The Rakehell Regency Romance Series Boxed Set 1 Page 3

  But Clifford suspected a hidden fragility which would allow Vanessa to be squashed like a cabbage leaf if the domineering Gerald were permitted to run her life now that she was back living with him for the sake of propriety while her aunt's house and estate were sold. He calculated she had to be almost nineteen now, ten years younger than Gerald, and as such, in his absolute power whilst under his roof.

  Clifford didn't like to get involved, not least because he had enough complications in his life with Gerald as a next-door neighbor constantly conspiring to poach land, game and fish at every opportunity. But someone had to look after Vanessa's interests, since Gerald obviously couldn't care less.

  Geoffrey Branson began to argue anew. "This has gone far enough, son. I forbid you to have anything to do with this sorry affair."

  "Yes, and I say I can deal myself," Gerald asserted.

  Clifford and Malcolm exchanged looks, and both remained where they were.

  Gerald eyed them both narrowly, then shrugged. "Very well, in the interests of fairness, Mr. Malcolm Branson can deal. We are ready. The initial stake will be five thousand pounds each, and a minimum of one hundred per hand."

  Some of the men giggled nervously, but they all pulled out their billfolds and checkbooks.

  "How much income did you say her estate is worth?" Timothy Bridges demanded.

  "Twenty thousand pounds per annum."

  "Right, I'm in."

  Clifford raised one of his broad, strong hands to command everyone's attention. They all turned to look at his handsome classical features expectantly.

  "Wait. Before we start, we must make the terms of play perfectly clear. It would be foolish to stake all on only one hand of vignt-un. What about the best of three wins the lady's hand?" he suggested.

  Gerald was about to dismiss the proposal immediately simply because it had come from Clifford. But in view of the way his luck had been running lately, it seemed sensible not to stake all on only one hand.

  "The best of five," he determined.

  All nodded agreeably.

  "One last point. Clear the room. We wouldn't want anyone to give the game away, now would we?" Clifford knew the fewer witnesses to what was about to take place, the better.

  Gerald protested again, but he was outnumbered by the men around the table, and forced to acquiesce.

  "Very well, then, since I'm out-voted. You heard him. All of you go, now. Shoo."

  He cleared the room of people like so many geese in a yard while Malcolm continued to shuffle the cards expertly.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Once the elegant green and gold silk sitting room was quiet and Gerald had resumed his seat, Malcolm explained he would lay out the cards upon the baize table, one face down, one face up, in front of each of the seven players.

  He hadn't spent a lot of years in Bath and London in his younger and wilder days for nothing. Of course, only Clifford, his closest friend, knew he had saved the Branson family fortunes at the card tables several years before, when his father and uncle had been duped into a series of bad investments that had virtually bankrupted them both.

  Malcolm had tracked down the men responsible, and quietly but comprehensively got the family's money back. He had also exposed the men for the scheming liars they really were.

  While Malcolm, upon principle, had never cheated his bosom companions, he'd read Clifford's look of desperation correctly. Feeling sorry for the girl Clifford was so determined to aid, he was now prepared to use all of his underhanded sharper's skills to help secure his friend's desired outcome. He knew Clifford well enough to be certain he was not doing it for Vanessa's fortune.

  All the same, he was worried. Gerald was a bluff, hearty country squire with a native cunning and the manners of a rutting boar. He was a rampant Tory who loathed the refined Radical landowner Clifford Stone with a violence bordering on mania. When Clifford did win, what exactly would Gerald do?

  But there was no time to worry about that now.

  "Deal," Gerald commanded imperiously, before knocking back his brandy and shoving the glass toward James Cavendish.

  James filled it, and the pair winked at each other.

  Malcolm caught the exchange as he dealt the cards and did his utmost to avoid looking at his friend.

  Clifford too kept his eyes firmly fixed on the table as if completely absorbed in the game. He prayed Malcolm would have enough sense not to let him win every hand in too obvious a fashion. If Gerald smelt a rat, the game could well be up for poor Vanessa after all.

  Malcolm made sure that Clifford won the first hand, dealing him a ten and king off the bottom, but for the next two hands he let the cards fall as they would.

  The second proved a tie with Gerald and James Cavendish on nineteen. Gerald won the second tie-breaking hand when he stood on eighteen and James went over.

  Timothy Bridges triumphed in the third round with a natural vignt-un.

  In the fourth hand, Malcolm once again controlled the cards that fell to Clifford, letting him tie with Charles Cavendish and Toby Stephens on twenty-one. Clifford eventually won the second hand when Charles, with raven hair and squinting blue eyes, became more and more drunk and foul-tempered. He asked for another card on sixteen, and went over. Toby had nineteen, Clifford twenty.

  Gerald's normally florid complexion turned dark crimson at Charles' seemingly careless play. He began tugging at his frayed cravat. Clifford wondered if he might have an apoplectic fit right there at the table and end this farce once and for all.

