Read Online A Christmas Gambol by Joan Smith - Free Book Online Page A

smudges on it afterward.”
    “Why did she want a phaeton?”
    “Because they are all the crack, goose!”
    “Oh. And why would he not let her have one?”
    “Because he had lost a thousand pounds at the card table the evening before, and naturally his wife was the one who had to pay for his sins. That is the way we are treated, Sissie. Shocking! It’s not all roses, being married to a rich lord, you must know.”
    “Lost a thousand pounds in one evening!”
    “That’s nothing,” Meg said. “Fairly once lost five hundred in two minutes. He and Atherly were betting on whether Lady Caroline Lamb would attend a dinner party after Byron had jilted her. She appeared at the door not two minutes later. I swear Atherly had seen her carriage draw up before he made the bet. Fairly tried to reneg on his promise to buy me a pair of cream ponies for my carriage after he lost his bet, but I made him go to the cents-percenter and borrow the money.”
    “How did you make him?” Cicely asked, her eyes wide.
    “I made his life a living hell,” Meg replied with a glinting smile at the memory. “I stayed in my room for twenty-four hours. Every time I heard him approach the door, I took a deep whiff of my hartshorn, and he found me in tears. Gentlemen can’t bear to see ladies cry.”
    Papa says it is folly to borrow from the usurers.”
    “Oh, everyone does it in London. It is the latest thing.”
    “Money is money in London, the same as in the country. What’s borrowed must be paid—with interest. I cannot think it wise for you to encourage Fairly to borrow.”
    “He needs no encouragement, goose!”
    “It would be horrid if he squandered all his fortune and ended up poor.”
    “Shocking,” Meg agreed, undismayed.
    “I wouldn’t do as everyone else does, just to make them like me. That can easily happen in a place like London.” To give her friend a foretaste of the doom awaiting her if she continued on this profligate course, Cicely asked Meg to accompany her and Fairly to the slums that afternoon.
    “I’ve already seen them. They are very boring. Bedlam was much more amusing. Perhaps Fairly will take you there to see the lunatics tomorrow. It’s kind of you to entertain him for me. It leaves me free for more interesting amusements,” she said daringly.
    “You aren’t seeing another gentleman!” Sissie gasped.
    “No, I am having my portrait painted as a surprise for Fairly.” She didn’t mention that the artist was an exceedingly pretty young fellow and an excellent flirt, even if he was not much of a painter.
    “Then you do still love Fairly?” Sissie said, relieved to hear it.
    “Of course I do, goose!” Meg said and frowned to realize she meant it. “It’s just that he hasn’t turned out to be the sort of husband I imagined. His first ardor faded too quickly. When new gowns and bonnets didn’t quicken his love, I tried making him jealous, but he was not at all jealous of my flirts. He didn’t command me to stop seeing my cicisbeo; he reciprocated by acquiring flirts of his own. If a man doesn’t take charge, then he must not expect his wife to behave as he wishes.” She pouted and tossed her curls. “It’s nothing to get in a pelter about. It’s the way everyone goes on in London. Married couples are not shackled leg and wing here. We’d be a laughingstock if we went about together.”
    “If I had a husband I loved I wouldn’t spend so much time in London, if that’s the way folks go on.”
    “You’re a country mouse, Sissie. You will marry some stout squire and have a nurseryful of children. To each her own.”
    “Fairly would like a son.”
    “One would never guess it by the way he behaves,” Meg snipped, dipping her fingers into the rouge pot, for her mirror told her she looked like a corpse beside Sissie.
    Fairly did not return for lunch. Meg waited for a quarter of an hour, and when it was clear he was not coming, she and Cicely went into the dining room without him.
    “It’s