The Last Waltz: Hearts are at stake in the game of love... (Dorothy Mack Regency Romances) Read online

  THE LAST WALTZ

  Dorothy Mack

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  ALSO BY DOROTHY MACK

  CHAPTER 1

  “You mean to do what?”

  Miss Anthea Beckworth’s normally placid countenance was distorted into an expression of consternation as she stared open-mouthed at the other occupant of the shabby room. Her companion met the agitated glance briefly before returning her attention to the shirt she was hemming with swift, even stitches. Her soft voice was as cool and matter-of-fact as her face.

  “You heard me, Becky.”

  A lifetime’s intimate knowledge of the girl sitting opposite caused the older woman to groan inwardly at this point, but she tried to infuse confidence into her brisk tones. “Nonsense, Adrienne! What you contemplate is totally impossible.”

  “We are nearly out of funds,” the other pointed out. “Granted, the rent for this magnificent establishment —” the girl swept a contemptuous eye around the poorly furnished and dimly lighted room — “is paid for the next few months, but what then? And how do we find the wherewithal to feed and clothe two growing boys? We might sew until our eyes drop out of our heads, but we’ll never be able to save enough this route to pay for our passage to England.”

  “We can always appeal to Lady Creighton.”

  “No,” said the girl, rejecting the tentative suggestion out of hand.

  “It’s what your father wished, after all.”

  A fierce aquamarine glare bombarded the older woman as the girl raised her head from her stitching. “Papa’s relatives cast him off twenty-five years ago, and after he married Maman they refused all further contact with him. I would liefer starve in a ditch than appeal to any member of such a family.”

  “Lady Creighton never cast your father off. They were friends from childhood, devoted to one another. It was her husband who forbade her to correspond with Matthew. The earl was a very possessive man and irrationally jealous of the attachment between the cousins.”

  “I don’t choose to seek charity from any member of my father’s family. They are a stiff-rumped, arrogant lot and I’ll have nothing to do with them.”

  As the girl resumed her sewing, Miss Beckworth marvelled anew that soft lips and a delicately pointed chin could take on such a mulish set, but she knew that look of old. “I am a member of your father’s family,” she reminded Adrienne with exaggerated humility. “Must I too be cast off after all these years?”

  Sudden laughter drove the scowl from Adrienne’s face. “For your sins it is your fate to be forever enmeshed with the Castles. Besides, you are merely a connection of Papa’s, scarcely a relative at all.” As quickly as it had arisen, her mirth departed. “You are our family, Becky,” she said with transparent affection, “and what we should ever do without you, I shudder to contemplate. Poor Maman could never have coped on her own with creditors and tradesmen and three raucous children, not to mention Papa!”

  They were silent momentarily, each lost in her own memories of the gentle, ineffectual woman who had been so unfitted for the life she had chosen by allying herself with a man infected with the gambling fever and imbued with a wanderlust.

  “When your father presented his bride to me, I saw at a glance that Juliette would be disastrously ill-suited to an unsettled life, which his looked like being. She was so delicate, ethereal almost, and couldn’t understand what had happened to her country, why her family had had to flee from France. And when her parents both succumbed to influenza in England, she turned to your father as though he were her saviour. Little did she know!”

  “Papa did give one a marvellous sense of security — at least before one grew up,” Adrienne said thoughtfully. “He was so big and exuded an air of such confidence, it was natural to believe that one’s fortunes would inevitably improve tomorrow — or the next day at the very latest.” She shook her head musingly and looked with curiosity across at the sober-faced woman in the cane-backed chair. “But you were grown up, Becky. What prompted you to throw your cap over the windmill, as it were, and attach yourself to us?”

