He finally raised his head and gave her a lopsided smile. “You win.”
When she extended her hand, instead of a solemn shake, he pulled her hand close to his mouth, turned over her palm, and placed a warm kiss there in the sensitive dip that she felt all the way down to her quim.
Out of the corner of her eye she noticed the club’s footmen forming into a line to come to her defense. She shook her head in a vigorous “no,” and they stood down.
She wanted to linger over the way his eyes looked in the low light, the way they changed from a light amber to dark brown, depending on how hard he concentrated. He wasn’t concentrating on the game now. He was focused entirely on her.
Instead of saying what she wanted to say, she complained. “I suppose you think you’re going to charm me out of the journal pages now.”
“Am I?”
“No. This game was not nearly close enough.” She ran her tongue over her lower lip before adding, “You’re going to have to try harder. I’m enjoying your…adventures…entirely too much.”
“How well do I have to play to satisfy you?”
“Enough so I’ll never forget you…or your journal pages.”
* * *
Col hardened painfullyagainst his already too-tight trousers. Ever since Maria he’d managed to compartmentalize his life. He’d vowed never again to fall under the spell of a deceitful woman. He and one of the actresses who lived on a lower floor of his boarding house managed to assuage their mutual needs from time to time, but out-of-control lust hadn’t overcome him in many years.
He had to move carefully here. When he’d promised himself never again, he’d meant it. If he’d meant it, though, why was his cock fantasizing about the woman before him? Open to him on silken sheets, her pale legs spread wide, her ethereal white-blonde hair splayed across a red satin-covered pillow?
Perhaps he’d take her wearing nothing but the harlequin mask, to taunt and remind him of his futile attempts to master her at the chess board. But he knew in that moment she was the sort of woman who would not willingly submit in his bed, or any other man’s bed for that matter. The touch of flint in her violet-tinged eyes made that truth abundantly clear.
He allowed himself to wonder for one jagged second whether all the men she trounced in the gaming room had the same thoughts. When he spared a furtive glance at the five other gentlemen playing that night, he realized he was not the only one who would be seeking release later in his lonely bed.
In one swift move he stood and swept from the chess room, refusing to look back toward his slim, exotic tormentor.
* * *
Charlotte’s corepulsed and ached where she needed the strange Mr. Colwyn most. The unexpected attraction left her confused. She’d never depended on a man to fill any of her needs since the night long ago when Captain El had marched into the shabby coffee house near the docks where Charlotte had been deep into defeating a group of more than eight chess players.
The sight of Eleanor when she was quiet and unassuming was frightening enough. Her unusual height for a woman coupled with the scar slashing one side of her face always gave strangers pause. However, the sight of Eleanor enraged could strike fear into the hearts of grown men.
Charlotte’s old handler, Bernard, was collecting wagers from the other patrons and onlookers when the fearsome Captain El stormed in through the front door. An icy wind had blown in behind her, magnifying the effect of her height in a full, swirling black woolen cape. The sound of her boots pounding against the aged wooden boards had been the only warning he’d gotten before she’d grabbed him by the shoulders of his shabby coat and thrown him onto the floor.
The coins he’d collected flew to all corners of the room. The mysterious Amazon of a woman had stood over Charlotte’s former torturer and forced him to crawl across the coffee shop picking up the stray pence and depositing them into the upturned top hat she’d worn that night. Two burly men who’d accompanied her into the room had lifted up the old bastard Bernard by his armpits and pushed him toward the rear of the coffee shop.
Patrons had spilled out into the cold night, desperate to flee the sight of whatever would happen next. Without a further word, the tall woman had held her hand out to Charlotte, and they’d exited the coffee house door immediately. When Charlotte had turned at the sound of screams emanating from inside the coffee house, Eleanor had gently turned her away. Away toward the interior of a luxurious carriage, away toward a new life.
* * *
Col walked rapidly awayfrom Goodrum’s, eager to get as much distance as possible between him and the confounded chess mistress. Her cryptic answer as to how well he had to play to get his damned journal pages back had left him more confused than he’d been at the very beginning. Who was this woman for whom money meant nothing? Why couldn’t she just take his coin and leave him in peace with his pages, his reputation, and his secrets intact? And then there was the matter of the unbidden memories that had surfaced when he’d tried to recall just how damning the pages might be.
She was toying with him, like a tom with a rat. If she wanted to destroy him, why not just get it over with instead of torturing him night after night at a damnable chess board?
He supposed CB could temporarily cover the costs of another expensive night in Goodrum’s chess room for him, but what if the damnable woman was still not satisfied with his performance? What then? He’d pay CB back when his pay from the river police came through, but he’d decided three games would be his limit. If she didn’t let him have his pages after that, he might have to explain to the infernal woman exactly what the stakes were if the contents of the pages were ever revealed publicly. Surely she could see reason. He had to find a way tomakeher see reason.
After a quick glance at his pocket watch, he headed briskly back toward Great Queen Street. He had a standing appointment with a beautiful, spoiled woman who would be annoyed if he were late again for her bedtime tale.
* * *
Damn the need toslow down moves toward the end. Charlotte felt as though she might burst from frustration if she didn’t get away from the chess room and back to her hideaway villa in St. John’s Wood. She needed to read more of Mr. Colwyn’s journal pages. She desperately yearned for more clues to how that lonely, used boy had turned into the hard, stubborn man she’d confronted across a chess board that evening.
In his early writing, he’d been eager and open for affection. But then he’d been betrayed in the worst possible way by the woman he’d thought had been as much in love with him as he was in love with her. Where had he gone, what had he become after she’d turned him into nothing more than a sexual plaything for her friends?
Had he run away? Or had he suffered through the shame of taking money for his services so that he could survive and stay at university?
