The Secret Marriage Pact. Georgie Lee
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held his breath as Jane rose on her tiptoes and pressed her face to the hole. The light spilling out of the room beyond spread over her fine nose and high cheeks, and he caught something of the mischievous imp he’d begun to love before his parents had sent him to America. Except it wasn’t their past captivating him tonight, it was the present. She was so stunning and innocent and he longed to draw her close instead of pushing her away. He couldn’t because she deserved better than a damaged and deceitful man, and it was already too late. There was no stopping Jane from being disgusted by what he was showing her and no way of preventing her from telling everyone if she decided to betray him.
She won’t. It was the old bond they’d shared in childhood when they used to sneak away from lessons with the bird-like tutor to go and play. It continued to connect them, despite the years they’d spent apart. ‘This is how I make my living.’
‘You’re running a gambling hell.’ She pressed her hands against the wall and leaned in closer to the hole.
He rested her painting on a small hook, then slid aside the portrait of a dog beside hers to view the tables full of men playing cards across the green baize. The cut-crystal lamps hanging over each table cast circles of light to surround them. Men recruited from the nearby slums who’d demonstrated even a modicum of manners moved between the guests to refill brandy glasses and light cigars, and, most importantly, extend credit. ‘Not only do I own the Company Gaming Room, I’m the house bank. The players bet against me and most of the time they lose.’
A loud cheer went up from across the room as Mr Portland, a rotund man with a long face, threw up his hands in victory. ‘Sometimes, they win.’
Mr Bronson, a lanky gentleman in a fine suit and a bright red waistcoat, Jasper’s partner in this affair, approached the winner to offer congratulations and payment.
Jane studied him, but he continued to observe the room, bracing himself for the sneer of disgust he was sure was coming. They’d both been raised to detest gambling as man after man had approached their fathers and brothers for money to cover their debts and save the businesses they were throwing away with the dice. Jasper was contributing to the very thing which had ruined so many, including him.
‘Why, Jasper Charton, I never thought you had it in you to be a rogue.’ He turned to face her, stunned to discover her blue eyes, illuminated by the candlelight concentrated through the hole, open wide in amazement.
‘You’re not supposed to be impressed.’ He set the dog painting over the hole and then reached past her face to return the house painting back to its original position.
‘I admit it’s a bit shady, but it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate what you’ve done and how much you’ve accomplished in a matter of months.’
‘It’s a gambling hell, not a cotton-import business.’ He pressed his knuckles into his hips. This wasn’t the reaction he’d expected and yet he couldn’t help but smile. This was exactly like something she would do. ‘I thought your brother raised you to detest gambling?’
‘I thought your father did the same. It seems it didn’t stick for either of us.’ She cocked her thumb at the wall. ‘I assume he doesn’t know about this.’
‘No one in the family does. Can I trust you not to tell them or use this against me in your matrimonial pursuit?’
‘Of course. I’m not low enough to blackmail a person.’ Jane crossed her arms beneath her round breasts. ‘But I don’t see how you’ll keep it from them for ever. Isn’t this illegal?’
‘No, but it’s not entirely legal either, rather a grey area, which is why I don’t draw much attention to it.’
‘And no one around here has noticed so much coming and going at night?’
‘Drunks are the only people in this area after dark and a dram here and there keeps them quiet. It, and the front and back entrances, are why I chose this building.’
‘Impressive.’ Despite himself, he basked in her compliment before her next questions dissolved it. ‘Did you do this in Savannah?’
Guilt struck him as hard as shame. ‘I did.’
‘What did your uncle think of it?’
He strode to the fireplace, debating whether or not to take her deeper into his confidence, but the freedom to finally speak about this part of his life muted his usual caution. He’d brought Jane this far, there was little harm in taking her a touch further. ‘He’s the one who taught me to do it.’
‘He was a gambler, too?’ She rushed to join him at the ornately carved marble mantel.
‘He never gambled and neither do I. It isn’t wise.’
‘Well, he certainly wasn’t a cotton merchant, was he?’
‘Maybe when he first went to America, but he couldn’t tell the difference between Egyptian cotton and South Carolina cotton by the time I joined him. I was as stunned as you are when I learned of his true trade.’ Stunned and in awe. To a young man of fifteen who’d thought he’d been banished from his family and consigned to a colonial backwater, the vice-filled rooms and the income they gave him had been a scintillating temptation. He’d embraced the life, even when its darkness had shown itself in the haggard faces of losers at the Hazard table. ‘Pretending to my mother to be a cotton merchant was Uncle Patrick’s way of explaining the source of his wealth without offending anyone’s sensibilities.’
‘And your mother never suspected the truth?’
‘She’s quick, but Savannah is a long way from London.’ The distance was the most enticing aspect of coming home, but not even an entire ocean could separate him from his past failures. ‘She loved her brother, but my father wasn’t as enamoured of him. Father would’ve despised him if he’d known the real source of his income.’
‘And he wouldn’t have sent you to him.’
A sense of lost days flitted between them. He wished he’d never left, then all the horror he’d witnessed, and all the sins he’d committed, might not have happened and he’d be worthy of accepting Jane’s hand. ‘Uncle Patrick built a fortune on merchants, sea captains with prize money, cotton traders and tobacco planters looking for more respectable entertainment than the seedy dives by the docks, a way to fill the time between when they saw their wares off and when they returned to their rural homes or ruined themselves at our tables.’
‘If they were stupid enough to gamble, then they got what they deserved,’ Jane pronounced.
‘I used to think so, too.’ Until Mr Robillard. He stared into the fire, watching the flames dance the way they had in the biers scattered throughout Savannah to try to drive off the miasma sickening the city. It hadn’t worked. ‘I’ve learned a little more compassion since then and I have rules about limits. The men who play here know I won’t allow them to end up drunk and broke in the gutter.’
It was a lesson he’d learned the hard way, one his uncle certainly hadn’t taught him. If he’d learned it sooner, many men and their families might have been saved from destitution. Try as Jasper might to atone for his sins in London, he couldn’t make up for the many he’d committed in Georgia.
‘How do you keep this a secret? I recognise most of the men in there from their dealings with Philip. They must recognise you.’
‘They’ve never seen me in there. The man in the red waistcoat who spoke to the winner is Mr Bronson. He was Uncle Patrick’s long-time employee in Savannah. After my uncle died...’ Jasper took a deep breath, forcing back the memories ‘...I offered him the chance to be more than a servant and to share in a good amount of the profits. He’s the face of the Company Gaming Room, the one clients approach with troubles and concerns, then he comes to me. It hides my involvement in the club.’ It was one of the many façades he’d adopted since coming home. ‘My clients are merchants, businessmen, or foreigners with a taste for English gambling who’d never be admitted to one of the more fashionable clubs.’