The Black Mask by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

thousand, perhaps. Most other fellows hold notes for two or three hundred each.”
    “Each?”
    “About that.”
    All thought of romance or happiness disappeared, crushed under the weight of this news. “What is your total of indebtedness, Rupert? Do you know the full figure?”
    “Of course,” he snapped. “Or at least, I would if I thought about it for a bit.”
    Her head throbbed in time to the horses’ clattering hooves. “Two or three thousand no doubt.”
    “Something on that order, yes. But I won’t go to Father so don’t trouble yourself on that score. Not after the things he said to me last year.”
    She had not been present on that occasion. Not that she’d needed to be. Her father’s voice had a peculiar carrying quality left over from the days when he’d studied for the clergy, and whatever she’d not heard then, Rupert had told her later. The interview had been shattering for both parties. Rupert had threatened to run away, and her father had been so white and sweating that her mother had sent for the apothecary.
    “What will you do?” Rose asked.
    He shrugged pettishly. “Recovering the smaller chits isn’t a difficulty. Most of them are good fellows and won’t mind waiting for quarter-day, though I shall be on deuced short commons after I pay ‘em. They’ve all been in the same condition one time or another, and I’ve let them run on tick ‘til their allowances come due.”
    “Then there’s no difficulty,” Rose said, sighing with relief.
    “Not with my special friends, no. But there’s Crawford. He’s a cash-down man who wasn’t happy to take paper anyway. He’ll cut up stiff if I don’t pay him first.”
    ‘Then pay him. I’ll gladly give you what I have left from my pin money.”
    He looked a trifle hangdog at that, but didn’t refuse her offer. ‘You’re the best sister a fellow could have. I only wish that ruby had been worthy of a queen. Then I would have figured it came to the correct hand.”
    “Save your compliments for those who want them,” Rose said, mimicking their nursery maid, the only female in three counties not charmed by Rupert from his cradle.
    He laughed shortly, but the worry lines didn’t fade from his forehead. They disturbed Rose, for they made her younger brother look old before his time. Old and dissolute, like the men who congregated in the card rooms at parties, their faces still painted in the style of thirty years ago to cover the ravages of debauchery and disease.
    Perhaps it was just the flicker of the widely spaced lamps that gave him that unhealthy look, but Rose didn’t like it. She vowed privately to write to her mother tonight, pleading with her to use her influence to get their father to relent. It was this kicking of heels when he longed to be up and doing that caused Rupert to waste his time and his substance at the gaming hells of London.
    “What’s truly troubling you?” she asked softly.
    “It’s the paper Alardyce holds. Besides tonight’s thousand, I owe him at least another five hundred. It’s a wonder he hasn’t come dunning me yet, though everyone knows he’s rich beyond telling. What good’s my measly fifteen hundred to him? Why can’t he just tear up the papers? It’s nothing to him, and it’s life or death to me.” He paused and seemed to sober, though tears dripped from his cheeks. “Life or death,” he repeated, staring out the window at the chill night.
    Rose gripped his arm tightly through the thinness of his sleeve. She could feel the strength of his forearm muscles, honed by years of neck-or-nothing riding, wasted now on holding cards or squiring fat matrons through dances. “There must be a way. Perhaps if I went to him ...”
    “No,” he said, jerking his arm free. “It’s a debt of honor. I either pay it or blow out my brains. There’s no other path.”
    Chilled, Rose tried to calm him. “Don’t be hasty,” she said. ‘Just... don’t be hasty.”
    Seeing him into his valet’s hands,