The Duke's Gamble. Miranda Jarrett

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СКАЧАТЬ woke; she usually rose at eleven, and now she’d lost that hour and a half of usefulness forever, never to be recaptured. “I would have his head.”

      Somehow she found the will to push herself upright just as Deborah drew back the curtains to the window, letting the bright noonday sun flood the room, and with a groan Amariah flopped back onto the pillow, her arm flung over her eyes.

      “Forgive me, miss, but Mr. Pratt said it’s the only way to—”

      “I know what Mr. Pratt said,” said Amariah, marshaling herself for another attempt, “though knowing he is right doesn’t make it any more agreeable.”

      “Forgive me for being forward, miss, but everything will be more agreeable after a nice dish of tea.” Deborah lifted the small silver pot and poured the steaming tea into one of the little porcelain cups, adding sugar and lemon. Then she tipped the fragrant liquid into the deep-bottomed dish and handed it to Amariah. “Your favorite pekoe, miss.”

      “Thank you, Deborah.” Carefully Amariah took the saucer, her fingers balancing the worn, gold-rimmed edge. Painted with purple irises, the tea set was one of the few things the sisters had had from their mother, and for Amariah, using the delicate porcelain each morning was a small, comforting way to remind herself of her long-past childhood in Sussex.

      Deborah shifted the tray to the bed, reaching behind Amariah to plump her pillows higher. “You see, miss, that Mrs. Todd cooked your eggs just the way that Miss Bethany—I mean, Lady Callaway—did for you, with them little grilled onions on the side.”

      “Shallots,” Amariah said wistfully as she looked down at her plate. “They’re a special breed of onions called shallots.”

      Deborah beamed. “See now, miss, isn’t that just like Mrs. Todd, knowing the difference, and knowing you’d know, too?”

      Amariah smiled in return, but without any joy. Mrs. Todd, Bethany’s assistant in the kitchen and a master cook in her own right, had made an exact copy of one of her sister’s best breakfasts, but it wasn’t the same. It never could be, not without Cassia and Bethany to share it. Breakfast had always been the one meal the sisters had together, sitting in their nightclothes before the fire to laugh and gossip and plan their day before their work began in earnest.

      Now Bethany and Cassia must be taking breakfast with their husbands, pouring their tea and buttering their toast, while she would be here at Penny House, with only—

      “Miss Penny, miss?” The scullery maid standing before her was very young and very new, her hands twisting knots in her skirts and her face so pinched with anxiety that Amariah feared she might cry. “Miss?”

      “What are you doing here, Sally?” Deborah scolded. “You’ve no business coming upstairs and bothering Miss Penny! Go, away with you, back where you belong!”

      The girl’s eyes instantly filled with terrified tears. “But Mr. Pratt said—”

      “What did Mr. Pratt say, lass?” Amariah asked gently, preferring to earn her staff’s loyalty through kindness, not threats. “Is something wrong?”

      “No, Miss Penny. That is, it be this, Miss Penny.” Sally made a stiff-legged curtsy before she darted forward, a folded letter in her hand. “I was sweepin’ th’ front steps, Miss Penny, an’ found this there, up against th’ door, an’ Mr. Pratt said I must bring it to you at once.”

      “Thank you for your promptness. You did exactly the right thing.” Amariah took the letter from the girl, her heart making a small, irrational flutter of hope.

      Why would Guilford leave her a letter by the door, instead of handing it to a servant? Why, really, would he write to her at all?

      “You’re new, aren’t you?” she said. “What is your name?”

      “Yes, miss,” she said with another curtsy. “I’m Sally, miss.”

      “Then thank you, Sally,” Amariah said, forcing herself to pause, and keep her curiosity about the letter at bay. “Continue to be so obedient, and you’re sure to prosper here. You may go.”

      “Yes, Miss Penny.” The girl fled with obvious relief, leaving Amariah alone with the letter in her hands. Though the stock was thick and creamy, the highest quality made for the wealthiest custom, there was no watermark or seal to reveal the sender. That alone was proof enough that it hadn’t come from the duke, and enough to silence her foolish expectations; Guilford loved his title far too much ever to be anonymous by choice.

      Still, the letter itself remained a puzzle. Only her name was printed across the front, in large, blockish letters written with an intentional crudeness to disguise the writer’s true hand.

      “That’s a curious sort o’ thing, isn’t it, miss?” Deborah asked, purposefully lingering near the bed to watch. “Should I fetch one o’ the footmen before you open it, miss, just to be safe?”

      “Whatever for, Deborah?” Amariah scoffed. “In case some sort of villainy should puff fright from the paper? I’ll grant that the writer must be a strange sort of coward to toil so hard at hiding his face and name, but I’m hardly afraid of his letter.”

      With a flourish, Amariah slipped her finger beneath the blob of candle wax that served as the letter’s seal and cracked it open.

      Mistress Penny,

      Be Advised that you have a Great Cheat at your Hazard Table & that I will Unmask him to Public Shame & Disgrace if you do not Do so First.

      A Friend of Truth & Honor

      “I hope it’s not bad news, Miss Penny,” Deborah said as she began laying out Amariah’s clothes for the day.

      “Not bad,” Amariah said, briskly refolding the letter. The message had been written in the elegant hand of a gentleman and a coward, and she intended to discover his identity as soon as possible. “Merely provoking. Please tell Mr. Pratt to send for Mr. Walthrip directly, as well as all the footmen and guards who have served in the hazard room within the last fortnight. I should like to address them all as soon as they have arrived. I will not have a gaming scandal at Penny House, especially not based on the whispers of some knave too timid to show his face.”

      Two hours later, Amariah stood at the head of the large oval table, made of the most solid mahogany, normally used for the playing of hazard. While the tall windows were thrown open as they were each day to freshen the stale air left from the night before, the room never could quite shake its nocturnal cast, like some dandy caught after dawn in the harsh glare of morning. One by one, Amariah glanced at each of the faces gathered around the green-covered table: some old and wizened, some fresh and young, some she’d inherited along with the club itself, and all still dazed and rumpled from being called into work so early.

      “I’m sorry to have roused you from your beds,” she began, “but my reason is a serious one. I received a letter this morning accusing us of harboring a cheat at our hazard table.”

      “But Miss Penny, that is not possible!” Mr. Walthrip cried, his bony jaw jutting out with indignation over his tightly wrapped stock. He was the hazard table’s director and had been for at least twenty-five years, and he took his job so solemnly that Amariah was not surprised he was the first to object. “There is a precision, a nicety, to hazard that does not favor cheating!”

      “Are СКАЧАТЬ