Thornecliff shrugged, reclining and hooking one arm over the back of his chair.“Have at it.”
He should’ve looked as sleepy as Chicheley had when he squinted, but instead he looked more like a coiled spring—ready to explode into motion at a moment’s notice.
His eyes tracked Chicheley’s movements as the viscount picked up the deck and clumsily shuffled it, spraying cards everywhere.
Lucy clasped her hands together, sweaty palms itching to grab the deck of cards from Chicheley’s fumbling paws and shuffle them herself.
But finally he managed to coordinate his sausage fingers well enough to get the deck set on the table.With a look of intense concentration, he dealt Thornecliff two cards, faceup, and then himself, one faceup and one facedown.
Chicheley’s showing card was a queen, and when he lifted the corner of his second card to peek at it, a wide smile spread across his face.The smile only grew when he glanced across the table and saw Thornecliff’s cards: a five and a Jack.
Tension caught at Lucy’s chest, too thick to breathe in.Thornecliff had fifteen—not terribly close to twenty-one, especially given Chicheley’s gloating excitement about his hidden card—and with each face card valued at ten, there were far too many chances for Thornecliff’s third card to go over the limit of twenty-one.Thus ensuring an instant win for Chicheley.
She bit her lip, unsure what she wanted Thornecliff to do.If he held, putting his score of fifteen up against whatever Chicheley had in his hand, it seemed very likely to come up short.But if he asked for a third card, he was even more likely to bust and lose the hand.
Thornecliff paused for an endless moment, studying Chicheley in a detached manner, as though his opponent was an insect under his magnifying lens.
The fire in those black eyes of his had been banked.With his relaxed posture and slow, curling smile, Thornecliff looked as though he couldn’t care less about the outcome of this game.Her earlier certainty crumbled.
Lucy felt light-headed.She swayed on her feet, but it wasn’t until a large hand clasped her elbow in a gentle grip that she realized she’d been breathing too fast and too shallowly to draw enough air into her compressed lungs.
The footman at her side, a ginger fellow with a bulbous nose and deep-set eyes, gave her an incongruously kind smile.
“Don’t worry, lady,” he rumbled in what probably passed for a whisper when one was the size of a mountain.“Your man knows what he’s about.”
“He’s not my man,” Lucy said automatically, but wasn’t he?At least in this moment, when he held her fate in the palm of his hand.
“What’s the matter?”Chicheley taunted, evidently running out of patience.“I’m ready to be done with this and move on to more pleasurable pursuits.Just play your hand so I can go ahead and win.”
But Thornecliff was impossible to rush.He glanced at Lucy, their eyes meeting in a strange, distended moment of connection.Lucy couldn’t read anything in their depths, no fear, no pride, no anger.He was just…blank.
Shaken, Lucy clutched her hands together and tried to convey, with every ounce of her being, how very unhappy she would be if he lost.
Thornecliff looked away, as though bored, and tapped the table once, indicating he’d like another card.A ripple of trepidation went through Lucy.
She didn’t like Chicheley’s triumphant smirk as he passed Thornecliff the card, facedown.
Without so much as the flicker of an eyelash to show a reaction, without even looking at the card himself or taking his eyes off Chicheley’s smug face, Thornecliff flipped the card over.
A six.
A six of spades sat next to the jack of hearts and five of diamonds.
Six plus ten plus five.
Twenty-one.
Lucy sucked in a breath, her gaze darting to catch the fall of Chicheley’s expression.All the overweening confidence drained from him.He looked like he’d been slapped in the face with a dead fish.
Still without breaking eye contact, Thornecliff reached across the table and flicked Chicheley’s remaining card faceup.
A ten of clubs.Together with his first card, the queen of hearts, he had twenty.A very good hand, indeed.
Just not good enough to beat Thornecliff.
Chicheley stood up so quickly he knocked over his chair.Lurching back from the table, he stomped off without another word.Certainly without handing over the guinea he’d promised the footman.
Breathing out a languid sigh of satisfaction, Thornecliff stretched like a cat in a beam of sunlight before rising from the table.
