Rake's Wager. Miranda Jarrett
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ornate gold frame on the tall easel for all to see.
Richard didn’t sit, choosing instead to stand along the wall where he could keep one eye on his old bawd. He crossed his arms over his chest and tipped his hat over one eye, leaning against the wall as he prepared for a long wait before his painting would be called. He glanced across the benches, but saw no sign of the red-haired woman in mourning. Perhaps he’d chased her off; perhaps she’d never had a real interest in the painting.
Slowly the sun slid across the skylights overhead as the auctioneer droned on, cracking his gavel to seal each transaction as the footman switched paintings. At last the footman lifted The Fortune Teller onto the easel, and Richard stood away from the wall and straightened his hat.
“Next is an Italian painting in oils from the sixteenth century entitled The Fortune Teller,” the auctioneer announced. “Opening with a reserve of five pounds for this very fine work by an old master whose name is lost to time, but not the product of his genius. Five pounds to start, then, who’ll give five pounds?”
Richard raised his hand just enough for the auctioneer to notice. He could see it hung in his dressing room at Greenwood already.
“Five pounds to the tall gentleman at the wall, a pittance for a work of this quality, of this sensibility, of this—”
“Seven pounds!”
“Seven pounds to the lady in mourning!” the auctioneer called. “The lady knows her art, gentlemen, benefit from her knowledge and—”
“Nine pounds.” Richard had spotted her now, sitting on the far end of one of the benches, with all but the brim of her black bonnet hidden by a fat man in a gray coat.
“Nine to the tall gentleman at the wall, will anyone give me—”
“Fifteen!” The young woman hopped to her feet, her program rolled into a tight scroll in her black-gloved hands.
Excitement rippled through the crowd; no one had expected any serious bidding for this particular lot of paintings, especially not between a gentleman and a lady.
“Fifteen to the lady with a connoisseur’s eye for an old master, fifteen to—”
“Twenty.”
The woman turned and glared at Richard. When he nodded and smiled, she twitched her head back toward the front, refusing to acknowledge him.
“Twenty-five,” she said, her voice ringing clear and loud in the auction room. She wasn’t afraid to make a spectacle of herself, and Richard liked that. What a pity she’d learn soon enough that his pockets were deeper than she’d ever dreamed.
“Twenty-five to the lady!” the auctioneer crowed with near delirious fervor. “Twenty-five for—”
“Fifty,” Richard said, and the audience gasped.
“Fifty-five!” the woman cried, tossing her head for good measure.
Richard smiled. She did have spirit, he’d grant her that.
“Fifty-five to the lady!” His round face flushed with excitement, the auctioneer peered expectantly at Richard over his spectacles. The room was nearly silent, the audience holding its breath together. “Fifty-five for this most excellent work, fifty-five for—”
“One hundred,” Richard said. “Even.”
The crowd exploded, whistling, swearing, applauding, cheering. The auctioneer turned back to the girl.
“One hundred for The Fortune Teller,” he thundered, his voice fair glowing with the importance of such a bid. “One hundred from the tall, dark gentleman for this magnificent work. Do I hear one hundred five? One hundred five?”
But the young woman only shook her head and sank back down onto the bench, behind the fat man.
Obviously disappointed, the auctioneer continued. “Once at one hundred, twice at one hundred.” His gavel cracked down on his desk. “Sold to the tall gentleman for one hundred pounds.”
Another spattering of applause came from the audience, but the contest was done and their interest with it. Few even bothered to turn as Richard made his way to the front to pay for the painting and make arrangements for its delivery to Greenwood. With the picture now leaning against the back wall, the old fortune teller seemed to be laughing at his expense now, too—as well she should, considering how much more than her worth she’d finally cost him.
“So this is how you seize opportunities to make your own luck, sir?” The redhead was standing beside him, her cheek flushed and her eyes flashing with anger. “I told you I wanted that painting, sir, and you stole it away from me from sheer spite. You swoop down and plunder like a—like a pirate, sir!”
“I didn’t plunder anything,” he protested. “I bid for the painting honestly, and now I must pay through the nose for the privilege, too. Show me a pirate who’ll do that.”
Her eyes narrowed, shaking the scrolled program in her hand as if it were a dagger. “You are no better than a pirate, sir. A thieving, incorrigible, rascally pirate, with no sense of propriety or decency!”
“And if you had outbid me, would that have made you the pirate?” he asked. “I come from a place where piracy’s taken seriously. Would the painting have become your righteous plunder instead of mine, hung alongside your skull and crossbones?”
She gasped, sputtering so incoherently as she struggled for words that he almost—almost—laughed. Instead, against his better judgment, he took pity on her.
“If you promise to surrender your sword, lass,” he said, “then I’m willing to make peace over a dish of tea or chocolate.”
“Go with you, sir?” Tiny wisps of red-gold hair had come free from her bonnet and now quivered around her face, echoing her outrage. “Sit with you, drink tea with you? After what you have done to me?”
“That was my intention, yes,” he said, his patience shredding fast, “though you are making it damned difficult to be agreeable.”
“That is because I do not intend to be agreeable to you, sir.” She took one last look at the painting. “Drink tea with you, hah. Even if you were to suddenly play the gallant and give the picture to me, I would not accept it.”
“But I’m not some blasted foppish gallant any more than you’re agreeable,” he said irritably. “The painting’s mine, fair and square, and it’s going to stay that way.”
“I didn’t need a fortune teller to know you’d say that.” She retied the bonnet’s ribbons beneath her chin with short, quick jerks, the black silk cutting against her white throat. “You can try to bend your luck all you want, but someday, Captain Pirate, you’ll find that luck will bend you back.”
He frowned as she turned away toward the door. “Is that meant to be a curse,” he called after her, “or are you telling my fortune?”
She paused just long enough to look back over her shoulder, her blue-eyed gaze so startlingly intense that he almost recoiled. “You’ll have to decide that for yourself, won’t you?”
She disappeared through the door, and slowly Richard turned back to the painting. Likely he’d never see the redhead again, not in a city this large. But he’d been in London less than a week, and already it had come to this.
A fortune, or a curse.
“Good afternoon, Pratt.” Cassia smiled at the old man as he held the door to Penny House open for her. “I hope my sisters haven’t been making your life too miserable today?”
“Like hell itself it’s been, Miss Cassia,” he grumbled, looking down sorrowfully at his leather apron, covered with silver polish, sawdust and general household grime. “Fussing about like an Irish parlor maid, ordered up an’ down those infernal stairs like it was nothing—that’s not why I agreed to stay on, Miss Cassia, not at all.”
“I