She also knew Lord Pettifer.
He was seated at the card table of course. But it was his smile that she remembered. It was the same awful, predatory smile he had shown when he had bested her father. It was the smile of a predator who had has just eaten until it cannot even move and then licks the blood off its maw.
Regina’s anger flared up. She wished to smack him.
“How can I help you, Miss?”
It was Lord Morrison. Regina recognized his voice. And of course, as the host, he must come forward.
For a moment she completely forgot what to say or how to say it. She almost let out a kind of squeak. Then she remembered herself.
“I am here to play,” Regina said. Her voice carried the accent that Lord Quentin had taught her.
All the men glanced at one another. It was plain to see that they did not know what to do with her.
“She can’t,” one man said.
“And why not?” Someone else added. “It’s the masquerade. Anything goes, and all of that, wasn’t that what you said earlier Daniels?”
Some of the men nodded, looking at one another with a gleam in their eyes that their masks could not hide. Regina drew herself up. She would not be seen as an easy target by them.
Not all of the men seemed convinced by their compatriot’s argument, however. They looked at Regina suspiciously. Regina could see the fingers twitching on one or two of them. She wondered if they were going to stride forward and yank off her mask, exposing her, sending her away for being a foolish, rebellious girl.
“I say that we let her play as well,” Lord Pettifer said. He was smirking. He thought that he had found easy prey.
The other men shuffled their feet and looked at one another. Regina could read the nervousness in their twitching mouths and their stiff limbs. None of them wanted to contradict Lord Pettifer, it seemed. Regina wondered how many of them owed Lord Pettifer in some way, same as her father did.
When no one contradicted Lord Pettifer, his smirk broadened. He looked at Regina with a gleam in his eyes. Already he was overconfident. That was good.
Regina focused on her anger in order to keep the smile off of her face. Yes. She would play. And she would destroy him.
Lord Morrison seemed torn for a moment. It was still his house and ultimately still his word on what was allowed and what was not. He looked at her, and for a moment, Regina thought he might recognize her. The Morrisons had been great friends of her family for years. If she could recognize Lord Harrison even with his mask, surely it was not impossible for Lord Morrison to recognize the girl whose family he had been entertaining for so many years.
Regina felt that lightheaded feeling returning. Lord Morrison looked her up and down. Would he know her? Would he turn her away if he did? Escort her out? Expose her?
Regina forced herself to look him in the eye. She met his gaze and did not flinch when he looked directly into her face. He looked a little resigned but not angry or surprised.
Then, with a sigh, he stepped back. “If someone would bring a chair for the lady?”
Regina had to remind herself to stay upright and proper and not to slump down in relief. He had not recognized her. She could play.
She sat down in the proffered chair and settled herself. She could feel that everyone was watching her now. She actually wanted them to. She wanted everyone to bear witness to what was about to happen.
For a wild moment, then, panic seized her. It was like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water on her head. What was she doing? How could she possibly pull this off? She was about to disgrace herself beyond reason and lose everything.
Then she got a hold of herself. This was no way to act. She had to win this and she was not going to let the fear have its way with her. She remembered what Cora had said. These were just men, really. Just men.
Lord Pettifer was the dealer to start with. Regina did not recognize any of the other men. Had their faces been exposed, Lord Harrison had told her, he should have warned her how each man played. But with her unable to recognize them, she would have to rely upon her ability to read them while they played.
There were eight of them to start out with: Regina, Lord Pettifer, and then six others. It was a good number for playing a game of loo with large stakes. For ruining Lord Pettifer, not so much. Regina would have to find a way to get the others out of the card game while keeping Lord Pettifer in and not losing it all herself.
Lord Pettifer shuffled the cards and dealt them out. Regina looked at her cards and breathed slowly.
She looked around at the card players. She would play it safe this first hand so that she could get a feel for how they all operated and then she would start to get more aggressive.
Regina focused on her breathing as they began to play. She could do this. She could do this. She could do this.
And then she found out—she could.
In the first round she played it safe. She watched the others as they played—that one gentleman, two to the left from Lord Pettifer, would tap his middle finger nervously when he had a bad hand.
The player directly on her left, he was raising immediately, putting too much money into the pot. She could see the strain around his eyes—he was bluffing.
None of these men, Regina thought, were as good as Lord Harrison. They weren’t even as good as Cora. All right then.
She knew this. She understood what was going on. She could read the players by their nervous ticks and the way their eyes moved and the expressions on their faces. She understood the cards and the different hands and possibilities and how to bet.
The one thing she wasn’t sure that she knew was if she could bluff.
It was something that Lord Harrison had often told her she needed to work on. Cora had noted it as well. Regina was not good at lying. If she had a bad hand at the end and she was up against Lord Pettifer…
No, she would not think about that. If she thought about how she failed, she reminded herself, then she would fail. She had to fake her confidence, Cora had often instructed her. If she acted confident, then others would believe it, and eventually it would become true.
She played, and played, and played. One gentleman, she saw, was playing it too safe. She would have to draw him out by increasing the pot to the point where he could no longer safely bet. Another was chewing his lip when he had a good hand—he was nervous the tide would turn against him. It was an odd tick, as much men showed their nerves when they had a bad hand but Regina was able to figure it out.
Regina affected a nervous habit of her own. She stroked the back of her cards when she had a good hand. When she had a bad one, she rolled her shoulders, just slightly.