Wayland caught his elbow and pulled him toward the carriage while the rhythmic hacking continued. He lifted the driver’s box and pawed through its contents.
“I’m fine,” he insisted. “Eliza is not.”
“Stop talking, son. You’re no use to her or anyone dead.”
The axe’s tempo slowed.
“Five pounds each if we have this tree cleared in the next ten minutes,” Wayland called out. There was a brief pause. The hacking began again—faster, harder, frantic.
Hope and desperation warred within Benedict as he allowed Wayland to tend his back.
Hold on, Eliza. Hold on.
Chapter Forty-Five
It was positivelylycanthropic the way Blackwood shifted from man to beast in the space of a single breath. His eyes brightened, dancing in the firelight. His grin slipped from cruel and mocking to ravenous. He straightened to his full height, towering over her.
“By all means,” he said, unable or uninterested in hiding the giddy undertone in that statement. “Lady’s choice.”
She allowed herself only the briefest second to worry that she’d made a very poor choice before packing it away. That reaction was beneficial, no matter how frightening. He wasn’t subtle at all. He lost his head, his composure at the gaming table. She could read his every thought in his body. And she was aWayland—reading the unspoken language of a man’s face and frame was the family business.
“Écarté?” she proposed. The game involved more skill than others that required luck to be on her side.
His brow raised at her choice, but he made no comment as he gestured toward the table. She settled herself primly, as though she were not filthy, crumpled, and stinking of a dying man.
He joined her and set the candelabra on a tarnished, felt-bottom silver tray resting on the table for that purpose. With ceremony, he pulled the deck out of a drawer.
“Stakes?” he asked.
“It hardly matters. You know I’ve nothing on my person. Add or subtract whatever you’d like from my father’s debts.”
“An even grand, then.”
Eliza offered him a wide-eyed expression of astonishment before hiding it with an affected, “Very well.”
He held out the deck for her to cut before cutting it again himself. She drew an eight to his jack. Blackwood then handed over the deck without protest.
Her shuffle was effective but not showy—he needed to think her overconfident. Because, like the men she had played against a hundred times before, he was going to underestimate her.
It was clear in his eyes—he thought the effort was amusing, practically adorable. To him, she was a child presenting their very first drawing to their parents for praise. A child he intended to tear to pieces.
She dealt them five cards each before flipping over the trump, hearts.
“Your father cheated me, you know. But you’re not capable of such things, are you, Miss Wayland?” he asked, baiting her. He wanted to talk about her father, wanted her to defend him.
“I wouldn’t know how,” she said.
He glanced at his cards, gaze snapping back to hers before looking down again. His lips pressed together, the tiniest gesture, less than half a second. Eliza suspected he was dissatisfied with his hand.
“Discard three,” he said, then pushed three cards across the table.
“Go ahead.” She forewent the traditional response. He drew three from the stack. As he looked at them, his lip twitched at the corner, pleased.
Eliza, uninterested in her own cards at the moment, smiled at her hand before grabbing two at random. “Discard two?” she asked, studying him.
“Accepted.” A hint of predatory gleam filled his eyes. He thought her satisfied with the hand.
She set the new cards aside and drew two more. “Do you wish to discard?”
