“Oh, my Lord, could you two look any more contrite.” Cora announced her annoyance the moment they entered the sitting room. She was sitting and reading a book, looking thoroughly put out. “One would think that you two had killed one another’s kittens or something for the looks on your faces.”
“Perhaps I am merely basking in the first proper apology I have had to give in years,” Harrison replied. “Contain your excitement, Cora, this does not mean I shall go about apologizing for anything else.”
“Oh, of course, that would be too much to ask of you.”
“Are you two certain that you are not related?” Regina asked. “Because you behave like siblings.”
“Cora wishes that she was related to me, but alas,” Harrison said dramatically, putting a hand over his heart, “Unless we stumbled into a Gothic romance when I wasn’t looking and she is secretly my half-sister or somesuch, no. We are not.”
Cora scoffed. “I thought that she was here to learn cards, hmm? Shall we go back to teaching her useful things?”
“Never mind her,” Harrison said. “She uses her cruel sense of humor to show her affection. As I’m sure you have well figured out. Her jealousy is a petty thing next to her congratulations for you.”
“She hides her congratulations well,” Regina remarked, a little put out by Cora’s attitude.
Cora sighed and set aside her book. “My sweet little one. I am quite happy for you. Although I must admit seeing your blissful faces does make my gut ache something fierce. So long as you do not flaunt it in my face overmuch, I see no reason to be anything but pleased for you. It is much better that you learn these things now, and snatch happiness where you can.”
Happiness? Regina did not think this to be quite so much as happiness—was it? Certainly she felt contented. She felt blissful, her body sighing with the echoes of great pleasure. And she was most comfortable on Harrison’s arm, at Harrison’s side.
Was this happiness? And if so, was she so unused to feeling it that she could not properly recognize it when it hit her? The thought startled her.
“Cora does raise one good point,” Harrison admitted. “We must turn to the cards. You are getting to be quite reliable in your talents, my Puck. Shall we?”
Regina nodded. Yes. To the cards.
They played again and again. Regina, her fears temporarily put aside by Harrison’s reassurances in their relationship, was able to concentrate better than she had the last few days.
She endered a kind of zone, so to speak. It was like she was thinking, but not as hard as she had been. Or it was just as hard, but she didn’t feel it. It was like she was coasting, almost, in her mind.
“It happens when you go riding for a long time as well,” Harrison told her when she explained it to him. “When your body or mind is doing something for a great length of time, it begins to sort of enter this state where it’s continuing to do it but without expending as much energy. It’s strange but also a little addicting, isn’t it?”
It was. Regina could understand why people went riding for so many hours. She had always imagined that it must be quite bothersome, getting knocked around on a horse and earning large bruises. But if they were entering the kind of state that she was, in their own way, then she could hardly blame them.
The next few days were very focused. Harrison and Cora let her be the dealer more and more often. In time her hands were able to go through the motions of shuffling and dealing without her looking at the cards as she did it.
She was winning more and more often, and it was getting harder for Thomas to beat her. She could see him struggling, even while Cora laughed at the both of them for their intensity and competitiveness.
“You two are a pair,” she would declare. “Both of you stubborn as mules and refusing to back down. If this were an actual game you’d have both staked your entire fortunes and your first born children by now.”
It was a joke, of course, but it struck Regina through the heart. Was this how her father was? Was she becoming a gambling addict as he was?
She brought it up to Thomas one night, after they had finished and she was preparing to be escorted home.
“You seem thoughtful, my Puck,” he noted as he put away the cards. “Is something amiss?”
Regina sighed. “It is merely that I worry that I am turning into my father. The way that Cora describes us—how competitive we are with one another—and how determined I am to win. The way I love… I am ashamed, I admit, of the way that I love how my mind gets when we are deep in a game. I fear that is how my father is and that after this game, I still will not be able to stop playing. That I will bring my family to disgrace and ruin, as he did.”
Harrison sat down next to her. “Miss Regina Hartfield. Listen to me. You are becoming good at something. I think, perhaps, that this is the first thing that you have truly worked for in the company of others where you can show off your skill. Is that true?”
Regina nodded.
“Then it is only natural that you should be a bit competitive. If you were used to doing activities with others, such as riding, I think it would not strike you so hard to be the best. When we are deprived of something, such as praise or recognition, to finally see the chance to obtain it is tempting indeed.
“But do you think of the cards as you lie in bed? Do you wake up with only one longing in your chest: to play again?”
Regina shook her head. It was only when she was in the middle of playing that she felt that strong determination to win. In those moments it was as if someone had wrapped a string around her stomach and pulled, and she was compelled to follow that string.
But the rest of the day? No. She was easily distracted, by Cora and Aunt Jane and letters from her sisters and so on. Thomas himself was most distracting as well.
She shook her head again, for emphasis.
“Tell me, then, what you think of when you sit down to play.”
Regina thought about that. “I think of my family,” she admitted at last. “It feels foolish to say, I know. But that is what I think on. I remember that this is the only way to save them. I remind myself that I must be the best, and if I do not best you, how can I hope to best Lord Pettifer?”
Harrison nodded. “That is good. That is as it should be. If you thought only of how you enjoyed playing and how you wanted to win, then I should be concerned. But your goal is still firm in hand and your senses are about you.
“It’s all right, you know, to enjoy this a bit. I should hope that learning how to play hasn’t been a trial for you and that you should find some joy in it. If you were miserable every game, I would feel quite awful, I must admit.
“But you do not have to worry. I have been watching you, as I must, to help you to improve. I have seen no sign of addiction about you. And why should I? There is no hole in your life that you are trying to fill.”