The Double Wager

Henry stared stonily at him.

He smiled. "Marius did well out of the wager, did he not?" he said. "He had been trying for months to purchase them."

Henry whipped the horses into a trot and turned from the park entrance into the street at a daring pace. I don't believe it, she thought, I won't believe it. But she found it impossible to believe her own denials.

Philip was feeling rebellious. Ma

"The dear duke put his trust in me at a time when I had been dismissed," she had said. "I feel it my responsibility to keep watch over you, dear children, and to make sure that you learn your lessons."

"But, Ma

"She will be safe, never fear," Miss Manford had replied firmly. "Philip talked to Mr. Giles this morning and I talked to Mr. Ridley. He assured me that the duke himself is concerned and is doing his best to protect the dear duchess."

"But, Ma

"That will be all, dear boy," his governess had interrupted. "For the next hour we will converse only in French."

Penelope had groaned.

Philip, remembering a conversation with Eversleigh and a narrowly averted thrashing, had decided that it would be ungentlemanly to argue further.

"Blood and thunder!" had commented Oscar from the floor of his cage.

Now this morning Philip had escaped for a few minutes on the excuse that he would go to the kitchen for a tray of milk and cakes. He dawdled about the errand, wheedling the cook into letting him sample some jam tarts fresh from the oven, and watching an undergroom polishing the duke's riding boots. It was quite by accident that he arrived in the main hallway with his tray just when a messenger was delivering a small package to the butler and directing that it be placed in the hands of the Duchess of Eversleigh.

By the time Philip arrived in the schoolroom one minute later, milk from three glasses had been sloshed onto the tray and one cake was looking unappetizingly soggy.

"Henry is receiving a secret message again," he a

"What is it and who sent it?" Penelope demanded.

"I don't know, but I mean to try to find out," Philip replied.

"I bet Mr. Cranshawe is sending her gifts and trying to charm her," Penelope said.

"More likely that moneylender making demands already, Philip replied.

"It is probably merely some ribbons that she has had delivered," said Miss Manford, "or some small piece of jewelry she has bought."

"Well, when she goes out later today," Philip said firmly, "Pen and I are going to go into her room again and see if we can find what it is."

"Oh, bless my soul," Miss Manford added, hands waving ineffectually in the air, "do you really think you ought, dear boy?"

Henry was out riding when the package arrived. She was in a very black mood. She knew that she ran the risk of meeting Oliver Cranshawe, but she did not care. If she saw him, she would gallop away from him. If he persisted in following her, she would ignore him or use her riding crop on him if she had to. But she had had to get out.

She had made Marius bring her home early from a di

Cranshawe was not in the park. A couple of young men who were- occasionally part of her court looked as if they were about to join her, but she smiled and waved vaguely at them and spurred jet into a canter, and they did not follow.

Henry felt wretched in the extreme. Until her conversation with Oliver the day before, she had not known just how deeply in love with Marius she was. The knowledge that he had married her so cynically, with no feeling for her at all, except perhaps contempt, hurt like a knife being slowly turned in her chest. For a while she had tried to convince herself that Cranshawe had been lying, but she did not credit him with enough imagination to invent such an ingenious story. It was undoubtedly true.

It hurt terribly to know that the conditions of her marriage must be widely known. She must be the laughingstock-the little green country girl who had been picked at random because she was young and likely to be a good breeder. He would have chosen a horse, or even a cow, with more care.

She could not quite understand why, if he had married her only for her reproductive functions, he had not asserted his rights on their wedding night and continually ever since. Probably he had made that wager on impulse and had found himself repulsed when faced with the physical fact of a wife for whom he had no feelings. He had finally taken her, goaded on by anger at her clandestine meeting with his heir. But he had obviously found the experience unpleasant. He seemed to find it preferable to be without an heir of his own issue than to have normal marital relations with his wife.

Henry wanted to hate him. She did hate him! But she could not stop herself from caring. She had grown to enjoy his companionship, to need his attention and approval. She had come to love him and want his caresses. She had given herself to him completely on that one night they bad had together, and had believed that for him it had been as earth-shattering an experience as it had been for her. It was painful and humiliating to know that it was anger merely that had provoked him and that all he had been feeling was contempt, or at best only a momentary lust. Henry had never wanted a man, had never wanted caresses or tenderness. She had certainly never wanted the dependency of love. Her fall was, therefore, all the harder. She had no defense against the pain of an emotion that she had never experienced before and that she did not understand.

She did not know what she was going to do. She could not stay with Marius. She would not live with him day by day, aching for every kind word or chance touch. She would not be thus shamed in her own eyes. But what choice had she? She was her husband's property, totally dependent on him for the necessities of life. He had once told her that he would apply for an a

Henry's thoughts were interrupted at that point when she noticed that jet's coat was begi

She rode her horse to the stables and satisfied herself that the head groom himself would immediately rub down poor jet. She walked to the main doors and into the hall, where she paused to remove her riding hat and leather gloves.