  He also saw that Gerald would lodge a protest if Clifford were to win yet another hand. He risked a glance over at Malcolm, who dealt a winning hand of twenty to James Cavendish instead. Gerald desperately tried to bluff, but James held out to the end, and emerged victorious.

  "We have played five hands. Clifford Stone is the clear winner with two hands," Malcolm stated. "Mr. Hawkesworth, you have your money on the table. I trust your sister will be content with the arrangement."

  Gerald said nothing, but simply glowered from one man to the next. The sum on the table was more money than he had ever seen in his life, but they could all see that his greedy nature made him wish he had held out for more.

  Clifford declared, "I shall be over tomorrow to pay a call on Miss Hawkesworth. I shall leave it to you to tell her the news, that you have gambled away her hand and lost." He stood up and bowed curtly to the other man.

  "Damn you, sir! Damn you!" Gerald shouted, his face turning purple with fury.

  Malcolm tried to cover over the awkward moment. "As party to this affair, and a person willing to stand as groomsman for Clifford, if you will have me, I shall see that the banns are called immediately. The wedding can take place at the end of the month. My sister Claire will be only too pleased to help with the arrangements for whatever is needful. Vanessa may come stay with us at the Grange until the wedding if she wishes, so that she may have help with all the necessary arrangements."

  Clifford, while alarmed at talk of a wedding, allowed his friend to speak uninterrupted. He was relieved that Malcolm had grasped his fears so readily, that the rapscallion was not fit to look after his sister's best interests.

  All the same, he couldn't shake off the uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Gerald Hawkesworth was nothing if not a bad loser. Clifford sighed as his thoughts began to crowd in on him, and he berated himself for his impetuosity. He wished now he had never let this charade go so far. But Vanessa had to be protected, no matter what the cost.

  "Thank you, Malcolm, for all your help. We shall all put our heads together tomorrow and see what is needful."

  All manner of worrying considerations entered Clifford's head as the full impact of what he had done finally began to sink in. Oh Lord, what had he been thinking? Having staked such a high ante and bet more in order to placate Gerald, he would need to reconsider his own finances. Such large unexpected expenses would entail more careful management of his estate in the short term.

  If not in the long term,
he realized with an inward groan. He might not marry Vanessa, but he would need to assist her in some way until her own affairs were more settled. He had to help the girl get free of Gerald somehow, even if it meant setting her up in a small house somewhere far way from her half-brother until she could smooth things over with the custodians of her estate.

  He sighed. He would also have to break the news to his own brother Henry. Not to mention mend fences with his friend Thomas, who was supposed to have been staying with him for a few days, but who had no doubt just headed home to the nearby town of Brimley in disgust.

  And what on earth would he tell his other dear friend Jonathan, at Oxford and shortly to be ordained! Clifford thumped his brow with the heel of his hand. Jonathan had not always been the most godly of young men, but he would still be shocked when he heard what he had done. Come to that, he was rather shocked himself.

  But all of his friends and family were the least of Clifford's worries now, for the parlor once again began to fill with guests. News of his 'victory' had filtered out into the ballroom as the participants in the card game prepared to go home.

  Clifford forced himself to smile as people congratulated him or rebuked him according to their mood.

  Henry came barreling in, his earnest young face glowering with indignation, dragging Josephine along behind him. The poor honey-blonde was breathless from the breakneck pace he had set.

  "Clifford, there you are! Thank God. I've heard the most appalling Banbury tale. That you gambled for a wife. And actually won."

  Clifford felt his face heat with shame.

  Henry saw the change in his sibling's expression at once. "For pity's sake, Clifford, enough practical jokes," he said edgily, his eyes never leaving his brother's face.

  "I'm sorry, Henry. It's no joke. I gambled with Gerald and the other men for Vanessa."

  He stared as though he had never seen him before. "Lord bless us! Tell me it isn't true."

  "Henry, I truly wish I could."

  Josephine gasped, and shot him a look of outrage. "Egad, how could you!"

  "Jo, I had to."

  "Don't speak to me! I thought you better than that. Treating a woman like a brood mare or bank account. Some Radical you've turned out to be." She spun on her heel and departed with a swirl of pink skirts.

  Henry daggered his elder brother with a rapier-sharp glance and followed after her.

  Clifford rose from the table numbly, trying to avoid being cornered by a bevy of men all berating him and lecturing him on his duty. And how he should mend his ways before his foibles led him to even worse debauchery.

  He swallowed the comments without protest as he tried to make his way to the foyer to reclaim his cloak and order around his carriage. For indeed, what would be the point. Everyone seemed determined to think the worst of him and more than happy to air his or her opinions as to his low character. He learned first-hand that night the veracity of the commonly held belief that the higher one was, the further one fell. Would they had dragged Gerald over the coals in the same manner.

