Twenty-Seven

Repercussions and Recriminations

Damn her for putting me in this impossible position!

Philip’s blood boiled at Sukey’s obstinate refusal to heed his counsel, for George’s failure to watch over her, and for his own failure to protect her from a man he recognized as a Greek of the highest order. Lastly, he cursed himself for ever having become involved with her.

She had thoughtlessly brought this travesty upon herself and now threatened to suck him into the vortex. His intuition warned him to escape, but he simply couldn’t bring himself to walk away.

“My lady,” Philip spoke lowly, “might I suggest we avail ourselves of the gentleman’s invitation to privacy?”

The banker lifted a brow in distinctly aristocratic hauteur. “I do not believe we are acquainted…”

Refusing to affect any air of servility, Philip’s bow was shallow enough only to mock. “Philip Drake,” he said in introduction, “and the lady is with me.”

Having made his decision to stand by her, Philip placed a hand on the small of Sukey’s back. He could feel her tremor even through multiple layers of petticoat, stays, and silk.

A baleful stare pierced Philip at the well-understood gesture of possession. “So you say?” Weston’s tone held a subtle edge of threat. “She was quite unattended when I found her, the poor little bird. Perhaps you should not be so negligent in future.” He reached out his beautiful bejeweled hand to Sukey. “Come now, my dove, and let us speak… in private.”

Sukey unconsciously recoiled, whereby Philip interposed himself between them. “Perhaps I wasn’t clear, my Lord Weston. Any matters concerning the lady, you may settle with me.”

“Hastings’s ignoble wastrel?” Weston laughed outright. “What have you to say to anything? Indeed, I begin to think your sire remiss in teaching you manners, a matter I would surely delight in addressing had I not more pressing business with the lady.”

The tension between the two men was palpable and escalating by the second.

Sukey’s anxious gaze flitted again between the two men: to Jack, who’d once betrayed and abandoned her, and to Philip, friend, lover, and reluctant defender. Her trepidation increasing, Sukey laid a warning hand on Philip’s arm. Philip covered her hand with his own. Her fingers dug through the fabric of his coat and nearly into his flesh, but his pointed look squelched any verbal protest.

Philip turned back to Weston. “As the lady’s protector, I have every right to speak on her behalf and am quite prepared to assume liability for her losses.” He carefully detached her fingers, one by one, raising them to his lips with an indulgent smirk. “Tsk, tsk, my dear. What a very bad night you’ve had.”

“You? Her protector?” Lord Weston’s nostrils pinched and pupils flared. “The whelp’s presumption knows no bounds!” The marquess looked at Sukey with a smile that made her blood chill. “My patience is waning,” he sighed when she still hesitated. “I had thought to spare you, but if you insist on playing this out as a public melodrama…”

He looked meaningfully to the gossipmongers who, scenting blood, had drawn in to circle the trio as vultures over their carrion. Lord Weston elevated his voice only enough to be heard over their low hum.

“Sukey, my dove,” he drew her name out in long, sibilant syllables, “for want of a proper man in my extended absence, have you now developed a penchant for impudent, posturing jackanapes?”

The blood that had earlier inflamed Sukey’s face drained completely. She blanched paler than white. “You knew me all the time… you… you loathsome cad!”

Weston smirked. “You should be flattered, my dear, to be such an unforgettable morsel.”

Philip looked from Weston to Sukey with momentary incomprehension.

They had history? Weston was her lover?

Philip turned to Sukey, desperate for a rebuttal that did not come. Pale and wide-eyed, her mouth opened and closed with no sound emerging much like a landed fish gasping its last. His brittle control was slipping fast. The shock of the revelation threatened to be his undoing.

While the marquess had aimed to cut him down, to metaphorically pink a would-be rival, the figurative blade he wielded had penetrated straight to Philip’s vital organs. It was a mortal blow, twisting like a dagger in his gut.

He struggled to block the invading visions of his Sukey, entangled naked and panting in Weston’s arms, and his vision blurred. A conflagration of emotion overcame him in a furious wave—shock, jealousy, pain, and then pure fury.

Masking it was a superhuman exertion, but he managed to signal a porter and hand him a guinea with the command to escort Sukey to her carriage. When she would have protested, he squelched her with a black look. “Good night, my lady.” He spoke stiffly and his manner was chilling.

She bristled at his imperiousness but thought better of flouting him further. With a backward glare of indignation, she accompanied the porter.

When she was out of earshot, Philip turned back to deal with Weston, speaking matter-of-factly. “As I see it, my lord, there are now two matters to settle between us. Shall we continue this discussion at Tothill Fields?”

Philip’s meaning was not lost. The marquess’s lips curved in satisfaction. “With pistol or smallsword?”

“Smallsword.”

