The Stepsister and the Slipper by Nina Clare
A Throw of the Dice
The gaming room,upholstered in red velvet and mahogany, had an air of luxury, and was not the lurid back-room Charlotte had imagined it to be. Despite her reluctance to enter she was interested to see her first gambling table. The atmosphere was rather exciting. Gamblers sat tight-lipped with anticipation, while others were brash with recklessness. The unlucky players sat slumped in corners, drowning their sorrows in Cognac.
“Do you play?” Lance enquired as Charlotte studied the Faro table.
“Of course not.”
“Many ladies do.”
A woman in a turban unpinned an enormous diamond brooch and declaring that it had been the gift of the Emperor of India before laying it on the table with a laugh.
“Only very rich ladies. Or very fast ones.”
But it did look exciting. Imagine being so rich one could cast emperor’s diamonds at a mere game and laugh!
“Shall you play?” she asked, half hoping he would, that she might watch. But she was also keen to return to the ballroom before her mother missed her. It would not do for Mama to make one of her scenes by being scandalised at her daughter in a gambling room.
“There’s no one here worth playing. There’s the count.”
She wanted to see if the turbaned lady won back her diamond or not, but Lance led her across the room to where a count with a strong accent was throwing gold florins by the handful onto the betting table.
“Troye!” called a young man with his wig pushed to the back of his head and his eyes red and drowsy. “Are you playing? We’re cutting a new deck.”
“Not tonight,” was the reply. “My wife does not care to watch me play.”
“Wife?” The man turned in his chair to look at Charlotte on Lance’s arm. “Why, you kept that quiet, you old—”
“Ah!” interrupted Lance, raising a manicured finger. “Mind your language, Dancourt. I won’t have my wife’s delicate ears offended. And I dare say Lord Taglione does not care to learn your native slang either.”
The count looked up, narrowing his eyes at Lance, as though trying to think where he knew him from.
Lance bowed to the count. “We met at the Duchess de Lionne’s evening party last night, my lord.” He bowed again. “May I present my wife, Madame de Troye. Greet Lord Taglione, my darling. I think you were otherwise engaged last night and had not the honour of meeting him and his charming daughter.”
Charlotte obediently curtseyed and smiled and simpered and clung to Lance’s arm like a new bride.
The count examined the couple, frowned, then nodded curtly and turned back to urge the dealer to begin.
Dancourt stared at Charlotte, first in astonishment, then in admiration. Charlotte turned her head away, not liking the look of him; any man who wore a coat in last season’s fashion was too poor to be likeable.
“You’ve bagged an eyepopper, Lance. What a beaut,” Dancourt slurred. “Where’ve you been hiding that little secret, you dark old bull?”
Charlotte pinched Lance’s arm to inform him that she wished to leave. This Dancourt fellow was vulgar, and she ought not to be exposed to him. Lance pinched her back, and she feigned a genteel cough to hide her indignation.
He paraded her around the table for good measure.
“Sure you won’t play?” Dancourt called after them, leaning back in his chair to look Charlotte up and down as she walked by.
“I don’t recall you settling your accounts with me the last time I thrashed you, Dancourt,” drawled Lance.
Every player at the table looked up sharply.
Dancourt gave a nervous laugh. “Just a joke,” he assured his fellow gamblers. “Right old court jester is de Troye! Ha ha—oomph!”
There was a heavy thud as the inebriated young man tipped his chair and crashed to the floor.
“Well, that’s that bit of business taken care of,” said Lance, ushering Charlotte back into the ballroom. “Ah, here comes your light-fingered mama. My, she looks inflammatory. Sorry to leave you to face the parental wrath but I am late for an appointment elsewhere.” He raised his hand and clicked his fingers at someone.
“You won’t forget the invitations, will you?” Charlotte felt suddenly anxious lest he had played her for a fool. Her voice betrayed her by rising half an octave.
The wretched man merely smiled and bowed and left, moving towards the stairs, where Joly stood with his master’s hat and cloak.
“Charlotte!” hissed her mother, her eyes ablaze. “Where have you been? I heard some gossiping shrew in a tiara say that the new lady from the country had gone gambling, and here you are sauntering out of the card room!”
“Hush, keep your voice down, Mama. Let’s go home. I’ve had quite enough for one evening. Don’t glare, or people will think I’m in disgrace.”
“You are in disgrace! It will be round the court like wildfire that you’re a gambler!”
“Oh Mama,” groaned Charlotte, suddenly weary of the evening and full of conflicting thoughts regarding Lancelot de Troye. Had he duped her? Had she ruined everything on her first evening? Could he be trusted? “Better a lady who gambles than a lady who steals,” she hissed back from behind her raised fan.
“What did you say?”
Her mother’s eyes were bulging. It was time to leave.
The dowager was stillirate next morning. “Our first night at court, and you ruined everything!” She paced up and down the salon while Charlotte reclined on the couch, her eyes closed against her mama’s glares. “A lady can never go into a gaming room unless she is married or too rich to be above reproach.”