  The men's responses were bad enough. There were also more than a few piqued young ladies in the County as well, he noted as some of them went storming past him in the corridor with an outraged snap of their fans. Clifford watched with only mild twinges of regret as Charlotte Castlemaine, Pamela Ashton, and Claire Branson went past him looking grim.

  They were all lovely women in their own ways, dark, fair and brunette, but he could not get the color of fallen maple leaves out of his mind. He had never lost his heart to any woman, and doubted at times that it would ever happen.

  He was also the last person to care what people thought of him. So long as he stuck to his own stalwart principles, the Devil take what anyone's opinion. He would not behave wrongly just to curry favor with others.

  Gerald came out of the card room now after having settled with his cousin and gathered up every penny. With one hostile look at Clifford he slithered off into the night with his pockets bulging.

  "Good riddance. May he never have a day's luck with that money," Malcolm muttered under his breath.

  "With the way Gerald gambles, he probably never will," Clifford predicted grimly.

  He waited until everyone was out of earshot before whispering to his companion, "Thank you for helping me, and above all Vanessa. I owe you a great deal."

  "Don't thank me yet. In fact, I think this night's business has opened up whole Pandora's box of troubles."

  "But at least there is hope at the bottom of the casket. A faint glimmer, but hope nonetheless."

  Malcolm shook his head and sighed. "Aye, Clifford, but it's small consolation compared to what's been unleashed. Gerald and you are like oil and water. Having him as a brother-in-law? It would be any reasonable man's worst nightmare."

  Clifford shrugged one shoulder. "It may not come to that. I need time to think, come up with some sort of plan to get her out of Hawkesworth House and to a more safe and respectable situation. If he would gamble her, he is not fit to be her guardian and protector."

  Malcolm nodded in agreement.

  "With your father's help, and our friend Alistair Grant the barrister's, I should like to make appropriate inquiries as to the best way to look after her interests without having to marry her. She will need a proper chaperone, and will have to be convinced of all our good intentions. She has been cast amongst virtual strangers to fend for herself since her aunt's death last month, and this turn of event could prove overwhelming for the poor child."

  "I'll do all I can, you know that. My whole family will."

  "Thank you. I only wish I knew where to start."

  He ruffled his golden hair nervously and looked around the corridor as if hoping for a clue as to how to proceed. It was a damned bad business, and liable to get a great deal worse before it ever got better.

  Clifford wondered for the hundredth time what Vanessa would say when she found she had been gambled away by her own brother, and would be expected by the entire district to wed Clifford by the end of the month.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Vanessa sat across from her brother in their shabby, old-fashioned red silk and walnut drawing room and stared at her brother in horror. "What are you saying? Gerald, surely you jest! How could you possibly have done such a thing!"

  "What's wrong with the idea? Plenty of people bring out their daughters for the express purpose of finding them a good husband. I've saved us all the time, expense and boredom."

  Vanessa laughed for a moment, until she saw the look on his face and realized he was perfectly in earnest. "You aren't joking, are you?" she said, shaking her head. "I'm shocked beyond words. You really mean to make me marry the man you lost to at cards? Even leaving aside your disgraceful conduct, who on earth would be such a barbarian as to even agree to such a thing? To sit down and gamble for a lady? In this day and age? The very idea!"

  "It was Clifford Stone."

  Her long-lashed eyes flew wide. "Clifford Stone!" she gasped. "Oh no, impossible. After all you tell me he's done to you and to your estate, breaking fences, ruining our serving girls, poaching our deer and fish from the adjoining lake, insulting you, Gerald, you want me to marry that beast?"

  Gerald passed a hand over his face to hide his disconcerted expression. Once again, his lies had backfired upon him. He shifted uneasily in the frayed red silk and gilt chair and tried to rescue the desperate situation by saying in a soothing tone, "I know he's a terrible person. All I've told you about him and more is perfectly true. But short of selling everything we have and moving away, nothing less will satisfy him.

  "It won't be so bad, dear sister. I'll be right here to protect you. Moreover, the censure of public opinion will buffer you from his more rampant excesses."

  She flung out her hand impatiently. "And exactly who will protect me in my chamber at night? In my bed?" she hissed. "You talk of this as if it were a business arrangement. As if marrying me to a criminal and debaucher means nothing! But it means everything to me.
It's my safety and happiness we're discussing. Surely there must be another solution? I refuse to sell myself to anyone like a common whore, not even to help you."

  "Now, now, Vanessa, language, please! As the head of this family, you will do as I say," he stated firmly.

  She snorted in derision. "You may well be head of the family, Gerald, but it is I who possess the fortune. Money is power. I'm certainly not going to hand my power or my person over to anyone without sober consideration. I'll simply speak to my solicitors. Apply to them for funds. You will have no objection to me clearing the debt, I take it, and there will be an end of the matter."

  Gerald struggled to keep his face impassive and his tone even. "But nothing less will satisfy him than to be paid immediately, and to wed you. It will take too long to settle the matter with the solicitors."