Page 3 of Enticing Odds (The Sedleys #5)

Lady Caplin’s brown eyes widened.

Matthew hastily doffed his hat, hoping to quell whatever fear had overcome her.

Curse his ungainliness. This was why he’d never be admitted to the Athenaeum—that legendary haven for great thinkers and learners—never mind his unremarkable origins. He’d never shed his provincial awkwardness, never moved through this metropolis like the sophisticated creatures who’d been born into it. In his mind he’d always be the balky foundling taken in by his punctilious aunt and uncle, reared on Cranmer’s Daily Office and groaty pudding.

“I’m sure you’re mistaken,” she said, glancing about before harshly adding, “I don’t believe I’ve made your acquaintance.”

“Dr. Matthew Collier, my lady,” he offered inelegantly. Ought he make mention of the circumstances of their first meeting, when he’d bluffed his way into her ball years ago?

“Dr. Collier…” She froze, staring at him intently. “We have met, haven’t we?”

Matthew smiled in relief. He didn’t violate social mores as a habit, but it was an awfully tricky thing when your friends conscripted you into their dubious schemes.

Suddenly the hint of a smile warmed her entire face. “And how do you find the cards as of late?”

“The cards? I, er…” Matthew fumbled for a moment, reaching up to fiddle with his spectacles. Finally he recalled the obscene winnings he’d walked away with the night of said ball. “Ah, generally… well.” He cleared his throat, wondering if he ought to be speaking so casually of gambling.

Lady Caplin seemed to have no such reservations.

“I would certainly imagine so,” she said coyly. “If I recall correctly, Sir Geoffrey was so badly laid out he didn’t play for several months after, on strict instructions from his wife.”

Matthew flushed.

“I hadn’t meant… that is—egad.” He grimaced, casting about for the proper thing to say. “A terrible shame, I didn’t expect—”

“Why, you’re a wee lamb, aren’t you?” she interrupted with a gentle laugh.

Matthew froze, fearing he’d said something wrong. Difficult, that, when he’d barely strung together a coherent sentence to begin with.

“And yet you don’t look it,” she murmured, her gaze raking him up and down. “No, not at all.”

Lady Caplin’s expression shifted into something altogether different, something more akin to the look Harriet had given her new husband that morning. It was both appraising and curious, sly yet sincere. Aloof, yet interested.

Heated.

Matthew swallowed. He hadn’t expected that, of all things.

“Well, Dr. Collier. You are more than welcome to come lay waste at my card tables whenever the fancy strikes you.” She smiled wide, revealing two charming dimples, at odds with her otherwise cool and controlled demeanor. “Heaven knows I could use the entertainment.”

“Of course,” he agreed weakly.

She lifted her head and glanced around, easily transforming into the fearsome, fashionable creature he remembered.

“You may accompany me to my carriage, if you like.”

It was only a few yards to the road. Matthew might have been oblivious to certain things, but he knew a demand disguised as a request, and promptly complied. Baffled by the strangeness of the encounter, Matthew did his best to ignore the pressure of her fingers on his upper arm.

“Your Mr. Rickard and Miss Sedley wed, after all that fuss,” Lady Caplin said abruptly.

“Yes,” he agreed, scanning the few carriages waiting before them. None boasted loud colors or grand crests. He couldn’t fathom which might belong to her. “Four years now. They’ve a daughter as well, dear thing.” Matthew hoped he didn’t sound envious. He was happy for his friend, truly.

They fell back into silence as they approached the street. Matthew frowned; she’d led him to a plain hackney whose driver waited with a disinterested look. The hour was late, and he felt uneasy handing her off. Where was her groom, her carriage? It didn’t seem right.

“If you’d be so kind.” She let go of him and indicated the hack with a nod of her head.

“Are you sure?” Matthew asked, glancing up at the driver, who ignored him in favor of staring impassively at the street before him. “It feels a bit strange, if you’ll forgive me,” he said, before adding, “My lady.”

“Pah,” she scoffed, waving her hand. “He knows what to do. I’ve already paid him to wait.”

“To wait?” he repeated, feeling there must be something he was missing.

“Darling lamb,” she jested as she settled in, “do not press me further. Only never speak a word of it, and I shall consider you forgiven.”

“Forgiven?” Matthew’s voice turned up slightly in confusion.

“Why, for crashing into me with that hulking form of yours.” She arched a brow. “After all, you did nearly knock me over.”

