Fortune's Lady by Evelyn Richardson Page A

wastes his time on a game where he does not stand to win at least ten thousand a sitting. The question is, what is he doing playing against you and your grandmother?”
    “I told you, his mother asked him to take the place of her partner. And Grandmama and I are quite good, you know.”
    “Yes, I know you are, but Harwood is the best! He is a wizard with cards and no one has beaten him yet.”
    “Except me.”
    “You what?”
    “I beat him. Well, Grandmama and I did. It was a very near thing, and he is certainly a very fine card player, but we beat him all the same.”
    Oblivious to the wrinkles he was making in his coat and his waistcoat, Reginald leaned forward eagerly, his boyish face flushed with enthusiasm. “I say, Allie, what was it like? It is common knowledge that no matter how much money you have to lose, he will only play against the best of the best; he says there’s no point in it otherwise. I am longing to try my hand against him.”
    “No, Reggie.”
    “But, Allie, you know I have played ...”
    “Yes, but you have not established a reputation anywhere near to what you claim the Marquess of Harwood’s to be.”
    “How can you say that? I have been playing since I was in short coats. I am a regular at Brooks’s. I ...”
    “Because I have played against you, Reggie.”
    “Oh.”
    “And beaten your consistently.” Althea could not help smiling at her cousin’s crestfallen expression.
    “Reggie, believe me, he is very, very good. You may have experience, but this man is brilliant, at cards anyway. It is quite obvious that he has a prodigious memory, a head for figures, and a talent for strategy. In fact, I have never seen better. However, they are just not equal to Grandmama’s and mine. And,” she added reluctantly, “his mother, though competent, was not an equal partner the way Grandmama and I are. If she had been, what a game it would have been.” A reminiscent smile curved Althea’s lips.
    “All the more reason I should like to play against him.”
    “I warn you, Reggie, you will find yourself under the hatches in no time, and you cannot afford that. Even you must acknowledge that your talent for choosing a waistcoat or tying a cravat is far superior to your skill at cards.”
    “You sound just like Augustus. He too considers me a useless fribble.”
    His cousin’s eyes softened. “No, Reggie. You are not a useless fribble. You have exquisite taste, which is no small accomplishment in itself, and you have winning manners. It just happens to be that your pompous brother cannot appreciate such things—not that he can appreciate anything beyond his hunters and that precious pile of stones he continues to call home, though any normal person would have moved out of that drafty abbey years ago. And it is not, as he claims, that your attics are to let because you are very clever about some things—people, for example. But you do not have the memory for figures or a head for mathematics. The marquess does, and so do I. Heaven knows it is not a particularly useful characteristic, and Mama is forever telling me that it is most unladylike, but there it is. And not having that is certainly no reflection on you.”
    “Well you must have whatever it is or Gareth de Vere would not waste his time playing cards with you at a ball.
    They also say he refuses to play with women,” Reginald concluded gloomily.
    “Why ever not, if he is such a gambler?”
    “Well, he is not just a gambler, at least not anymore. Now he only plays for the challenge of it, and he generally does not find competition stiff enough to be a challenge outside of Brooks’s card room.”
    “Why not anymore ”? What happened?”
    Reginald glanced suspiciously at his cousin. It was unlike her to be so curious about a person. If the Marquess of Harwood had been a horse, her interest would have been understandable, for she infinitely preferred animals to people any day. But this particular person seemed to have caught her