As a footman opened the door, he faced the new day. The breaking sky was a lush pink and he wondered at its cause – never before had he beheld such colour in London, but then this year’s weather thus far had been without precedent. Snow on Easter Sunday, sheep lost to May floods, predictions of harvest failure, and this morning it was colder than a bailiff’s heart.
“Casper… I’m not sure what to say.”
He turned to Ernest, who had a mightily impressed expression, and wished it could be due to their tenants being warm and dry below well-maintained roofs instead of a little luck at whist.
Of course, luck could be studied, just like everything else.
“I’ll lend you Hoyle’sTreatise on the Game of Whist. I have a signed original.” He sighed. “If you must gamble, you should be the best. I also have some tomes on recognising cheating tricks.”
“Is that how you won? Were they cheating?”
“Yes, but…” Casper squirmed and continued walking. Yesternight, he’d sent the coach home, and although a hackney might be in the offing this morning, the insides were usually a tad unsavoury after a night working the streets of London.
They’d walk.
“Coaxing Tom was false shuffling and between them they were piping.”
“What?”
“Swapping card information by the alignment of their smoking accoutrements.”
“Lud!” Ernest halted on the corner of Jermyn Street. “What utter charlatans.”
“Quite.”
“So how did we win?”
He debated. It hadn’t been gentlemanly. It hadn’t been honourable but there had been no other way. “I cheated better.”
“No! Never. I do not believe it!” Ernest gaped, bloodshot eyes duplicating the sky. “You would never cheat.”
“Not normally, no. But they’d taken you for all you had with a few basic techniques. I deciphered their code and merely righted the balance. But I certainly don’t want a hunting lodge in Scotland, they can have that back.”
“They won it from Lord Cameron who’s newly arrived from Edinburgh.”
“Well, let him win it from you next time.”
“I don’t… I don’t believe I’ll gamble again. It’s not my forte. I’ll stick to women.”
Casper’s brow creased. Was that better? He supposed so. “Be careful, Ernest. The heart is a fragile organ.”
His brother cast a hurt look. “Of course. I’d hoped you’d know me better, Casp. And I thought I knew you. How did you become so adept at whist?”
“Father. He was actually rather good; it was the drink that let him down. But if I wished for his company at all, then cards were my only way to garner his attention… Ernest, er, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“Hmm?”
Casper swallowed. Devil take it, this was more painful than a poetry recital. But during the gambling spree, he’d watched Ernest, noted the way his attention at cards had waned, and realised his brother was not so enamoured with gambling as he pretended, but required a focus, one which Casper had constantly denied him. “I will fund your venture with Lord Sancroft, but…” He held a hand to Ernest’s elation. “I want weekly reports, detailed accounting and a plan of business.”
“I won’t let you down, Casper.” He struck a pose, tilting his beaver hat. “I like the sound of rakish horse breeder…even more than being a soldier.”
Casper nodded, avoiding both his brother’s intimation and the staggering bucks who did indeed look like they’d lost their shirts.
But Ernest pursued his thread. “Why didn’t you buy me a commission into the cavalry when I asked?”
As a rule, he wangled his way out of this conversation, but it obviously still festered within his brother.
He’d many answers but in the past had only scolded that Ernest wasn’t old enough or responsible enough. That as heir his duty was to the estate and tenants that relied upon it. Once he would have continued in that vein, but Evelyn’s and Uncle’s recently bestowed advice – or criticism depending on how one viewed it – pounded in his head and he wasn’t so stuck up his own ducal arse that he didn’t see some sense in…sharing.
