Page 13 of Hazard a Guest (Ladies’ Revenge Club #3)

“ I ’m not going in there,” Freddy whispered, stopping Ember short of progressing through the foyer and into the gaming room. “I can’t.”

She turned at his grasp on her arm, coming almost nose-to-nose with him, and blinked in genuine surprise. “Oh,” she said after a second. “Yes, that makes sense.”

“But Penrose,” said Freddy, grimacing.

Joe joined them, following easily as Ember gestured to an empty corner where they might talk, his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his tails.

She tried not to look at him directly, lest she begin to stare again. She needed to deal with Freddy first.

She failed at not looking, of course, but only stared for a moment.

“Penrose has plenty of guests to distract him,” she reasoned, shivering a little when Joe’s shoulder brushed hers, but otherwise remaining focused on poor Freddy. “Why would he single you out?”

“Because he said he was going to,” Joe answered easily, looking down at her. “He’s sweet on Freddy.”

“He’s not sweet on me,” Freddy retorted immediately, then paused and considered it with his head tilted. “Wait, is he? Does Penrose have a wife?”

Ember scoffed. “Since when has that ever made a difference? It doesn’t matter anyway. If he's looking for you, then we need to have a reason for your absence.”

Freddy looked a little frantic. “I can’t just be tired? Have a headache?”

“No,” said both Ember and Joe in very different tones.

She sighed, looking around like she’d find a suggestion etched into the walls.

Freddy, however, was not looking at the walls. He was looking at Joe. Which was obviously preferable, but Ember couldn’t do that right now.

“Can you play?” he asked the other man. “Do you know how to play?”

“Play what?” Joe replied, looking baffled. “Whist?”

“Whist,” Ember repeated fondly. “No, my darling man. With the dice, he means. Do you know hazard? Crown and anchor?”

Joe shook his head. “Just knucklebones, really.”

“With dice?!” Freddy barked, obviously offended. “It doesn’t matter. Damn it, Joseph!”

“Why does it matter if Joe plays?” Ember asked impatiently.

“Joe?!” Freddy balked, more frayed by the minute. “We’re calling him Joe?!”

“I am,” Ember snapped. “Focus, Bentley.”

Freddy made a grumbling noise, spinning in a circle in an irritated semblance of pacing, and took two deep breaths as he worked through his mindset.

Joe watched him with a little frown of concern but did not rush him or otherwise attempt to soothe his kinetic panic.

“What if he’s my protégé?” Freddy finally said as he stilled, looking from one set of eyes to the other. “What if I’ve already gambled everything worth gambling and now I want the thrill of letting someone else roll the dice on my behalf?”

Ember laughed. She didn’t mean to laugh, but it happened anyway. “That is obnoxious!” she said with admiration. “Penrose will eat it up with his favorite spoon. Even I believe it. I’ve seen exactly that kind of absurd ennui at play at the Forge, in different flavors.”

“But I don’t know how to play,” Joe protested, raising his dark brows, “at all. I don’t even know the rules.”

“We can teach you the rules,” Ember said with a wave of her hand, making the mistake of turning to look directly into his face. She swallowed, her mouth a little dry all of a sudden. “And I can teach you how to win.”

“Can you?” he replied, so softly that she thought she might faint.

“I … yes,” she replied, her own voice softening against her will.

“Stop that!” Freddy cried, slapping at the air between them.

Ember immediately did, stepping away with a self-conscious little chuckle and a bit of heat in her own cheeks this time. “Apologies.”

Freddy grunted. “Fine. But what about tonight? What do we do tonight?”

“We watch Ember play tonight, surely?” Joe put in. “I know you don’t want to be in the gaming room, but if we just stood behind her and watched her play?”

She considered it, tilting her head. She hadn’t been planning to play tonight, only to observe, but given the circumstances, perhaps it was a good idea? She clicked her tongue, thinking about it, and gave a slow nod.

“I think that will work,” she said. “We arrived together, after all, and I never play at my own club. We can frame it like a novelty. It’s not ideal, Freddy, but will it work? For tonight? You can get bored after an hour or so, make a show out of it, and leave. It will only reinforce the ploy.”

He sighed, heavy and overly dramatic, but he looked mollified all the same. He looked at them watching him, waiting, and gave a big roll of his eyes.

“Yes,” he said at last, crossing his arms over his chest like a child. “All right. Fine.”

As it happened, widespread indigestion gave them the protective buffer they needed.

It started around two hours into the games, enough time for Ember to have observed a little and for Freddy to have made his exit, and it spread rapidly, with green faces and hunched bodies quickly fleeing from the room.

In the days following, no obvious culprit could be found, not a bad round of fish or a suspicious pitcher of milk. Instead, the only conclusion anyone could draw, according to Merryn the maid, was that the folks affected were the ones who didn’t eat a particular dish.

The Cornish pasties.

Every toff and noble who’d turned their noses up at warm pastry flake and hot stew had come down with a case of bilious misery.

Ember liked that.

Penrose, who’d probably eaten nothing but the pasties, had stood in the middle of the gaming room, watching in disoriented confusion as his guests were toppled off one by one.

Beck, she had noted with displeasure, seemed perfectly hale. He’d stayed at his own table, knocking down his own set of victims with savage hands of vignt-et-un until it became untenable to continue.

Ember’s preferred game was faro, but she could count cards just as well if he was stuck there. Any fool could count to twenty-one.

