Dinner dragged on, involving far more lavish dishes than Caroline cared for, along with what seemed buckets of wine.By the time the port and cigars came out, Caroline was beyond ready to leave the gentlemen to them so she could corner her mother and demand that Helena stop being so prickly.
But it was not to be.Lady Rosalie, apparently intent on flouting as many of the conventions Caroline had read about as she could, declared that the port and cigars would be served in the drawing room so that everyone could partake while playing a few rounds of cards.
Lady Rosalie clapped her hands and announced, “Gather round, my ducklings, I have a treat in store!”
The servants brought in a large table covered in green baize and a murmur of anticipation swept through the guests.Caroline cocked her head, wondering at the fuss.
She had played many a hand of three-card brag and loo with her parents in their tent, after a long day of walking, climbing, and drawing.They had even gambled sometimes, to make it more interesting, playing for colored stones or pretty leaves.But Caroline had never encountered anything like the high-stakes play outlined by Lady Rosalie.
“Open your purses,” she smiled slyly, her interestingly dark eyes glittering like obsidian.“Tonight, we play baccarat.”
Gasps of excitement from some, while Lord Alfred harrumphed and beetled his brows in disapproval.With a sinking sensation, Caroline saw that her mother instantly lifted her chin and attached herself to Lord Weatherby’s side, saying, “I have never played, but I should be most interested!”
“My lady,” Lord Alfred interjected with some urgency.“Baccarat is not at all a proper game.Even the damned French?—”
“Oh, la,” trilled Lady Lavinia, with a coy glance at her friend, Lady Rosalie.“Of course it isn’t proper.That is precisely what makes baccarat so enjoyable!”
“Come, Father, do play,” Fitz tried, only for his father to round on him in fury.
“I don’t pretend to be surprised that you are in favor of this unsavory entertainment, boy, but I won’t hide my disappointment either.Many a young gentleman has found himself in deep waters at the baccarat table,” Lord Alfred said severely.“Why, only last month, the scion of the Bastable family gambled away his entire inheritance in a single evening!”
“How…exciting,” Caroline’s mother said, looking a bit ill.
“It is.”Lady Rosalie produced a small velvet drawstring bag, from which she drew a set of personalized ivory counters.“I shall be the bank.Who will deal?Fitz?”
“Certainly!”Fitz was no longer looking at his father, but Caroline perceived from the hardness of his jaw and the hectic flush along his handsome cheekbones, that he had been wounded by Lord Alfred’s comments.“I will deal, of course, if you wish it, Lady Rosalie.Have no fear, friends, I’m certain that one round of baccarat won’t result in anyone’s utter ruin.Even if my father finds it beneath his dignity.”
Caroline swore she could hear the marquess’s teeth grinding.“I won’t apologize for having achieved an age that renders me immune to schoolboy taunts about being a coward.I am too old to be gulled into playing a game that is clearly only suitable for fools and liars.Perhaps some of the younger guests may disagree…”
Oh dear.Caroline saw her mother’s eyes flash the instant before Helena tossed her head and said, without ever once looking at the marquess, “Well!I may not be as young as some, but thankfully I have no grand, important stature to think of either.Lord Weatherby, what are the rules?”
Brick-red in the face, Lord Alfred bent a stiff bow to the company and stalked out of the drawing room.Caroline watched him go, frustration burning at the backs of her eyes.Blast Fitz, anyway!Was he trying to get their parents together, or separate them?Yes, his father had been horrid to him, and in such a public setting, but would it have killed Fitz to suggest a game everyone could have enjoyed instead?Caroline wanted to pull him aside and demand to know what he was playing at, right that moment—but she would have to content herself with writing a critique of his performance that evening in her head.
Narrowing her eyes at the blithe unconcern on his handsome face across the card table, Caroline resolved that one way or another, she would find a way to ruin his night as thoroughly as he’d ruined their matchmaking chances.
What a disaster of an evening.
ChapterSix
Fitz thought the evening had gone splendidly!
Well, he temporized as he lay back against his pillows, perhaps splendidly was overstating the matter a bit.
Baccarat was always amusing, and tonight had been no different once his old stick-in-the-mud of a father had taken himself off to bed.And though the bets had been large and the play deep, as it always was with his set, no one had lost the ancestral pile or found they’d inadvertently gambled away their sister’s dowry and the right to her hand, or whatever melodramatic nonsense Father imagined.
Fitz crossed his arms behind his head and pictured the unhappy look Caroline had sported through most of the evening.He’d been aware of her all the time, even when he wasn’t looking at her, as though she’d tied a string to his ribs that tugged taut every time she moved.He wasn’t sure he altogether enjoyed the sensation, any more thanshehad appeared to enjoy the party once Father got through his diatribe about the evils of gambling.
Perhaps what made Fitz uncomfortable was the lingering burn of shame at the way his father had spoken to him in front of his friends—or at his own reaction, which he could not help but think somewhat childish as he replayed it silently in the dark of his room.
He didn’t wish to be always at odds with his father, whom Fitz truly did admire and love.He didn’t relish forever being cast in the role of the scapegrace ne’er-do-well, and it occurred to Fitz in a prickling rush of shame that he had a distressing tendency to attempt to live down to his father’s expectations, rather than rising above and showing him that Fitz was made of better stuff.
Quite possibly Fitz wasn’t made of better stuff.But perhaps, while Father still held the purse strings, Fitz should at least pretend.
Only tonight, he’d so wanted Caroline to have fun.And instead, he’d squabbled ingloriously with his father and she’d spent the evening no doubt fretting that her mother was about to lose her widow’s portion to a roll of the dice.
Frustrated and cast down by the turn of his thoughts, Fitz made an effort to think of something else.He needed to sleep.He needed to stop mulling over his strained relationship with his father and relax.Perhaps…
Fitz closed his eyes and called up an image of Caroline as he had never seen her—but, oh, how he wished to.With her wild hair tumbling around her bare shoulders in a cascade of white gold, the long, slow blink of her violet eyes as she gazed up at him through her fair lashes.The tremble of her pale pink mouth, the catch of her sharp little teeth in the plush softness of her lower lip.Fitz felt his cock thicken and swell, throbbing against his thigh.
