All or Nothing, page 1
ALL OR NOTHING
Copyright © 2016 by Susan Roth
Cover by Kanaxa
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Author’s Note
EXCERPT: True Pretenses
Gambled Away
For my great-grandmother Rose,
WHO GOT OUT.
Acknowledgments
This novella was originally published in the anthology Gambled Away. I want to thank Molly O’Keefe for being as excited as me when we had the idea on Twitter one day. I am so proud to have been part of it!
A million thanks to my insightful, generous critique partners and beta readers: Tiffany Ruzicki, Kate Addison, Greg Holt, Aleksei Valentin, L. Anthony Graham, Ariella Bouskila, Melanie Kress, Charlotte Russell, Alyssa Everett, Susanna Fraser. I love you. Any remaining mistakes and bad decisions are of course entirely mine.
Extra-special thanks to Olivia Waite for telling me it felt like I was holding something back. I was.
And as always, thanks to Sonia, my first reader and other half.
Chapter 1
LONDON
JUNE 1819
Simon Radcliffe-Gould didn’t even know why he kept coming back to this gaming hell.
He hadn’t the stomach for gambling, not really, and in consequence was very bad at it. He always gave up when he shouldn’t and then, inexplicably, dug in his heels when he ought to give up. So he didn’t know why, at least once a week, he found himself in this dingy, loud, overdecorated flat in the very northwest corner of London, nearly to Lord’s Cricket Ground, losing at cards to men he hadn’t even liked much at school.
Well, he did know, actually. It was because of Magdalena da Silva. Definitely the most beautiful woman in London. Probably the most beautiful woman in England. He wouldn’t be much surprised if she turned out to be the most beautiful woman in the world. There she was now, laughing at some jest of Meyer Henney’s, her obnoxious lover and host of the establishment.
Her laughter lit up the dim room like sunlight, purifying the London soot and dust into country air. Her skin was golden in the candlelight, her brown hair piled on her head, mostly dark and plain but gleaming here and there like honey. Delight suffused her face so utterly that Simon’s chest hurt, a sharp pain like envy or grief or a knife in his heart. She whispered in Henney’s ear, and Simon would have sworn that for just a moment her eyes rested on him. A fever of hot and cold pinpricks swept over him.
She and Henney both affected the showy fashions of twenty and thirty years ago, the deep-gaming powder-and-patch days of the ancien régime. In Miss da Silva’s case, this meant sometimes a great bell of petticoats and sometimes—like tonight—none at all. Even in the candlelight Simon could see the faint outline of her legs.
“My trick.” Fletcher swept Simon’s five guineas into his pocket. Simon sighed. He should be at home working, not nursing an infatuation with a gambling-den hostess like a student.
If it were his student days and he were here with Clement, Clement would know what to say to her. He would have already made her laugh, bribed her, and dropped her in Simon’s lap like a gift. Maybe he would have leaned in and whispered in Simon’s ear, We’ll share her.
Simon burned at the thought, and it was only about a third lust and a third resentment and inadequacy. The last third was a longing still violent enough to feel like homesickness, even now after three years apart. He felt in his pocket for Clement’s letter.
I want you to design a folly for Throckmorton, to celebrate my accession. Something cheerful to mark a sad occasion. Can you come next week? I’m having a small house party, but I promise we won’t bother you.
Unfortunately, Simon knew what that promise was worth. Absolutely nothing.
“Well?” Bishop asked impatiently. Simon realized the other players thought he was reaching in his pocket for his next stake, not dithering over an invitation for next week.
He withdrew his hand, pushing himself up from his chair. “I’ll watch the play this round, I think.”
“I’ve no more ready money.” Henney’s Dutch-accented voice rang out from across the room. “Let’s make it interesting.”
Simon’s stomach flipped. Everyone in the room knew what Henney meant by Let’s make it interesting. It meant, I’m going to stake my mistress, because I’m a base, caddish, hateful muckworm with no respect for a woman. And somehow, when Henney staked Miss da Silva, he always lost. Probably didn’t bother to exert himself, when he stood to lose no money.
Miss da Silva moved obediently to stand behind Henney’s chair, but as she did, Simon swore her eyes met his again. The message in them was clear: Save me from this brute. He started forward, determined to put a stop to this, and her face lit up hopefully.
But then she turned away, leaning upon the back of Henney’s chair and smiling at his opponent, Lord Sinclair. Giving in.
The club’s furniture had been rescued from the dust heaps of the last century, and somewhere Henney had dug up a dozen mismatched voyeuse chairs, built with a third armrest topping the back so a friend could watch one’s play over one’s shoulder. The host liked to sit in the softest, largest, most throne-like of them, a great Louis XV wing chair of worn turquoise velvet. Miss da Silva laid one gloved arm on the cushion, deliberately pillowing her breasts on it.
You don’t have to play his games, Simon thought at her. You don’t have to offer yourself up at the snap of his fingers.
She cut her eyes at Simon again, and this time it was pure flirtation. His stomach flipped again, that she’d surrendered so completely. “I’ve just remembered an urgent appointment,” he said, though it was nearly two in the morning, and fled.
