A chap across the table took one trick.
The blonde took two tricks.
Rhys looed—again—as did a few others.
And one of those others who’d looed happened to have been Sir Felix.
The thought occurred to Rhys that Sir Felix and the blonde were in league to run the table. But, no, the scowl trenched across Sir Felix’s high forehead told a different story as, with eyes narrowed, he watched the blonde divide the pool with the other chap, two to one.
Rhys found himself at a crossroads.
The pool, as he’d predicted from the start, had ballooned. The buy-in was now over £100, which wasn’t prohibitively expensive, but enough to give one pause.
But he’d come this far, and what was the alternative?
Leave the table? Abandon the ring?
No.
However, he’d come prepared. From an interior coat pocket, he pulled a scrap of paper and a pencil. He scrawled £100 across the surface and tossed the vowel into the pool. “This should suffice, no?”
Levelly, he met Sir Felix’s gaze, then lifted an eyebrow for good measure.
Rhys knew it was now his own eye glinting with a dare.
A trio of seconds ticked past with Sir Felix on the spot. Then Rhys watched as if from a dream as the rotter tugged Papa’s signet ring off his pinky and dropped it into the pool. “And I reckon that will suffice.”
The blonde, shuffling the deck, as it was her deal, said, “Yeah, I reckon it will.”
The blonde…
In all Rhys’s predicted scenarios for how this night could twist and turn, he hadn’t accounted for her.
Plainly, she was having a night.
Which was slightly infuriating in and of itself, for she didn’t seem to care all that much.
It was as if she would’ve been just as happy losing.
Like it was all a lark to her.
Rhys felt his back teeth grind together.
She dealt the cards.
He looked at his cards. Objectively speaking, he held a hand that wasn’t precisely terrible, but legitimately bad.
Judging by the undiminished scowl on Sir Felix’s face, his hand wasn’t any better.
And the blonde kept smiling in that carefree way of hers.
So, who knew.
One couldn’t read her.
The player to her left led the first trick with a queen of diamonds. Rhys played the ten, and Sir Felix the king.
And the blonde… Of course, she played the ace.
