Читать книгу Paying the Virgin's Price - Christine Merrill, Christine Merrill - Страница 9

Nate hurried out of the Carlow town house and down the street, feeling the cold sweat beading on his brow. Of all the people, in all the places, why had he been greeted by Diana Price? He had been nervous enough, going to the house at all. But once he had arrived on Albemarle Street, the feelings of his youth returned. As a boy, he had run across the chequered floor of the front hall, chasing and being chased, laughing and playing. It had been as a second home to him. And to feel that moment of pleasure, as the young woman had entered the room. The Carlow daughters grown to beauty? But no. A stranger. A very attractive stranger. Delight, curiosity, an awakening of old feelings in him, long suppressed.

She was a lovely thing, with shining dark hair, and a small pursed mouth, ready to be kissed. Her large brown eyes were intelligent, but full of an innocence he never saw in the female denizens of the Fourth Circle.

She had looked at him without judgment or expectation, and a hint of responding interest that proved she was not wife to Marcus or Hal. Nate had felt quite like the man he once hoped to be. For a few moments, he was an ordinary gentleman meeting a pretty girl in a nice parlour, with none of the stink of the gaming hell on his clothes or in his mind.

And then he had discovered her identity, and it had all come crashing down. Thank God he had not decided to use his true name, for if she’d realized…

He hailed a cab in Piccadilly to Covent Garden and Suffolk Street, to the low haunts inhabited by Nate Dale the gambler. If the man he sought was anywhere, he would be here, waiting in the spot that he’d last been seen.

Nate went from the dim street, into the dim tavern connected by a tunnel to the Fourth Circle. ‘Mr Dale, returning so soon? And in daylight.’ Dante Jones saw him less as a friend than as a way to bring more people to the tables. ‘To what do we owe this honour?’

‘Mr Jones,’ he responded, with barely a nod, resenting the grimy way he felt when the man looked at him as though he was nothing more than a meal ticket. ‘Where is the damned Gypsy?’

‘The man who you beat last night? In the same spot as when you left him. And I am glad to have him, for his play draws quite a crowd. He is very nearly as lucky as you.’

‘Not any more.’ Nate stalked past Dante and into the gaming room to find Stephano Beshaley, or whoever he chose to be called today, seated in Nate’s regular chair, as though he owned it. He seemed impervious to the action around him, nursing his drink, long slender legs outstretched, as though he had been waiting for Nate’s return.

Nate pulled the silk rope from his pocket, and threw it down on the table in front of the Gypsy. ‘Take it back.’

Stephano only smiled and sipped his drink. ‘Once it is given, there is no returning it.’

‘Take it back. You have had your fun.’

‘Fun?’ Nate’s former friend greeted this with a bitter twist of his mouth and an arched eye-brow. ‘Is that what you think this is for me?’

‘I think you take pleasure in tormenting me. But you have done enough.’

And there was the ironic smile again. ‘You have changed much, in a few short hours. Last night, you said that there was nothing left to hurt you.’

‘And I was wrong. I freely admit it. You have found the one thing.’

Beshaley laughed. ‘I? I found nothing. But apparently you have. And I wish you to get what you deserve from it.’

‘You knew where I would go, when you returned. And you knew that Diana Price would be there, waiting for me.’

‘Who?’The Gypsy seemed honestly puzzled.

Nate reached into his pocket, and removed the tattered piece of paper that he had carried with him for ten years, like Coleridge’s albatross. He set it on the table before his old friend, who read aloud.

Should I lose the next hand, I pledge in payment my last thing of value. The maidenhead of my daughter, Diana. Edgar Price June 3rd 1804

Beshaley sneered back at him. ‘Just for a moment yesterday, I almost believed you. If you are innocent of any crime, then to carry vengeance to the second generation is to damn myself. But a man who would take such a thing in trade for a gambling debt deserves to suffer all that fate wishes to bring him.’

Nate glanced around, afraid that the people nearby might hear what he had done in that moment of madness. ‘I was young. And foolish. And in my cups. Edgar Price was my first big score, and I was too full of myself and my own success to think of what I might do to others. When I suggested this bet, it was intended as a cruel jest. I’d taken the man’s money. And his house, as well. I live there still. He’d bankrupted himself at my table to the point where his only options were debtor’s prison or a bullet. And yet, he would not stop playing. Like every gambler, he thought that his luck would change if he played just one more hand. I thought to shock him. To embarrass him. That if I pushed him far enough, he would slink from the table. Instead, he signed this to me.’

Nate took the paper back and stuffed it into his purse so he would not have to see it any more. It still pained him to read those words. ‘He cried when he lost. He begged me for mercy. And I told him that if I ever saw him again, or heard of him frequenting the tables anywhere in London, I would find him and the girl and collect what was owed me. And to his credit, I never saw or heard from him, after that day. I keep the paper to remind me what can happen when a man is pushed too far at the tables. And I have not taken a single marker, since.’