Lady Caplin gave Matthew one last look before turning to face forward. Then the cabbie cracked his whip, and she was off without a backward glance. Left in the hackney’s wake, holdall in hand, Matthew did the only proper thing when, having had one’s romantic hopes dashed, one had very nearly humiliated themselves before a highborn lady with whom one shared the most tenuous of acquaintances.

He headed for his club.

The Transom Club, insipidly named for the narrow window above its front door, lacked creativity in every aspect. The rooms were a jumble, the meetings inane, and the hall porters lackadaisical, even abandoning their posts on occasion. Members tended toward the elderly, professional men who’d been young forty years prior when the club was founded following a particularly rousing game of pall-mall. Perhaps it was only natural, then, that the furnishings were as worn as the members, the wallpapers dated and tacky, and the club’s funds spent on ridiculous amenities no one utilized like a room with a hired piano, rather than any sort of modernization effort.

On occasion, he’d dined at the Reform Club as the guest of his friend Marcus Hartley, MP for Knockton and club member. Matthew had gaped at the spectacular marble facade and the plush velvet chairs and sofas; some in red, others green, and the rest blue. And mirrors everywhere, upon every wall, creating the illusion of infinity, invitations to look inward and reflect upon oneself. When Matthew had offered this observation to Hartley, the MP had dismissed him with a chuckle. “Don’t dwell on it overmuch, Collier—it’s just a building.”

But clubs were more than mere buildings to Dr. Matthew Collier. When he’d arrived in London as a lad, eager to begin his apprenticeship at St. Thomas’ Hospital, he found the city to be everything he’d dreamed of as a lonely boy mired in Wolverhampton. Not long afterward, he found himself trekking westward from Southwark, crossing the river so that he might gaze upon the architectural wonders of London’s clublands. They waited behind tall gates, stately and elegant, signifiers of the heights that might be reached if one truly applied oneself. Or inherited something of sufficient value.

What great men might reside within, or take their leisure there? What ideas must be shared, what lofty topics debated?

“Sparlings again, eh?” Mr. Benjamin Mordaunt, an aging journalist with an opinion on everything, groused as he stabbed at the three small, silvery fish set before him. “What I’d give for a saddle of mutton now and then.”

Matthew silently looked back to his own plate; nearly every meal in the dining room was accompanied by an airing of culinary grievances, no matter who one’s companions were.

“We had snipe pudding just yesterday, Collier. You missed out; lovely bit of a treat there. And roasted well, not dry in the least!”

The diner to Matthew’s left had joined in. Mr. Ian Hudgill, a stooped, rheumatic Scotsman, claimed the title of the club’s eldest and most enigmatic member. To hear others tell it, he’d rented a room within since time immemorial, and had never answered a single question about his origins or former occupation.

“What? Those nasty little birds, a treat? Food for the dogs, more like!” Mordaunt threw his napkin upon the table. “What kind of man consumes a creature whole, guts and all?”

“Aye, a gentleman,” Hudgill said, raising his bushy brows enough that one could actually see the beady eyes underneath. “Of course, I’d expect you to know naught of game and shooting. Why, I’d wager you’ve never set foot outside the confines of this dratted city, let alone hold a rifle the proper way. Too busy with those fiddly little metal letters, you and your lot are.”

“I’m a journalist, Hudgill, not a damned compositor! I don’t set the bloody type!” Mordaunt brought his fist down atop his discarded napkin, the flatware on the table clanging loudly. “And you damn well know it, too!” He leaned forward as if to push up from the tabletop, his face red.

“Gentlemen!” Matthew sputtered, one arm extended before Mordaunt. “Mind the bylaws, please!”

Mordaunt sat back in a huff.

“That’s it, Mordaunt, easy now. Don’t want to get our doctor miffed; giant that he is, he’d lay you out in one blow!” Hudgill crowed, earning himself a censorious glare from the newspaperman.

Perhaps it was a testament to the length of both Hudgill and Mordaunt’s tenures as members, or the frequency with which they butted heads, but the other diners scarcely paid the scuffle any mind; the lilting chatter about the rest of the room continued without interruption.

Matthew shook his head sadly at the last half-eaten fish of his meal.

Suddenly the overwhelming sorrow returned, along with the dry thickening of his throat. Had he wed Harriet years ago, he would not be here, eating such mean fare with such dispiriting company. Harriet would keep a neat house and a tolerable menu every night, in consultation with their cook. In this private fantasy, Matthew saw himself finishing up the day’s work, then leaving his study and crossing the hall to his own supper, in his own home, with his own wife, kind and smiling. And perhaps a son at one chair, and a daughter as well…

It was a beautiful picture. And forever out of reach, whether the wife was Harriet or not. The pain of it gave him no quarter.