  “I don’t quite know.” Miss Beckworth’s expression was abstracted and she took some time before expanding on this statement. “I was fond of Matthew, of course, but I was aware of his weaknesses. The thing was, Juliette, your mother was not. She was expecting a baby when I first met her, and she was clearly still a babe herself. I was at a fairly low ebb myself just then. The man I was betrothed to had been killed in 1793 during the siege of Toulon, and —”

  “I didn’t know you’d ever been betrothed, Becky!” cried Adrienne, looking at her companion in quick sympathy. “I suppose I just took your presence for granted since you’ve always been part of my family. Losing your fiancé must have been a terrible blow. Did you never wish for a life of your own later, when your first grief had abated?”

  A self-mocking smile teased at the corners of the older woman’s mouth. “There never seemed to be a ‘later,’ ” she admitted ruefully. “At your father’s request I came to stay with them temporarily to help Juliette, who was unwell during much of her pregnancy. Then you were born and she hadn’t a notion how to care for a baby, apart from being in a weakened state to begin with. I actually did return to my home briefly, after Matthew engaged a nurse — the first of several, as it turned out, and all equally unsuitable. I called on them a few weeks later and was appalled at the chaotic state of that household. Juliette couldn’t manage the servants, Matthew couldn’t manage Juliette, and you were being neglected amidst the tumult. There seemed only one thing to do.”

  “So you moved back in and managed everybody, fortunately for us.”

  Miss Beckworth did not respond to the smile that accompanied this cheerful summation; indeed, her expression grew more sombre as she confessed with a twinge of bitterness, “If I could ever be said to manage anyone, it certainly wasn’t Matthew or he would have altered his way of living before bringing us to this pass. Nothing I said on the subject of gambling over the years had the least influence on him.”

  “Please, Becky, do not be blaming yourself!” Adrienne reached across the table to grip her companion’s hand in a comforting clasp. “You know he wished to stop gaming, tried to stop times without number, but he was trained for no profession and could see no other way out of our difficulties. With people like Papa, gambling is an obsession, almost a … a sickness.”

  As the young girl prepared to release her companion’s hand, Miss Beckworth leaned forward and gripped tighter, holding the aqua eyes with an accusing hazel gaze. “And yet you have just proposed to set up as a gamester yourself!”

  “Becky, it’s not the same thing! I have no intention of turning gamester permanently, but there is no other way we’ll be able to accumulate enough money to get the four of us to England.”

  “There is Lady Creighton.”

  “Never!”

  Miss Beckworth sighed, reflecting with unhappy conviction that however much her charge resembled her delicate mother physically, she wa
s in essence her father’s daughter, every bit as stubborn and wilful as Matthew had been.

  “What gives you to assume you will be able to win the necessary money by gaming? Your father spent a lifetime trying to win a fortune and died in debt.”

  Adrienne dismissed this reasonable argument with an airy wave of her hand. “I intend to go about the task in a methodical fashion,” she explained eagerly. “Success in faro or roulette is too dependent on chance, but piquet is another matter. I don’t wish to brag, but you will allow that I am a better piquet player than ever Papa was. Did he not take me with him on several occasions when our finances were at their worst, and did I not win enough each time to tide us over the crisis?”

  Miss Beckworth’s glance slid away from the expectant girl and she bit her lip to keep from articulating her opinion of a man who introduced his innocent daughter to the evils of gambling and the society of gamesters.

  “So you see,” continued Adrienne, taking silence for agreement, “there is no reason for all this concern.”

  This blithe statement caused Miss Beckworth to close her eyes for an agonized moment, but she rallied and protested strongly, “No reason? Setting aside for the present the very real possibility that you will meet your match at cardplaying, being seen in a gambling hell will sink you quite beneath reproach and ruin your chances of contracting a respectable marriage at the very least. And heaven only knows what personal indignities or actual danger you would be subjected to in such places!”

  So far from daunting the young girl, this dire prediction evoked a gurgle of laughter. “A pauper with two brothers to establish in the world is totally ineligible for marriage in any case,” she retorted, undismayed by the prospect of continued spinsterhood. “But I have no intention of frequenting hells, Becky. The two places Papa brought me to were perfectly respectable; indeed, one was a private home, and there were women playing in both.”

