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“Dissolve the wager?” Wondered Lord Weston. ”Why on earth would you want to do such a thing when you are so close to winning it?”
“Because it now seems...indelicate, I suppose would be the term. It smacks of disrespect to the lady, and I feel uneasy in continuing.”
“The wager has not changed since we made it,” Lord Edward pointed out. “If it is disrespectful now; it was disrespectful from the start.”
“So it was,” Sir John admitted. “It was a mistake. One I wish to rectify. I agreed to the wager when I was ignorant of the truth of matters of the heart. Now that I have learned better, I find the entire thing to be made in bad taste.”
“I would not go so far as all that,” Lord Weston argued. “It might be in bad taste if we were to proclaim the thing from the rooftops,but we have all sworn discretion. You can hardly expect to be let out of a wager simply because you have had a change of heart. After all, Ashbrooke, for all we know, you may have suddenly had a turn of terrible luck with the lady and are simply looking for an easy way to escape holding up your end of the bargain.”
“I say now, it is nothing of the sort.” Sir John retorted hotly, stung at the implication. “If I were in danger of losing, I would accept it gracefully, as befits a gentleman. You all know that I am a man of my word.”
“We do,” Lord Henderson said soothingly. “But it isn’t really done, you know. Why distress yourself about it? Win the wager and enjoy the rest of your life blissfully wedded to your love. That hardly sounds unbearable.”
“You do not understand,” Sir John protested. “I do not know that I will be able to enjoy any of it with this falsehood hanging over me.”
“I suppose you could lose the wager,” suggested Lord Blakely doubtfully. “That might ease your conscience if it troubles you so. Simply throw the lady over.”
“No! I will not!” Sir John’s explosive reaction made Blakely chuckle and Lord Edward shake his head.
“You would have a clear conscience,” Blakely said “If that is what matters to you.”
“I think the lady matters,” Henderson said. “And a clear conscience would be difficult to enjoy while pining away for a lost love.”
“Come, I say we should let him off,” Lord Edward said. “It is poor sport, really, making a game of things when a friend’s heart is on the line. Can you not see the poor chap is miserable?”
“I believe I agree with you,” Lord Henderson stated, clapping Sir Edward heartily on the back. “And I would say that in general you are something of the moral compass of this group. But it must be unanimous, I am afraid. Are we all in agreement?”
“Decidedly not,” Lord Weston declared. “Apologies and all that, and I hope everything turns out for you, Ashbrooke, but I shall never agree to end a gentleman's wager before its end. It just isn’t the thing. Once a wager is made, it must play to its final conclusion.”
“Blakely?” Lord Henderson queried, turning to Lord Blakely, who looked terribly uncomfortable.
“If I must answer, then I suppose my opinion is also no. You have succeeded Ashbrooke. When you marry Lady Charlotte you may take my money and be glad of it.”
“Very well then,” Ashbrooke said through gritted teeth. “Then I fear, I shall take my leave of you all. I am in no mood for pleasant company at present.”
“Oh, come now, Ashbrooke,” Lord Henderson protested, but Sir John was already striding out the door frustrated with the lot of them.
* * *
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19
Sir John headed back in the direction of his lodgings. He was so distracted he barely noticed when a voice called his name. He blinked stupidly, looking around for the source of the sound. Lounging against the wall outside of his apartment, watching him, was a shabbily-dressed young man with dark hair and swarthy good looks. The man appeared somewhat familiar.
“I beg your pardon? Do I know you?” Sir John asked, taken entirely aback by the presence of the stranger. The man was smaller than John, with a jagged scar that ran from the corner of his eye to his cheek. A war injury, John assumed. He did not ask.
“You do not remember me,” the man said in a thick French accent, shaking his head and pulling a little frown. He pushed away from the wall and strode toward John. “Although if all was as it should be in the world, we would have grown up together as close as brothers. My name is Henri Toussaint, the son of Louis Toussaint. You remember?Oui?”
“I… I suppose I do,” John said slowly in amazement. Louis Toussaint was the name of the man who had married his mother’s sister, so many years ago. Louis had died in France along with his wife and their young son, or so John had assumed. After the nightmarish escape, John had never returned.
“Henri?” he said. He could not quite reconcile the thought that the man before him was the child he had last seen when he was an untried youth, fleeing France with his mother. “Henri!” He said again. “Look at you. You’re alive.”
“I am,” Henri said. “Alive and in England.”
“Come in,” John invited. It was not the best time for John to be sprouting French relatives, but in light of his recent confessions to Lady Charlotte perhaps it was the perfect time. Louis Toussaint was his mother’s brother by marriage, and Henri was his cousin. Regardless to the fact that John could not recognize the man before him from the child he remembered. He had thought the last of his French relations were killed during the Terror; it was most bewildering to come across one on the street.
John was still reeling from his realization of his love for Lady Charlotte, and this unexpected meeting seemed surreal, taking him back to the past. “How is it you have come to be here in London?” John asked.
