Page 5 of A Game of Scandal

“If you’re going to eavesdrop on private conversations,” the voice that was doing strange things to my insides murmured, “next time you should take care to hide those pretty slippers.”

My breath caught in my throat, and my gaze darted towards my feet. I hadn’t noticed that the fabric did not quite reach the floor. I swallowed a curse.

“Thank you,” I managed after a moment, relieved that my own voice sounded steady. “I’ll certainly bear that in mind. Next time.”

There was an amused hum of laughter. The fabric rippled once more, and for a moment I thought he was about to pull it back. I braced myself for confrontation. Then came the sound of an unhurried tread making for the door. When I heard the catch snick softly into place, I knew I was alone again.

With a sharp exhale, I slumped back into the chair. I turned over the events of the last few minutes in my mind. The argument, the fear of discovery. I could admit there was a gleeful thrill in eavesdropping, even if it transpired that one of the parties had been aware of my presence. It felt as though the stranger had drawn me into some curious intimacy by acknowledging my existence, by talking to me but not attempting to see my face, by not showing his. Just that voice, curling round me like smoke.

Giving myself a shake, as if to shrug off all the curious feelings it had stirred up, I turned my thoughts instead to a more significant and incredibly tantalizing proposition.

A gambling den where ladies were welcomed.

What was gambling, I mused, but mathematics? Chance, probability, risk and reward. Surely an enterprising mathematician could work the odds, could learn a few ways to turn their pin money into a much more substantial sum. After all, men were always winning fortunes over a hand of cards, and few of them could have my own expertise to bring to the table, as it were.

I leaned back in the chair, all but purring now, as a delicious new possibility presented itself.

Money meant freedom. With my own money, I could pay my enrolment fees, present my university career to Max as a fait accompli. It would show him how serious I was; it would give me control over my own destiny. Could he stop me? I thought about it. I suppose he could, legally. But he wouldn’t. I knew my brother; he would never let things get so far. I simply had to shake him out of his complacency, his wrong-headed notion of what I wanted and needed. I had to demonstrate that I was going to do this with or without his help, that for once I knew better.

With a grin, I swept the curtain aside and strode towards the bookcases. I needed to learn how to play cards. I needed to learn how to play cards perfectly.

And then I needed to pay a visit to the Lucky Penny.

PART TWO

Three months later

CHAPTER THREE

I stood in the shadows, adjusting the bottom of the gold lace mask I wore round my eyes, and watched as groups of rowdy customers made their way inside the Lucky Penny. Every time the door opened, there was a blast of noise, a flash of red velvet and flickering light, the smell of perfume and cigar smoke. It was a tempting glimpse of another world, and I edged closer, drawn to it all.

This was the third time I’d stood outside the gaming hall. It had proved embarrassingly easy to slip out of the house and hail a cab to Whitechapel. For one thing, Max and Izzy often spent evenings sneaking out themselves to perform covert missions for the separate agencies they worked for – the ones they thought I knew nothing about.

Of course, I’d been aware of Max’s government work for years. It hadn’t been a difficult deduction to make – one had only to pay attention to his comings and goings and the way they lined up neatly with certain news items, to take note of the company he kept, to listen occasionally at a closed door.

Izzy’s secrets were, I will admit, much better kept, but we did live together. I saw plenty to arouse my suspicions. At first I thought she worked for the same agency as my brother but I quickly discounted that theory. There was no way that Max was recruiting female agents from the aristocracy; that was decidedly not his style. Still, he seemed to know what she was doing, and occasionally they went out on their nighttime excursions together, stealing into the darkness practically hand in hand. After several months it became thrillingly apparent that the people Izzy worked with were all women, and it didn’t matter if she slipped them in through the service entrance or communicated with them in code: I was skilled at spotting patterns.

Sometimes I felt I should tell the pair of them that they didn’t need to go to the trouble of sneaking around, that they could simply come and go as they pleased, but I took a certain amount of pleasure in allowing them to continue creeping in and out of their own home, because they had, once again, dramatically underestimated me.

The first two times I’d been to the Lucky Penny, it was to gather information. Having never been to a gambling den, I was interested in the etiquette. It had been a wise decision, because I’d learned that, while women did frequent the club, they were always masked. I also noticed that no women seemed to enter alone. This had given me a moment of disquiet, but I realized I would simply have to time my arrival to coincide with one of the large, rambunctious groups that often weaved their way through the wide mahogany doors.

Despite my best efforts, my casual enquiries into the place and its owner within my own social circles had turned up very little. Any young woman my own age knew nothing about it, sheltered as we were from such scandalous adventures. (Unfortunately.) And I could hardly risk alerting Izzy and Max to my plan by betraying my interest. All I’d learned was from my own late-night observations, and I would have to hope that would be enough.

While the club was on Goulston Street, in a rather dingy part of Whitechapel, the building looked better cared for than most. The sign hanging discreetly over the door had no words on it: only the image of a gold coin, glinting in the dim light of a single, flickering streetlamp. The clientele was surprisingly upmarket for such a location. It must be part of the thrill that drew members of the upper classes – a trip to this part of town. If it felt as though they were flirting with danger, they were reassured, I supposed, by the presence of two burly men who flanked the door, their meaty fists hanging listlessly at their sides until the first sign of trouble.

Keeping out of view of them had been the greatest challenge presented to me thus far, but that was about to change. I had no time to waste. It was a mere handful of weeks until the social season kicked off in earnest, and then Mother would be here, down from the estate in the country where she usually lived, and my life would be an unending cycle of teas and dinner parties and balls. In other words: a living, breathing nightmare.

I’d studied card play with a single-minded enthusiasm for just over three months, and the mathematics were fascinating. As far back as the 1650s, Pascal and Huygens had produced exciting theories on the structure of games of chance. It was an area ripe for investigation, and this side project of mine had proven to be a rich intellectual pursuit. Which was going to make tonight all the more satisfying. I was confident that I could turn the slim purse of coins in my reticule into, if not quite a fortune, then certainly a sizeable sum.

As a large party caterwauled its way down the street, I took a deep breath and slipped through the dingy light, to follow behind them. It was now or never.

Three women accompanied six or seven gentlemen, and they were clearly slumming it in Whitechapel, and giddy on the adventure of it.

“I do hope Joe has ordered in more of that brandy,” one of the gentlemen chortled from over my left shoulder, his words slightly slurred. “He’s got a fine nose for drink.”

“Ash has got a fine skill for smuggling, you mean,” one of the women giggled, and several of the men guffawed at that. I tried to join in, though to my ears my laughter sounded wooden. Now that the moment was here I found I was much more aware of all the different ways things could go wrong.

No one had seemed to notice me joining the party, and I sent up a silent prayer that it would stay that way. We reached the two giants at the door, and I dared to peep up at one of them. He was a huge, hulking man with a head that looked like it had been carved – barely – from a lump of rock. A rock with the general impression of a face.