“Could I stop you?”
“No, and why would you want to, when I make such a staunch and clever ally?”
“Idiot.”Ash turned to pass through the French doors and take his place at the tables, but Sycamore caught him by the arm and dragged him into a ferocious embrace. Ash’s first impulse was to simply endure the moment, another fleeting display of Sycamore’s drama, but Della’s words, about courage and love, stayed that reaction.
Ash wrapped his brother in a good, tight hug and did not step back until Cam let him go.
“You will sink Chastain’s prospects past any hope of redemption, Ash, one hand of cards at a time,” Sycamore said, “and I will discreetly buy up his markers from the other guests. By the time you are through with William Chastain, not a hostess in England will permit him into her drawing room for at least five years.”
“Let’s go for ten,” Ash said, straightening Sycamore’s cravat. “And toss in Paris for good measure.”
Chapter Seventeen
Della did not want to watch the tournament, but she also refused to leave Ash alone on the battlefield. She compromised by choosing a place in the gallery where she could see Ash, while Chastain, sitting across from Ash, could not see her.
Sycamore had appointed himself her bodyguard, and Della was glad for his company.
“You are for once not chattering,” she said as the cards session moved into the second hour. “Your silence is nearly unnerving.” She and Sycamore were playing a wager-less game of cribbage, though her mind was not at all on her cards.
“I’m keeping an eye on matters across the room,” Sycamore said, “and Ash told me all about your hysterical nerves. Does your mouth go dry? I always carry a flask in part because the damned panics leave me parched.”
If Sycamore had dealt Della the perfect hand she could not have been more astonished.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Ash is being cautious,” Sycamore said, shuffling deftly. “He’s losing modestly for most hands, but winning enough to make a small net gain even in the face of Chastain’s ineptitude.” Sycamore dealt them each six cards. “And yes, Ash told me that you and I have more in common than a protective attitude toward my brother. My mouth goes dry when I am taken captive by worry. I get the shakes, I wheeze. I fret that I will wet myself, but so far, that hasn’t happened.”
Sycamore met her gaze across the table, his expression perfectly bland, though his gaze was watchful.
Oh, Sycamore. Della picked up her cards and saw only pips swimming in her gaze. “I bleat,” she said. “I sound exactly like a sheep when I try to breathe. A gurgling wheeze when I draw in a breath. Sometimes, I faint.”
“I haven’t fainted yet,” Sycamore said, tossing two cards face down on the table. “One more thing to worry about. I keep hoping I’ll outgrow it, but no luck. Can you see Lady Tavistock?”
“She and Mrs. Tremont are by the windows. They are playing Portly and Mrs. Chastain. The game looks quite friendly.”
Della discarded the first two cards her fingers grasped. “Did you tell Ash about your panics?”
Sycamore cut the deck, and Della turned over the new top card. “Had to. He thinks his damned doldrums make him some sort of freak. I wasn’t out of the nursery when I… Well, I thought he had a right to know. I trust Ash.”
Three words, and yet, Sycamore had probably never uttered them about any other family member.
“I trust him too, Sycamore, and I trust you. The marchioness is really quite striking, isn’t she?”
Sycamore’s smile was purely sweet, none of his usual naughtiness. “She likes me. I don’t think she liked her husband very much, but she likes me.”
“I like you too,” Della said, “though admitting as much will doubtless swell your head to the proportions of a small asteroid.”
“Everybody likes me,” Sycamore said. “The predictability of my appeal approaches tiresome monotony. This evening, Golding will keep you company.”
Della was trying to make sense of her cards—how could Ash concentrate with all the tumult of the day?—when Sycamore’s words sorted themselves in her mind.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Golding. Chastain lied to him, told him Tavistock was—my signature delicacy fails me—yearning for a left-handed tryst with a man of experience. Golding is mortified that he was so easily and dangerously manipulated. Golding, among others, will ensure that you are never alone for Chastain to accost.”
Della had formed no particular opinion about Mrs. Tremont’s brother, but avoiding more threats from Chastain was imperative.
“Ash had you arrange this?”
“He did. Mrs. Tremont, Lady Fairchild, Miss Catherine, the marchioness, myself… a few others, and the staff too are charged with keeping you company when Ash cannot. Chastain does not know how to play fair, and when Ash wrecks him, Chastain will try to threaten you.”
“Let him try. I am not the cowering ninnyhammer he forced into a sham elopement.”
“I dearly wish the marchioness would force me into an elopement. She could grab me by my darling little ear and drag me anywhere. I would go willingly to my fate.”
Sycamore kept up that outrageous banter for the next hour, while Della lost one game after another. She was too preoccupied watching Ash and Chastain, trying to read the course of their play from what she could observe.
Ash smiled occasionally, Chastain drank at a great rate, and Della told herself not to panic. The week would be long and expensive, but the battle was worth winning, and she and Ash—and now Sycamore and apparently half the other guests—were determined to win it.
“You’re toying with Chastain,” Sycamore said, appropriating a purple and yellow viola blossom from the bouquet on the library’s sideboard and tucking it into his lapel. “Playing out the line. He won’t know what hits him when you haul him flopping and gasping onto the riverbank tonight.”
Ash had spent his week doing exactly as Sycamore said. Winning some, losing a little more. Winning more than that, losing yet still more. The oscillations in his fortunes—and Chastain’s—were increasing so gradually, that Chastain did not appear to have noticed that play had become quite deep.
Not deep enough.
The tournament was now down to a single table. Ash and Chastain would play the marchioness and Mrs. Tremont. Both women had lost to Ash and Chastain earlier in the week, and Ash intended to see them, among many others, made whole and then some.
“You look very jubilant for a man who’s about to spring a trap,” Sycamore observed taking a nip from his flask, then holding it out to Ash.
Ash shook his head. “The trap isn’t sprung yet. Chastain’s usual recklessness has been held in check by the notion that he could win a fortune if our luck holds. He’s not accustomed to winning, and ineptitude could make him more unpredictable than arrogance usually does.” Ash had spent his week managing the cards, calculating odds in his head, keeping track of what had been played and what had not, and also managing Chastain.
With humor, with liquor, with strategic asides, and well-timed breaks. The whole business was tedious as hell, but then, Ash had become deucedly skilled at managing tedium. Melancholia had done that for him, given him the discipline to carry on despite a lack of enthusiasm, to maintain a quiet vigil a short mental distance from his own mind.