  “Unescorted females? Girls of your tender years?”

  “Perhaps not quite so young as I,” admitted Adrienne with a scrupulous regard for the truth, “but several seemed to be without escort, though I have no way of knowing for certain.”

  Miss Beckworth sniffed. “Women of the demimonde, most likely, and ruinous for your reputation to be seen in their company.”

  “But I shouldn’t be in their company, and what good will an unblemished reputation be to us if we are starving?”

  “Now, that is pure fustian, Adrienne,” declared Miss Beckworth tartly. “We are not going to starve, and well you know it. I have my little annuity, and our sewing brings in a pittance at least.”

  “It won’t get us out of Brussels!”

  At the ring of desperation in her companion’s tones, Miss Beckworth’s glance sharpened and her hands ceased their mechanical motions with the needle. “It’s Luc, isn’t it? You were not discontented with Brussels until the troops began to arrive in the area. But truly, my dear, I am persuaded you alarm yourself unnecessarily. Given the circumstances, most boys his age would be army-mad.”

  “Perhaps. But most boys would not be constantly begging for permission to be allowed to enlist at fourteen — or threatening to run off to join without permission!”

  “They would send him packing in a trice.”

  “Yes, ordinarily, but these are not ordinary times, are they?”

  The older woman had resumed her stitching, but the younger cast hers down and began a restless pacing in the small apartment. “The Bruxellois are convinced that Bonaparte will invade, and from the talk in the shops, a significant proportion of them would be happy to see him victorious. Now that Wellington has arrived, I fear war is inevitable, and in times of war no one is going to be overly particular about checking on a volunteer’s age. And you will admit that Luc appears older than his years.”

  “He is well-grown certainly, but his countenance betrays his extreme youth.”

  “Some of the young troopers who come into town look scarcely older.”

  As it was clear to Miss Beckworth that her charge was determined to clutch her worries to her bosom, she wisely curtailed her ineffectual efforts to provide comfort. Conversation lagged for a time, but Miss Beckworth, despite her head bent attentively over her stitchery, was keenly attuned to the activity in the room. She knew when Adrienne pulled the curtains together to eliminate the one-inch space that was generally present in the centre, and when the girl straightened the painting of the Grand Canal that hung over the mantel. Sparks cracked in the fireplace in response to some half-hearted stirring, and several ornaments were redistributed on a tabletop. At one point, the girl bent down to retrieve an object that her impetuous movements had swept off a table. A covert glance at the smooth young face revealed that Adrienne’s thoughts were far removed from the actions of her fingers. Miss Beckworth was already braced against shock when the girl broke the silence to propose eagerly:

  “Becky, what if I disguised my identity? If I am unrecognizable as Adrienne Castle, there can be no possible objection to my going to a gaming club to win our passage to England.”

  Several objections occurred to Miss Beckworth, but she swallowed them, merely inquiring in an expressionless voice how her companion planned to disguise herself.

  “Well, I would venture that one’s colouring is the most distinctive thing about one, would not you, Becky?”

  “Yours is,” agreed the other with a faint smile that drew forth an answering sigh and a rueful grimace in the pier glass on the part of her companion.

  “Why could I not have inherited Maman’s beautiful blue-black hair as Luc and Jean-Paul did, instead of Papa’s carrot top?”

  “It’s not carroty, it’s a marvellous dark auburn,” corrected the other. “Recollect also, while you are bemoaning your fate, that you did not inherit your father’s freckles along with his hair colour.”

  “Heaven be praised!”

  “Your colouring is undeniably distinctive, but tampering with one’s hair colour is chancy business at best.”

  “A wig wouldn’t be tampering. Do you recall that old wig of yours that we used to play with when we were children? I believe it is still in one of the trunks.”

