Lady Allerton's Wager. Nicola Cornick
you done, Beth?’
Beth wandered over to the big red wing-chair opposite and curled up in it. She was beginning to feel annoyed as well as guilty.
‘It is all very well for Kit to act the moralist, but it was his idea to go to the Cyprians’ Ball in the first place—’
Charlotte gave a little squeak and clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘Beth! You told me you were going to Lady Radley’s rout!’
‘Well, so we did, but then Kit had the idea of the Cyprians’ Ball!’ Beth wriggled uncomfortably under her cousin’s horrified stare. ‘We were masked, so I thought there would be no harm…’ She looked defiant. ‘Very well, Lottie, I admit it! I was curious!’
‘Oh, Beth,’ Charlotte said in a failing voice. ‘I know I cannot accompany you about the town, but I thought you would come to no harm with Kit!’
‘Well, you were wrong!’ Beth said mutinously. It suddenly seemed much easier to blame the whole thing on her cousin. ‘None of this would have happened if Kit had not decided to have some fun!’
‘None of what?’ Charlotte asked, in the tone of someone who was not entirely sure they wanted to know the answer.
Beth yawned. She was very tired and suddenly wanted her bed, but equally she wanted someone to confide in. Her cousin had been as close as a sister this year past, closer than they had ever been in childhood when Charlotte’s five years’ seniority had put Beth quite in awe of her.
Beth, Kit and Charlotte had grown up together, but time and differing fortunes had scattered them. Charlotte had married an officer and followed the drum, Kit had spent several years in India and Beth had been orphaned at seventeen and left penniless. Friends and relatives had murmured of schoolteaching or governessing, but two days after her bereavement, Sir Frank Allerton, a widower whose estate marched with that of the Mostyns, had called to offer her an alternative future. He had not been a friend of the late Lord Mostyn, but Beth knew that her father had esteemed him as an honest man, and so she had accepted.
She had never regretted her decision, but she did regret the lack of children of her marriage. Her home and parish affairs had given her plenty to do, but when Frank had died, leaving her a widow at nineteen, she had been lonely. Though Kit had inherited Mostyn Hall and the title he was seldom at home, and it was Beth who kept an eye on the estate. Then, a year into Beth’s widowhood, Charlotte had lost her husband during the retreat from Almeira and had come back to Mostyn. Fortunately she and Beth had found that they got on extremely well. Charlotte was cool and considered where Beth was impetuous and tempered some of her cousin’s more madcap ideas. Beth’s liveliness prevented her cousin from falling into a decline.
‘So what has happened?’ Charlotte asked again, recalling Beth’s attention to the lamp-lit room. ‘You went to the Ball…’
‘Yes. We only intended to stay for a little, although I think Kit might have lingered if he had been there alone!’ Beth said, with a sudden, mischievous grin. ‘At any rate, it was not as I had imagined, Lottie! There was the most licentious behaviour—’
Charlotte looked exasperated. ‘Well, what did you expect, Beth? You were at the Cyprians’ Ball, not a Court Reception!’
Beth sighed. ‘Yes, I know! Everyone was staring at me—no doubt because they thought me a demirep!’ she added, before her cousin could make the observation herself.
‘Yes, well, it was a reasonable assumption—’ Charlotte looked at her frankly ‘—and you do have a lovely figure, Beth! The gentlemen—’
‘Spare me,’ Beth said hastily, remembering the disturbing heat in Marcus Trevithick’s eyes. ‘I thought you wished to hear what had happened, Lottie?’
‘Yes,’ her cousin said obligingly, ‘what did?’
‘Well, Kit and I had a few dances and, as we were waltzing, the behaviour was becoming more and more uninhibited so I decided it would be wise to come home. Then a gentleman came up to us and asked me to dance.’
Beth looked away. When Marcus Trevithick had first approached her she had been amused and some dangerous imp of mischief had prompted her to play along. She had not known his identity then, but she had been tempted by the atmosphere, tempted by him…
She looked back at Charlotte, who was waiting in silence. ‘We danced a country dance together and he introduced himself as Marcus Trevithick. I had had no notion—I have never met Trevithick before, and although he knew who Kit was he did not know me, though he made strenuous attempts to find out my name…’
‘I’m sure he did,’ Charlotte said drily. ‘Did he proposition you, Beth?’
‘Lottie!’ Beth looked shocked, then smiled a little. ‘Well…’
‘Well, who could blame him?’ Charlotte seemed torn between disapproval and laughter. ‘The poor man, thinking you Haymarket-ware and no doubt getting a set-down for his trouble!’
‘It was not quite like that,’ Beth admitted slowly. ‘Yes, he did…make his interest plain, but I did not discourage him exactly…’ Suddenly, foolishly, it seemed difficult to explain. Or at least difficult to explain without giving some of her feelings away, Beth thought hopelessly. And Charlotte was no fool. She would read between the lines and see all the things that Beth had not admitted.
‘It is just that I thought of Fairhaven,’ she said, in a rush. ‘You know that I had been intending to make Trevithick a financial offer for the island! Suddenly I thought how much more fun it would be to make a wager…’ She risked a glance at her cousin from under her lashes and saw that Charlotte was frowning now, all hint of amusement forgotten.
‘So I suggested that we step apart, and then I challenged him to a game of Hazard, with Fairhaven as the stake—’
‘Beth!’ Charlotte said on a note of entreaty. ‘Tell me this is not true! What did you offer against his stake?’
Beth did not reply. Their eyes, grey and blue, met and held, before Charlotte gave a little groan and covered her face with her hands.
‘Do you wish for your smelling salts, Lottie?’ Beth asked, uncurling from her armchair and hurrying across to the armoire. ‘You will feel much more the thing in a moment!’
‘I feel very well, thank you!’ Charlotte said, although she looked a little pale. ‘I feel better, in fact, than you would have done if Trevithick had claimed his prize! I take it he did not win?’
‘No, he did not!’ Beth felt the heat come into her face. ‘I won! And if I had lost I should not have honoured the bet! It was only a game—’
‘No wonder Kit cut up rough!’ Charlotte said faintly. ‘Stepping aside with a gentleman who already thought you a Cyprian, challenging him to a game of chance, offering yourself as the stake…’ She took the smelling salts and inhaled gratefully. The pale rose colour came back into her face.
‘I have shocked you,’ Beth said remorsefully.
‘Yes, you have.’ Charlotte’s gaze searched Beth’s face before she gave a slight shake of the head. ‘Each time you do something outrageous, Beth, I tell myself that you could not possibly shock me more—and yet you do!’
‘I am sorry!’ Beth said, feeling contrite and secretly vowing not to tell Charlotte any more of the encounter. ‘You know I am desperate to reclaim Fairhaven!’
‘Not so desperate, surely, that you would do anything to take it back!’ Charlotte sat back and patted the seat beside her. ‘This obsession is ridiculous, Beth! The island was lost to our family years ago—leave it in the past, where it belongs!’
Beth did not reply. She had learned long ago that Charlotte was practical by nature and did not share the deep mystical tug of their heritage. Beth could remember standing on the cliffs of Devon as a small child and staring out across the flat, pewter sea to where a faint smudge on the horizon signified the island that they