Or his praise, spoken low and velvet in her ear.
Or something else… Something she couldn’t rightly identify.
She shook the thought away and accepted her winnings, her blood soaring with triumph and possibility. If she could do that—her mind did a quick calculation—ten more times, she would have Papa’s finances settled and forget the other scheme she’d had planned.
“Want to try your luck at hazard?” asked Lord Archer.
“Not a chance,” shesaid, determined.
She experienced a feeling she hadn’t felt in months.Hope.
Here at Chaz’s gaming hell, tonight, at this roulette table, she was going to fix what had gone so desperately wrong for her family.
She might have to allow that it would be thanks to Lord Archer.
She’d keep that last bit to herself.
Chapter Three
Archie stepped back and observed Miss Valentina Hart as she gambled on roulette like she really meant it.
He’d only brought her here as a lark, to get her mind off having just lost her employment. Of course, her place at the Five Graces was no great loss. She could do better, though, curiously, she didn’t seem to understand that.
On the next spin of the wheel, she lost the number—44—but won the color—black—the one gain more than offsetting the other loss. Then another spin, and another win—the corner of 18. Did the woman possess a prescience that made her particularly skilled at this game of whirling luck?
After her fifth win in a row, she tossed him a smile. Eyes bright, a dimple in her left cheek, he sensed daring in that smile. A daring that pushed through her natural reserve.
A daring that called to a place in him that had no choice but to respond. “You’re wilder than you think, you know,” he couldn’t help saying.
She tossed a laugh his way and played on, wild and daring, for a length of time that was impossible to track within the timeless confines of a gaming hell. Certainly, she lost here and there, but mostly she won and won and won.
Then it started.
She began losing.
Once was a fluke.
Twice was a bit of bad luck.
Thrice was a pattern.
Dame Fortune had, at last, deserted her. It had been bound to happen, as it did to every gambler. Miss Hart, however, hadn’t yet learned that hard fact and kept throwing money at the problem. Archie sensed in his gut it would only get worse from here.
Her smile fell with each spin of the wheel, the crease between her eyebrows deepening. When she was down to two markers, her gaze flicked toward him, then skittered away. But the contact lasted long enough for him to catch an emotion in there.
Panic.
Odd, that. What did Miss Hart have to be panicked about? She wasn’t gambling with her own money. But the way she was behaving… It was as if she were.
She placed her markers on red, her shoulders set in the posture of someone holding her breath while the wheel spun. The marble skittered and hopped until, at last, finding a home—8.
Black.
She gasped and went stone still.
“Shall we try our luck at the hazard table?” he asked. He needed to pry her away from roulette.
She shook her head, silent, body tensed with held breath.
