"I do not cheat. I know how to count cards. Mine. Yours. Everyone's."
"It's a skill."
"Yes," she said, "and it can be learned!"
"So you did. And what have you won over the years?"
"Why? Do you want me to return it all?"
He reproved her with a look. "Don't be funny. I'm not. I'm trying instead to understand you. Your winnings, please?"
She winced. Ran a hand through her hair and began to pluck the pins from her coif. She hated fancy coiffures and tightly bound hair, tightly bound corsets, tightly bound women and suffocating rules. She'd obeyed all of them to what avail?
Curse it!
Her long dark hair cascaded around her shoulders in thick heavy coils. She massaged her head, spread out her curls, free of the restrictions, and stroked strands of it, recalling what she'd won. "Money. I won money, mostly. A hundred here. Fifty there. I usually donated it to the Foundling Home in Bath. Poor innocents, they need much, you know. But lately, my mother and I run short of funds. Since my father died, we live on an allowance that he ordered for us." Penny-pincher that he was, her sire ordered his solicitor to search for the new rightful earl who, according to his mother, lived in the American State of Massachusetts.
"Anything else?" Rory pressed.
She sniffed. "Last month, I won a cow but I did not take her home. Where would I put her, eh? In the pink parlor?"
"What did you do with her?"
"Gave her back to Mister Wiggins who owned her! I can't feed a cow. Or milk her."
"Why do you gamble?"
Ah. He was attempting to discover if she worked the cards to satisfy an addiction. Well, she picked up a deck to experience a euphoria, but not for the type he understood. "I don't...gamble."
"How's that?"
"I...play!"
"Explain it to me."
If he were any other man, she would have shown him the door. Injured ankle. Kindness to her. His charm, notwithstanding.
"I know how to play well. With insight and skill. I can count and see what others have. And I use that to my benefit. My ability makes me strong. Competent."
"You are that without gambling."
"Kind of you to say, sir. But let's be honest, you have known me less than one day."
"I have known you well enough that you told me how you dance with abandon."
"Oh, Rory." Tears surprised her. She brushed at them. "That is a saying."
"Yes. Which comes from the need to be free."
She nodded and glanced at her clasped hands.
He took them both in his. "Free of what, Fee?"
She met his gaze.
"Of what must you be free?"
"Such a long tale. You would be bored."
