Percy met the croupier’s gaze across the table. Even as the man appeared to blanch at Percy’s stake, he nodded. The odds were no friend to the reckless aristocrat on this roll, and they both knew it.
The blood whissed through Percy as he stood on the precipice of the unknown. At this moment, his purpose wasn’t solely to wreak revenge and justice upon Montfort. A wickedness flowed in his blood, one that he’d only ever been able to control when he starved it completely. Once fed, even a scrap, it took on a life of its own.
His hand began a slow, relentless shake. With every rattle, the volume of the crowd increased until it crescendoed into a loud roar. The night had been building up to this one fateful toss.
He’d neither nicked nor thrown out on his last roll. If he rolled the main, a seven, the house would win. Sevens were always the best odds.
If he rolled an eight, both the chance and the worst odds in hazard, well, matters would take an interesting turn. He would most definitely gain Montfort’s attention.
Percy flicked his hand open and let the dice fly. Across green baize they hopped, skipped, bounded, and rolled, a series of gasps following their every rotation as they bounced to a stop, their numbers staring up for the world to see.
Percy’s heart galloped in his chest, and he felt as out of breath as if he’d just run a mile at full tilt. He lifted his gaze to meet that of the croupier across the table. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of the man’s face, the smile on his lips turned rictus.
Percy almost felt badly for the croupier, for the man would have to answer to Montfort. Then Percy considered the lives this place had despoiled and destroyed, families ruined as men were reduced to paupers and women to whores. This man was part of that life.
“I’ll settle up now,” Percy spoke through the charged silence.
The croupier’s throat undulated with a hard swallow. He and Percy both knew that he didn’t have the cash on hand to pay out. He would have to summon his superior. This was the exact series of events that Percy had hoped to set in motion when he’d walked through Number 9’s front door tonight.
He was close, so close his fingers twitched with anticipation. So close was the proof he needed against Lord Bertrand Montfort, younger son of the Earl of Surrey and long-standing servant of Crown and Country. It had taken a few months of poking around to catch the whisper that Montfort had been silently investing in gaming hells and brothels around London. Once he’d held this dark, slippery bit of information, Percy understood that if he kept pursuing this path, he would eventually hold the key to Montfort’s ruin. In their rarefied world of wealth, excess, and privilege, reputation was life, and Percy would see Montfort’s destroyed. A little quid pro quo.
The croupier’s gaze shifted and widened on a point beyond Percy’s left shoulder. That was when Percy felt it: a change in the air, an electric current that rippled through the room as it passed from person to person, brightening eyes and heightening smiles. He pivoted and followed the general gaze until he found the veiled woman, her attention fixed on him.
The world stretched away, receding to a great distance. A path parted for her, she one magnet and he the other. Although he could see nothing of her features beneath the veil, her focus never wavered as she moved forward . . . towardhim.
With only a few feet of Persian carpet separating them, she stopped, her lush figure—waist cinched tight, breasts pushed up—somehow on full display beneath all that black lace. Through dense air fogged by cigar smoke and brandy, he caught her scent.Honeysuckle.Another word came to mind.Sunshine. How was it possible a gaming hell madam smelled of summer at its sweetest?
At last, she opened her mouth to speak, only to hesitate at the last moment. No, nothesitate. Women like her didn’t hesitate. She’d paused for effect. “Shall we play for higher stakes?”
Percy blinked. Hervoice. It was husky, a lower register than he would have guessed. Further, it held a foreign accent. The night grew more interesting by the moment.
Montfort had sent her. Percy knew it in a flash.
What he didn’t know waswhy.
Familiar anticipation charged through Percy, urging him on, toward the edge of the precipice that would drop him into the thick of whatever this night—and this woman—held for him. As a spy, he’d loved nothing better than a path that bent at sudden angles.
“Lead the way,” he replied, only just containing a cynical snort. What did Montfort think sending him a whore would accomplish? If this was a stratagem to catch him unawares, it was for amateurs.
The crowd, which had quieted to take in the exchange, burst free and broke into rounds of leers, hoots, and rowdy whistles. The frisson of unease returned and snaked through Percy, as if an unconscious part of himself understood that within this woman lay something he shouldn’t get tangled up in. Except . . .
When had he ever let such a feeling stop him? When hadn’t that feeling, instead, pushed him into the thick of it?
Whatever game Montfort had planned for Percy, he would play.
And he would win.
Chapter 2
Layered in thin black lace and thick red rouge, Isabel Galante looked her part.
Whore.
Except, was it playing a part once one did the deed and accepted payment? Wouldn’t it, in reality, make her one?
She wove across the main floor, through tight spaces packed with gaming tables, chaise longues, and sweaty bodies, expertly eluding the excited grasp of a hand or errant jab of an elbow, and questioned all the choices and bad luck that had led to this moment, withthatman at her back.
Her instructions had included a short description—tall, dark, aristocratic—along with his precise location at the hazard table. And this tall, dark, aristocratic man had been standing in that very spot. She’d expected to find a thoroughly intoxicated, boorish lout bent on dice, women, and self-indulgence.
