Page 28 of A Game of Scandal

For the first couple of hands, I was tense, distracted. I folded early, feeling the numbers jumping around in my head, like fleas on a dog’s coat. I watched the money I had bet slip across the table, ending up in front of Edward Laing’s seat and I knew a moment of panic. All this time, telling people how clever I was, and at the first opportunity to prove myself I was going to fail.

No.

The voice in my head was firm. I watched carefully as the men around me discarded and drew their cards. I looked at my own hand, and for a moment I imagined myself back in Mrs Finch’s office, playing her across the desk. I remembered the confidence she had displayed in me, heard her telling me that I had a gift, and that I was using it to make a difference.

“Discard two,” I said, and my voice was steady. The numbers stilled, everything stilled, and it was as if I could breathe again. My focus narrowed down to the cards in my hand, the hands that the other players discarded. I kept a count, I calculated the odds.

And I started to win.

Just a small amount at first, but then more and more. Soon, I wasn’t focusing on the money, the extraordinary amounts that I threw about with abandon. The only thing I cared about was the sequence of the cards as I drew them.

Occasionally, when my calculations left too big a gap for chance, I found I had to play the men themselves. This was harder. I noticed Lord Covington had a habit of touching his eyebrow when he was thinking about folding, that Horatio’s small talk sped up when he was excited about his hand, and that Johnson’s lip curled when he was feeling pleased with himself. Edward Laing, though, was a complete enigma.

He wore the same expression of mild interest throughout the game, even though he won several large bets and then lost them to me. He had beautiful hands, I noticed, soft and well cared for, with neatly trimmed nails and a tasteful gold ring on his right little finger. They looked like the hands of an aristocrat.

Ash handled the cards as if it were a game of the kind that schoolboys played for a lark. He sent them skipping lightly across the table, moving to a music only he could hear. I knew his hands had callouses. I knew because I’d felt them against my skin.

My attention wavered for a moment. I lost. Refocused.

While I played in dogged silence, the others began to make conversation. Horatio was the source of most of the talk, as he shared his thoughts on everything from cheese to steam engines, to the migration patterns of Canadian geese. Keeping half an ear on him, I was impressed by the bizarre breadth and depth of his knowledge on so many seemingly unconnected subjects, including the upcoming social season.

“Queen Charlotte’s Ball!” he exclaimed, puffing his chest. “Got my daughter an invitation to that, and it was a trial, let me tell you.” He chewed on the end of the unlit cigar he had produced from his pocket. “But nothing’s too good for my girl. She wants something, she’s going to get it, and she’s got her heart set on the full experience. She’s going to steal the show, a real jewel she is, my Sadie. And she’ll look the part, oh yes siree – it’s costing a pretty penny what with the gown and the veil… My God! These English customs! Girl’s got to wear a veil!”

“Ridiculous,” Johnson muttered, folding his hand.

“The whole thing is always a sad crush,” Covington drawled, checking the bet. “Shouldn’t bother, if I were you. They’ll let anyone in these days.”

If his words were meant to insult Horatio, the man seemed not to feel it, only nodded eagerly. “Well, that’s what I said, but of course after we sent our Sadie over to a British boarding school it was bound to happen that she’d want to do the same as all her friends, and when she came to me in tears – in tears, Mrs Williams! – saying how she needed to be a debutante and be presented to the royal court if she was going to find an acceptable man to marry … how could I argue?”

Covington looked queasy. “Good God, man, you sound like a matchmaking mother hen.”

“Isn’t that what this whole season business is about?” Horatio waved the cigar in the air, bluff face suddenly shrewd. “I’m not above buying a title. Plenty of dusty English aristocrats who’d like a slice of the Peabody fortune.”

I wondered if this peculiar statement was a roundabout offer in Covington’s direction, and from the startled light in his eyes it seemed the thought had occurred to him as well.

“Of course” – Edward Laing broke in, his eyes on his cards – “there will be one less eligible bachelor in the running this season. I hear poor old Peregrine Archer passed away this morning.”

There was a moment of stunned silence.

“Archer is … dead?” Covington’s bored facade dropped away, leaving him looking shaken.

Johnson’s expression was grim, his mouth thinning further. “Bad end. Not that it’s exactly a surprise. Nevertheless, a shame. He was young yet.”

“His poor parents.” Horatio looked dazed, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. “I must send my condolences to his father.”

Ash didn’t react at all, but there was that unnatural stillness about him again, telling me that something was wrong.

Peregrine Archer. I tried to place the name.

“I’m sorry for your loss, gentlemen,” I said. “I take it Mr Archer was a friend of yours?”

“Lord Archer,” Johnson corrected, almost absently. “He was Baron Ely.”

“One of Peabody’s dusty aristocrats.” Covington reached for his drink with a hand that wasn’t quite steady. He gave a humourless laugh, too loud in the quiet room. “There’s a man who’d have been happy to accept … what was it? A slice of the Peabody fortune.”

“This is no way to speak of the dead,” Johnson snapped. “I thought the pair of you were friends.”

Covington laughed again, knocking back a generous gulp of brandy. “After a fashion. Though lately, he’d been hanging about with some strange sorts. Anyway,” he continued petulantly, “there’s no need to act as if you care. Perry owed money all over the place – probably to everyone at this table, in fact.”