Jane Feather.

Almost.

Almost A Bride.

On a bitterly cold January morning, Meg stood on the bottom step of the house on Cavendish Square, waving a cheerful farewell to a flamboyantly moustached cavalry officer who swept his plumed hat in an elaborate bow. "Farewell, dear lady. My heart will yearn until we meet again."

"Oh, tush," Meg retorted. "You say that to every woman under the age of sixty, Lord Thomas.""You cut me to the quick," he declared, but with a grin to match her own. Shaking her head Meg turned to walk up the steps and collided with the duke of St. Jules, who, in most unaccustomed haste, was running hatless from the open front door. "Meg, where have you been?" he demanded, even as he moved her out of his way. "In the park," Meg said, looking at him in astonishment. "Arabella . . . the doctor . . ." he said, waving a hand in inarticulate explanation as he prepared to resume his run down the steps.

"Jack, wait." She seized his arm. "It's the baby?" It was really a rhetorical question. "Why are you going for the doctor, Jack? Send a footman."He shook his head, saying distractedly, "Arabella won't have me in the room. Said she can't stand the sight of me. I have to get the doctor. I don't know what else to do. I can't stay in the house."

Meg made no further attempt to stop him. She hurried into the house, where the usually imperturbable Tidmouth was pacing the hall. "Oh, there you are, Miss Barratt. Her grace-""Yes, the duke told me," Meg said, going swiftly to the stairs. She ran up them and hastened towards Arabella's apartments. Boris and Oscar were pacing the corridor outside the door to the d.u.c.h.ess's boudoir and leaped up at Meg, barking excitedly. "Shh," she said. "It's all right. There's nothing to worry about." She pushed them down. "Stay here."She opened the boudoir door and then closed it firmly on their resentful soulful gaze.

The door to the bedchamber stood open. Arabella was pacing the floor, white-faced and grim. Lady

Barratt and Becky were occupied with linens, and kettles of water on trivets over the blazing fire. "Oh, Meg, thank G.o.d you're back," Arabella greeted her friend without preamble. "This just started so suddenly."

"I gathered as much." Meg cast off her cloak and hat. "I b.u.mped into your poor husband on the way to fetch the physician. He was utterly distraught.""Oh, Jack," Arabella said with a disgusted wave. "He's no good at all in a crisis. He just goes to pieces."

Meg swallowed a chuckle at this description of the cool, composed, utterly debonair duke of St. Jules. "I did explain to his grace that women in labor can be somewhat grumpy," Lady Barratt said. "They sometimes say things they don't mean."

"Oh, I meant it," Arabella stated, then gasped and held out her hand blindly towards Meg, who took it and grimaced as Arabella squeezed it until tears sprang in her friend's eyes. "I think you should go to bed, now, Bella dear," Lady Barratt said calmly. "Things seem to be moving along rather quickly."

"I thought first babies were supposed to take forever," Arabella said, but she climbed into bed.

"Don't complain," Meg said practically. "It doesn't look much fun to me, so the shorter the better, I would have thought."Arabella grinned weakly. "Now, that's the kind of comment I wish my husband would make. Instead of wringing his hands and moaning."

"Arabella, he did no such thing," Lady Barratt expostulated. "He was very calm until you started shouting at him."Becky bustled over with a cool lavender-soaked cloth and laid it on Arabella's forehead as another pain brought an involuntary groan to the laboring woman's lips. Meg offered her hand again.

"I told Jack I don't need a doctor," Arabella said when she could breathe again. "Lady Barratt and Becky can manage perfectly well.""I think it's best, my dear," Lady Barratt said.

"The physician's here now anyway." Meg spoke from the window, where she was looking down on the street. "Jack practically pushed the poor man out of the hackney."

The doctor entered the room ahead of Jack, who hovered in the doorway. "If you still can't stand the sight of me, my love, I'll go away again."

