Anne Barbour by Escapades Four Regency Novellas Page B

bad for a man, what about a female?” interrupted Sally. “I mean, just look at you and me. If we hadn’t dug in our heels three years ago, we would have found ourselves married to one another.”
    “Precisely my point. We were lucky. Our parents wished us to marry, but they had some regard for our feelings. Others, however, simply push their progeny into the pit with no regard to their preferences. Anyway,” he continued, taking up the thread, “at the end of it, we all—there were twelve of us in the room— made a vow to resist all the parental machinations and society’s expectations and all the rest.”
    Charlie rose and began to pace the floor.
    “Then,” he continued, “Horace Belwharton spoke up. He’d actually been studying his history, and he came up with this tontine idea. It seems,” he went on hastily, observing further signs of impatience in his listener, “that a couple of hundred years or so ago, some of the more rapacious citizens of Italy, thought up a unique sweepstakes scheme. Simply put, a group of men would shove a fairish amount of money into a pot, and the last man alive would collect it all.”
    Once more, he was the recipient of a blank stare.
    “I’m not saying it’s a very sensible sort of undertaking—I rather think it must have led to some duty work—stilettos in dark alleys and that sort of thing— but the whole idea seemed especially designed to fit our particular situation.”
    “Charlie,” said Sally with great firmness. “You’re babbling, and I really don’t ...”
    “No, no.” Charlie spoke impatiently. “Just listen, will you? I don’t mean we wagered on who would live the longest. We amended the scheme. We each agreed to scrape together a hundred pounds and give it to Tom Falwell to invest for us. Tom is the best of good fellows, even though his father is a cit—owns a couple of banks or some such, and he’s considered a financial genius. We solemnly vowed to fight our families’ matrimonial plans tooth and nail, and the one who remained successful the longest—that is, the last of us left unmarried would claim the ducats.”
    Sally stared at him thoughtfully. “Well,” she said at last. “The whole thing sounds idiotish in the extreme, but—let’s see ... You’re, um, twenty-three, so that must have been six years ago. If your financial genius did well by you, I suppose there must be a fair amount of money accrued by now. You, of course, are obviously still in the running to capture the prize, but”— her eyes narrowed—”what has all this to do with me?”
    Sally contemplated her friend uneasily. It was true, they had been in each others’ pockets almost since they had been in leading strings. Their estates marched together, and they had been inseparable through all their growing-up time. A year Charlie’s junior, Sally had acted first as worthy opponent in endless games of toy soldiers and mumblety-peg, and later as indefatigable carrier of his game bag and fishing pole, as well as target of daring ambuscades and brilliant military maneuvers. In turn, Charlie had put in duty as doll mender, defender against every other small boy in the neighborhood, and arranger of funerals for the assortments of birds, kittens, and rabbits discovered by Sally in various states of terminal distress on their tramps through meadow and forest land.
    It was true, she reflected uneasily, that she and Charlie had delivered one another from more than one sticky situation. If she had aided him in some of his more totty-headed schemes, he had always been there to rescue her from the results of her own folly. That was all in the past, however, she reflected stiffly. The last time she had sought Charlie’s aid—the episode of Lady Melksham’s pet pug, if she were not mistaken—she had still been in her teens. She was now a dignified lady of twenty-two years and far beyond such escapades.
    Charlie, on the other hand, had never outgrown his capacity to fall from one