Page 109 of A Gentleman's Wager

“Perhaps you could explain—”

“I can’t entirely say.” She refused to be a snitch. Let the gentlemen enlighten Lucerne as to the cause of Bella’s anger. “I’d best find her.” She slipped around him, before he made any further demand, though she heard him turn to his companions.

“Which of us do you suppose that was aimed at, hm?”

Heaven only knows whether he got an honest reply.

Bella lay sprawled atop the eiderdown in her chamber when Louisa found her. She was still muttering incoherent curses between gut-wrenching sobs. Louisa made a perch for herself, and tentatively patted her back. “There, there, now…”

What Charles and Vaughan had done was brutish and unkind, but her friend’s response seemed out of proportion. She could understand hurt, anger, but this seemed much more than that.

“Belle.”

Bella thumped the mattress. Then flung her pillow to the floor. “Damned worthless, whoreson fop.”

“Bella, don’t you think you’re being a little overdramatic? I agree it’s not particularly nice of them, but gentlemen wager on all sorts of things constantly, it seems pointless to let it affect one so much.”

“You’re addled,” Bella spat, pulling herself into an ungainly sitting position. She glared at Louisa through puffy eyes, as if she’d sprung an extra head.

“Bella, I’m not addled. I’m perfectly reasoning, more so than I have been in some time. I simply cannot understand why you are this upset.”

“Well, I do not understand why you’re not. I thought you were in love with Frederick, but you spread your legs for Vaughan.”

“Bella, in case you’ve forgotten it, Freddy took me for a fool. He left me here, went to town and took up with Millicent. I had to witness that with my own eyes. You have no concept of how much that hurt. So, I did something. Something I hope hurts him just as much. I gave my maidenhead to the person he dislikes most. So there, there is your reason. Do you understand it? I let Vaughan have it out of spite, to hurt Freddy as he hurt me, as he continues to hurt me. So, you see, I don’t give a damn about Charles and Pennerley betting upon us. It is not a factor in any of this. All that matters,” —she trembled as she strove to make her point— “is that his doings temporarily aligned with mine.”

Her friend remained silent once her speech was done. Louisa reached out, only for her hand to be ignored. “Bella, I shan’t ask you to explain your reasons for your upset, but I do wonder if you ought to ask yourself why you are so dreadfully afflicted. Perhaps you care for him more than you allow.”

“You have no idea of what you are speaking, of the things that have passed between us. I hate him. I despise him with every ounce of my being.”

“But do you though?”

Bella glared at her hot and tortured.

“Please leave. I don’t wish for company presently.”

Nodding, Louisa edged backwards. “As you wish. Should I check—”

“Just go. Leave me.”

Obediently, she departed. Louisa did not consider herself a worldly person, but it wasn’t difficult to conclude from observation that her friend’s feelings for the marquis might not amount to hatred, precisely. What was most perplexing though, was how Lord Marlinscar factored into the puzzle. Bella’s fondness for him was true. Could her feelings be split between the two men? Could a person even be enamoured of two people at once? It was a conundrum she determined not to solve. Better she applied her efforts to solving her own love woes.

She still loved Frederick.

He’d punched a hole in her guts, but she wasn’t ready to let him go.

-59-

Bella

“Bella.”

Bella froze at the sound of Lucerne calling her. They hadn’t spoken since her outburst in the great hall. In fact, she hadn’t spoken to anyone since she’d sent Louisa away. She’d eaten both supper and breakfast in her room, too discomposed to don the veneer of civility. But equally, she could not tolerate confinement. It rotted the mind, caused her skin to crawl. She’d put on her riding habit, determined to exorcise her demons with a reckless gallop.

“Bella.”

She fixed on a smile and turned to face him. ’Twas best she recalled she had no argument with Lucerne. Likely enough, he had no knowledge of the wager, or if he did, he had only learned of it due to her outburst.

“I have a letter here for you.” He shuffled a pile of correspondence he was holding and offered up a folded square. “From your brother, I believe.”