But Arabella was lost now, no longer really aware of anyone in the room. Jack could neither bear to remain nor bear to leave as morning gave way to afternoon. He was gripped by a dreadful fear. Charlotte's death was a part of him and always would be. The sorrow rested deep in his soul, but he was at peace with it. Arabella had brought him that peace. And now he could lose her too.

And with such a loss he might as well not live himself.

He stood helplessly at the head of the bed, gazing down at her white, contorted face. He wiped her brow with the cloths Becky gave him. He tried to take comfort from the doctor's calmness, from Lady Barratt's matter-of-fact attentions to Arabella, from Becky's apparent lack of concern, as the long afternoon wore on. He wished he could be like Meg, who kept up a light stream of joking chatter that just once in a while Arabella responded to with a glimmer of a smile.

The sudden bustle at the end of the bed alarmed him. Arabella's abrupt cry terrified him. And then the thin wail of an infant astounded him. He stared blankly at the blood-streaked sc.r.a.p in Lady Barratt's hands.

"A son," she said. "You have a son, your grace . . . Bella, love, he's beautiful." She laid the baby on his mother's breast.

Arabella smiled wearily and kissed the tiny head. She looked up at Jack. Tears stood out in his gray eyes. "See what a miracle we have wrought, my love."

"I'm not sure how much I had to do with it," he said with a watery smile. He kissed her, then kissed his son. "It makes me feel very humble."

"Charles," she said. "We shall call him Charles."

"Yes," he agreed, tentatively taking the tiny body into his hands.

"You'd best give him to me now, your grace." Lady Barratt bustled across the room. "We don't want him to catch cold."

Jack hastily yielded up his son into the blanket that her ladyship held to receive him.

"Now, you go away for about an hour and when you come back Arabella and the baby will be ready for you," Lady Barratt instructed. She was generally in awe of the duke but her role as midwife had given her sufficient authority to think nothing of ordering him around.

"If you want to do something useful," Meg said helpfully, seeing his hesitation, "you could take the dogs for a walk. They're moping around in the corridor."

"Yes, I noticed," he said rather dryly.

"Do go, love," Arabella encouraged, her voice rather faint. "Give them a good run. They've been cooped up all day. They refused to go with anyone else, but you know they'll go with you."

Jack regarded the circle of female faces rather quizzically. Then he yielded. "Oh, very well. I'll be back in an hour." He bent and kissed Arabella's damp forehead, brushing a strand of lank hair aside. "No more than an hour, mind."

She smiled. "Hurry back."

He left, whistling for the dogs, who chased after him down the stairs. Tidmouth was still pacing in the hall. "Your grace . . . ?"

"A son, Tidmouth," Jack said, trying to control his beam and failing utterly. "A fine boy. And her grace is well."

"Congratulations, your grace." A smile cracked Tidmouth's ordinarily austere expression. "May I offer the congratulations of the household?"

"You may," Jack said, still grinning. "And broach a keg of the October ale for the kitchen to celebrate."

"Yes, your grace. With pleasure, your grace." Tidmouth bowed and went off on his errand with something of a spring in his usually stately gait.

Jack returned to the house an hour later and found it humming with excitement. Tidmouth informed him that the doctor had left some fifteen minutes earlier. Jack took the stairs two at a time, the dogs racing ahead of him, and burst into Arabella's bedchamber, bringing the cold freshness of the outdoors with him into the overly heated room.

Boris and Oscar leaped up at the bed and Meg swiftly seized their collars. "No, not now," she said. "I'll take them to the kitchen."

Jack had eyes only for his wife. She was propped on snow-white pillows, her face still very pale, but serene. She held the baby to her breast. "He has Charlotte's nose," she said.

Jack knelt beside the bed and Lady Barratt trod softly to the door, shooing Becky in front of her. "Don't you think?" Arabella said, putting a fingertip on the feature in question. "It's a tiny miniature of Charlotte's."

