Page 10 of The Rebellious Lady and the Phantom Lord
Patrick Gilhooley Fitzhurst grinned at her, flicking aside one of the strands of hair that drooped in front of his twinkling green eyes. His riotous mass of brown curls defied confinement in the queue he had attempted to form at the nape of his neck.
“‘Tis a fine hand you have there, I’m thinking,” he said. “Would to God it pleased you to play some of it.”
“I intend to, Gilly, if you would cease interrupting me.”
Re-sorting her hand, she tried to concentrate on her game. But the vision of steely-blue eyes kept rising between her and the cards. She kept remembering the marquis’s final words of warning: he would find a way to be rid of her if she pried into his affairs. Of course, she had made the first threat, but she had been angry and blustering. He had meant it. What sort of deadly game must the man be playing, if the mere hint of a few questions provoked such a response? Phaedra had a feeling thatshe would never know a peaceful night’s sleep again if she did not discover the truth about de LeCroix.
“Phaedra!”
She started, almost dropping her cards. “Oh, very well, Gilly.”
She flung down a jack, little thinking what she did. With a snort of disgust, Gilly trumped her, taking the trick.
Phaedra strewed the rest of her cards across the table. “You’ve won.”
“Won, is it?” Gilly wrinkled his snub nose. “For all the challenge you offer, I might as well have been playing with my old grandmother, and herself half blind. Here, look at this.”
Phaedra watched as Gilly tugged one threadbare cuff of his rateen frock coat, shaking it until several aces dislodged from his sleeve, fluttering onto the table. “And you not noticing a blessed thing! I thought I’d taught you better.”
“And I thought you would have outgrown such childish tricks.” She began to gather up the cards, but she paused, regarding him gravely. “Gilly, you have not been using these tricks elsewhere. Not when really playing for money.”
The jade eyes widened to the full extent of their innocence.
“Now, by the grave of my sainted mother?—”
“Gilly!”
He sighed, then stood up to remove his frock coat, revealing the patched canvas work on the back of his worn silk waistcoat. “There, now do I look as if I were making my living fleecing gentlemen at cards?”
She smiled. “I do beg your pardon, Mr. Fitzhurst.”
“And so you should, my girl.” He donned his frock coat, adding, “You were such a gloom-faced chit this morning. I only thought to amuse you by reminding you of the old days when we used to play at being cardsharps. Lord, don’t you remember how we planned to run off together and live by our wits? We even practiced picking pockets. That, of course, was only supposed tosustain us until we saved enough for pistols and could take to the High Toby.”
“Yes, I remember. What dreadful, wicked children we were.”
She chuckled, but her laughter held a hint of wistfulness in it. She remembered well the old days. Her Irish days, she was wont to think of them. When she had run wild with Gilly, barefoot down the dusty lanes like a pair of urchins, scrumping apples from Squire Traherne’s orchard, scaling trees as if they were castle walls, galloping bareback across the meadows on half-wild ponies. It was a wonder they both hadn’t broken their necks. Never again in her life had she felt so free.
Gilly, her mother’s nephew, was all that she had left of those days. Her English grandfather, angered by his only son’s elopement, had always hated her Irish mother. With both her parents dead, Sawyer Weylin had done his best to sever all Phaedra’s connections with Ireland, but her affection for Gilly proved too strong a bond even for the old man to break.
Phaedra became aware that Gilly had come round the table to her side. His fingers, roughened from handling the leather of his horses, chucked her lightly under the chin.
“Out with it, Phaedra, my girl. Sure and your mind hasn’t been on the cards. What’s troubling you?”
She sighed. “It seems I have acquired an enemy.”
“The devil you say! And you, with your sweet, gentle disposition.”
“I am serious, you rogue,” Phaedra said, although she was forced to bite back a smile. “What have you heard of a man who calls himself de LeCroix?”
“Is it the Marquis de Varnais you’re meaning? Well, he appears to be far wealthier than me and I’ve heard half the ladies in London would willingly cuckold their husbands in his bed.”
“Is that all you know of him?”
Gilly regarded one of his worn sleeve cuffs. “The marquis and I do not exactly attend the same supper parties, colleen.”
“I would have also thought him to be above my grandfather’s touch, but apparently they have become boon companions.”
Phaedra’s chair snagged on the thick Axminister carpet as she shoved it back, rising to her feet. She paced about the small chamber while she recounted for Gilly the entire tale of her meeting with the Marquis de Varnais, beginning with the nobleman’s advice to Sawyer Weylin that she be kept in Bath, and ending with a description of Armande’s warning.
