“If you so choose,” he echoed in a murmur. Slowly he collected the cards, tapping them to reform the deck. “And if you don’t choose?”
“I’m not promising that.” But she supposed she was…considering it. At least enough to make it worth having lost two hands. At least enough to prolong a game she might have won handily, and could have made go much faster.
“I see,” he said, chewing at his lower lip. “Suppose I lay my cards on the table.”
“First you have got to deal them.”
A low chuckle. “I’m getting to that,” he said. Another shuffle; not a false one. Probably he’d throw one in there eventually, but he’d distract her with a few honest ones first. “I love you,” he said frankly. “It feels like I have for ages. And you were never a mistake. You are clever and beautiful and witty and kind. Charming, when you wish to be. Generous, even to people who don’t deserve it of you. Idowant to marry you, and not because it is expected or necessary. Only because I want to, because I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”
Her heart performed an obnoxious little leap in her chest. “You do realize,” she said, watching the fluid shuffle of the cards in his hand, “that I am not remotely suitable. You will never find the perfection you’ve been searching for in me.”
“You’re the only woman who could ever suit me,” he said. He seemed to have forgotten he was meant to be dealing the cards; still they moved through his fingers in perfect, rhythmic shuffles—cards beating like a heart—as if the repetitive gesture was soothing to his frazzled nerves. “In the interest of honesty, I am a bad bargain at present. I won’t be an earl much longer. But I won’t be destitute. At least, not entirely.”
Grace folded her arms across the table. She really ought to tell him otherwise. But curiosity made her say only, “Oh?”
“I’ve had quite a lot of meetings of late with my solicitor. Both to ensure that the tenants and staff whom Uncle Nigel is likely to neglect are as insulated from his indifference as I can manage, and to review the terms of my father’s will,” he said. “It wasn’t necessary to review it quite so thoroughly when I was his only heir, but now—” He gave an awkward shrug. “Most everything is entailed, and will naturally fall to Uncle Nigel. But there is a small estate in Hampshire for which I was the named inheritor. So we will have a home. It’s not overlarge, but there is room enough for us. For my mother and sister, and Aunt Alicia as well, if she does not fancy being Uncle Nigel’s countess. And for children, eventually. It produces a modest income, but—it would be enough, I think, to support us. If we are frugal.”
“Henry,” she said patiently, pursing her lips to restrain the smile that wanted to emerge. “I have got a dowry of twenty thousand pounds.”
“Oh.” He paused in his shuffling just briefly, as if it had slipped his mind.
And Grace found that she rather liked that. That even when he thought himself so substantially reduced, her dowry had not been a consideration. That he wantedhermore than anything else.
He stared down at the deck of cards in his hand, considering them as if they held his entire future within them. “The mistakemy parents spoke of wasn’t me,” he said slowly. “It wasn’t even how their relationship had begun. It was in letting the important things go unspoken for too long. It was in the consequences of not being perfectly honest with one another to begin with. It was in waiting past the point of reason in silence. And because I assumed differently, I made the same mistake. I should have told you I loved you well before now. So I am telling you now, and hoping it isn’t too late for me. Forus.” He drew a steadying breath, tapped the well-shuffled cards back into order. “I’m changing the terms of our game,” he said. “One last hand. Winner takes all.”
“Henry,” Grace protested as he dealt the cards. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I really do,” he said resolutely. “Fair warning. I’ve dealt myself twenty points.”
Why would he tell her that? To give her a fighting chance to win? She didn’t need it; she could always cheat. She glanced down at the cards he’d dealt her, still face down upon the table, and experienced a small shock as she realized—they weren’t from the same deck. The artwork printed upon the backs was different.
Somehow, he’d palmed a card and she hadn’t noticed. He’d dealt her not just a card he’d switched out for another, but a card from a completely different deck, and she hadn’t seen him do it.
A nagging suspicion settled in her stomach. “That was…very clever of you,” she said. “I didn’t see the switch at all.”
“I havebeen practicing,” he said. “Probably I’ll never be half so good as you—”
“No one is half so good as me.”
“—But I wanted to make you proud. To show you that your efforts on my behalf were not wasted.” He inclined his head toward the cards she still hadn’t picked up. “The one I slipped in,” he said, “I’ve had it on me for quite some time, now.”
Oh. The queen of hearts. The one he’d had tucked up his sleeve when he’d left after the first time he’d called upon her. That nagging suspicion grew, and with fingers that trembled, she lifted the cards from the table.
He’d dealt her a natural twenty-one. He hadn’t told her what he held in his hand to inform her of what she would have to beat; he’d known full well that he’d dealt her the winning hand. He’d told her only so that she would know what score to come in beneath—if she cared to do so.
And he’d left the choice quite literally in her hands.
Chapter Twenty Five
Henry had never been much given to gambling, and this—this was by far the largest wager he’d ever made in his life. His heart pounded in his chest and his pulse rushed in his ears as he watched Grace consider the hand he’d dealt to her, her face utterly smooth and serene. The sort of face that revealed nothing at all, and could have won her a fortune even if she hadn’t cheated.
At any moment she could lay her cards down on the table opposite his own. He would lose, and the game would end. That was the risk he had taken; the choice he had given her.
But she didn’t. She held them close to her chest, considered them a moment longer. “What is my tell?” she asked.
Henry blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“My tell. You said I had one. I would like to know what it is.”
