“You’ve been busy, I hear,” Robert Vale said. “From what I’ve been able to determine, you have what, eight hundred quid left in your pockets with which to win back what Matthew Harris owes me? Unless you were very lucky wherever it was you were last night, that is.”
The vulture didn’t know everything, then. And Adenhad only five hundred twenty quid left to his name. “Oh, I was lucky. Just nae playing cards.”
Vale sat forward a little, placing a crisp, fresh deck on the table between them. “Good for you. That is your goal, though, is it not? To purchase Matthew’s debt and set him and his lovely sister free?”
“Mayhap,” Aden returned, gesturing for a plate of roast chicken and a glass of whisky. The bits he’d eaten before his five minutes of sleep hadn’t been enough to keep a mosquito alive.
“Not maybe,” Vale corrected. “It’s a fact. Matthew told me that you’re… what was it? ‘Coming for me.’” He lowered his voice beneath the hearing of the men seated around them. “He also told me that you despoiled my bride-to-be. A cowardly way to attempt to win a game, but an unsuccessful one.”
“Ye talk a lot,” Aden drawled, and rapped his knuckles on the deck of cards. “What’s yer game?”
“What isn’t my game? I enjoy faro, hazard, vingt-et-un, and whist, though it’s difficult to find a competent partner for the latter. Piquet is good, and it has the benefit of not requiring a dealer or a banker.”
“Aye. Just ye and me. Piquet it is, then. Low card deals.”
“Not so fast, MacTaggert. You are an eager brute, aren’t you? A hundred quid that I draw the low hand.”
Pure chance didn’t much appeal to Aden; he preferred relying on his skill. In the end it likely didn’t much matter, except that if Vale truly meant to rely on nothing but chance and happenstance, winning—or losing—might take some time. “From the size of the deck it looks like ye’ve already pulled out the cards we’ll nae be using, aye?”
“Of course I did.” The vulture lifted one arched brow.“Thirty-two cards. It didn’t take much insight to know you would choose to play piquet.”
Robert Vale didn’t lack confidence. “Cribbage would work, but I reckoned ye’re anxious to prove yerself, and piquet is a wee bit faster-paced. A wee bit. A hundred quid for the low card, then.” His gaze on the captain’s raptor eyes, Aden reached over and cut the deck, turning over the stack over in his hand.
It was Vale who looked down at it first. “A ten. Well picked.” Once Aden set all the cards back into the stack, the captain in his crisp blue uniform cut even deeper and turned a seven. “Ah, the low card,” he said. “You couldn’t beat that even if I gave you another chance at it.”
Aden reckoned it had more to do with Vale prearranging the deck than with good fortune, but he kept that to himself. They had a long way to go yet, and he needed to pay attention, not get caught up in trying to prove some simple trick. “As ye say.” He produced a hundred quid and set the money on the table.
“No argument? Hmm. I’d heard that Scotsmen were poor losers.”
“We’re nae accustomed to losing, so aye, I reckon some of us are bad at it. But I’m nae some Danny Pierce to get a whiff of trouble and jump overboard.”
A muscle in Vale’s cheek jumped, though his fingers didn’t falter as he shuffled. “That’s an odd saying,” he noted. “Wherever did you pick it up?”
“Ye’ve nae heard it before? It’s used to describe a lad who gets picked on by his betters and pays dearly because he doesnae fight back. Nae a man wants to be called a Danny Pierce and get bullied by some smug bastard who can do as he chooses and nae face a consequence.”
Vale dealt them each twelve cards. He’d won first deal, which meant Aden would have the last—not a goodposition in which to be. With six deals in the firstpartie, Aden would have to be well ahead to have a chance to take the game. “I should ask what stakes we’re playing for,” the captain said conversationally, arranging the leftover cards into two stacks and sliding the more generous one in front of Aden. “I do hope it’s not a penny a point. This is not some cheap gaming hell, and I am not a clerk in some warehouse.”
“Twenty quid a point?” Aden suggested.
“Promising. Let’s make it fifty, shall we? To be settled at the end of eachpartie? Or it might be more fun to settle at the end of our contest. Then the meager amount in your pocket won’t send you home too early.”
That was Vale’s plan, then, to push him into debt and make him keep playing in an attempt to win back points before they settled up. A quick road to ruin, that was. And an obvious one. “I reckon I’d prefer to settle up at the end of eachpartie. I’ve nae idea when ye’ll decide to turn tail and run.”
“As you wish, then.”
Halfway through the thirdpartie, with Aden ahead by some forty points and twenty-five hundred quid on top of that, Matthew and Lord George Humphries appeared. Both of them looking like beaten dogs, they took seats behind their master.
“So ye had a chat with Vale, did ye, Matthew?” Aden commented, countering the captain’s queen of diamonds with her king and taking a point.
“I think it’s more interesting,” Vale cut in, before Matthew could respond, “that very soon both you and I, MacTaggert, will be brothers-in-law to Matthew. You through your dear sister Eloise, and me throughhisravishing sister Miranda. You’ll be surrounded, won’t you, Mr. Harris?”
Matthew frowned. “Apparently.”
“Aye, hewillbe surrounded,” a low drawl soundedbehind Aden. “By three MacTaggert men and their wee sister.”
A large hand clamped down on Aden’s shoulder, and he twisted his neck to see Coll, Niall close behind him. “How did ye get in here?”
Niall sidestepped, and his father-in-law, Charles Baxter, came into view. “Turns out Idoknow someone who’s a member of the club,” the youngest MacTaggert said with a slight grin.
