Page 21 of Her Majesty's Necromancer
He sat with me and pulled the deck of cards from his apron pocket. "I thought you'd given up cards," he said as he dealt. "You bein' no good and all."
"I'm not too bad when I concentrate." I checked my cards and placed the queen of hearts on the table. "Did you know that Fitzroy has a set of weighted dice?"
"I do not cheat at dice. Or cards."
I spun around as my stomach plunged. Lincoln strode into the kitchen, looking like he wanted to challenge me to a duel for besmirching his reputation. "Why are you always sneaking about? It's grossly unfair."
"I am not sneaking." He flicked his hand and Cook dealt him in. "Why do you think I cheat?"
"The Red Lion barkeep said you won every throw against Jimmy and Pete."
"That was luck."
"Every time? How many throws were there?"
"Twenty-eight." He threw down a card and swept up the pile. He'd won the round.
"Twenty-eight!" I looked to Cook. "In your experience, has anyone ever won twenty-eight throws of dice in a row?"
Cook glanced from me to Lincoln then threw in his entire hand. "I have bread to bake."
"Coward," I muttered.
"It was merely luck, Charlie," Lincoln said again. "Jimmy and Pete couldn't accept that, even after they inspected the dice." He tapped the table with his finger. "Are you playing or arguing?"
I threw down my best card and won the hand.
"You should have discarded something lower," he said. "My card was only a six."
"What if I didn't have anything lower?"
He looked at me like he didn't believe me.
We played for another hour and he won every round except for those where he deliberately discarded a low value card. It was extraordinary. It was as if he could see my hand. I checked the deck during the break we took for him to have his soup, but I couldn't see any markings on them. If he was cheating, it wasn't obvious how he was doing it.
"You're wasting your time," he said. "I do not cheat. I'm merely lucky at cards. And dice." He sounded offended.
I resisted telling him, once again, that nobody was that lucky. "You could make a fortune at those disreputable gambling dens that you gentlemen like to frequent."
He said nothing, merely finished his soup. Seth, who'd rejoined us, laughed softly. "Where do you think we met? It was at one of those disreputable gambling dens. Mr. Fitzroy did indeed win everything that night."
I recalled Seth telling me the story of how he'd been about to wager his body as a last resort when Lincoln had stepped in and won enough to clear Seth's debts. His price had been Seth's service, which he still seemed to be paying off a year later.
"He was banned that night," Seth said, smiling. "For suspected cheating."
"I didn't—"
"Cheat," I finished for Lincoln. "So you keep saying."
He set the bowl down hard on the table. "It's time for your training." I got the feeling he was going to make me work extra hard today. "Change into your exercise clothes and meet me in the ballroom. It's still raining outside and there's more space in there."
I did as told, leaving him behind in the kitchen. I changed into my training attire of loose fitting men's trousers and an oversized shirt. Even without a corset, women's clothing was too restrictive. I would one day have to learn to fight in it, so Lincoln had told me, but not yet.
The ballroom was located on the first level. I rarely entered the vast, empty room, as there was no need to clean a space that was never used. Besides, it made me a little sad to see such a grand room go to waste. In days past, the three crystal chandeliers would have presided over revelry and scandal, but now they gathered dust. Perhaps Lady Harcourt could convince Lincoln to hold a ball there, one day, to breathe life into the room. Perhaps after he attended a few elsewhere, he'd want to hold one of his own.
Or not. I rather thought he'd prefer to use the room for fighting than dancing.
Lincoln arrived a few minutes after me in his regular clothes of shirt and trousers. He rarely wore a waistcoat or tie around the house, unless he was receiving callers, and he rolled his shirtsleeves up to his elbows for training. If he knew the effect his state of casual undress had on me, he would probably don the full suit. Sometimes it was a marvel that I could learn anything at all.
