Proof by Seduction (Carhart 1)

The door shut.

“Damn it.” Gareth considered his options. Run, and flag down the vehicle. Or let Ned disappear, and miss a second meeting with Ware. Incongruously, he noticed the silhouette of a hat atop the carriage. The driver flicked his whip, and the carriage started off.

Gareth grabbed hold of his own hat and ran. “Wait! You there!”

He caught up with the vehicle before the horses had picked up speed, and he beat on the side of the moving carriage. “You in there! Stop!”

The carriage slowed, and then halted. A burst of laughter rose inside, and Gareth’s spine prickled. He hated being laughed at. A voice inside broke through the cackles. “This will be excellent.”

The door swung open. Hanging on the side was that red-faced fellow Gareth had seen with Ned in the gaming hell the other night.

“How may I be of sher—of service?” The fellow bowed and lost his balance, grabbing the handle of the door for support. The hinges torqued under his weight, but held. For a moment, the fellow swung suspended against the door.

Gareth peered inside. Ned was squashed, like a piece of cake in a hamper, between two men who were as round and red as apples. One of them was tippling from a silver flask. He handed the container to Ned, and Ned took a defiant swig.

Every face but Ned’s stared at Gareth in drunken hope.

The fellow at the door scrambled to regain his footing. “Did you,” he said in suggestive tones, “stop us because of the hat atop the carriage?”

For some baffling reason, this query sent the two apples flanking Ned into a raucous cheer. “Hat on top! Hat on top!”

Ned joined in with a halfhearted raise of his fist. “Huzzah. Hat on top.”

Gareth reached up and placed his hand on the brim of the hat atop the carriage. “No. I’m here for Mr. Carhart.”

He tugged, intending to toss the offending head-covering into the carriage at his cousin. But the hat didn’t budge; instead, his fingers slipped and he lost his balance himself.

The maneuver was not missed by the onlooking drunkards. “Yah!” they screamed. “Hat on top!”

Gareth sighed heavily. “What is going on here?”

Ned didn’t meet his eyes, but the door-hanger laughed and poked Gareth in the chest in an unbecomingly familiar fashion. Gareth stared at the offending finger.

“Hat on top—” the man enunciated his words very carefully, punctuating each one with a jab “—is a game. An excellent game. The most excellent game available to gentlemen in Britain. It requires only a carriage and a hat.”

“And penny nails,” shouted out one of the other men. “Don’t forget the nails.”

Gareth grabbed the man’s hand before he could jab again. The palm was slick with sweat.

The door-hanger beamed with all the solicitude of the extremely drunk. “You nail the hat to the top of the carriage. Then you drive about, and take wagers about how long it will be until some officious do-gooder stops you, shouting you’ve left your hat atop the carriage.”

The man’s hand fluttered in Gareth’s grip. He looked down and frowned, as if only just realizing his wrist was trapped.

Gareth let go. The only thing more appalling than the man’s clammy hand was the fact that Ned planned to spend his evening playing Hat on Top instead of making things right with Ware and Lady Kathleen. Life wasn’t a game. There was no time for childish drunken bouts. Gareth would have to straighten out Ned’s priorities.

“That,” said Gareth, “is the most puerile game I have ever heard of. It has absolutely no point and I cannot condone it. Come along, Ned. We’re leaving. We don’t want to be late.”

Ned’s friends turned in shock and broke into a babble.

“But we’ve only just started!”

“Come on, Carhart, you know Hat on Top is no fun with only three.”

“You’re not even bosky yet. And we promised to meet Branning at Gaither’s. He’ll be at the hell any minute, now.”

Ned swiveled his head. He didn’t quite meet Gareth’s eyes. Instead, he stared at a point just past Gareth’s shoulder.

“If you want to speak with me,” he said coolly, “you’ll have to come along. There’s always room for more in Hat on Top. And I’m not leaving.”

Backslaps all around. Ned’s lip curled in distaste.

Door-hanger seemed to think Gareth’s participation was an actual possibility. He grabbed Gareth’s arm.

Gareth shook off the officious grip. “Do you know who I am? I am the Marquess of Blakely. I don’t play ridiculous games. And, Ned, you are coming with me this instant.”

