His hazel eyes were different when he said that. Alive, but not smiling, not smiling in the least. Hart watched him as he looked down at his cards again, and thought, So that’s what you look like when you’re telling the truth.
He nudged a bit further. “I suppose you will be very lonely if she makes a match in London.”
“I should be a poor brother if I let my selfish concerns stand in her way. But I hope we will always be close, and she will be a sister to my wife too. If that should come to pass, of course.”
“Of course.”
They played the hand out with little more talk and Hart emerged the winner by a few pounds. He couldn’t fault Loxleigh’s play, any more than he could fault the man’s words. There was barely a chink in his facade of steady humble decency.
And every instinct Hart had screamed he was a liar.
Chapter Three
Robin Loxleigh was in a mixed frame of mind.
The Beaumont ball had gone well. He’d got a good few blushes out of Alice, the kind that came with proper smiles, and when he’d enquired if she might be at home to receive a caller the next day, she’d said her stepmother would be pleased to see him. She wasn’t precisely falling into his arms, but that was for the best: if she had a habit of flinging herself at any man who showed interest, all but the most negligent parent would raise doubts about a swift marriage.
Robin had initially hoped that Alice’s family would be negligent, or that Mrs. Blaine would want to push out the cuckoo in her nest, but nothing could be further from the case. The older woman obviously adored her stepdaughter, who called her Mama. They were a happy and a loving pair. It gave Robin a feeling in his stomach that he preferred not to have.
Still, if an affectionate home made Alice less vulnerable to a lover’s blandishments, it offered Robin a different advantage: Mrs. Blaine would not want to deny her anything that made her happy. He just needed to persuade them both that that included himself as a husband.
In fairness, he had every intention of making her happy. She was not a pretty girl, but he didn’t care about that, and she was pleasant company, very amusing when she got over her shyness. They’d rub along well and he’d make her a good husband by the world’s standards. He had no intention of squandering her money: he’d live happily on the interest of twenty thousand, well invested. He’d respect her, present a face of affection and mutual kindness to the world, make her a matron to be envied by prettier misses, and plough her if she wanted, albeit while thinking about other people. That surely made him better than most husbands he’d heard of. Robin might be a fortune hunter, but he’d treat his prize well once he’d won her.
And he would win her. He had a handsome face and taking ways, plus Marianne to attest to what a good, kind brother he was, and standing ready to embrace the lonely orphan Alice as her sister. What girl could resist?
The only fly in the ointment was Hartlebury.
Robin had an uncomfortable feeling about him. He’d seemed aggressive when they’d played at Lady Wintour’s hell, and Robin couldn’t quite put that down to his notorious brusqueness. He’d been pushing, Robin was sure, and he’d watched too closely.
Doubtless some of the awkwardness had sprung from Robin’s own thoughts. He’d felt extremely self-conscious at being found by the man in a hell. Gambling was a common recreation for all classes, and there was no reason he shouldn’t play, but it was undeniably a poor match for his parade of domestic virtue.
What else was he to do? They needed the money. Marianne was spending it like water on bonnets and dresses while insisting they build up a substantial reserve in case the fortunes they hunted got away. She didn’t intend to flee the city with nothing but the clothes they stood up in, not again. Robin had all the incidental expenses of a gentleman to meet, including making sure he could cover his occasional losses. Those were inevitable, no matter how good he was with the cards, and if he ever failed to pay a debt of honour they’d be sunk.
No, he had no choice but to play. And Hartlebury was a gamester too; he would be a hypocrite to hold another man’s play against him. That probably wouldn’t stop him—hypocrisy was the defining feature of the upper classes in Robin’s view—but who knew; perhaps a man who actually worked rather than simply waiting for money to be handed to him might be a little more tolerant.
Except, he had watched Robin. At the Beaumont ball, at Lady Wintour’s, and again just last night at the Laodicean Club.
Robin had joined the Laodicean at vast expense, sponsored by an unimportant but rich young man named Mowbray whose fiancée had become bosom friends with Marianne. It was an investment. Playing at informal events in the houses of the rich was safest, but he had to be restrained or the upper-class sheep would start to count up how many of them he’d shorn. Gaming hells had big unfriendly men who kept a weather eye out for sharps. A gentleman’s club was the perfect compromise. Large winnings and losses were entirely expected in the Laodicean, where the play was frighteningly high, with hundreds wagered on the turn of a card. Robin had had to learn not to count it as money, only a means of keeping score, because throwing away those sums terrified him. He’d had to excuse himself from the table his first time in a deep hell, because his stomach had rebelled, and he’d feared disgracing himself in public.
He was hardened now, or in too deep to turn back. One of the two. He was ready to play anywhere he could find a game, and take whatever money he could wring out of the wealthy. But he hadn’t been ready for Hartlebury’s looming presence in the corner of his eye.
‘Hart’, the man’s friends called him. It was bizarre he had friends at all, the intimidating bastard. Sir John Hartlebury was an imposing, heavy-set man, looking forty for all Alice claimed he was a mere thirty-two, inelegant and powerful, with a gruff voice, thick thighs, strong shoulders, and absurdly heavy eyebrows that gave him a permanent scowl. A bruiser, except for those striking, clear blue eyes set over a prominent Roman nose.
And he’d stood behind Robin, watching for some unspecified length of time without him noticing. That was not good, because last night Robin had been forced to play by Vincent’s law. The cards had run against him; a series of risks hadn’t paid off. He’d found himself eight hundred pounds down at one point, a sum that didn’t bear thinking about when a jeweller’s bill had eaten into their cash reserves that very morning. He’d had no choice but to even the odds. Improve his chances. Cheat.
Another man might have panicked in the face of that mounting debt. Robin had stayed calm, enhanced his hands with a few judicious aces, and come out of the night only seventy pounds down. It would have been a relief except that Sir John Hartlebury had been there. Not playing. Watching.
It would be nice to think he’d been observing his niece’s suitor with a view to giving his blessing, but Robin wasn’t holding his breath for that. Hartlebury was notoriously rag-mannered, with his brusque unwillingness to trouble with social niceties, but even given that, he’d radiated hostility. Robin had done his best to charm, but everything he’d tried had bounced off the man’s armour. He just hoped that was because Hartlebury was protective of Alice, rather than what he really feared, which was that he’d spotted Robin fuzzing the cards.