“Perhaps I’ll catch you at it.”
She pursed her lips together to restrain another laugh. “No one catches me,” she said. “I have warned you before, you know. You should never agree to play against me. I’ll fleece you of all your money, and you’ll never even know it’s happening.” She paused a moment, canted her head to the right reflectively. “At the very least, you’ll never be able to prove it.”
“I don’t want to play for money,” he said. “I want to play foryour hand.”
“My…hand,” she echoed in disbelief. “You don’t mean in marriage?”
“What else might I have meant? Have you got a surplus of hands just lying about?” On impulse, his gaze slid across the room to where Mr. Moore stood, his arm about his wife, chuckling to himself. Probably, if anyonewereto have some number of hands going spare, it would be him.
Grace resettled herself, schooling her features into bland neutrality. “And what do I get when I win?”
When. Henry fought a wince and lost. “Anything that is within my power to give you.”
An inquisitive cant of her head. “If I were to ask you to walk out the door and never approach me again?”
“That,” he said, quietly, “would be within my power to give you. But I hope—I hope you won’t ask it.”
“Henry,” she said patiently. “You really couldn’t win against me even if you were in peak form. You’ve ruined your dominant hand, you know, at least for the next few days. It’s unlikely you could even perform a proper false shuffle. Your hand may be too stiff to palm cards. You’ll give yourself away with a wince or a flinch. And you’re drunk, besides.”
He had the feeling she thought she was doing him a service in an attempt to dissuade him from it; a sort of mercy he hadn’t asked for and didn’t want. “I’m not drunk,” he said. “Not entirely, at least.” Though the gin he’d consumed, coupled with the champagne had left him just the tiniest bit fuzzy-headed. “And I won’t drink while we’re playing.”
“Henry—”
“I’m not asking you to spare me,” he said. “I’m not even asking you not to cheat.”
The smallest furrow of her brows. “Why, then?”
“Because—” He drew in a short, sharp breath, painfullyaware of the silence that had fallen over the room in the wake of the cacophony of laughter. Of all of the people listening in with rapt attention. “Because if there is the smallest chance I might win, I have to take it. Because there is nothing in this world I want more than you.”
She didn’t quite believe him. Not yet, anyway. But some curious emotion flashed across her face for a fraction of a second before she smoothed it away, something rather like…hope, he thought. Or the shadow of it. There and gone in an instant.
Perhaps he could find a way to draw it to the surface once more.
Slowly she rose to her feet, smoothing at the skirts of her gown—that glorious, shining ivory that made her skin glow with hints of gold, made her lustrous hair gleam as if it had been spun of purest sunlight. “We’re for the rose salon,” she said to the room at large. “Lord Lockhart is determined to receive a sound thrashing. Enjoy the festivities; I expect I’ll be back down again shortly.”
Naturally, she expected him not to be back down with her.
“Godspeed, you miserable son of a bitch,” Mr. Moore said to Henry as he rose from the couch and followed after Grace. “You really can’t win against her.”
No, he really couldn’t. He’d known it had been a futile endeavor when he’d made the suggestion. She was too good, too clever. Her fingers were faster than his eyes could track, and she performed her sleight of hand with a proficiency and a dexterity that were beyond comprehension. He, with his scant few days of practice, with his already clumsy fingers wounded and cracked and bleeding, had never stood a chance.
But if he were very, very lucky—if he explained himself properly, if he made himself vulnerable in a way he had never had to do before, then perhaps he wouldn’t have to win.
Totrulywin, he had to make her want to lose.
∞∞∞
“Have you got a deck of cards?” Henry asked as Grace set about rearranging the room to suit their needs.
“Of course I have,” she said as she dragged a small table toward the center of the room. “There are decks of cards stashed all over the house. The children often ask me to perform tricks for them.” She seized the back of a chair and positioned it at one side of the table.
“What sort of tricks?” he asked as he collected another chair and set it opposite the one she’d selected.
“All sorts. Palming cards, disappearances, reappearances. They’re very fond offind the lady,” she said. “Of course, I don’t allow them to bet upon it.”
“Because you always win.”
“I always do.” Grace retrieved a deck of cards from a basket upon a small table tucked away in the corner, and set it in the center of the table as Henry settled into his chair. “Would you like to count them?”
