The Double Wager by Mary Balogh

Author:Mary Balogh [Balogh, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Class Ebook Editions Ltd.
Published: 2016-08-22T18:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

T he Duke of Eversleigh threw his cards into the center of the table, his face impassive, though he had won a considerable amount of money in the first two games of the evening.

Lord Horton threw in his cards, too. “I should know from experience never to play against you, Marius,” he sighed. “You’re always a lucky devil!”

“We miss you at the club, Eversleigh,” Rufus Smythe commented. “Tell us, do you still believe you were wise to choose a bride so carelessly?”

Eversleigh raised his quizzing glass and eyed his questioner slowly, his face still expressionless. “Ah, but I never do anything without care,” he answered.

Sir Wilfred Denning smoothed the lace of his cuffs over his well-manicured hands and shuddered delicately. “You certainly chose fast enough, Eversleigh. I am still smarting at the loss of my grays. I see you have given them to her Grace. A nicely ironic touch, that!”

“Indeed you have brought the duchess into fashion, Marius,” Horton commented. “She is all the rage, I understand.”

“Henry is one of a kind,” Eversleigh answered enigmatically.

Rufus Smythe laughed. “I see that even your cousin has taken a fancy to her,” he said.

Eversleigh toyed with his quizzing glass again, but did not lift it to his eye.

“I lunched with him at Watier’s today,” Smythe continued. “It must be pleasant, Eversleigh, to have a relative willing to relieve one of the tedium of accompanying one’s wife to all the social functions.”

Eversleigh s hand, clasped around the quizzing glass, stilled. The half-closed eyelids hid eyes which had sharpened. “To which event in particular are you referring, Smythe?” he asked with a languidness that was at odds with his alert eyes.

“Oh, he was taking her to something or other tonight, was he not?” said Smythe, gathering the cards together and proceeding to shuffle them.

“Ah, tonight, yes,” said Eversleigh, and prepared to play the hand that was dealt him.

At the end of the game, which he again won, Eversleigh rose to his feet in leisurely fashion and brushed an imaginary speck of dust from his coat sleeve. He turned to his host. “This has been pleasant, my dear fellow,” he said, “but I have another engagement for tonight that I cannot avoid.”

“Marius!” said Horton, also rising to his feet. “The night has scarcely begun. I thought we were to have a fair chance tonight of stripping you of your fortune.”

“Ha! See what marriage has done to him?” Denning mocked with his haughty drawl. “He does not even have the stamina to sit up with his friends to play cards.”

“Perhaps he has better things to do,” said Rufus Smythe, leering.

“I am delighted to have left you with a topic on which to speculate for the next hour, my dear fellows,” Eversleigh said, seeming quite unperturbed by the good-natured teasing.

A half-hour later, the Duke of Eversleigh was announced in the music room of Mrs. August Welby’s home. That lady was all aflutter. Having a real live duke present at her musical evening, especially such a distinguished one as Eversleigh, was beyond her wildest dreams.

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