‘How noble of you.’ The Gypsy looked ready to spit in disgust. ‘You are lower than I thought you, Nathan. And after seeing this, I feel considerably less guilty about delivering the rope.’ He pushed it back across the table toward Nate.

Nate stared down at the symbol of disgrace, and in his heart, he agreed. He deserved punishment. But his mouth continued to try to justify the unjustifiable. ‘I thought the girl long married, by now. It has been years. She must know that I am no threat to her. But I went to warn the Carlows of you. And she was there. She is chaperone to Honoria and little Verity. You knew, you bastard. You knew it all along.’

The Gypsy smiled in satisfaction. ‘I knew nothing, other than that I would bring the rope to you, and see what resulted from it. Normally fate is not so swift. By your actions, you have made your own hell. Do not blame me, if today is the day that the devil has come to claim you.’

‘Whether or not you have staged this meeting with the girl, it will be the last one between us. I mean to leave Diana Price alone, just as I have always done. Now take this back.’ He slapped the rope upon the table.

Stephen arched his eyebrows. ‘And what will happen, if I do? Will she vanish in a cloud of smoke? You created the problem, Wardale. You must be the one to solve it.’

‘I can hardly be held to blame for what happened to her father, Stephen. He came to me, and he would not leave. He wanted to gamble. I am a gambler. I never set out to be what I have become. It is all the fault of your mother and your people.’

‘You won someone’s daughter at faro, and it is all my mother’s fault, is it?’

That sounded even more foolish than the rest of it. God knew how mad the rest of his defence would sound. ‘Did you know me for a gamester, before the curse?’

The Gypsy snorted. ‘You were ten years old.’

‘Yet I’d ruined my first man before I could shave. And that is the way it has been, from the very first wager. I am lucky. And it is all because of the curse your mother placed upon me.’

The Gypsy laughed. ‘You believe in luck?’

‘What gambler does not? I cannot claim that skill has brought me all that I have gained. I win far too often to think that it is always by my own abilities.’ He waved a hand in the direction of the faro tables. ‘These tables? All gaffed. Dante cheats. Only a fool would play here. But if you like, I will beat them for you. No matter how much Dante might cheat, he can never beat me.’ He stared at the tables in remorse. ‘No one has ever been this lucky. No one save me. It is not natural. And if I cannot lose? Then to play against others is little better than robbery.’

‘Then stop playing. Or tell them to.’

‘I cannot.’ He gritted his teeth. ‘Every night, I swear I am through. But the next night falls and I come back to the tables. I mean to play until I lose. Not just a hand or a single pass of the dice. When I lose all of it, every last thing I have won, then maybe I will understand how the others have felt. Only then can I stop.’

The Gypsy’s snorts continued, combining into a gale of laughter. ‘First you thought I conjured the Price girl. And now you wish to blame me for your excessive good luck. That is the maddest thing I have heard yet.’

‘You do not believe in your own magic?’

‘I do not have to. Not if you do. I come here with a reminder of your family’s villainy. And you proceed to fill in the rest. In less than a day, you are near to prostrate with guilt. If you want freedom, Nathan, use this rope for the purpose it is intended.’ He held the noose at eye level, until he was sure the meaning was clear, and then tossed it back on the table. ‘Then my doings with your family will be over and you will no longer be able to concern yourself with the families of your victims.’

His self-control was a distant memory, as Nathan felt the long-buried rage burning in him again at the old accusation. ‘My father was hanged for a crime he did not commit. My family has paid more than enough, with that. Take back the curse, Beshaley.’

‘No.’

‘You dirty Gypsy. Take back the curse.’In fury, he reached out and grabbed his former friend by his bad arm, squeezing the bicep.

He had found the injury. Stephano Beshaley went as white as his dark skin would allow, and the pain of the contact brought him out of his chair and to his knees.

Nate was overcome with a shameful glee to see his enemy humbled before him, and he remembered why it was so important to keep one’s emotions out of the game. When one always had the upper hand, it was too easy to take pleasure from the suffering he inflicted. He pushed the anger from his mind, and squeezed again with clinical precision, watching the other’s face contort with pain. ‘Take back the rope. Let me go, and I will release your arm. You have my word.’

The Gypsy took a deep breath, as though he were trying to drive back the pain with the force of his will. Then he raised his shaking white face in defiance. ‘Your father was a coward and a murderer. And you are the sort who would gamble for a girl’s honour. Your word means nothing to me.’

Though the first statement angered him, the last was so true that his grip slackened on his old friend’s arm, and he watched as the colour returned to the man’s face. And in the place of the nothingness inside him, there was now a deep bone-aching remorse. ‘Please. I am sorry. For all of it, Stephen. Let me go.’

And for a moment, the man on his knees before Nathan was plain Stephen Hebden, as hurt and bewildered as Nathan was. ‘I cannot. I am as much a slave to the curse as you are, for I was the one left to administer it. If your father was innocent, then you are already free and what you think is a curse is all your own doing. But if not?’ He shrugged with his one free arm. ‘I can do nothing for you.’