Jack smiled. He couldn't see it himself but he was more than willing to believe it. "Charles," he murmured, laying his lips on the baby's cheek. He looked at his wife. "I love you. There are no words for how much I love you. I don't know how a man can be so happy."

She touched his cheek. "Or a woman," she said. Charles, Marquis of Haversham, yawned. "He's not impressed," Jack said with a soft laugh. He lay down beside his wife and son, slipping an arm behind Arabella as she slid into an exhausted sleep. For the first time in his life, Jack thought, he understood contentment.

Chapter 1.

The slither of the cards across the baize table, the c.h.i.n.k of rouleaux as the players placed their bets, the soft murmur of the groom porters p.r.o.nouncing the odds were the only sounds in the inner chamber of Brooke's gaming club. Six men sat around the faro table, five playing against the banker. They wore leather bands to protect the laced ruffles of their shirts and leather eyeshades to shield their eyes from the brilliance of the chandeliers, whose many candles cast a dazzling glare upon the baize table. The banker's face was expressionless as he dealt the cards, watched the bets being laid, paid out, or collected at the completion of each turn. To the spectators gathered around the chamber it seemed as if winning or losing was a matter of complete indifference to Jack Fortescu, Duke of St. Jules.

But there were those who knew that it was far from the case. Something other than the usual game of chance was being played out in the elegant room, where despite the late hour the day's summer heat remained trapped, fusty with the smell of sweat mingled with stale perfume and spilled wine. The concentration at the table was focused upon a near-palpable current between the banker and one gamester, and gradually the other players dropped from the game, their supply of rouleaux diminished, their hunger for the gamble for the moment overtaken by this other battle that was being fought.

Only Frederick Lacey, Earl of Dunston, continued to place his bets on the lay out of the cards, with an almost febrile intensity. When he lost he merely thrust his rouleaux across the table to the banker and bet again. The duke, impa.s.sive as always, turned up the cards in steady rotation, laying winners to his right hand, losers to his left. Once his cold gray eyes flickered up and across the table to his opponent in a swift a.s.sessing scrutiny, then his gaze returned to the table. Neither man spoke a word.

"By G.o.d, Jack has the devil in him tonight," Charles James Fox murmured from the doorway, where he stood watching the play. Like several of the others in the room he wore the exaggerated costume of the macaroni, an impossibly tight waistcoat in bright crimson and gold stripes and a beribboned straw hat over hair that was powdered a crazy shade of blue.

"And the devil's own luck it would seem, Charles," his companion replied in the same undertone. His own costume, rich in lace, ruffles, and gold velvet though it was, was almost somber in contrast with the other's. "The luck's been running with him for months."

"And always against Lacey," Fox mused, taking a deep draught of burgundy from the gla.s.s he held. "I saw Jack win ten thousand guineas from the man at quinze last night."

"And twenty from him at hazard on Monday. It seems Jack's playing a deep game. He's not playing for the pleasure of it, there's some d.a.m.nable purpose behind it," George Cavenaugh said. "If asked, I would say he's set to ruin Lacey. But why?"

Fox made no immediate response as he remembered the old scandal. No one knew the real truth of that story and it had happened so long ago now, it could hardly be relevant. He shook his head. "Ever since Jack got back from Paris he's been different." He shrugged slightly. "I can't put my finger on it. He's his usual careless, charming self, but there's something, a hardness underneath that wasn't there before."

"'Tis hardly surprising. Anyone escaping that h.e.l.lhole of murderous anarchy is going to be touched in some way," George said somberly. "They say he got out by the skin of his teeth, but he won't say a word about it. He just laughs that d.a.m.nable laugh of his and changes the subject." He held out his gla.s.s to a pa.s.sing waiter, who refilled it.

The two men fell silent, watching the play. Frederick Lacey had but one rouleau in front of him now. His hand hovered over it for a second, his first hesitation of the evening. St. Jules caressed the stem of his winegla.s.s between two long white fingers of an immaculately manicured hand. A large sapphire ring glowed blue fire in the candlelight. He waited.