  “You want to escape notice, not attract it! Hairstyles like that towering erection went out of fashion twenty years ago.”

  “But the hair is abundant and can be cut and arranged in a modern style with very little trouble. You have such clever fingers, Becky.”

  “Oho! So it is my fingers that have been selected to effect this transformation,” said Miss Beckworth with a quizzical look. “I am honoured.”

  Adrienne dimpled mischievously. “Well, neither of us has any illusions about the cleverness of my fingers,” she retorted. “Except for rudimentary sewing ability, can you dredge up a single feminine accomplishment to my credit?”

  This light-hearted challenge served to depress Miss Beckworth’s spirits still further. “I would be ill-advised certainly to claim any outstanding success in imparting to you those accomplishments that are considered indispensable to a lady’s education,” she confessed, after rapidly passing under mental review her charge’s musical and artistic attainments.

  The latter paused in her perambulations about the room to recommend in kind tones that Becky not refine overmuch on the situation, since she herself did not consider that to be accorded an accomplished female was an accolade to be devoutly coveted in any case. “Of what use to me would be the ability to simper and sing and assume missish airs? And as for making interminable sketches of every tree or building that crosses one’s path, I hold that to be a sheer waste of time, when one may easily obtain such from professional artists, should one desire a memento of a particular scene. It is of much more practical worth to learn how to stretch a joint to make three meals and how to get raspberry stains out of one’s best table covers, and so I shall tell anyone who —”

  “Adrienne, please, I beg of you, do not air such sentiments in company if you ever wish me to hold my head up again!”


  The girl chuckled, having succeeded in drawing the expected reaction, but she made amends with a quick hug as she passed in back of Miss Beckworth’s chair on her tour. “I shouldn’t tease you at this hour of the day, Becky. You are too fatigued to retaliate. The candles are nearly guttering. I’m for bed. I’d like to search out that wig first thing in the morning.”

  Adrienne wished her companion goodnight with an admonition against staying up late to continue sewing. Though she nodded in acknowledgment, the older woman did not immediately follow the girl from the room. Her unseeing gaze reflected a degree of troubled concern she had taken pains to conceal earlier. She had no intention of publicly confessing that she regarded their present situation with even graver misgivings than Adrienne. The girl’s fears were all centred on the remote possibility that her young brother might succeed in escaping their guardianship and joining the army. In the eight months since Matthew’s death, life had gone on in the same quiet style for the children despite their grief. The natural optimism of youth and the experience of a lifetime spent living on the fringe of financial disaster had protected them from sharing the growing worry that overshadowed her own days and nights. Only at this moment did she acknowledge that she had spent these last months drifting along trying to deny any anxiety about the future that threatened to overwhelm her if she brought it into the light. Tonight, Adrienne’s absurd proposal to try to make their fortune by card-playing had torn the self-applied scales from her eyes.

  The shock of Matthew’s death from a sudden pneumonia must be her only excuse. He had been a hale-and-hearty man of barely forty-eight, who, as his daughter said, radiated confidence and optimism. His unexpected death had cast her asea without the resolution to do more than drift along from day to day. She must hold herself extremely culpable for this present state of affairs. Matthew’s financial dealings had ever been complicated, of course, but within a month or two of his demise the bald evidence of their penury had come to light. After his debts had been paid, there had been practically nothing left on which to live. Her initial suggestion that they should remove to their own country had been casually rejected. Except for Adrienne, who had been born there, none of the children had even seen England. So here they had remained while the unwelcome suspicion that their resources were insufficient gradually and inexorably became hard fact. Certainly it was more than time to make a push to improve their situation, but as she gathered her sewing materials together and deposited them neatly in her work-box, Miss Beckworth was a long way from sharing Adrienne’s optimistic expectation that cards could provide the means of effecting a change for the better. Indeed, her shoulders were bowed beneath an additional load of worry as she snuffed the candles and scattered the coals in preparation for quitting the room.