“You may send your seconds to Wimbledon Park.”

Philip signaled acknowledgement with a silent inclination of his head.

As if an afterthought, the marquess added the mortal threat, “By the bye, Drake, you might forego the added expense of a physician. Assuredly, you’ll have no need of one.”

Philip turned away, flinging carelessly over his shoulder, “I’m sure you are right, my lord… but perhaps you may.”

***

Lady Susannah Messingham nodded abstractedly to her acquaintances as she wended through the remaining late night revelers. She awaited her hired carriage seething with words yet unspoken.

“Just what is he to you?” Philip demanded, startling her from behind.

“Nothing!” she snapped. “He is nothing to me.”

“Then why in God’s name would you habit his table?”

“I had no idea at first, and then upon realizing who he was, I was so overcome by shock that I hardly knew where I was, let alone what I was doing. I was overset, confused, not thinking clearly.”

“Overset? Confused? Not thinking clearly? When you have placed a thousand at stake? Good God! I credited you with more intelligence! Yet when I arrived you still had a chance to walk away, but you thumbed your nose at me!”

“I had been winning!” she protested.

“And you didn’t walk away. Do you still not understand? It is all part of the game. They let you win to draw you in deeper. I warned you of it, time and again!”

“I did not intend to go so deep.”

“Yet you didn’t leave,” he accused.

Failing to summon any words to defend untenable actions, she choked back tears of bewilderment and fury.

They simmered in a protracted silence before Philip asked more calmly, as if speaking to a particularly dull child, “After all I taught you, didn’t you even suspect he palmed that last queen?”

She gasped. “If you knew him for a cheat, why did you not warn me?”

“Good God, I tried!” he cried, throwing his hands up in frustration. “You don’t listen!”

“What can you expect when you’re so infernally high-handed! You could have taken a different approach.”

“Un-bloody-believable! You are trying to cast the blame on me?”

“But you knew he cheated, and you let me fall victim! For one who claims to be my protector, you evince little instinct to protect! Why did you not even call him on it?” she persisted.

“Call him out, do you mean?”

“Yes!” she cried. “It’s the least a proper gentleman would have done!”

“Ah, so now you impugn both my honor and my valor?”

“If the boot fits!”

“So sorry to disappoint, my dear, but I don’t recall ever presuming to be a gentleman. Moreover, I refuse to shed my blood over your fatuous notions. If you hadn’t broken every rule and thoughtlessly discounted every lesson I tried to teach you…”

She looked guiltily away.

“I warned you about deep play, Sukey, and you heeded nothing I said. Nothing!” he continued, growing more enraged. “Instead, I find you deeply embroiled with one of the most notorious gamesters and rakes in London.”

When the vehicle arrived, mutely Philip handed her up into it. She moved stiffly aside to make room for him, but he ignored the gesture and slammed the door.

“But where are you going? We have yet to discuss this.”

“Tomorrow,” he said with a warning look. “We will not speak any more of it until emotions have quieted.”

“I am perfectly composed,” she snapped.

“Tomorrow, Sukey.” He silenced her with a darkling look and signaled the driver.

***

Philip watched the coach depart in a clatter across the cobbles. What the hell had transpired this night? It was almost a blur. They’d arrived in a companionable enough frame of mind, if not precisely in perfect harmony. They’d mapped out a plan whereby Philip would set the punters at hazard. Meanwhile, she would set up the dowagers, frequently the wealthiest and most careless players, by losing a hand or two at loo, a game she played passably well, and follow by winning many more hands.

Philip would later join her at whist, a game in which they were now nearly as in tune as they had become in bed. It was a perfect plan, but not half an hour had passed after their arrival that she’d blown it all to hell.

He stole a deep breath before taking stock of the calamity the evening had become.

He had entered the gold room, well-pleased with his own success, but then he’d sighted her. Admittedly, he’d botched his handling of the matter, but damn her tenfold, she’d broken every cardinal rule he lived by. She had played a game she knew nothing about, and one he’d particularly cautioned her against.

She’d wagered more than she could afford to lose and had lost any self-restraint. She then defied him and resisted his attempts to extricate her from the web in which she appeared intent on entrapping herself. The sum she’d lost was more than he could fathom, and impossible for her to pay.

The worst of it was he’d now committed himself to an actual duel over her. Bloody hell.

What had he been thinking? Or rather, his lips curled sardonically, with what had he been thinking?

George had warned him about her that very first night and ol’ Bosky had proven a veritable sage. She’d given him so many reasons. Why in the devil’s name had he not just walked away?

It seemed she’d become his addiction, akin to laudanum, which temporarily soothes the wounded, easing away pain until one eventually overindulges—when contrary to medicinal, it becomes a poison.

She was his poison.