With a short intake of breath Lacey placed his rouleau on the ace. The duke turned over the next card in the box to reveal the first, and thus the losing, card. It was the ace. Lacey's countenance was now several shades whiter beneath the raddled complexion of the heavy drinker. Without expression the duke placed the ace on the discard pile and dealt the next card from the remainder of the pack. He turned it over and the ten of spades lay faceup, seeming to mock the ashen earl. The duke slid the rouleau into the pile that glinted at his elbow. He surveyed the earl in silence. Now only three cards remained to be dealt.

Frederick Lacey fought the constriction in his chest. In the last month he had lost his entire fortune to this one man, who somehow couldn't make a bad play. The duke of St. Jules had always played deep. He had lost one fortune at the tables in his green youth, disappeared abroad to recoup, and returned several years later in possession of a second and even larger fortune. This one he had not lost, simply increased with steady and skillful play. He was a gambler by nature and yet he never again made the mistakes of his youth. Rarely if ever did he allow himself to rise from the tables a loser at the end of an evening.

Lacey stared at the two piles of discarded cards beside the dealer and at the three remaining cards in the dealer's box. He knew what those three cards were, as did everyone who had been watching and recording the discards. If he called the turn and bet on the order in which those three cards would be dealt, he had a one in five chance of being right. But if he was right, the dealer would have to pay out four to one. One last ma.s.sive stake and he would recoup everything. He looked up and met the gray gaze of the man he loathed with a pa.s.sion for which there were no words. He knew what St. Jules intended and he alone in this crowded, stuffy chamber knew why. But one stroke of luck and he would elude him, and not just that, he would turn the tables. If St. Jules accepted the stake and lost, he would be forced to pay out four to one, and he would be facing his own ruin.

St. Jules would accept the stake. Lacey knew that.

He slowly removed his rings and the diamond pin that nestled in the foaming lace at his throat. Deliberately he placed them in the center of the table. As deliberately, he said, "I call the turn."

"And that is your stake?" The duke's tone was faintly incredulous. In terms of what had been won and lost this evening, the wager was pathetic.

A dull flush infused the earl's countenance. "No, merely an earnest. I stake everything, my lord duke. Lacey Court, the house on Albermarle Street, and all their contents."

There was a swift indrawing of breath around the room and the spectators exchanged glances.

"All the contents?" the duke inquired with soft emphasis. "Animate and inanimate?"

"All" was the firm rejoinder.

Jack Fortescu moved his own stacks of rouleau towards the center of the table. "I doubt this sum alone would cover my loss, my lord," he said in soft consideration. He looked around the room. "How do we value the earl's wager, gentlemen? If I'm to cover it four to one, I would know precisely what I'm risking."

"Let us say two hundred thousand pounds in all," suggested Charles Fox. An addicted gambler himself, he had lost every penny of his own and had borrowed from his friends with such reckless abandon and no possibility of repayment that he had ruined many of them in turn. It seemed appropriate that such a man should come up with such a sum. "That would put Jack's liability at eight hundred thousand."

The room fell completely silent, the enormity of the sum hanging in the air. Even for men for whom gaming was their life's obsession, who won and lost fortunes in a night, it was a figure hard to absorb, with the exception of Fox, whose eyes were glinting with the thrill of the wager. All eyes rested on St. Jules, who leaned back in his chair, still idly caressing the stem of his winegla.s.s, a tiny smile playing over his lips. But there was no smile in the eyes that rested on his opponent's face.

"Do you accept the figure, Lacey?" His voice was very quiet.

"Can you cover it?" the earl demanded, irritatingly aware of a tremor in his own voice.

"Do you doubt it?" It was said with a cold confidence that left no room for doubt.

