Rhys grunted and accepted the deck. He didn’t want the first deal. He wanted Sir Felix to deal, so he could get on with exposing the man for the cheat he was and take the ring back.
While Rhys shuffled the cards, Sir Felix asked, “Three or five card Loo?”
“Three.”
Each of the six players seated at the table tossed three markers into the center pool.
“And shall we play unlimited?” A dare glittered in Sir Felix’s eyes.
Instinct had Rhys wanting to say no, but he couldn’t. Simply because the Rhys he’d been his entire adult life until a year ago would’ve said… “What’s the point of playing any other way?”
Limited Loo kept the pool fixed and the stakes low. With unlimited Loo, however, the pool only increased and increased as looed players—those players who stayed in play and lost all three tricks in a hand—were required to match the pool as their pay-in for the next hand, causing the value of the pool to balloon into dangerously high stakes within a few hands. Lords had lost everything from prized racehorses to unentailed country estates to their father’s emerald signet ring in the course of an hour of unlimited Loo.
Rhys dealt three cards to each player. As Sir Felix was seated to Rhys’s left, he led the first trick with an ace of diamonds, making diamonds the suit as the other players followed. The blonde, Rhys noticed, played a queen of spades, which meant she had no diamonds in her hand. As Rhys was the dealer, he was last to play his card—ten of diamonds.
Now, it was time to reveal the trump card.
As all the players except the blonde had followed suit, if the card was a diamond, club, or heart, Sir Felix would take the trick.
Rhys flipped the card.
Seven of spades.
Because she’d played the queen, the blonde took the trick.
A smile twitched about her lush lips that appeared tinted with a touch of rouge, and above her black silk mask, her eyebrows waggled with barely suppressed mischief.
At least someone was having a good time.
As the second trick played out, Rhys experienced déjà vu as he lost—again. Except it wasn’t the blonde who won this time, but some other chap. However, one dim flicker of light in the darkness was that Sir Felix hadn’t yet taken a trick, either—which meant he might start cheating.
On the third trick, however, Sir Felix remedied his losing situation and won—without cheating, as far as Rhys could tell.
Rhys and two others had looed the hand, which meant they each had to pay in the sum of the pool from the last hand, which the three winners were now splitting amongst themselves.
And like that, the stakes took on an altogether different timbre.
No longer was the game light and fun.
The game was now serious business.
Rhys saw that fact acknowledged within every pair of eyes at the table.
Well, everyone except the blonde, who didn’t appear to take anything seriously.
As Sir Felix was the player to Rhys’s left, it was now his deal. Rhys passed him the deck. If the rotter were going to cheat, this hand would be his best opportunity as dealer.
While Rhys watched Sir Felix shuffle the cards and cut sideways smirks his way and leers the blonde’s, a vision of the man Rhys had been a year ago came to him. A man in his late twenties who was still living like the lordling he’d been in his early twenties. What had been sowing his wild oats in those earlier years had transitioned into something less fun and less socially palatable. At some point, without Rhys noticing, wild had tipped into wastrel.
That was the man who had sat across the table from Sir Felix a year ago.
A reckless waster…an easy target.
And that was the man Sir Felix thought he was sitting beside tonight.
Sir Felix dealt them each three cards.
This hand had both some key similarities to the previous hand and some key differences.
