A Michaelmas Wager

"And that's three of a kind, and I'm ever so sorry, but I seem to have won all of your money - again!"

  The three men groaned as Anthony Griffiths smoothly drew the large pile of silver in the middle of the table towards him. Cigar smoke hung in the room, as they had for the last three hours, and some of the candles around the edges of the room were guttering.

  "You can't have such brilliant hands time after time, it's simply impossible!" Nicholas Wingrave complained. "I want to see sleeves!"

  Anthony, the winner of the night by a good few pounds, dramatically rose from his chair and flourished his hands. "Just like our very best magicians, you can see that my sleeves are - " And here he pushed back the baggy linen sleeves from both of his wrists - "completely empty."

  He bowed as Rufus mock applauded him, and Percival Quinn chuckled as he poured more red wine into the four glasses that were on the table, surrounded by notes of paper, old cigar ends, crumbs from the capons that the servant had brought them, and a small IOU note that Nicholas, unwillingly, had been forced to sign for Anthony.

  "I really don't think," said Percival lazily as he leaned back in a dark brown leather armchair, the like of which scattered the gentlemen's club where they had spent the evening, "that there is any greater pleasure than cards."

  Nicholas belched slightly before he replied. "Not one that I would gladly share with the four of you!"

  Rufus could not help but laugh with the others. The red wine, potent and spiced, had rid him of his ability to contribute to much of the conversation this last hour, but he was still standing - or rather, sitting. His only trouble was that beyond his general inability with cards, he was finding it rather difficult to concentrate. A mere week had passed since his outing to the opera with Juliana - Miss Honeyfield, he needed to get into the habit of calling her Miss Honeyfield - and yet each succeeding day had not dulled his sense in her regard.

  Even the cards reminded him of her, the dark red of the Queen of Hearts the same tones as the roses that he had sent her; the crisp white of the background the same brilliance as the gloves that she had left behind in the opera house; the dark inky black of the Knave of Spades the same welcoming sky that witnessed their first kiss . . .

  "I said, there is one thing better than cards and that's wagers, Rufus!"

  Rufus was brought back to the spot with a jolt, and stared wildly at Percival, the one who had been speaking - his discontent with the card game still playing across his furrowed forehead.

  "I do beg your pardon," said Rufus hastily, ". . . what?"

  Percival guffawed slowly - or at least, as quickly as his drink-addled mind would allow it. "You're not backing out now, are you? My mother saw you, you know, at the opera last Wednesday, and she mentioned how she saw you with Lady Audrey Marchwood, and one of her lady's maids as chaperone. Have you given up with Miss Honeyfield - or is it Jamland, I forget - and taken up with a conquest a little more suited to your pocket?"

  Nicholas and Anthony grinned, but Rufus felt hot, red hot.

  "I was at the opera, and Lady Audrey was, indeed with us - but she was the chaperone," he said, trying to keep the heat of his anger out of his voice. "The woman your mother mistook for a ladies' maid was in fact Miss Honeyfield."

  "Honeyfield!" Percival clapped his palm to his forehead in mock embarrassment. "And I knew that the Jamlands had no daughter!"

  Nicholas was laughing so much at this point that he had to wipe tears away from his eye, but Anthony had something else on his mind.

  "Come on now, who's for another hand?" He picked up the pack of cards and started shuffling, until Nicholas grabbed the cards from him.

  "If we're going to play again then there is absolutely no chance that I am letting you shuffle."

  Anthony threw his hands up in the air in mock surrender, but Percival wasn't finished with Rufus, and he knew it. As Nicholas started to deal the next hand, the question that Rufus had known was coming was aired.

  "So how is it going with young Juliana?"

  Rufus swallowed, and picked up the cards that had been dealt him. "Miss Honeyfield? Rather well, actually. I've met her Father, the Reverend Honeyfield," and he rolled his eyes dramatically, eliciting the groans he knew he would receive, "and received his blessing, of a sort, and I've spent more money than I've known possible on roses. We've attended the opera, as you all know, and she will be accompanying me to the Right Honourable Mrs Evesham's dinner two nights from hence."

  "Sounds like you're doing well," said Percival shrewdly.

  Rufus laughed uncomfortably, trying to force the bravado that he didn't feel as he gazed at the cards in his hand. Two of a kind. "Sounds like within a week she'll be eating out of my hand."

  He winked and hated himself as the laughter rang out from the table, deep and low. They had joked about women before, of course: women they didn't know, women who went looking for attention and wore their dresses low, lower than was decent - women who wanted those sorts of jokes made about them, and occasionally made them themselves. The five of them had gawked at beautiful women, and spoke openly about their wishes, but it had been something Rufus had been on the periphery of; watching, but not taking part.