"I accept it." The earl snapped his fingers at a groom porter, who immediately produced parchment, a quill, and an inkstand. The scratching of the pen as the earl wrote out the terms of the wager was the only sound in the room. He took the sand shaker and dried the ink, then leaned forward to retrieve his signet ring. The groom porter dropped wax on the parchment and the earl affixed his signature, pressing the ring into the wax, then wordlessly pushed the doc.u.ment across to the duke for his own signature.

The duke glanced around the room and his eye fell on George Cavenaugh. "George, will you hold the stake?"

George nodded and moved to the table. He took the doc.u.ment, read through it, and p.r.o.nounced it in order. His eyes were questioning as they rested for a moment on his friend's inscrutable countenance, then he folded the doc.u.ment and slid it into an inner pocket of his coat.

The duke nodded, took a sip of his wine, and said formally, "Be pleased to call the turn, my lord."

Lacey licked his lips, a quick involuntary flick of his tongue. He leaned forward, fixing his eyes on the remaining cards in the box as if he could somehow read through them, then said slowly, "The ace of hearts . . . ten of diamonds . . . five of spades."

All breath was suspended and the sudden splutter of a guttering candle on a sideboard was a thunderclap in the deathly silence. St. Jules took out the first card. He turned it slowly. It was the ace of hearts.

The silence, if possible, deepened. The earl leaned forward a little, his gaze riveted to the dealer's long white hand as it moved for the next card. The duke's face was expressionless. He turned over the five of spades.

The earl flung himself back in his chair, his eyes closed, his face haggard, almost as white as his elaborately curled and powdered hair. He didn't watch as the last card was revealed. It was irrelevant now. The five of spades had lost him the wager. At last he opened his eyes and looked across the table at his enemy.

St. Jules met his gaze and there was neither satisfaction nor triumph in the cool gray eyes. "So, mon ami, the chickens finally come home to roost," he said softly.

The earl pushed back his chair with an abrupt sc.r.a.pe on the polished oak floor. The crowd parted for him in the same silence as he pushed his way through towards a pair of French doors that stood open to combat the hot summer air. He stepped onto a small balcony overlooking the street of St. James's below and the thick curtains swung to behind him.

Charles Fox, with a sudden exclamation, took a step to follow him, but the sharp report of a pistol sounded before he could reach the door. He flung aside the curtains and knelt beside the still figure of the earl of Dunston. There was no need to feel for a pulse. The top of Frederick Lacey's head was missing, blood pooling beneath him and dripping through the balcony railing to the street below.

Men crowded to the door, squeezed onto the balcony, bent over the body. Alone in the room, the duke of St. Jules slowly gathered up the cards, shuffled them, and returned them to the dealer's box.

"What the devil game do you play, Jack?" George Cavanaugh spoke harshly as he came back into the room.

"The game is now played, George," Jack said with a shrug. He took up his gla.s.s and drank. "Lacey was a coward and he died a coward's death."

"What else could he do, man?" George demanded. "You ruined him."

"He made the decisions, my dear, not I," his friend said with a hint of a drawl. "He chose his own risks."

He stood up, and a groom porter hastened to help him out of the frieze greatcoat that const.i.tuted the uniform of the serious gamester. He put on his own crimson velvet coat over the sapphire waistcoat, slid the leather bands off his wrists, and shook down his ruffles. He removed the leather guard that had shielded his eyes. His hair, black as night, was unpowdered, tied back in a queue on his nape with a sapphire velvet ribbon. A startling streak of white ran from a p.r.o.nounced widow's peak springing off his broad forehead. As George knew, St. Jules had had that streak since their schooldays and it had not made the brutal rough and tumble of Westminster School any easier for the boy. But his peers had soon learned that Jack Fortescu was not an easy mark. He fought without scruple or inhibition, never allowed a challenge to go unanswered, and in general emerged from the fray bloodied but victorious.

And somewhere, somehow, Frederick Lacey, Earl of Dunston, had earned himself a lethal combat with Jack Fortescu, Duke of St. Jules.

"Why was it necessary, Jack?" he asked directly.