Not long after, Simon crawled into bed alone. It was the warmest summer in years, but the sheets were still chilly everywhere the warming-pan hadn’t touched. He tried to remember the last time he’d shared a bed with someone. If Magdalena da Silva were here, he wouldn’t be so damned lonely.
Simon was so lonely he felt like a blown-out eggshell.
He had to stop thinking about her. He had to stop going to her boring club. She lived with Henney, and unless—unless you win her at piquet, he thought, and hated himself for it.
He had to get out of town. He needed work, and Clement was offering him a commission. He could think of ten different wonderful places to put a folly on the Throckmorton grounds, and he hadn’t seen Clement since Lord Throckmorton’s funeral three months ago. He’d even avoided answering most of his letters, because he was a terrible, ungenerous friend. He should go. Clement would be occupied with his guests anyway, and Simon could spend most of his time working.
He shouldn’t go. Clement had tried to kiss him after the funeral. He’d begged Simon to stay the night. It doesn’t have to mean anything.
He’d just been upset. It was his father’s funeral, after all. Simon had been very firm, again, that all that was over for good. Surely Clement would behave himself this time. He had a new lover, he’d mentioned in one of his letters. Hopefully that would distract him.
It wasn’t as if Simon could just never visit him again. Clement was his best friend.
He wanted to get out of bed right then and write his acceptance letter, before he could dither over it any more. But it was chilly, and he’d have to light the candle with his tinderbox, and his valet would see him, and he couldn’t post it until the morning anyway.
So instead, he lay there and dithered.
“So how was Sinclair?” Meyer asked over breakfast in their little room behind the club.
“Mmm.” Maggie stretched, sore in all the right places. “Very masterful.”
Meyer smiled lazily. “Just how you like them.”
Maggie stirred marmalade into her tea. “Mm-hmm.” Meyer himself was one of the most masterful men she knew, though she didn’t know how many people would recognize it, looking at him with his shaggy hair uncombed and his ancient brocade dressing gown trailing in the butter. Most people would discount him only for his height; he topped Maggie by no more than an inch or two.
But most people didn’t understand that size and strength didn’t make a man masterful. In bed, Meyer’s quiet confidence—sometimes nearing implacable indifference to others’ opinions—manifested itself as a careless ruthlessness that enchanted her.
Still, variety was the spice of life, and Meyer never begrudged her a night with one of Number Eighteen’s patrons. They made a game of it, him contriving to lose her at piquet to a man of her choosing. Maggie loved feeling like an object to be bartered, loved the casual exercise of power, loved playing at obedient surrender while carnal possibility built in the air, the cards sliding against each other with soft caressing sounds. And it got the man in the right frame of mind to swagger and bully her a little.
“I told you I wanted Simon Radcliffe-Gould, though.
Meyer paused in spreading poppyseed preserves on his toast to roll his eyes. “Why?”
Maggie frowned at him. “What do you mean? Because he’s beautiful.”
If his eyes could have actually left his head and wandered up to the ceiling, they would have. “In a chinless goyishe sort of way.”
“I like his chin!”
“You would.”
Despite Meyer’s teasing, Mr. Radcliffe-Gould’s jaw was definitely there, in a sharp delicate way Maggie felt in her bones. His pallor didn’t seem to her to belong to his black hair and dark blue eyes. Goyishe she would grant. His mild-featured face was so aristocratically English as to be almost otherworldly. Maybe that was what intrigued her, and gave his beauty its cruel edge—how entirely it shut out little Portuguese Maggie. He would never want her for more than one night, so she wanted that one night, the craving fluttering frantically in her chest like a bat trapped in a chimney.
“He doesn’t come in that often,” she persisted. “I’m going to miss my chance. You’re going to miss my chance.”
“He’s the worst card player in the world. I won’t even pretend to lose to him at piquet. A man has his pride.”
“I can’t argue with that,” she said, more sharply than she meant to. Meyer’s stubbornness might suit her perfectly in bed, but elsewhere, she was a little sick of it.
He relented. “Maybe faro. There’s no shame in losing that. A game of pure chance.”
“Not the way you play it, it isn’t.”
He grinned wolfishly. “I can’t argue with that. You win, Maggie. Next time he comes in, I’ll make sure you go home with him.”
But he didn’t come all the rest of that week. Maggie couldn’t help watching for him, her head turning toward the door every time it opened. She suspected her face fell in a pretty impolite manner each time the newcomer wasn’t Mr. Radcliffe-Gould.
“Once, you were happy to see me,” Meyer mourned, returning from the back room, where he’d gone to change his breeches after a guest overturned a glass of wine. “Ah, love’s young dream, so fleeting!” He put his arm around her, smirking. He knew quite well who she was looking for.
Maggie’s eyes flew to another new arrival. This time it was only a kid with curly blond hair poking out from under his cap. Yossi, the messenger-boy from Meyer’s uncle’s counting house. He pushed his way heedlessly through the crowded room, jostling elbows and banging into chairs. Meyer swore and strode forward, expostulating loudly in Yiddish.