  Now he felt as though he had sullied himself. He felt dirty, and it was a stain that would not come clean.

  "Well said Master Lovell, well said!" Nicholas tilted his head in a small fake bow. "So my money is quite lost then, for this wager?"

  Rufus crinkled his eyes and forehead into a miserable expression. "I am so sorry for your loss, Nick, it must have hit you so hard."

  Percival punched Nicholas gently on the arm. "You haven't lost yet - and Rufus, you haven't won yet! Michaelmas is growing ever closer, it's only two months away now, and I haven't seen any invitations come to my door with silver lettering and RSVPs dripping off them."

  "No, of course not!" Anthony interrupted, his face gleaming as he perused his cards. "I see Rufus here as more of a gold and green sort of type, none of this fancy silver nonsense. Only the best for our Miss Jamland!"

  "Honeyfield," said Rufus, almost absentmindedly as he threw down another shilling into the ever-growing pile in the middle of the table. If only he could move the subject on to something completely different . . .

  "The real question is - no no, forget lettering or foiling and all of that nonsense," Nicholas said, placing a newly lit cigar into his mouth as he threw down a crown into the middle, forcing them all to raise their stakes, "the real question is: how long are you going to let it go on for, Ruffy old boy, until you send her off to Parliament to get your divorce?"

  There was a stunned silence: or at least, it was stunned in Rufus' ears. Parliament? Divorce? How could they possibly know, surely they - but they made sure that no one had known, they had even paid off most of the important journalists to ensure that the news had never got out. And yet somehow, someone had talked.

  "I don't wish to discuss it," he said finally. "I fold."

  He placed down his cards and looked stubbornly down at the table before him, but his friends were not going to let up that easily.

  "I would say . . . three months," opined Nicholas, and looked round at Anthony to see whether he would match his bet. "Three months is more than enough time to make use of a woman and then still get rid of her with some of her honour intact."

  "Some?" Percival shook his head as he too matched the raise set down by Nicholas. "No, if you really like her enough for her to be able to marry again, it's got to be within the week. If you leave it any longer, it's clear that her honour has been taken, and that's an end to it."

  It's Juliana, Rufus realised as he let the debate wash over him. They weren't talking about - they were speaking of Juliana. Of when he would divorce her, if he did marry her at Michaelmas.

  Shame, hot and red and nothing like the anger that he had felt before now coursed through him, flooding his lungs with regret at even breathing a thought of accepting this wager. What on earth had he done? They were right: once she was married to him, no
other man would touch her, even if they divorced the very next day. The very mention of divorce in society would send any sensible man running in the opposite direction. Once he married her and then divorced her with little ceremony, she would become a societal outcast.

  But then - his friends assumed that he would be divorcing her: collecting the money from Nicholas Wingrave, and then forcing her to go her separate way. That had been the last thing on his mind. He had enjoyed her company too well to consider quitting it, and he had found the twist of her mouth as she smiled and the way she seemed completely incapable of self-censure to be the most refreshing trait he had ever seen in a person.

  "And I will see your cards no matter what it takes, Anthony!" Nicholas was teetering close to the edge of his temper, and Anthony's giggles were not helping. Silver poured onto the table from three directions.

  Rufus was still lost in his thoughts. These feelings, they were painful with hints of pleasure, and they did him no good. He'd not felt uncomfortable about this wager until now - not when it seemed to go along so happily with his own emotions. He liked Juliana, he . . . well, there was something stronger than like there, though he cared not to examine it too closely.

  A wager? A wager towards marriage? What was he thinking? He, Rufus Lovell, was the not the man to do anything like this. He was not a man to even think about a wager of this nature. He did not grow up in this rich world of wagers, and parties, and cigar-smoked cards. He was just a man.

  "I say you are a cheat, and I mean it!" Nicholas had finally lost his temper: cards and money and wine and smoking cigar ends were strewn onto the floor as the table was upturned, Anthony laughing uncontrollably as he held on tightly to a straight flush. Nicholas rushed at him and brought him down to the ground, pummelling at him.

  Ignoring the smouldering cigar ends which soon burst into small flames, igniting the carpet in three or four places, Percival immediately rose from his chair to get a better view of the fight, laughing himself, and throwing silver and copper coins down onto the sparring pair, betting on who was going to hit the next punch, betting on who was going to bleed first, betting on who was to win in the end.

  And Rufus just sat there, in his chair, numb. What had he got himself into? And more importantly, were these the sorts of friends that Hubert had made before his descent into the gutter?