His icy tone cut through the drunken merriment with satisfactory efficiency. The youths—they were none of them any older than Ned, if that—exchanged worried glances. Then door-hanger gave Gareth a negligent push in the chest. His sweaty palm left a dark print on Gareth’s silk waistcoat.

“A marquess who was fooled by Hat on Top,” he jeered. Laughter, this time with a nasty, dark edge, rang out. And then the door swung shut.

What logical arguments could one marshal against a fellow who preferred to tool around of an evening with a hat nailed to the top of his carriage, instead of setting the remainder of his life in order? Gareth had never felt so completely and utterly dumbstruck.

The carriage jerked and rolled forward, swaying from side to side as the twin bays pulled in their traces.

For the first time in his life, Gareth acknowledged there were things he couldn’t do. And not stupid, inconsequential things like singing or carving. Important things. What Ned needed was completely outside Gareth’s ken.

And he could turn to nobody now that he’d failed.

Really?

No. He had to admit it, even to himself. There was one person he could turn to. And he needed her now more than ever.

“COME WITH ME,” Gareth said without preamble as her door opened. “We haven’t a moment to spare.”

He held his hand out to Jenny. She stared at him in confusion, her hair falling in wisps around her face. One strand was caught between her lips. She looked up at him, those eyes piercing straight through him.

The words he needed to say stuck in his throat, but he choked them out.

“I need you.” There. He’d said it. There was no use hiding it any longer. He needed her for everything, and she…Well, she didn’t need him for anything. He looked away. “Ned needs you. You were right.” His hands clenched with the effort of his admission. “I can’t do this. I need you to—to—”

To what? To work a miracle? To intervene?

“I need you to put things back the way they were.”

She said nothing, but turned to find a cloak and bonnet. She had to succeed; Gareth had no other plans for his cousin. And if she couldn’t help, then Ned was doomed—doomed to spiral downward without any hope of redemption.

It wasn’t only Ned who needed redemption.

“Just come,” he said. “Be Madame Esmerelda again. Conjure spirits. Tell fortunes. I don’t care what you tell him, so long as you make this stop.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

DESPITE THE FACT that Gareth had referred to the gaming establishment as a hell, the room Jenny entered struck her as a far cry from brimstone and burning pitch. A fire burned in the room, but it was of the cozy, coal-burning variety, separated from the rest of the room by a mundane brass screen. There was an occasional orange glow when someone puffed a cigar. But for a hell, there was a distinct paucity of smoke and ashes. It wasn’t even sulfurous.

There were neither imps nor devils. No demonic overlords; the denizens here were mere sinners, every one.

If this was hell, hell was red velvet upholstery. It was the acridity of rancid tobacco and the sharp scent of spilled gin. It was the clink of coins and the dull murmur—in voices accented with those distinctive lazy drawls that bespoke wealth and years of education—of gentlemen engaging in the damnably honorable task of losing fortunes and pretending not to care.

Despite the warmth of

the room, Jenny shivered. She understood why sailors gambled, why clerks scraping together their pitiful quarterly incomes wagered. After all, when you had little to lose, a chance win could change a life.

But these men had everything—wealth, property and family connections. A handful of the coins these men tossed around would solve all Jenny’s problems.

Ned slouched in a corner, surrounded by men she supposed must call themselves his friends. The sullen slump of his shoulders told her everything she needed to know. After two years of his acquaintance, she knew the ups and downs of his moods rather well. There was that jocular, irrepressible Ned that she normally knew. And then there was the fellow she’d first met. Dour. Quiet. Depressed.

Ned picked up his cards from the green baize before him. He stared at them dolefully and blew out his breath. He seemed oblivious to the gentlemen on either side of him; he certainly didn’t look across the room to see where Jenny and Gareth stood, framed in the doorway.

Gareth shifted uneasily. “He doesn’t listen to me. He must know he’s destroying his place in society. He will be ostracized for the rest of his life if he persists in this sort of callous behavior. And you haven’t heard Ware speak of his daughter. Do you have any idea what a duke is willing to do on behalf of his only child?”

Jenny interrupted Gareth’s explanation with an upraised hand. “I know Ned when he’s like this. He’s almost past despair. Of course he won’t listen to you—he can’t feel anything right now.”