Page 136 of Lessons for Marquesses
“Who’s there?”
A steadydrip, dripof water answered.
Her heart pattered in her chest. She was far from the Green Chamber and the Evil Leprechaun. She had never heard water before, and she had spent years in the labyrinth. She took a step with the feeling of being watched, of a hand only seconds from clutching her.
“That is enough. Whoever you are.” She listened harder. A woman cried. It sounded miles away like a light upon the sea. “Mama?”
Silly.
Georgiana walked on.
Men’s voices rumbled into the passage. A cutting laugh pierced the black. Her father’s laugh. He was angry though most would not recognize it as such. Her father could smile through a rage.
Georgiana edged toward what was becoming an argument in the billiard room. She ran a hand over the panel to the latch, pressed her thumb to lift it, and cracked the door.
Framed in the sliver of light stood her father and a gentleman in a burgundy coat and fawn breeches. His hand braced the narrow end of the oak billiard table. Even as he slouched carelessly, he loomed.
“You cheated.” Her father sipped his liquor. “No man is that lucky.”
The man feigned a yawn. “You certainly are not. And by the by, you cheated me.”
Cigar smoke coiled between them, making a ghostly apparition of her father’s smile. “I have never had cause to cheat. I prefer the satisfaction of knowing that when I win, I come by it honestly.”
“Honestly? And what of the five I invested in your colonial trading enterprise? Do you call that honest?”
“Two ships sank in a freakish storm,” her father replied in a flat tone. “I can neither predict nor control the weather. And a piece of advice if I may? If you cannot afford to lose money, you should not invest it.”
“Sod off, St. Clair, you insufferable bastard.”
How dare he curse Papa in his own home!
Her father remained silent. Georgiana grit her teeth.
The man dipped his chin with a laugh as if considering a private jest. He looked up, his eyes hard. “I know of your circumvention of the Ottoman trade monopoly. Illegal, I’d say. How much is that worth?”
“Nothing. It is not fact.”
“And if my family were to ensure it was seen as fact? Do you believe the St. Clairs, the Tindall earldom, more powerful than us?” The man feigned a shot with his finger.
Her father’s dark eyes burned like the cigar he brought to his lips. He sucked in and blew the plume straight into the man’s aristocratic nose before striding away to refill his drink. The man tapped his index finger on the baize with an air of boredom.
“In good faith, I will pay what you cheated from me,” her father said, studying a billiard stick propped against the marble parson’s table. “In return you will never darken my door again. Or I will crush you. And your family.”
The man guffawed, an arrogant lord. “I’ll make this easy. My winnings paid to me and a few of your nags in the stable. Indeed,my brother comes into his majority next month, and he admires your horseflesh. And what, without a gift for him, I believe this could kill two birds with”—he grinned—“your loss.”
Georgiana clutched hard on the latch.Not my horses.
“The chestnut hunter with the two front socks,” the man said. “I’ll take him.”
Turk!Georgiana bit her lip to stop from shouting.Tell him to rot, Papa! And tell that brother to rot, too! Kick him! Make him rue the day he showed discourtesy in a man’s home!
“Along with the bay racing stallion, the grey broodmare, two more racing mounts of my choosing andyourhorse. Yes, that shall suffice.” The man studied his hand wrapped at his goblet. Freeing it from the glass, he held it out. “No, I also expect you to kiss my ring.”
Her father picked up the billiard stick, lofting it in his hand and catching it. “You shall get none of the horses. And most assuredly, not George’s chestnut hunter.”
The man smirked. “George? See here, St. Clair. You can put breeches on a sow, but it’s still a sow. If she’s got a quim, she’s a daughter. I wonder, what will you do with her when she wants that quim stretched and filled with cock?”
Georgiana struggled to follow the man’s logic. How was she a sow, and what was a quim, and did she have one?