In any event, they’d all enjoyed an early night.

She had hoped to begin her private lessons with Joe Cresson immediately, but with so many people clinging to the walls in the hallways and stumbling back and forth, they had exchanged a quiet glance of understanding that tomorrow would be better.

He’d touched her hand lightly, just once, and whispered, “Good night,” like he was trying to kill her.

Besides, Hannah Lazarus was with them, stepping delicately out of the way of not one but two near-misses with the sick. Ember wasn’t usually much for observing decorum, but she would have felt a pang of guilt if she’d set an example for the lass of stealing away to Joe’s room in the night.

And God, did she want to steal away to his room.

She wondered if he required lessons in anything other than dice.

She had a head for odds, of course, but the potential of his lived experiences with women were, by her estimation, a 50/50 split of likelihoods between devastating trail of well-pleasured former conquests or, potentially, no one at all.

Worst of all, she found both options equally appealing.

It was hard for anything to not be appealing when looking down the barrel of helping him out of those tails, wasn’t it? Of getting those carefully styled curls back into disarray.

She sighed. Maybe she did need a muzzle after all, though she’d never acknowledge to Freddy that one of his quips had been right.

Just one, she reminded herself. Not that other one.

She frowned, heading into the bedroom, Freddy’s voice echoing in her ear. He’s not for you .

Well, who was he to decide?

Mr. Cresson was a barrister, an international hero, and a damned fine specimen of masculinity. He could very well decide for himself, couldn’t he?

Couldn’t he?

She shook her head, kicking the door shut behind her and making poor Hannah startle.

“Sorry, a stóirín ,” she said immediately. “Was lost in my own head.”

“What does that mean?” Hannah asked, tilting her head as she pulled the pins out of her hair, repeating with damn near perfect pronunciation. “ A stóirín ?”

Ember smiled. “It means ‘my treasure’ or something like ‘darling.’ Common where I come from.”

“Oh?” said Hannah, shaking out her glorious copper mane. “Where in Ireland do you originate, anyway?”

“Kildare,” Ember replied, delighted to be asked as she found her way to perch on the foot of the bed. “Do you know Ireland? Have you been?”

Hannah nodded. “Papa took me to Dublin once. It was very pretty. Many hills.”

“Many,” agreed Ember, grinning. “Kildare is not so large or grand as Dublin, but it’s got a lot of beauty and a lot of legend.”

“The warrior monks,” said Hannah with a smile.

“Yes!” Ember’s eyes widened. “How do you know about that, you little vixen? How English are you, exactly?”

“Too English for the boys at synagogue,” said Hannah wryly, “not English enough for the boys anywhere else.”

“Ach,” said Ember with distaste. “Men.”

“Men,” agreed Hannah Lazarus. “Shame about how appealing they are, isn’t it?”

Ember laughed. Had she been that obvious? “Oh, yes,” she agreed. “That’s the rub, isn’t it, at least for women like us.”

“Women like us,” Hannah repeated a little dreamily, taking out her night rail and sitting down to braid her hair. “Do you think I’m like you? Truly?”

“Do you want to be?” Ember replied, watching this innocent young thing with fascinated horror. “Why?”

Hannah looked at her through the mirror with a sleepy smile. “I think you’re marvelous.” She sighed. “No one tells you that you aren’t enough, do they? They don’t make you feel ugly or void of charm. When you got here, Lord Penrose didn’t call you a pretty little Jewess.”

Ember almost choked at the candor.

“He called me Freddy’s mistress!” she blurted out. “Because I was, once. I used to be!”

That at least made the other girl hesitate. “Were you really?” she marveled. “What was it like?”

“Hannah!”

The girl smiled again, perhaps a little mischievously this time. “Passionate, isn’t it? Those types of affairs? I’ve always assumed so. Not matters of practicality or duty, just … just want?”

“It was actually entirely a matter of practicality and duty,” Ember replied, feeling something awaken inside her that sounded and felt alarmingly like her mam lecturing her before the harvest fair. “It wasn’t passionate at all!”

“I would be passionate,” Hannah Lazarus said with a sigh, “for a man who looked like Lord Bentley.”

Ember scoffed, throwing herself onto the floor and padding over to her own particulars. “Pretty men are just as dangerous as the rest,” she told the younger woman. “More so. Just ask Freddy’s poor wife.”

“His very rich wife, you mean?” Hannah replied calmly. “Millie’s sister?”

Ember frowned, a little noise of frustration rising in her throat that really did sound like her mam escaping from inside her gullet. She hesitated, horrified by it.

“I don’t just like the pretty ones,” Hannah confessed wistfully, standing and flopping onto the bed, her braid bouncing. “I like them all. The short ones. The tall ones. The little ones. The big ones. Ohh! Did you see that Mr. Beck? My goodness!”

“No!” Ember hit her limit, spinning around. “No!”

Hannah fluttered her lashes, seemingly enjoying getting a rise out of her. “No, you didn’t see him, or …?”

“No,” Ember repeated sternly. “Now come help me unlace my dress before you give me gray hairs.”

“All right,” said the gentle little Miss Lazarus, sliding from the bed and hopping to helpful attention, as though she hadn’t just revealed what a little menace she was under it all. “You sound like someone’s mother, you know.”

“I know,” Ember said unhappily. “God help me, I sound like mine own.”