“That’s hard to argue.”Thornecliff cocked his head, his black gaze never leaving the other man’s face, but Lucy saw the tic of the muscle in his jaw.
Abruptly, Lucy realized Thornecliff was absolutely not enjoying this.He wasn’t lazy or careless at all.
He was furious.
And when he turned those devil’s eyes on her, blazing like twin coals in the calm marble of his face, Lucy understood that some of his fury was reserved for her.
She’d broken his rule.
Was he angry enough to leave Lucy to suffer the consequences of defying him?
Fear raked down her spine.Before she could do more than draw a breath, Thornecliff had turned back to Chicheley, dismissing Lucy as though she had nothing more to do with the conversation.
“I can certainly understand your position, Chicheley, but the fact is, the woman is here with me.She wandered off to powder her legs or something and I suppose she got lost.But she is not an employee of Sharpe’s.”
“I don’t care who employs her.”Chicheley was a dog with a bone.“And I don’t care who brung her.I’ve got her now and I’m keeping her.”
“For the next fifteen minutes, at least,” cackled a man at the nearest table, reminding Lucy that they had a small audience for this little spectacle.
Thornecliff was keenly aware of that, Lucy saw by the way his nostrils flared at the interruption.
“I don’t know how much plainer I can be.She is not for sale,” he said, the words beginning to sound ground out of him by the way he was clenching his jaw.
“You lost her,” Chicheley said stubbornly, too addled by drink to register the change that was overtaking Thornecliff.
It was like looking at a lake on a calm day, smooth as glass…but with something lurking beneath the surface, circling, huge and ominous and rising from the depths.
“She is mine,” he said, so gently that Lucy barely knew why she flinched.
But Chicheley’s bottom lip jutted out, heedless of the danger.“You lost her.Said so.At Sharpe’s, losers get nothing.Winner takes all.”
The something under Thornecliff’s smooth surface shifted, burgeoned, threatening to break free…then subsided once more.Lucy’s breath was lodged somewhere near her breastbone.
“Then I suppose I’ll just have to win her back, won’t I?”
ChapterNine
In short order, Thornecliff had procured a deck of cards from one of the massive footmen.Lucy watched, vibrating with tension, as he directed that same footman to set up a small card table with two chairs, into which he and Chicheley settled themselves.
But not before Chicheley transferred custody of Lucy over to the silent footman with a leer and a jovial, “Just in case she gets the urge to wander off again!Keep an eye on her, man.There’s a guinea in it for you.”
The footman only nodded and stood, impassive and enormous, at Lucy’s elbow.He didn’t wrap one of those meaty hands around her wrist; he didn’t have to.His silent presence—along with the single, burning glance Thornecliff had sent her before sitting down—was enough to anchor her in place.
Lucy was surprised to find she knew Thorne well enough to be certain that he wasup to something.She was even more surprised to discover that she trusted him enough to wait and see how his plan played out.
And there was also the knowledge that if she fled, she would cause the sort of scene that would undoubtedly make its way to her brother’s ears.
As it was, most of the onlookers had drifted away once it became clear that no one was going to resort to fisticuffs.
Another game of chance, another high-stakes bet, another hand of cards—those things were common sights at Sharpe’s.Not exciting enough to draw a crowd.Which Lucy realized must have been Thornecliff’s intention in proposing this wager.
But what if Thornecliff lost?There was no way she was going anywhere with Viscount Chicheley.
Looking at Thornecliff’s opaque expression as he shuffled the deck of cards, Lucy felt a strange calm wash over her.Even if he lost, there was no possible way he would let Chicheley have her.She didn’t know what he would do to stop it, but she knew in her bones that Thornecliff wouldn’t let that man touch her again.
“Let’s keep things simple, in deference to your previous endeavors this evening,” Thornecliff said, all gracious magnanimity in the face of Chicheley’s inebriated confusion.“I propose a hand of vingt-et-un.I’ll deal, you try to get as close to twenty-one as you can without going over.Whichever of us is closest wins the woman.”
Chicheley narrowed his eyes in a way that he might have meant to look discerning; he merely wound up appearing next door to unconscious.“You chose the game.In fairness, that means I should deal.”
