Opening his hand, he held the stack of cards out, and she removed a good two-thirds of the deck, set the queen into their spot, and placed the rest back on top. He tapped the cards against the table and began shuffling with nimble fingers. Then he set down the deck and cut it. Reaching over, she turned over the exposed card. The queen of clubs again.
Looking at him through her lashes, she picked up the queen and turned it over, examining the back for a cutmark, the edges for a bend or a sign that he’d marred it with a fingernail. Nothing. She rubbed it against the soft white kid of her glove. No ink came off against the material.
If his brother hadn’t already suggested he had a deck full of the same card, she would have demanded to see them all. It was a trick of some sort, but what was the trick? What wasn’t she seeing? Had he secreted it up a sleeve and only returned it as he cut the deck? She’d been watching carefully, but she wasn’t accustomed to deviousness.
“Do ye give up, lass? Should I wish ye good day so I can go find someaught to eat? I’m feeling a bit peckish. Or do ye have someaught else ye’re of a mind to offer me in exchange for my insight? Someaught more personal might suffice, I suppose.”
Miranda scowled. Everyone wanted something from her, apparently. Every man did, anyway. At least this one was thus far only annoying and arrogant. “May I touch you?”
“That was swiftly decided,” he returned, his gray-green eyes amused and, unless she was greatly mistaken, a little surprised. “Well, I’m a man of my word. Do ye want to do it here, or somewhere more private?”
What?“Oh, for heaven’s sake. May I touch your damned arm, Mr. MacTaggert. To decipher your card trick.” There. And she’d spent barely a second imagining herself kissing him, as if she would ever wish to do such a thing. Just because his appearance was likely to set other, more naive women swooning didn’t mean she was the least bit tempted by him.
His grin only deepened at her rejoinder, and if her clarification disappointed him, he didn’t show it. “Oh, aye, then. Such language, Miranda Harris. Ye’ll make me blush.”
She very much doubted that, though she couldn’t recall ever cursing in a man’s presence before. Well, this one deserved it for being so aggravating and handsome and more complex than she’d expected. Sitting forward, she reached for his right hand. He had large hands, with calluses across the palm and several fingertips—marks of someone who labored. That surprised her. Gamblers gambled. That was their occupation and their means of support. They didn’t do whatever hard work it would take to make calluses.
“Do ye reckon I hid it inside my skin, then? That’s a worse guess than any Niall’s ever made.”
“I’m not finished.” When she glanced up at him, his gaze was on their joined hands, his palm up with one of hers holding it there and the other touching his fingertips. His hand did have an elegance to it despite the calluses—a sculptor’s or a wood carver’s hand rather than that of a common laborer. And his skin felt warm, even through her gloves.
Mentally shaking herself, she felt up along his sleeve to the elbow. This wasn’t a seduction, and it wasn’t simply about trying to solve a puzzle; her future might well depend on whether he would answer her questions or not. No springs or wires lurked beneath his coat sleeve or the superfine shirt beneath; no sign that he’d hidden a card away.
“Are ye finished now? Ye can check beneath my kilt if ye like, but I can promise ye there’s nae room for a spare deck of cards down there.”
“I will not be rattled, Mr. MacTaggert,” she stated, even as her cheeks heated. “Not by your crassness or your lack of empathy.” She couldn’t afford to be dissuaded; she didn’t know where else to go for advice that wouldn’t tear her family apart and break several hearts in the process.
The idea of trying to find a way out of this disaster allon her own left her cold. Thus far Captain Vale had had a ready answer to every argument she presented. It felt like he’d already been there, seen all the paths she might use to escape, and laid out snares and dug pits, and now just waited for her to realize she had nowhere to turn.
On the outside she felt chilled as well, but then half the windows in the room were open to the overcast outside. Clearly that didn’t trouble Aden and his warm hands, but then he was from the Highlands and likely accustomed to a much colder clime.
Miranda blinked. Releasing his sleeve, she sat down again, reviewing the trick in her mind—him shuffling one-handed, his fingers closing over the deck as she selected her card, his chat about queens and clubs as she held the card in her gloved fingers in the cold room. Could it be that simple? And that clever?
She took a slow breath. He’d wanted her to wager her mind against his skill, but how far was she willing to trust his instincts? Could she trust him at all?
“I require your advice and quite possibly your assistance,” she said, tapping her fingers against the tabletop as she spoke. “And in order for you to be of the most use to me, I also require your discretion, your word that whatever I tell you will not go beyond the two of us. Will you agree to those terms?”
He lifted an eyebrow. Then a slow smile touched his mouth once more. “Ye reckon ye’ve figured it out, then, do ye? And ye’re confident enough to double yer wager? Aye, I’ll accept those terms. If ye’re wrong, though, ye have to leave and nae trouble me again. But before ye go, I’ll require a kiss from ye. Yer mouth to my mouth, right here at this table.”
She’d already been looking at that smile of his, an amused, cynical temptation to sin, an expression that dared her to trust what she thought she knew and place avalue on that decision. If he hadn’t just proven once again that he was nothing but a game player who twisted people about to suit his own whims, she would have noted that he had an attractive smile, that altogether he made for an astoundingly well-featured man. That only made him worse, that he had the means to lure someone in with a pleasant, compelling countenance and then ruin them. At least her eyes were open, thank goodness, and she was already under threat of ruination. “Agreed.”
Leaning back, he folded his arms across his chest. “What is it, then? How did I find yer queen?”
“Temperature,” she replied, mentally crossing her fingers. She needed to be correct. Everything depended on it. “You keep the room cold, the cards in your hand warm, and when a card is chosen you distract your victim with chatting about something or other until the air cools it. Then you feel it as you finish shuffling and cut the deck appropriately.”
For a long moment he gazed at her, gray-green eyes still assessing and measuring for something she couldn’t guess. “I’ve been fooling Niall for three years and he’s nae come close to guessing. Ye did it in one morning, with one shuffle. I am impressed, Miss Harris.”
She was rather impressed with herself, and with how sensitive his callused fingers must be. That, though, was neither here nor there. “You gave me your word that you will not speak of what I’m about to tell you.”
“Ye are a single-minded woman, Miranda Harris. Ye’ve my word. What’s sent ye running up here to find me, of all people? Because after that dance last night and now ye coming to me here, I’m beginning to think mayhap ye’re smitten with me, after all.”
“I am most certainly not smitten with you. I’m somewhat amazed your swelled head could even fit through this doorway.”
Aden laughed aloud at that, watching as she gathered her thoughts together. The lass was desperate about something, or she never would have sought him out—twice, now. He’d watched these lunatic Sassenach over the past few weeks, though. A sideways look from the wrong man, some bread crumbs on a waistcoat—anything might send one of them spinning off into ruin. This had something to do with wagering and a man who wouldn’t forgive a debt, he’d surmised; had she done a bit of wagering and lost a bauble? That might explain her dislike for the whole enterprise.
At the same time, her swift dismissal of every flirtatious word he spoke was less amusing. Because despite his own logic and the knowledge that at least a bevy, and perhaps even two bevies, of eligible females lay ready to throw themselves at him, not a one had caught his interest. With one exception.
“Millie, please shut the door,” she said, and her maid hurried over to comply. Then Miranda folded her hands together on the tabletop. “My brother in the past has gotten a bit… tangled into wagering. His skill does not match his confidence. We thought—my family thought—he’d learned his lesson several years ago and had stopped these nefarious pursuits. We were wrong.”