“Mama, calm yourself, you will be ill again.”
“What does that matter? We cannot show our faces tonight! The gossip was flying round the ballroom before we left. They say that man you were with is a rogue! He charms everyone’s daughters, turns their heads with his handsome looks and then he drops them to go running after the next one. He’s a scoundrel. How could you go gambling with a scoundrel?”
“Mama, I did not gamble and I do not think Monsieur de Troye is a scoundrel.” She was not quite sure she believed this last part.
“Oh, surely he is no scoundrel,” Blanche added from the chair in the corner where she was reading. “He was so kind to us that night at the inn.”
“Men are not kind to lone women for the sake of kindness,” said the dowager, still pacing. “No one does a good deed without a motive. No doubt he took a liking to you, Charlotte, and determined to compromise you for his own sport!”
Charlotte did not reply. There was nothing she could say to change her mother’s mind when she was in a temper. There was no point in mentioning the insubstantial promise Monsieur de Troye had made of procuring her an invitation to the prince’s select balls. He had not taken her address that he might send such an invitation. Even if she had given it, it was unlikely anyone could find this peculiarly hidden house.
“Why are you in here, eavesdropping?” the dowager snapped, rounding on Blanche.
“Why…I’m sorry…”
“Why aren’t you doing something useful? Sitting there like a lady at leisure pretending to have your little nose in a book when really it is in my business! Shouldn’t you be preparing dinner? I suppose it’s more wretched lentil soup!”
Blanche’s eyes filled with tears. She stumbled from the room, clutching her book to her chest.
“Mama, let me tell you something about last night,” Charlotte said, getting to her feet. Blanche’s tears causing her patience to snap at last. She would not keep quiet any longer. She would confront her mother with the truth about her borrowing. She had looked in her mother’s pockets early that morning and seen a filagree gold bracelet and half a dozen of the little silver dessert spoons that had accompanied the lemon crème dessert at last night’s ball. “I was persuaded to go into that gambling room because—”
A rapping at the door cut her off mid-sentence. She stared in surprise at her mother, who stared back.
“Who could that be?” the dowager asked. “Are you expecting someone? Did you give any suitors this address?”
“No. Did you give anyone our address?”
“Of course not. I would be ashamed for anyone to see where we lived. So unfashionable a house.”
The knocking came again.
“Who should answer the door?” said Charlotte. “We have no butler or maid.”
“Blanche!” bellowed the dowager. “Answer the door!”
Blanche’s soft footsteps pattered down the hall. The key in the stout door turned with a click.
“Can I help you?” they heard Blanche’s gentle voice enquire.
Charlotte and her mother scrambled to the doorway of the salon, listening intently.
“Thank you,” said Blanche, and shut the door again. She soon appeared, holding out a large letter. “A courier gave me this.”
Charlotte’s eyes glittered with hope.
“It’s addressed to Charlotte,” Blanche said, as her stepmother snatched it and broke the scarlet seal.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” cried the dowager. Her quivering hand flew to her heart. “Oh, my darling girl, you will never guess what this is!” She sank down onto a nearby ottoman.
“An invitation to the royal balls?” suggested Charlotte, taking the letter from her mother’s hand.
“How did you guess?”
Charlotte’s lips curled into a satisfied smile. She shook the letter of invitation at her mother. “This, Mama, is the reason I permitted that de Troye man to lead me where he would last night. He promised me this very thing.”
“Charlotte! Why did you not say? Oh, my darling, clever girl! The crown prince’s exclusive balls!”
“May I see?” Blanche said eagerly. Charlotte gave her the thick, expensive paper. The invitation was scripted in gold ink. “Three masque balls,” read Blanche. “Why masque balls? Why should the prince want to be anonymous?”
“Foolish girl, is it not obvious?” said the dowager. “He wants to choose a wife. And he wants to choose one without her playing up to him as the prince. Charlotte, this is your chance. You must win the prince.”
“Mama, you forget, I am not of noble blood. I cannot marry royalty.”
“Fiddlesticks! You are the daughter of a nobleman!”
“Stepdaughter, Mama.”
“Plenty of kings and princes choose women with no blood. Actresses, singers, dancers. Even housemaids.”
“I think, Mama, you mean plenty of kings and princes choose mistresses with no blood. The crown prince has not had a single word of scandal spoken about him. He is not the type for mistresses.”
“You would not be someone’s mistress even if he were,” said Blanche, looking shocked. She looked back at the invitation. “Oh, it says all the ladies of the Bellerose household are invited.”
“So it does.” Charlotte said with satisfaction.
“So we can all go!” Blanche had never looked so shining and eager.
“Don’t be ridiculous, child.” The dowager regained her feet and plucked the invitation out of Blanche’s fingers, scanning it again with hungry eyes. “The carriage only seats two, and I have only procured three gowns. Charlotte will need them all. Don’t stand there gaping, get to work on Charlotte’s gown—the first ball is tonight!”