Chapter Four

A fter supper and several drinks at his club, Luke stumbled into the main gambling room at the Lyon’s Den with two friends who still remained upright. They always saved this establishment for last so they could shore up their courage with whisky. Games here were high stakes, and those stakes were not always blunt.

Along with the traditional games, there was an area separated by velvet ropes where customers were invited to make more unique and dangerous bets. The winners’ purses for these were significantly heavier, but so were the risks. At the very back was the infamous hazard table. If one was willing to offer marriage as stakes, that was the table to play at. A man had a certain amount of time, Luke did not know how long, to either win his gaming debts back, or to sign a marriage contract. It also was not the usual marriage contract. Rather than naming a bride, it allowed the establishment’s owner, Mrs. Dove-Lyon, to choose a woman she found suitable.

For those bored with the usual card and dice games, that roped-off area was a lure after a few drinks. Luke had been attempting to convince his friends to venture past the velvet barricade for a fortnight.

Tonight, he went straight toward it. “Look, they have the tightrope. Come, lads, ’tis a simple matter of balance. And it isn’t high enough to do any serious harm, even with the bed of nails underneath it.”

His friends groaned in unison. He’d discovered this place a few months ago and had been pushing them to try some of the wilder games. He’d been insistent enough that he’d earned a new nickname. These friends had made a play on his name and the Den and dubbed him, “Lyon.” He preferred it over South, which needled him with reminders of his father.

“Not again, Lyon. Let’s play some whist.” The most sober—or least drunk—friend attempted to divert his attention.

“We’ve already played that.” And lost . He’d have to face a reckoning of his losses one of these days, at multiple gaming houses. “’Tis only a yard or so high. At worst, you’ll end up with a few pinpricks.”

“Let’s get a drink first,” his other friend slurred.

“I won’t say no to that, especially here.” The Den had the finest spirits and a better chef than even the finest men’s clubs in Town, no doubt to keep men in the place longer.

One drink turned to two, then three. Finally, Luke convinced them to try the tightrope.

The employee overseeing the tightrope game watched them approach, stifling a grin behind a slender hand.

Luke frowned. The fop was clearly amused as Luke fumbled to release the velvet cords.

After watching for a long moment, the young man stepped forward. “To your left, my lord.”

“Oh.” There was a convenient opening between two of the posts for visitors to walk through.

Stumbling through, he turned to his friends. “Who’s first?”

“You.”

“Right, then. How does it work?”

“You can play against yourself, and ’tis a straight bet. I make the odds. Or you can bet among yourselves and the house takes a cut.”

“Oh, I bet I could get farther than either of you,” he garbled, turning to the other two.

“Let’s hear the odds for betting against ourselves, what?”

“Certainly. For you”—the game host nodded at Luke—“odds are ten to one against you making it halfway, twenty to one for the full length. For you two, seven to one and fourteen to one, respectively.”

“Twenty to one!” Luke could put a sizable dent in paying off his vowels at the Lyon’s Den and other establishments with that kind of blunt. The hope those odds gave him stifled his curiosity as to how the young man had come up with them.

“What’s the ante?” his friend asked.

The employee had been gazing upward to his left, to what seemed like the third floor. A beat after the question, he nodded and looked back at them. Tilting his head toward Li-Na, the bookkeeper behind a barred window, he said, “Your bet is your gaming debt owed the house. Do you need me to get you the exact amount?”

Luke was not drunk enough to want to hear that figure.

His friend whistled. “Double or nothing. No, ’tis more like double or-or-eh, I can’t do the math. Lyon, what shall it be?”

“I’m in.”

He shed his jacket and shoes, sure that his stocking feet could balance better on the thick rope strung taut between two columns. He scrambled up the ladder and clung to the column as he placed a foot onto the tightrope. One step out, his arms windmilled and his foot clenched, curling around the line. It suddenly felt as thin as twine and as sharp as a wire. The second step put both feet on the cord as it flexed under his weight. His stomach lurched with it, and he swallowed hard. His whisky-blurred vision tilted, and before he could right himself, he crashed. Hundreds of nails dug into his side. He rolled to his back, and they stabbed new holes into his flesh. “Help me off, help me off!”

His friends doubled over in laughter, yelling that they weren’t braving the nails to get to him.

Other spectators called out, “Roll off,” “Scoot over on your bum,” and other ideas.

The pricks of pain along his shoulders where his waistcoat ended and only his linen shirt protected his skin, as well as in his bum and legs, made the whisky in his belly swirl and threaten to reappear. The ceiling above whirled. He closed his eyes, but the blackness spun just as fast.

Pale and sweaty, he sidled along the torture device and requested his jacket. Someone tossed to him, and he used it to pad his forearms to lever himself like a crab onto the carpet where he lay face down, panting.

The young man went to a knee next to him. “As much as I appreciate the view from this angle, my lord, your presence is requested upstairs.”

Luke groaned. Pushing to his knees, he attempted to stand. Swaying, he waited for the nausea to subside.

His friends stood along the rope, having declined to try their luck.

“Be back in a few.” He waved them off and turned to the woman in black lingering behind the game host. Nodding, he followed her to a curtained alcove that held stairs.

Climbing them nearly did him in, but he clung to the banister on the last step and waited again for the world and his stomach to stop turning. When she led him into an antechamber, he collapsed into the closest chair. “Please... may I have water?”

After a few careful sips, voices intruded upon his consciousness. He listened for a moment. ’Twas two ladies, one presumably the Black Widow, but he could not make out their words.

The same woman who had led him upstairs reappeared from a different door than he’d entered through and gestured to him.

He grabbed his water and stepped through the doorway. Another woman—also all in black, with a veiled hat that covered most of her face—stood behind the desk. He clutched the door handle for balance and tracked his eyes around the room searching for the other—

A familiar figure turned to look at him. Grimacing, she scanned his disheveled hair, clothing and stance. It was William’s widow’s friend, Mrs. Ross, or Rosso. Whatever her name was.

Shaking her head, she said, “Clodpate.”

He bowed. “Wench.”