He withdrew a gold sovereign coin from a small pocket of his coat and handed it to Lucy’s guard.The giant footman bobbed his head and glanced up at the balcony where his employer still watched impassively, before shuffling back to his place at the wall.
“Shall we?”Thornecliff offered her his arm, all gracious politesse, as free and easy as though they’d been for a walk in the park rather than a round of cards in which Lucy’s body was the prize.
The wave of relief that had swamped Lucy when she saw Thornecliff’s winning hand receded abruptly, a tide eddying out and leaving nothing but raw anger in its place.
What a ridiculous situation to be in, she thought furiously, with two ridiculous men cutting cards for her as if she was a pound note lying on the table between them.Humiliation scorched the back of her throat like bile.
And Thornecliff, with his smooth smiles and empty black eyes—it was all the same to him.Why should he care what happened to Lucy?He clearlydidn’tcare.
Refusing his arm, Lucy turned on her heel and stalked toward the large set of double doors leading out of the card room.To her intense irritation, his long, lean legs easily kept pace with her as she escaped into the quiet of the club’s foyer.
“You seem upset,” he commented dryly.“Sharpe’s not delivering all the excitement and drama you were hoping for?”
“You bet my body on a game of chance,” she hissed, collecting her wrap from the impassive majordomo, who did a very good job of pretending he didn’t have ears to hear their argument.
“I won, didn’t I?”
“Purely by luck!There’s no skill involved, you said it yourself.You could just as easily have lost.”
“I said there was no skill involved in hazard.Vingt-et-un is a different game, one governed by mathematical rules of probability.”She was still refusing to look at him, but she could swear she heard the frown in his voice.“And Ididn’t lose.”
Lucy was struck with a sudden memory of her debut Season in London, five years ago.She had begged Bess, who’d been acting as her chaperone, to let her attend more interesting events than the endless round of daily social calls and walks in Hyde Park.They’d would up at a scholarly lecture on the new mathematics…and Thornecliff had been there.
She’d always wondered what interest a man like him could have in the new mathematics.She supposed she had her answer now.
“Fine,” she said, her jaw stiff.“You played the odds.You still could have lost.You will pardon me if I don’t find the risk involved to be acceptable—given that I was the only one risking anything at all.”
Lungs and cheeks burning, eyes prickling, Lucy stomped away from the majordomo toward the exit that would let her put this awful evening behind her.
For the second time that night, a large hand clamped around Lucy’s arm—but this time, though it burned like a brand, she had no desire to shake it off.She let Thornecliff tug her back against the broad, hard planes of his chest.
“You think I risked nothing,” he said, low and ragged in her ear.His hot breath on the side of her throat sent shivers racing down her back and legs.“Au contraire.I risked my membership in this very club.Because if he had tried to take you away from me, I would have torn the entire building down, brick by brick, to get to you.”
Dimly, Lucy was aware of the discreet withdrawal of the club’s majordomo, leaving them alone in the club’s entryway.But most of her attention was focused on the man holding her against his body, his arms like bands of steel wrapped around her.
It should have felt caging, confining.She should have wanted to claw her way free—but she didn’t.
Lucy stood in the circle of his arms, in the shelter of his body, and burned for more.
“I still can’t believe you played cards for me,” she said, unable or unwilling to let it go.“Mathematical probabilities or not, you could have lost.”
“No, I couldn’t have.”
Arguments rose in her chest, but before she could give vent to them he’d whirled her to face him.Her breasts crushed against his shockingly tough musculature.Her nipples tightened in a rush of sensation that was echoed by a throb of heat lower down.
When Thornecliff gripped her chin and angled her face up to his, she couldn’t help it—her lips parted in anticipation of his kiss.Everything in Lucy ached for it, even knowing that anyone could come upon them at any time.
But he didn’t kiss her.He stared down at her, his eyes—those blank, black pools she’d thought so emotionless—wild with wanting.With need.With a frank, possessive desire that Lucy responded to by melting and softening against him.
“There was no way I could lose,” Thornecliff murmured, ghosting the words across her cheekbones, nosing them along her jaw.“Because I stacked the deck before I handed it to Chicheley.”
All the air went out of Lucy.It was unthinkable for a gentleman to admit to cheating at cards.Like defaulting on a debt, it was a matter of honor—most gentlemen of the Ton would consider suicide preferable to being known as a cheat.
Reminded all over again that Thornecliff was a man entirely and unrepentantly without honor—or, at best, a man with his own idiosyncratic code of honor—Lucy managed to bleat out, “But you—you expected to be the dealer!Chicheley dealing must have ruined whatever plans you had when you fixed the deck.”
“I knew he would demand to be the dealer.”
Lucy’s head was spinning.Partly from Thornecliff’s revelations, but even more from his nearness.She attempted to gather herself, her brain revolving swiftly past every single moment in the card room and viewing it all from this new angle.
