Page 8 of Reforming Lord Ragsdale
“My lord, you had better come downstairs at once. I don’t think you’ll like what’s going on. I know I don’t, but it’s not something I can prevent.”
“What can you be so lathered up about?” Lord Ragsdale said as he followed the man down the stairs. “I think myyoung cousin is spending my money, but that’s my business. I intend to give him quite a scold, rest assured.”
The landlord stopped on the stairs and looked him in the eye. “He’s gone beyond your money, my lord, way beyond. Please hurry.”
If anything, the taproom was more crowded than before, even though it was hours after midnight. The same group of gamesters sat at the table, with the addition of Robert and the waiting woman.
Lord Ragsdale barely noticed his cousin, who waved him a greeting and moved to pull up another chair. His eye went immediately to Emma Costello, who stood in her nightdress behind his cousin’s chair. She was as pale as her flannel shift, her auburn hair flaming around her face, her eyes burning like coals into his own. She swallowed once, and he thought she would speak, but she said nothing and did nothing but stare at the opposite wall. Her face was wiped clean of any hope, or of any expression at all.
He wrenched his glance away from her and stared hard at the gaming table. There was a document on it, with a seal and ribbons and folded in half as though it had just come out of the leather case upstairs. He looked at Emma again and back at the document, and he was filled with more anger than he would have thought possible, considering that this whole affair was probably none of his business.
He was so angry he could not speak. The man sitting next to Robert nudged him. “Your draw, laddie,” he said, and then grinned at Emma and smacked his lips.
“Touch that card, Robert, and I will thrash you until your backbone breaks through your skin.”
Did I really say that?Lord Ragsdale thought as he crossed the room in two steps and stood leaning over his cousin’s chair.
To his further amazement, Robert merely looked at him and shrugged his shoulders. “Cousin, I am in debt and nothing else will do but Emma. I have her papers here, and I can do as I like. It’s legal. Everyone’s agreed.”
He turned back to the table and reached for the card. Lord Ragsdale slammed his fist down on his cousin’s hand, shoved him out of the chair, and sat down in Robert’s place, his face inches from his opponent. “I’ll make you a better deal,” he said, each word distinct in the suddenly silent room. He picked up the indenture papers. “Look here, did he show you how this indenture has less than eighteen months to run?”
The other men at the table crowded close. The smell of rum breath and tobacco made him want to flee the room, gagging, but he looked at each man in turn, hoping for a measure of intimidation from his unseeing eye. “How much was he going to ask for?”
“Two hundred pounds to settle up.”
“Against an eighteen-month indenture?” Lord Ragsdale leaned back in his chair to escape the fumes, and laughed. “Well, I have. . .” He paused.Absolutely no money, he thought as he stared daggers at his cousin.
The gambler shrugged. “I can take your money as well as his,” he offered.
“I don’t have any,” Lord Ragsdale said.
“Well, then, we play for the wench,” said the gambler. “You can go back to bed.”
I could, he thought.She is not my chattel.He looked at Robert.And you are not my problem.He started to get up when he heard the smallest sound from the servant. He may even have imagined it, but suddenly he knew he could not leave her there to the mercy of these men, no matter how much he disliked her. He sat back down again.
“I have something better than that testy Irish wench.” He leaned forward again, his voice conspiratorial. “Two horses out in the stable. One a chestnut and the other a bay. The chestnut won at Newport last season. That cuts the debt, and Emma goes back upstairs where she belongs.”
I am giving away the best two horses a man ever owned for an Irish bog-trotter who can’t stand the sight of me, he thought as he glared at the other men around the table.
The men looked at each other. The hostler by the bar spoke up. “I curried them two bits of bone and blood this afternoon, and he’s right, lads.” He stopped then and looked around, filled with the pride that comes from being the expert.
Lord Ragsdale stood up, ignoring his cousin, who still sat on the floor where he had pushed him. “Does that clear my cousin’s debt, then? Two of the best horses in London, and I take back this paper.”
The men nodded. “We’ll call it even,” the dealer said.
Even, my dead eye, Lord Ragsdale thought as he watched his cousin get to his feet, sway a moment, and then reach for the paper.
Lord Ragsdale was quicker. He snatched the document from Robert so fast that his cousin leaped back in surprise and toppled onto the floor again. “Robert, the only way you can get this paper back is to pay me the two thousand pounds you now owe me.”
Emma gasped. Lord Ragsdale looked around in amazement of his own.I just bought a woman, he thought as he took her hand and pulled her from the taproom,an Irish woman I don’t like too well, and who doesn’t like me at all.
She sank to her knees in the hall and covered her face with her hands. His first instinct was to leave her there and just go back to bed. He started up the stairs and then returned to kneel beside her in the passageway.
“Don’t cry, Emma,” he said.
“I’m not crying,” she murmured, even as the tears streamed down her cheeks and she savagely wiped them away.
“Thank goodness for that,” he replied, keeping his tone light. “’Pon my word, Emma, I hope you are worth two thousand pounds.”
