*
The tea trayclattered as his mother’s maid gasped and stumbled. Henry was on his feet and at her side, helping her steady it. She gave him a concerned look, and he realized she must have overheard his comment about the witch.
“Why don’t I take that?” he said.
“Your Grace, I couldn’t—”
“Leave us,” his mother said, and the maid bobbed a curtsey and practically ran from the room.
Henry carried the tray to the table and began to serve. “Where did you learn to do that?” his mother asked.
“Oh, here and there. Just lemon for you, Mama?”
“That’s right.”
He handed her a cup and then added cream and several clumps of sugar to his. Even before he poured the tea, he’d smelled that it was the oolong his mother preferred. She liked it steeped overly long, and Henry found it far too bitter for his taste. “Still drinking oolong, I see,” he said, eating a sandwich triangle and then another. He was quite hungry.
“Are we to sit here discussing tea and gobbling sandwiches, or do you want to explain what you meant by that last phrase?”
Henry swallowed and reached for another triangle. “About the witch?”
“Oh, we’ll come to the witch. The first thing you said. The town house.”
“Ah.” Suddenly, the sandwich tasted like he imagined sawdust might. “Yes. I—er, lost it.”
“It’s not a pocket watch, Henry. You cannot misplace it.”
Henry looked down. She would force him to admit it. “I lost it in a game of vingt-et-un.”
Silence.
Henry looked up and found his mother glaring at him. “Go on.”
“I was actually trying to win Carlisle Hall back. I’d had a run of very good luck. I’d won nine hands out of ten for two hours or more, so I wagered Shrewsbury—”
His mother closed her eyes as though pained.
“I wagered the estate on another game, but he wouldn’t play unless I agreed to put up the town house. I didn’t see how I could lose—”
“Idiot,” his mother muttered. Normally, Henry would have protested this verbal abuse, but she had a point.
“I did lose.”
She opened her eyes again. “And now you have nothing. In twelve years you have managed to take all your father passed on to you and either lose it in a card game, sell it, or run it into the ground. Oh, Henry. I am ashamed of you.”
Henry stared at the carpet, a plush blue weave with a gold design. He felt every single admonishment in his bones. He let himself feel it. He needed to hear this. When he craved the gaming tables again, he’d repeat it to himself. “You should be, Mama. I’m ashamed of myself, but it’s not solely my fault.”
His mother’s gaze went to the ceiling, as though she were trying very hard not to throw her tea in his face.
“I told you, there was a witch in the fire at the club. I didn’t recognize her at first. It took me a few days, but then I remembered.”
In fact, he’d been asleep a day or so after losing the town house and dreaming about that night in Scotland when he’d been thirteen.
He’d come awake suddenly and in a cold sweat because he’d recognized the witch in his dream as the one from White’s. He explained all of this, but his mother only leaned forward and patted his cheek.
“Are you feeling well, Henry?”
“I know I sound daft, but there was a witch, and I believe the reason I lost the town house was because of her curse.”