Matthew held no illusions about himself. He was forty, reserved, and his social standing might as well be non-existent, for all it amounted to.

“Where were you off to anyway, Doctor?” Hudgill said, interrupting his doleful daydream. “Rare that you leave us in the springtime.”

“Back home, to the Midlands.” Matthew removed his spectacles and set to wiping the lenses with his napkin.

“All is well with your family, I pray?” Hudgill asked.

“Oh yes. It was just a quick visit, obligatory sort of thing.”

“Obligatory?” the Scot pressed.

Matthew frowned. He didn’t wish to speak of this to anyone, certainly not to the motley crew of Transom Club members who took their evening meal at such a late hour.

“A poor trip, was it?” Mordaunt chimed in, loath to be left out if bad news was to be had.

Matthew drew a breath, then smiled. “No, not at all. Just uneventful.”

Suddenly he recalled the look Lady Caplin had given him in front of the hotel, just outside of Euston Station. He felt the back of his neck prickle.

“Uneventful, he says,” Mordaunt chortled. “Look at him, he’s about to go as red as a beetroot.”

Matthew shoved the last bite of sparling into his mouth. He’d made a mistake coming here, thinking a convivial atmosphere might put him in better spirits. No, he needed to go, to someplace where he could be in control, someplace he could feel a different person altogether. Someone brutal and unshakable.

It’d been ages since Matthew had allowed himself any sort of excitement.

He left his holdall with the hall porter, with instructions to send it along to his house. Unfortunately, Pantler was on duty, yawning into the back of his hand, so Matthew resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn’t see his effects until the following evening.

With a silent apology to Aunt Albertine, who’d done her best to set him on the moral and righteous path, Matthew set off into the dark with one goal in mind: to find a beastly low house and make a killing. For a moment he wondered if, after the misery of the morning and the agony of the afternoon, he wasn’t in the right state of mind for it. But he quickly quashed the notion. Already he had begun to feel lighter. Anticipation skittered across his skin as he walked briskly eastward.

Soon the streets grew even darker, the miasma fouler. A woman called to him from a street corner, her language blue and her tone ribald. A couple of dark figures emerged from a doorway several paces ahead, then quickly retreated as he approached, abandoning any thoughts of jiggery-pokery when Matthew’s brawn became apparent. This was another city entirely, nothing like the pristine buildings of St. James’s Square. Hell, even the middling Transom Club and its members occupied a London worlds apart from here.

The last gambling house he’d plundered a couple months prior appeared to be shuttered; the windows were dark and the door shut tight, the sign proclaiming pie and mash indicating nothing but an honest business.

No matter; he had all night. Matthew flexed his hand, his palms itching for a game. He continued on.

Finally, several blocks farther ahead, he found what he was looking for.

As with the previous business, there was no outward hint of gambling; in fact, it seemed the last thing they’d know anything about. Charles Sharples, Chops and Steaks at the Ready , the sign and windows proclaimed. However, this dodgy butcher was fraudulent to its core.

For what butcher kept such hours? The door was flung open, the low light from within spilling out into the street along with the spindly, dancing shadows of the men who milled about before it.

This was not a butcher, but a spieler. A small gambling club catering to—and preying upon—the lower classes. And Matthew, when the fancy struck. There was something thrilling about these low houses, with the threat of the Met crashing in and taking the lot of them into custody hanging over every moment.

It made him feel alive, gaming in these types of places. He could feel his heart pounding; his veins pulsed with excitement.

How easily he’d fallen into a lonely routine upon his return from the war. The past twenty years had eroded him, leaving behind a nameless, mild-mannered doctor in spectacles. Not the Matthew Collier who had been orphaned and thrust into the care of two cold and elderly relatives, desperate for a kind word and a gentle hand, who had grown into a young man bursting with curiosity and desperate for adventure, for life beyond the gray, barren streets of Wolverhampton.

That version of Matthew had joined up as a surgeon, which gave him his fill of adventure, danger, and death. After going through that, life as a mild-mannered physician had seemed awfully appealing.

But every now and then, there were nights like this, when he needed to forget who he’d become, and recall who he’d once wished to be.

Nights when he wanted to grasp Harriet by the arms and fervently kiss her all over… but while before he wouldn’t dare, now he knew for sure he would never.

And so he sought out trouble of this kind, the illegal kind.

The gaming kind.