Page 34 of Hazard a Guest
Lord Penrose hadn’t gone to a Catholic school, of course, but Ember imagined that if he had, he’d have had a favorite nun. Maybe a few of them. Men like that loved severe old women.
Luckily, when she got back to the room, Merryn was still there, fussing over Hannah’s hair.
“Thiscolor,” she was cooing to the younger woman. “I’d pray for it my whole life and never be given the gift.”
“Ugh, take it and go,” Hannah replied with good cheer. “I’d much rather have your flax than my fox fur.”
“Perish the word,” chided Merryn.
Ember hesitated at the door, looking guiltily down at her own breakfast. “I should have brought you a plate,” she realized, blinking up at Hannah.
“Oh, no, I’m going to go check on Papa,” Hannah said with a wave of her pale hand. “He seemed well enough when I saw him last night, but he’s never had the strongest stomach, you know. He’d live on broth if we let him.”
Merryn frowned at that. “Well, don’t let him, miss.”
“I won’t,” assured Hannah.
Ember sat and picked at her breakfast, waiting for Hannah to be off before she scribbled out a note for Joe and sent it off with Merryn, who had, thus far, been an invaluable agent of both information and discretion.
She thought, with a little jolt of joy, that it would be fun to begin their tutelage in the conservatory where he’d taken her yesterday after her little scare.
Perhaps the pirate spirit of the first Lord Penrose would assist them in their dishonest endeavors, or at the very least offer them some insights on elevating their fashion choices.
She smiled to herself, checking her reflection twice before departing the room. She went first to the gaming hall, where she was able to borrow a couple of sets of dice, then made a direct path to the conservatory.
Even if she arrived before Joe, she thought she could practice a little. She hadn’t played hazard for over a year, and even then it was her own variation. In the brief window of normal play that had happened last night, she’d heard at least one games master shout “No chickens!” to a lordling who’d attempted to play with rule variance.
She chuckled to herself. She would have to tell her own masters to abandon all eloquence when the same happened at the Forge. It would improve her nights considerably to hear them shouting“No chickens!”at the guests.
She was laughing to herself, a wide smile stretching her cheeks, when she rounded the corner into the conservatory. Her smile immediately fell to the floor and shattered.
There in all his unwanted glory was Thaddeus Beck. His hair glinted in the morning sunlight streaming in from the glass panes above. He was standing near the first Lord Penrose, admiring a bloom of lilies, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he had played interloper and day-ruiner with instinctive precision.
And unfortunately, he turned around before she could beat an escape.
He looked surprised but not displeased. “Oh,” he said, “good morning, Mrs. Withers.”
Her heart gave a thump, sickening and dry against her ribs. “Miss Donnelly,” she corrected. “I don’t use Withers anymore.”
“Good morning, Miss Donnelly,” he corrected immediately, like he respected her.
She frowned.
“I like this room,” he continued, sinking down onto the bench at his knees,herbench, the one she’d sat on with Joe Cresson just yesterday. “I like the smells even more. What are these flowers called, do you know?”
“Callas,” she said automatically. “Calla lilies.”
“They’re lovely,” he said with a deep inhale. “They remind me of Covent Garden in the summer. My mum sold flowers there, you know.”
She felt her own roots growing, anchoring her to the flagstones in the entryway. What in the blue eye of God was this man trying to do right now? Covent Garden? Flowers?
“I never got to offer you my sympathies,” he said, blinking at her as though her frigid posture and silence were not unusual at all. “About Mr. Withers. Your husband was a good man. Decent. I liked him very much.”
“I did too,” she said warily. “Thank you.”
She wasn’t going to stand there like a clay pigeon, she decided. She forced her feet into motion, breaking and shaking away those invisible roots that had started to form, and marched over to the bench,her bench, to sit next to him.
She hadn’t had a plan for this, of course. If given the option, she might just scratch those black eyes out of his face right now and save everyone the trouble, but she’d hate for Joe to find her like that, picking blood out from under her fingernails.
