The Bargain

One

Lord Alan Gresham was icily, intolerably, dangerously bored. As he looked out over the animated, exceedingly fashionable crowd that filled the large reception room, his blue eyes glittered from under hooded lids. His mouth was a thin line. Revelers who glanced his way, curious about his very plain evening dress and solitary state, looked quickly away when he met their eyes. The women tended to draw their gauzy wraps closer despite the enervating warmth of the room, and the men stiffened. Whispers began to circulate, inquiring as to who he was and what the deuce he was doing in Carlton House at the Prince Regent's fete. A damned good question, Alan thought, well aware that he was the object of their attention. He was here against his will, and his better judgment. He was wasting his time, which he hated, and he was being kept from truly important work by a royal whim. He couldn't imagine a situation more likely to rouse his temper and exhaust his small stock of patience.

Alan watched a padded and beribboned fop sidle up to the duke of Langford and murmur a query. The duke did not look pleased, but he answered. The reaction was only too predictable--surprise, feigned incomprehension, and then delight in having a tidbit to circulate among the gossips. Alan ignored the spreading whispers and continued to watch the duke, a tall, spare, handsome man of sixty or so. This was all his fault. Alan wouldn't be trapped here now, on this ridiculous quest, if it weren't for the duke. He clamped his jaw hard, then deliberately relaxed it. He wasn't being quite fair, he admitted to himself. The duke, his father, was no more able to refuse a direct command from the sovereign than he himself was. Prinny's whims and superstitions had brought him here, and until he satisfied the prince, he could not return to his own life. Let's get it over with, then, thought Alan. The waiting was about to drive him mad.

"Well, I hope my eyes are not like limpid forest pools," declared a very clear, musical female voice behind him. "Aren't forest pools full of small slimy creatures and dead leaves?"

Somewhat startled, Alan turned to find the source of this forthrightness. He discovered a girl of perhaps twenty with lustrous, silky brown hair and a turned-up nose. She didn't have the look of the haut ton, with which Alan was only too tiresomely familiar. Her gown was too simple, her hair not fashionably cropped. She looked, in fact, like someone who should not, under any circumstances, have been brought to Carlton House and the possible notice of the Prince Regent.

Or of the dissolute-looking fellow who was bending over her now, Alan noted. He had the bloodshot eyes and pouchy skin of a man who had spent years drinking too much and sleeping too little. The set of his thin lips and the lines in his face spoke of cruelty. Alan started to go to the rescue. Then he remembered where he was. Innocent young ladies were not left alone in Carlton House, at the mercy of the prince's exceedingly untrustworthy set of friends and hangers-on. Their families saw to that. Most likely this girl was a high flyer whose youthful looks were very good for business. No doubt she knew what she was doing. He started to turn away.

"No, I do not wish to stroll with you in the garden," the girl said. "I have told you so a dozen times. I don't wish to be rude, but please go away."

The man grasped her arm, his fingers visibly digging into her flesh. He tried to pull her along with him through the crowd.

"I'll scream," said the girl, rather calmly. "I can scream very loudly. My singing teacher said I have an extraordinary set of lungs. Though an unreliable grasp of pitch," she added with regretful honesty.

Her companion ignored this threat until the girl actually opened her mouth and drew in a deep preparatory breath. Then, with a look around at the crowd and a muttered oath, he dropped her arm. "Witch," he said.

"'Double, double toil and trouble,'" she replied pertly.