And Trune.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Electricity jolted along her fingers and she fumbled with the tiny salad fork. Tesara turned her back determinedly. Had Trune seen her? She didn’t think he’d seen her. She kept her back straight, hoping against hope that her old-fashioned dress wouldn’t draw his attention. No gentleman noticed that sort of thing anyway, she encouraged herself.
First things first. She had to get out of there. The dancing had begun again in the other gallery, and the entrance was on the other side of where Trune and the rest had come in.
“We should dance again,” she said, popping an orange slice into her mouth and licking her fingers, propriety be damned. “Mirandine, grab one of your admirers.”
“Oh goodness, he’d have apoplexy.” Mirandine threw back her head and laughed, the strong column of her throat catching the light with a sparkle of diamonds at her neck and her ears.
“My toes couldn’t take the strain,” Jone said, and she knew he was teasing and she laughed, even as her cheeks pinked up. “They’re setting up the card tables. Let’s play.”
Yes, anything, let’s just go.
No one noticed Tesara’s eagerness, but at the mention of gaming, Mirandine was interested, her eyebrows raised comically.
“Decent stakes?” she said.
“Terk is running it, so I imagine so. Besides, I’m always flat, so what does it matter?”
His cousin snorted. “One of these days, Jone, someone is going to call in a marker.”
“And I’ll pay. They just never do, so why should I bother?” He glanced over at Tesara, and perhaps something in her expression made him apologize. “I sound rotten, and I am. But I’m a lousy gamester, so it’s not as if I’m winning anything from them. They’re just not winning anything from me. Do you play, Tesara?”
Tesara gave an apologetic smile. “It sounds like fun,” she said. “But I admit I do not. I haven’t brought any money to game, and anyway, I fear I’d be dreadful at it.”
A part of her marveled at her lie as it rolled off her lips with automatic ease. Uncle would be so proud; she was hustling.
“Oh, it’s easy to learn. We’ll teach you and we’ll make them pay for the privilege of helping you learn,” Mirandine said.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t.”
They overrode her protests and pulled her up. “Now, listen,” Mirandine said. “You must learn to play. Everyone does it; it’s no good saying that you won’t do it. And I have a feeling you will be quite good at it. It’s all a matter of bluffing. And Tesara–” she turned Tesara to face her, her hands on Tesara’s shoulders. “I saw the way you walked into this house. You are a fine gambler.”
With Trune not thirty feet away, she was gambling at this very moment that he would not see her and recognize his onetime housemaid. Mirandine and Jone could never understand what she was going through, because the stakes would never be that high for them. They were young, privileged, and had not a care in the world. They could fall but they would not fall far, whereas she walked very near the edge.
And yet something whispered in her that wanted to meet Mirandine’s challenge. She had bluffed when she walked up to the front door that evening, and she had won through because she believed her bluff. She was meant to be here and she was meant to gamble. That was what the whole evening was about. If Uncle had taught her anything when he taught her to gamble, it was for this moment.
She was a Mederos, and a Mederos took risks.
She raised her chin and saw Mirandine’s answering smile. “Let’s play,” Tesara said.
Jone found a table of older gentlemen, more rough-hewn than the other guests, and pulled out a chair for Tesara. Their tweed coats made them stand out among the black tail coats worn by the other male guests. Jone introduced them carelessly.
“You know Mira, and this is my friend, Tesara. Now, our dear friend has never played before, so we will talk her through the first hands,” he said, admonishing the men. She glanced up at Mirandine, who stood slightly behind her. The Depressis girl shook her head and pressed a hand down on her shoulder.
One man leaned back in his chair, raking her up and down with his eyes. He wore a string tie, a vest over his white shirt, and his coat was unbuttoned. He blew a thin trail of smoke from his cheroot.
“Hoaxing us again, Jone?” Terk said.
“Not a bit,” Jone said. “She’s a friend, and she wants to learn to play. Who better to teach her than you fellows?”
She was alive to tension and her fingers were buzzing a little. She could do this. She knew how to play; even Uncle said she had an innate feel for it.
“I do hope I’ll learn quickly,” she said, “Jone is a dear to stake me.” The man laughed, and the other gentlemen smirked.
“A bit of a dove, ain’t she? It’s not us you’re busting, it’s the boy here.”
“The boy here,” Jone said, with a smile but an edge like steel in his voice, “has invited you on sufferance of good behavior. Seems to me you owe me your time and attention.”
The man didn’t look intimidated. He glanced up at Jone, then shrugged.
“All right, Mr Saint Frey. We’ll teach the young miss how to play. Usual terms?”
Mirandine drew her small beaded purse off her wrist and threw it down on the table. It landed with a satisfying thud. “These terms.”
That raised a few eyebrows around the table. The man hefted the purse then left it to sag in the middle of the table.
“I’m in. All right girl, here’s how you play.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Terk dealt the cards and everyone threw in. Tesara deferred to Jone and Mirandine. At the hard man’s polite request, they
