Chapter Twenty-one

Sylvester saw Neil Gerard as soon as he entered White's. The captain was playing faro and seemingly absorbed in his cards. Excitement prickled along Sylvester's spine. The excitement of a huntsman scenting his quarry.

He stood for a minute in the doorway, watching the scene, then casually sauntered into the room. A group seated around a port decanter on a table fell silent as he passed; then the conversation picked up again. Heads were turned. He knew his face to be bloodless, his eyes to be veiled, all emotion wiped clean from his countenance as he strolled across to the faro table.

Neil Gerard felt Sylvester's arrival, and his fingers trembled slightly as he took up his cards. There was an almost imperceptible hush in the room, a sense of suspended animation as the Earl of Stoneridge reached Neil Gerard's table and paused beside his chair.

Neil looked up from his cards and nodded pleasantly. "Stoneridge, how d'ye do." A collective breath was released around the faro table, and now people were looking openly at the scene. Gerard held out his hand. Sylvester took it in a firm clasp. The hand of a man who was trying to kill him.

"Well, I thank you, Gerard." He laid the faintest emphasis on the word "well," and his eyes were hooded, hiding the raging speculation. For some reason Neil was not going to cut him again.

Gerard indicated his cards. "Care to take a hand?"

"Delighted, if there's no objection." Pointedly, the earl glanced around the table at Gerard's fellow players. The Duke of Carterton held the bank. It was almost amusing to see how faces were rearranged to adapt to the idea of Sylvester Gilbraith back in Society's fold.

"Take a chair, Stoneridge," the duke boomed, and a little rustle of relaxation ran around the table. Lord Belton moved his chair sideways, gesturing to the space beside him. "Porter, bring another chair for Lord Stoneridge."

A dainty gilt chair appeared instantly, and Sylvester sat down, nodding to his neighbor. "I trust all's well, Belton. It's been a while."

"Yes… yes, so it has," his lordship mumbled.

"Lady Belton quite well?"

"Oh, yes, in the pink… in the pink," his lordship declared, taking up his claret glass. "Try a glass of this, Stoneridge. An excellent wine." He gestured to the porter again, and a glass of claret appeared at the earl's elbow.

He smiled his thanks and picked up the cards the duke dealt him. So Neil was prepared to behave as if the court-martial had never happened. Such an attitude from the man who'd started the scandal in the first place would oblige others to follow suit and would put a stop to any further speculation. But why would he reverse himself in this way?

A man who could forget ties that went back more than twenty years was capable of anything, Stoneridge thought with a surge of bitterness. Ties and obligations. Neil Gerard owed him for countless acts of friendship during those years, and he chose to repay them by destroying his reputation and threatening his life.

They played for half an hour; then Gerard cast in his cards and rose from the table. "Care to join me in a glass, Sylvester?"

"By all means." Sylvester excused himself from his fellow players and followed Gerard to a secluded table in the window embrasure. His expression was bland, his eyes as cool as ever, but he was as much on his guard as he would be if he were manning a picket at the front line on the eve of battle.

"Congratulations on your marriage, Stoneridge." Neil filled two glasses from the decanter on the table. "Is Lady Stoneridge also in town?"

Whom did he think he'd seen in the Fisherman's Rest? Sylvester wondered as he said, "Yes, indeed, she is. Her mother and sisters are here, also."

"Not all under your roof, I trust," Neil said with a laugh. "A man can't call his soul his own with a monstrous regiment of women at his table."

Sylvester smiled faintly at this sally. "Lady Belmont has her own establishment on Brook Street."

"I shall do myself the honor of calling upon Lady Stoneridge,"

Neil said. "I assume she'll be attending the Subscription Ball at Almack's this evening."

"Yes, with her mother and sisters." Sylvester sipped claret, leaning back in his chair, legs crossed, his eyes resting placidly on his companion across the table.

"I thought I'd drop in myself," Neil said. "Show m' face, you know. I've only just come to town."

"I thought I hadn't seen you," Sylvester said deliberately. Did he imagine the twitch of Neil's eyelid? But his companion was continuing in the same hearty tone.

"You must dine with me, Sylvester. It's been a long time since we dined together."

"At least three years," Sylvester agreed without expression.

"Good… good. Shall we say Thursday?" Neil's flat brown eyes shifted, although his mouth smiled.

"I should be honored."

"Good. Half Moon Street at eight, shall we say? And a few hands of whist after. You were always a formidable opponent at the whist table."

"You exaggerate," Sylvester said, with the same placid smile.

"You're not thinking of dropping in at the Assembly Rooms yourself tonight?"

"I hadn't been," Sylvester responded.

"It's a trifle insipid, of course," Neil agreed. "But one must be seen, mustn't one?" He laughed, but his eyes shifted again. "I don't suppose you'd care to accompany me?"

If he entered Almack's at the height of a Subscription Ball in the company of Neil Gerard, his rehabilitation would be complete. Just what in the devil's name was the man up to? But if he didn't play along, he'd never discover.

"Why not?" he said casually. "I'll have to go home and change." He gestured to Neil's satin knee britches, striped stockings, and white waistcoat.

"Then I'll meet you here later and we can stroll across together."

Sylvester nodded his agreement and took his leave after another five minutes of desultory chat. As he left the salon, a few hands were raised in greeting. He responded with a bow, but his cool smile couldn't disguise the ironical glitter in his eye. Two old friends had publicly made up their quarrel; how very satisfying for the audience.

But the game was now in the open, and he had an enemy he could see. And an enemy he knew he could defeat His heart lifted on a surge of jubilation. He knew Neil Gerard's weaknesses as if they were his own. He'd known them from childhood. And within those weaknesses lay the answer to Vimiera.

The two of them arrived at Almack's Assembly Rooms just five minutes before the doors were closed at eleven o'clock.

They strolled up the stairs and entered the ballroom. Lady Sefton was the first of the patronesses to see them and came gliding over. "Lord Stoneridge, your wife has made quite an impression on us all," she declared, raising her lorgnette and subjected him to a piercing scrutiny. "Quite an unusual young woman, we find. Captain Gerard. You've just come to town."

Both men bowed since neither of her Ladyship's statements required a response.

Sylvester's eyes searched for his wife. She was waltzing with a gentleman of middle height, his appearance distinguished by his silver eyebrows and the matching silver flashes at his temples. There was an indefinable aura of authority about him, but he and Theo seemed to be engaged in a most earnest conversation, enlivened by glimpses of Theo's mischievous smile and the enthusiastic glow in her eyes.

She was wearing a simple gown of bronze silk over a half slip of cream lace, a costume that, despite her own lack of interest in her wardrobe, was in the first style of elegance. But they had Lady Belmont to thank for that, he thought with a half smile. The Stoneridge topaz necklace was clasped at her throat, delicate matching studs glimmered in her ears, and her hair was drawn into a heavy knot at her nape, with artful ringlets drifting over her ears.