodded. “It seems that, in his way, that is what Father wished us to do.”

      “To London!” Cassia crowed, and raised their joined hands together. “To London, and to Penny House!”

       Chapter Two

      Four months later

       London

       R ichard Blackley leaned closer to the painting, inspecting the surface for cracks to better judge its age. He didn’t give a fig whether the painting was two hundred years old, or two weeks, nor would he recognize the difference, except for how high the auctioneer might try to run the bidding. He glanced back at the listing in the exhibition catalog: The Fortune Teller, Italian, Sixteenth Century.

      That made him smile. The smirking old woman was a bawd if ever he’d seen one, taking the last coin that poor sot in the foreground had in his pocket, while he was busy gaping at the strumpet in the scarlet turban at the window. It was the strumpet he liked best, with her sloe-eyed, sleepy glance and creamy bare breasts. He knew just the place for her, in his dressing room at Greenwood, where she’d amuse him while he was shaved.

      He drew a small star before the picture’s number in the catalog. Generally he didn’t care one way or the other about pictures, but this was one he didn’t want to let slip away. What was the use of being a rich man if he couldn’t buy himself a painting that made him smile?

      “Excuse me, sir.” A young woman had eased her way through the crowd of other viewers here for the exhibition before the auction, and she now stood squeezed between Richard and the painting—his painting. “I didn’t mean to bump you.”

      “Forgiven,” he said, lifting his hat to her as he smiled. It was easy to smile at her: she was a pretty little creature, with bright blue eyes and golden-red hair that her plain dark mourning bonnet seemed to highlight rather than mask. Whom did she grieve for, he wondered idly: a husband, parent, sibling? “Though to be honest, I hadn’t noticed that you’d bumped me at all.”

      “Well, sir, I did,” she said, “so of course I had to apologize, to make things right. It would be rude of me not to.”

      She stated it as simple fact, a fact that he wasn’t sure how to answer, but because she was such a pretty little creature, he wanted to. She wasn’t being forward, the way a demirep might be to attract his notice; in fact, if Richard was honest, she didn’t really seem interested in him at all. Instead her whole attention seemed focused on the painting before him, and to his dismay she was marking a circle around the same number in her catalog as he had in his.

      “You are bidding on this picture, miss?” he asked. “You like it that much?”

      “That is the reason one usually comes here to Christie’s Auction Rooms, isn’t it? To bid on the pictures one likes?” She darkened the circle around the listing for emphasis. “Last week I sold three dreary paintings of peasants with cows, and now I plan to reward myself by buying this one.”

      “For yourself?” he asked, surprised. It didn’t seem like the kind of painting a young lady—she couldn’t be more than twenty—would choose for herself.

      “It’s my choice, yes, though I’m sure my sisters will find it amusing as well.” She leaned closer, studying the surface just as Richard himself had done. “I don’t believe it’s as old as they’re claiming—it’s likely a copy, and not even an Italian one—but the fortune teller in particular is very nicely done, I think.”

      “They got that wrong in the catalog, too,” he said. “If that old crone’s a fortune teller, why, then I’ll—then I’ll—”

      His words trailed off as he realized his mistake, the kind of mistake that true English gentlemen weren’t supposed to make when addressing English ladies.

      “Then what else could she be?” The young woman’s eyes were as blue as the Caribbean itself, and just as ready to swallow him up. “The smiling soldier had just given her his payment, and now she’s holding his hand as she reads his palm, while the other woman watches. His future must be improving, for him to look so jolly. Good fortune overcoming bad. That, sir, is why I wish to buy this particular picture.”

      She turned away from him and toward the next picture, and he joined her, unwilling to lose her yet.

      “You speak as if from experience,” he said, happy to let her think what she wished about the old procuress in the painting. “About good luck and bad, that is.”

      “There’s not a person on earth that’s not had experience with luck of both kinds.” She glanced at him sideways, up through her lashes, and without turning her head. “Unless, sir, you are among those who don’t believe in it?”

      “If you mean sitting idle beside a stream and waiting for my luck to change, then, no, I do not,” he said. “But I do believe in seizing the opportunities that fate offers, and making them my own.”

      She raised one arched brow, and laughed, a merry, bubbling sound that he instantly wished to hear again.

      “That’s bold talk, sir,” she said, “quite worthy of Bonaparte himself.”

      “It’s not empty talk,” he insisted, “nor was it meant to show sympathy to the French. It’s how I live my life.”

      “I didn’t say your words were empty. I said they were bold, which is a very different thing altogether.” She moved to stand before the next painting, and Richard followed. Clever women like this one hadn’t existed on Barbados, or at least none in the society that had allowed him, too. “You must enjoy gambling.”

      He frowned a little, not following her logic.

      “I’ve become good at spotting gentleman gamesters, you see,” she explained with an inexplicable triumph in her voice, as if spotting gamesters were a required skill for young ladies, like singing and fine needlework. “If you’re as bold as you say, then you must be the sort of sporting gentleman who enjoys his games of chance.”

      He shook his head, sorry to see her face fall. “Not dice, not pasteboard cards, and I’ve no wish to empty my pockets on account of some overrated nag, either.”

      “Truly?” she said, disappointed. “You are not pretending otherwise?”

      “I did when I was younger,” he said, to make her feel better, “but not for years. Now I’d rather find pleasure in playing for higher stakes than a handful of coins.”

      “Indeed, sir.” Her voice turned frosty, her cheeks flushing. “How fine for you.”

      He barely bit back an oath, realizing too late that she’d misunderstood him again. He’d meant the dangerous investments and other merchant ventures with high-risk profits that had become his specialty, while she’d thought the stakes were her and her charming little person—her virtue, as ladies liked to call it.

      “Oh, blast, I didn’t intend it that way,” he said, taking her by the arm so she’d have to look at him, so she’d understand he meant her no harm “Here now, miss, listen to me. I’ve never had to rely on a wager for a woman’s company, and I’m not about to begin now.”

      “No,” she said curtly, staring down at his fingers СКАЧАТЬ