Page 19 of Hazard a Guest (Ladies’ Revenge Club #3)

S leep was a thing Joe only suspected he once knew.

The return to the tables had been faster than he’d expected, much more immediate.

There hadn’t been a slow trickle of recovering guests that gradually built night to night, but the crack of the doors for a bunch of hungry dice and card hounds who’d been tending an ache for their compulsions alongside their sour stomachs, rather than in place of.

It was a little bit horrifying, he thought. And unfortunately for Freddy, more than a little bit familiar.

“I was like that too,” he said quietly to Joe that first night back. “I am like that.”

And then he’d turned his back when it was Joe’s turn at the hazard table.

Those ivory dice of his were heavier than the ones Ember had brought to the room. The grooves on each side had been filled with little clumps of gold which flashed prettily in the candlelight when they were rolled.

He did as he’d been taught, and always bet on seven.

He won once, but lost three times, and he knew it wasn’t important.

Ember had explained the numbers to him, the patterns, and the expectations.

The dangerous hazard players were the ones who stood to the side of the felt. They were the ones who won.

Ember had said she would be cheating at the card tables, but from Joe’s estimation, she was also losing as often as she won. He must have been missing something about her strategy, however, because twice, when she’d caught his eye across the room, she’d given him a little wink.

He wanted nothing more than to take her away from these rooms and keep her all to himself. He wanted many things, if he was being honest with himself, many things that were not precisely benevolent.

Every night she wore something more beautiful, more devastating.

She dressed in rich fabrics in deep, jewel-colored tones, gems sparkling at her throat and in her hair.

She flashed smiles as easily as she flicked cards onto the tables.

She was as sharp as the tips of her gems, he thought.

She was the trump card and the money rake and the pot, all at once.

By the third day of the return to gambling, it had become his nightly ritual, trying to sleep and returning mentally to that moment against the door, that delicious, heated moment and all the ways it could have burned hotter.

He almost resisted sleep just to stay crisply in the memory, to retain how her skin felt under his fingertips, how her mouth had tasted, how she’d moved.

Yes, it hurt. It ached. And it was divine.

The days had run later because the nights had taken so long to expire since they’d entered the playing rooms. He’d kept an eye on Thaddeus Beck, noting that the man refused to play at a table after Ember sat down.

He’d finish his hand, he’d excuse himself quietly, but regardless of the game or the stake or the round, he would always leave after she arrived.

He knew she had noticed it too, and he knew it irked her.

Joe wasn’t quite sure what to make of Beck. He wasn’t what he’d imagined from Silas Cain’s description. The man was massive. Built like a stagecoach. But he moved with the quiet agility of a stray cat, somehow elegant despite its inelegant presentation.

Joe still couldn’t quite shake the image of him sitting on that conservatory bench across from Ember Donnelly, the two of them clearly sharing a moment that anyone with working eyes would have described as tender.

He didn’t like it. He didn’t like remembering it.

“People have hurt you,” Joe had said to her.

And since the moment the words had left his mouth, he’d felt a rigidness in his flesh, sharp edges pointed, perhaps unfairly, at Freddy Hightower.

“She doesn’t forget when things go badly,” Freddy had said to him, mere days ago.

What had he done to her? Had Freddy broken her heart? Had she trusted Freddy with that beautiful, fearful heart and he’d gone and harmed it?

He couldn’t shake the suspicion. He couldn’t quell the rage.

Joe didn’t live in pockets of limbo. His upbringing had always emphasized the benefit of plain speech, of confronting a thing before it could fester, and so he’d followed Freddy back to the rooms on that third night because he couldn’t stand it anymore, the not knowing.

Freddy had observed it and accepted that something was different without comment.

Perhaps he had expected it, somehow. Maybe he’d been preparing for it since that morning after Ember’s dice lessons, when Freddy had opened the door to the washroom and immediately noticed the two glasses, stained red with the ghost of wine, on Joe’s windowside table.

