“That’s good.”
“It is,” Alice said. “Because to be quite honest, Uncle Hart, I didn’t in the slightest want a Season, and I haven’t liked it very much, and it’s costing Mama a great deal of money to do this for me. Making friends means I can honestly say I’m enjoying myself so she doesn’t feel she’s done the wrong thing. You aren’t to tell her that, of course.”
Hart turned to look at her. “I hope Edwina realises how lucky she is in you.”
“I’m very lucky in her, but I do wish she’d stop fretting about me. Look, it’s Giles.”
Giles Verney was indeed approaching. He exchanged a few mild insults with Hart, and gave Alice his hand with the ease of long acquaintance. “Can I beg the next dance?”
“If you like. I’m not in great demand. But I’m a terrible dancer.”
“So am I,” Giles assured her. “To say I have two left feet is to understate things considerably. I have as many left feet as a centipede.”
That was arrant nonsense since he was a superb dancer, but it made Alice giggle and she stood with a smile. Hart left them to it. Giles would give Alice a couple of dances, bring her an ice, and enliven her evening. It was the sort of thing he was very good at, having a bevy of sisters, cousins, and nieces, and he’d always extended that kindness to Alice as well. Hart, hopelessly lacking in grace, had long given up trying to imitate Giles’s charming manners. The effort had made him feel, and probably look, like a dancing bear.
So he didn’t attempt to uproot any wallflowers, but merely strolled around the ballroom for a little while, chatting to acquaintances. He watched young Loxleigh return to the ballroom in company with a couple of other men, and saw him drift casually over towards Alice, then he returned to the card-room.
Kinnard was still there, the seat next to him empty. Hart took it. “Evening. How are the cards running?”
“Shocking,” Kinnard assured him. He had the look of a man caught in gambling fever, eyes bright but hollow. “I’ve just lost sixty pounds to a sprig from the country with the best luck I’ve ever seen. Want to let me make it up at your expense?”
“No, but I’ll happily make things worse,” Hart assured him, and settled down to play, thinking hard.
Chapter Two
As an unmarried man who preferred the country, Hart didn’t trouble to maintain an establishment in London. He kept a set of rooms in Cursitor Street instead, unfashionably far east and thus both larger and more economical than gentlemen’s lodgings within a stone’s throw of St. James’s. He had his own entrance and three good-sized rooms; the married couple who lived upstairs cooked, cleaned, and valeted as required. What he lacked in convenience by not having a servant at shouting distance, he gained in privacy, and as a deeply private man he found that very much worthwhile.
He spent the day on his own business, sent his sister a brief note telling her he would report back in due course, ate a simple meal at home, and set out that evening to visit as many gaming hells as he could.
The third he tried was Lady Wintour’s house in Rupert Street, a place which teetered on the far edge of acceptability. Sir George Wintour had married a hostess from a faro den—some said while drunk, but that state had covered most of his adult life—and when his passing left his widow in dire straits, she had returned to her old profession. It was a very reputable place, in that the rooms were better lit and aired than those of the average hell, and the drinks less likely to leave you with a painful head. There was still a big man with a cudgel who watched out for the law and made sure you paid up, but at Lady Wintour’s he wore livery.
Hart nodded to the big man in question as he was admitted. “Evening, Ned.”
“Evening, Sir John. Herself is upstairs, she’ll be glad to see you.”
Herself, or Lady Wintour, appeared at that moment. “Hey there, Ned— Why, John Hartlebury, as I live and breathe! Hello, Hart!”
She came down the stairs in a rush and flung herself at him in a cloud of perfume, powder, and skirts. Hart caught her and lifted her off her feet, feeling corsets creak in his grip. She was his notorious affair—three months of self-delusion that she’d ended with some stinging home truths—but they’d parted on good terms for all that, and proved far better friends than lovers.
“Evangeline.” Hart kissed her rouged cheek. She squeezed his arse, which she had always and loudly admired. “You’re looking well.”
“I’m a haggard old woman. A wreck. More ruined than the Parthenon.”
“The house is losing, I take it?”
“I’m going to retire to the country and keep chickens.”
“Before you do that, I could use your help,” Hart said. “I’m looking for a young man.”
“Are you, now?”
He glowered at her. “Yellow-brown hair. Handsome face. Goes by the name of Loxleigh.”
Evangeline raised a plucked brow. “Him? He’s upstairs.”
That was a stroke of luck; he’d been resigned to trying a dozen places. “Do you know anything about him?”
She jerked her head and escorted him into a side room, to speak in private. “What are you after?”
“I want to know more about him.” Her expression conveyed without words that information was to be exchanged, not merely given. Hart sighed. “He’s courting my niece.”
“I didn’t know you had a niece.”
“My sister’s stepdaughter.”
“Did I know you had a sister?”
“They live in Aylesbury. She’s here for the Season, making her come-out.”
She nodded. “And why shouldn’t he court her?”
“Perhaps he should. That’s what I want to find out.”
Evangeline narrowed her eyes. “Has she got money?”
“She’ll have a portion on her marriage.”
“And you’ve come round the gaming houses to find out about him.”
Hart grimaced. Evangeline nodded as though he’d spoken. “You’ve got a feeling about him, haven’t you? I know what you mean.”
“You think there’s something wrong?”
“He’s very pleasant,” she said. “Very modest, polite, never takes offence or crows about his winnings. He’s been here four times, and came out to the good all of them. Wins fifty or sixty pounds a night.”
“That’s not huge.” It was vast amounts by normal standards, of course, entire sections of the annual accounts to John Hartlebury the prudent brewer, but mere tokens to a gaming baronet.
“It’s not breaking the bank, no. It’s the kind of money you can win at a gaming hell without attracting too much attention. The question is how many gaming hells he’s winning sixty pounds a night at, and how often.”
“You think he’s a sharp?”
“I’ve never caught him at it and I’ve no grounds for saying it, which is why I haven’t had Ned throw him into the street and stamp on his fingers yet. I just have a feeling, that’s all. And my feeling is, he looks like a pigeon but he plays like a hawk, and I don’t like him.”