Yossi’s answer was high-pitched with agitation. He pushed a letter at Meyer, who broke the seal, still scolding—and turned to stone mid-sentence, mouth frozen open.
He shook himself, and more Yiddish followed. Maggie made her way to his elbow. “What is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?”
Meyer ignored her. But when she took his arm, he squeezed her hand in a death grip.
At last Yossi nodded and ran out. A card player leaned toward them. “Everything all right, Henney?”
Meyer nodded and clapped him on the back. “Carry on.” Not meeting Maggie’s eyes, he dragged her into the back room. “My father’s dead. I have to go to Rotterdam tomorrow and sit shiva.”
Fear speared through her. For how long? Are you coming back? She wasn’t a good friend.
At least she didn’t say it out loud. “I’m so sorry, Meyer. I’ll go with you, keep you company.”
His mouth tightened. “We can’t afford two tickets.”
“We’ll borrow the money.”
He sighed, finally meeting her eyes. You didn’t always remember how fine his eyes were; it struck her now. They were large and gray and long-lashed and apologetic. “I can’t take you home. You know that. My mother thinks I live alone.”
Her heart sank like a stone. The money was an excuse. He didn’t want her. She’d only be an encumbrance anyway, someone he had to look after, not speaking the language, not knowing the prayers. Would his mother even accept her as a real Jew?
“I wish I could take you, Maggie. It’s going to be a nightmare.” He rubbed a hand over his chin. “At least the mirrors will be covered so I won’t have to see what I look like after a week without a shave. Ugh, and I’ll have to tear one of my coats. Maybe the red one, it’s wearing out anyway.”
When Meyer was unhappy, he’d ramble restlessly on until someone stopped him. Maggie pushed her hurt feelings aside and wrapped her arms around his waist, resting her chin on his shoulder. He subsided and hugged her back. “It’ll only be for a couple of weeks,” he mumbled into her neck. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
I hope so. It was pitiful, to be this afraid to spend a few weeks alone. “I’m so sorry about your father.”
He turned his face away. “I haven’t seen him in ten years.”
She spat his hair out of her mouth. “That doesn’t make it easier. You can start packing your trunk, I’ll go and send them all away.”
Just then, someone from the other room said clearly, “Radcliffe-Gould! Good evening.”
Meyer straightened. “I haven’t seen my father in ten years. We’ll be losing enough profits when I’m gone, no need to start now.”
Miss da Silva wasn’t here. Why not? She was always here.
How long did Simon have to stay before leaving would seem odd? Half an hour? Or could he get away with twenty minutes?
Then she appeared in the doorway. Henney had her wrist in an iron grip, from which she attempted vainly to free herself. Simon started toward them. To his surprise, Henney dragged her forward and met him halfway, smirking. “Radcliffe-Gould. Care to make things interesting? You can’t play piquet to save your life, though. Try faro, you’d have half a chance at winning.”
Magdalena’s eyes flashed. She leaned in to whisper something in Henney’s ear. Simon heard clearly, Not tonight and you lout and stay with you. Simon burned with indignation—and, to his shame, with lust. He had never yet had Let’s make it interesting directed at him. He had never wanted to.
Not...with his mind, anyway. He’d hated that the thought crept in, sometimes. She’d have to do whatever I wanted. Which was filthy, disgusting nonsense.
Up close, her beauty was overwhelming: wide mouth, long lashes, and large eyes penciled larger. Dimpled elbows showed between her gloves and fanciful overdress, which looked to have been sewn from a Paisley shawl. Did that faint odor of violets and orange-flower water come from her?
Henney ignored her protests. “I’m called away to Rotterdam for a couple of weeks, with nothing in my pocket for expenses. I’ll make you a wager. If I win, you pay my way. Say, twenty guineas. If you win, you can borrow Maggie while I’m gone.”
She froze—then sighed and gave in. “That means starting tomorrow,” she told Simon firmly.
For a moment he was dazzled—a couple of weeks!—before common sense asserted itself. “I won’t wager for a woman’s favors,” he said sharply. Let her see that not all men were brutes.
Henney looked him up and down. “Make an exception?”
Miss da Silva put her slender hand on Simon’s arm and nodded, very shyly. Coyly, he thought, and then scolded himself for self-serving imaginings. “I don’t mind,” she said. “Honestly.”
He allowed himself to put his hand over hers, just for a moment. He would not wager. But perhaps, in the few days between Henney’s departure and his own visit to Clement, he might offer to buy her an ice at Gunter’s.
The thought of her in sunlight, laughing over a lemon ice with an ancient parasol shading her face and muslin skirts trailing, was almost too much.
“I mind,” he said quietly. “I think you do, too.”
Henney snorted. “Well, if you’re sure you’re not interested. Burgoyne!”
Miss da Silva stiffened. “Meyer.”
Across the room, Lord Burgoyne stood, eyes on Miss da Silva. Simon, though not well acquainted with the earl, had always liked him, but Magdalena shrank back. “You know I didn’t like him,” she said in an undertone. “Stop it.”