He just looked sidelong at Joe falling in step beside him as they walked the halls, and nodded quietly.

He didn’t speak until they crossed the threshold into Joe’s room. Freddy followed as though he knew he was wanted for this. He crossed the room and sat on the foot of Joe’s bed and heaved a sigh.

“So,” he said, raising his pale brows. “You have questions.”

Joe closed the door and leaned back against it, crossing his arms over his chest. He nodded.

“It wasn’t what you think,” Freddy said with a sigh, dropping his palms to the mattress.

“I don’t think anything,” Joe replied softly.

“Of course you do,” Freddy returned with irritation. “Even you aren’t above presumption. It wasn’t a love affair. It was business.”

“Your contract, you mean?” Joe pressed. “Or your friendship? Or …?”

Freddy sighed loudly. “The contract, maybe all of it? I was in debt. I’m always in debt, Joe, and she was a woman in a very dangerous business. She could give me absolution and I could give her protection. It worked. We worked.”

“You worked,” Joe repeated, without inflection.

“We were friends ,” Freddy burst out, fraying in his emphasis.

“Good friends. She was the best friend I’ve ever had, Cresson.

She’s like me, you know? Enough like me that we spoke the same language.

She was my mistress, yes, but it wasn’t …

it wasn’t what it usually is. I”m not saying we didn’t … that we never …”

“I don’t care about that,” Joe said quickly. “That doesn’t matter.”

That, unlike everything else, seemed to stun Freddy. He stopped speaking entirely, staring in bafflement for a dozen ticks of the clock before he could snap himself out of it. “That’s not what this is about?”

“No.”

Freddy grimaced, his eyes falling to his hands on the coverlet. He started to pick at it, the color of his face turning blotchy. “You want to know why she hated me,” he said quietly, “not why she loved me.”

“Yes.”

Freddy sighed again. “Why? Why does it matter? She doesn’t love me anymore.”

“Freddy,” said Joe, impatient but not loud, “I don’t think it would matter if she didn’t.”

At that, Freddy raised his eyes, a look of raw pain and hope muddled on his features.

“She saw those dice,” Joe continued, patting his pocket. “She saw them on the first night I played and she looked like she’d been slapped. Why? Why did she look like that, Freddy?”

He made a sound, something between a scoff and a humorless chuckle. “I finally get you to call me by my name,” he said, “and it’s in reprimand.”

“Freddy,” Joe said again, not moving, not changing.

He let the clock tick. He let the branches tap the windows. He let Freddy breathe. Rushing him would only harm him and perhaps harm the truth too.

It took a moment for Joe to realize the other man was crying. It was a quiet thing, silent. Just tears pooling on the lower lids of his eyes, just a hitch in the breaths he was taking.

It almost made him abandon the ask. It almost wasn’t worth it, to hurt him when he had never harmed Joe in any way. Not once.

He pushed away from the door and walked to the other end of the bed, sitting on the corner opposite to Freddy. He didn’t look at him. He focused on the carpet at their feet, willing to wait as long as necessary for Freddy to be ready.

It was a confrontation, yes, but it was also a gift that Freddy was willingly giving. Joe would not take that for granted.

It only took a moment. When he spoke, he sounded almost like another man. Hollow. Away.

“You know I’ve done unforgivable things,” Freddy began. “You know about Dot. About Claire. What I did to Ember was worse, but it was all connected, all at once.”

Joe nodded, but he didn’t look up. He knew it wouldn’t help if he did.

Freddy drew a shaking breath. “I was drowning in it. I couldn’t stop.

I hated the idea that I might need to stop.

Silas was away on some case or another, unable to stop me or to help me.

I have a lot of money tied up in my father’s legal bindings, control from beyond his cold grave.

He knew I couldn’t be trusted with it. No access to the fortune beyond a yearly allowance, until I married and produced an heir.

That was the bequest. That was his final curse. ”

He pushed himself off the bed, landing hard on his feet, and began to pace.

