A Radical Arrangement by Jane Ashford Page B

any she had heard him use.
    “No,” she replied, coming back into the room. “Can I do something for you?” As she said this, she felt a strange impulse to giggle. They were talking to each other as carefully as her mother did to Mrs. Kane, her only rival for “great lady” of their neighborhood in Devon and, consequently, her deadliest enemy.
    “It is very slow, lying here. It appears they have no books at this inn. You mentioned cards. I thought we might try a hand, if you are still willing.”
    “Of course. I’ll fetch them.” Turning away, Margaret hid a smile. The insufferable Sir Justin Keighley had certainly altered since the morning. A few hours’ boredom was apparently salutary. She found the cards and ran lightly back upstairs, still smiling. There was a certain pleasure in this change. He deserved a bit of chastening.
    “Do you play piquet?” Keighley asked when she presented the deck.
    Margaret shook her head.
    “Whist? Bezique?”
    “I fear I’ve rarely played cards. The only game I know is Patience.” For an instant his face showed such chagrin that Margaret had to suppress another giggle. “I am willing to learn,” she added with a sweet smile.
    Justin closed his eyes briefly, then opened them with a sigh. If he had had to describe his idea of hell, it probably would have closely resembled his present situation. No doubt the girl would be an execrable cardplayer. Perhaps even boredom was preferable to trying to teach her a game. He considered this alternative but rejected it. “Is that tray still about?” he asked. “We can put it here and use it for a table.”
    Margaret brought the wooden tray back, after removing the dishes, and placed it at his side on the coverlet.
    “All right,” he continued wearily, fanning the deck out on it with his good hand. “We will try piquet, I think. These are the rules.”
    * * *
    An hour later, Margaret hunched, frowning, over the cards in her hand while Sir Justin gazed at her with a look of such rigidly controlled fury that Mrs. Dowling might have been alarmed at her patient’s state. “Are you going to play?” he asked. His tone would have withered any number of habitués of White’s, where Keighley was known as one of the finest cardplayers in London.
    But Margaret was concentrating too closely to notice. She had been making an intense effort in the past hour to remember all the rules he had thrown at her and to play a creditable game. This seemed to become ever more difficult as time passed, and at the moment she was completely at a loss. “Do you think,” she responded without looking up, “that all the cards are here? I have not seen the jack of hearts. Have you had it?”
    Sir Justin clenched his teeth, and his face reddened ominously. “Did you not count the deck before we began?” he said slowly, enunciating each word as if he feared to let it out.
    “I didn’t think to. I should have. I daresay these cards have been lying about for years.”
    “You are the stupidest girl I have ever had the misfortune to encounter!” exploded her companion. “Not only are you utterly unable to grasp the simplest set of rules, but you don’t even have the sense to examine cards before you begin a game. Even an idiot does that much.”
    “Indeed?” Margaret’s chin had come up in outrage. “Why didn’t you do it, then? You are supposed to be the expert. I never claimed to know anything of cards.”
    “I assumed you had taken care of the matter,” he snapped venomously. But her point was so telling that he abandoned this line and added, “In any case, I think we may dispense with cards. You will never be even an average player.”
    “I don’t think that is fair. I have scarcely tried.” Margaret did not understand the rage of a first-rate player after an hour of hesitations and mistakes, and thus she failed to comprehend the depth of his emotion.
    “ Do try the next time, then. Perhaps if you strain your faculties to the utmost, you