“So I had to get married. Fine. I didn’t want to stop rolling the dice, but I needed to pause.

I needed to change tack just long enough to be whole again.

So I asked Ember to take the dice and not to give them back until I was settled.

She agreed. I trusted her. She trusted me.

Then I went out and I found Dorothy Fletcher.

It was all exactly as I wanted it to be. It was easy. Perfect.”

Joe frowned.

“I couldn’t have anticipated Claire. I couldn’t have known that I’d host a soiree to celebrate my engagement and an angel would descend from the staircase and ruin my life.

I didn’t think I could fall in love, and then moments later, I couldn’t remember ever not being in love with her.

It was a disaster, Joe. It was horrible because she felt it too.

It was like the universe put us in one another’s way.

It doomed us as it blessed us because I was involved. Because it was me.”

He spun around. He leaned down. He forced Joe to meet his eye. “I had to have her. I was possessed. It would have been worse to marry Dot while loving Claire. You see that, don’t you? Worse.”

Joe only blinked. He only blinked because he could not see it. He couldn’t comprehend it. It sounded like a horror.

But that was enough for Freddy. Freddy nodded like he’d received an affirmation. “Right. So I was going to elope with her. To take her away from London and figure it out. It was the only thing to do. But I had no money, Joe. I needed the dice and I needed a loan. So I went to get them.”

They shared a breath, a pregnant, stale breath of still air.

“From Ember,” Joe said.

“From Ember,” agreed Freddy. “Bloody Ember who insisted on keeping her word. She wouldn’t … she wouldn’t give them back. She kept shouting at me, telling me to be better. Telling me I had to pay for her roof. Reminding me that we had an agreement. And she would not give them back.”

The tears had come back, Joe realized. They were streaming down Freddy’s face while he ranted, while he paced.

“I lost my mind. I went completely mad,” Freddy confessed, throwing his hands up, raging at it, at the ghost of himself.

“I took her jewelry. I took the boxes and pouches and precious things from her rooms. I knew my dice would be in one of them and the rest would pay my way, would give me Claire. I took it all. I kicked over her chairs. I screamed. I made her …” He paused, squeezing his eyes shut, gritting his teeth.

“I made her afraid,” he finished. “And I didn’t stop then.

I didn’t stop until I got to the Continent and sold every single thing without an ounce of remorse. Everything but the dice.”

Joe watched him. He didn’t trust himself to speak. He didn’t trust himself to move.

“No,” amended Freddy softly. “The dice and the other thing. The thing no one would buy. I don’t even know why she had it. It was a cross made out of dried grass. I keep trying to give it back to her, you know. I brought it. I just … can’t.”

“Made out of grass?” Joe repeated, because it was the only thing to cling to that wouldn’t break him, that wouldn’t shove him over some precipice of emotion. “What do you mean?”

Freddy sucked in air through his nose and held up a finger, a finger that said wait .

He paced to the washroom and jerked the door open, flinging himself through it.

It took a few minutes of rummaging, a few whispered curses and thumping rearrangements of things, and then he came back with the thing cradled in his palm.

It was a cross, Joe saw. It was Brigid’s cross.

They both stared at it for a moment that stretched far beyond the confines of true time.

“Will you give it to her?” Freddy finally asked, puncturing the silence, begging. “Will you do it, Joe? Please? I don’t think I can. I tried. I really did try.”

And he looked up at the other man, whose hand was shaking, whose face was streaked with sorrow, holding out the cross in the same hand, in the same way that he’d held out those cursed dice.

“Yes,” said Joe. “If you want me to, I will do it.”

Freddy sagged then. He let Joe lift the cross and then he sank all the way to the floor. He pulled his knees up to his chest and sat there, looking like a little boy who had lost his parents in a crowd.

“Thank you,” he muttered. “Thank you.”

Joe went down to the floor and sat with him. They sat together for a long time, until it felt safe to stand again.