Outside on the sidewalk, he flipped the collar of his greatcoat against a soggy northern wind that was blowing through, his feet pointed in the direction of Bennet Street. He’d made it ten or so yards when he heard a shout at his back, “Oi!”
His feet stuttered to an abrupt stop—and not because he thought the oi! intended for him.
He knew that oi!
Even from a single syllable.
He whipped around, frantically scanning the pedestrians bustling all around…the carriages and hackney cabs and drays racketing down the street…for a woman with blonde curls and, well, curves.
The next instant, he located…her.
Arm still lifted, she was dashing into the street toward the hackney cab that had stopped for her.
Rhys’s lungs lost their ability to draw breath. Truly, he couldn’t believe what his eyes were telling him. It was her—the blonde card cheat he’d been searching for this last month.
Though he was viewing her in daylight for the first time, it could be no other—sun-kissed curls springing free from the chignon at her neck…those curves which not even a woolen winter pelisse could obscure…her smile that sparkled all the way to her eyes… His first impression proved to have been the correct impression: she was no lady. Ladies didn’t smile up at hackney cab drivers like that.
Not for the first time, he wondered: how had she secured an invitation to that masquerade ball, anyway?
The mysteries surrounding this woman were certainly mounting.
When she placed a foot on the first step of the carriage, Rhys snapped to.
Oh, no, no, no.
He wasn’t losing her again.
No time to spare, his feet were on the move, covering the ground between him and the cab in fewer than ten long strides, and, without a second thought, he was shoving into the conveyance just as her hand was reaching for the handle to close the door.
“Oi!” she exclaimed from her seat on the bench, “what do you think you’re—” Her eyes, the clear blue of a rare type of topaz, went wide as saucers. “You!”
Only after Rhys had shoved inside the carriage did he realize it was a two-seater. He saw but a single option—to squeeze onto the bench beside her. Even as he attempted to make himself small and shove back into the cramped corner, the fact remained that the entire right side of his body was in full contact with the left side of hers.
Outrage shimmered about her, umbrage twinning with bewilderment in her topaz-blue eyes.
The universe continued to have its fun with him, didn’t it?
The cab lurched into motion, and no choice left to him, Rhys got directly to it. “You have something I want.”
Her brow crinkled, then a second later, released. “All this over fifty—fifty-five pounds? I thought gambling debts were naught but minor annoyances to you lords.”
Up until a year ago, Rhys had been precisely that sort of lord, and he couldn’t help feeling annoyed that she’d so efficiently hit the bull’s-eye of his past character. “Actually,” he said, “you took eighty-four pounds off me. But that’s not why we’re here.”
She gave her head a slow, incredulous shake. “Is that so?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “I know why I’m here. You’re the one with some explaining to do. There is no we.”
“The ring.”
Her eyes narrowed into irritated blue slits. “Now, I won that ring off Sir Felix, fair and square.”
Rhys lifted his brow. “Fair?”
“To my way of thinking,” she began, looking disinclined to give any ground, “when one cheats a cheat, it ain’t cheating.”
Rhys exhaled sharply through his nose. She had a point, and it was a good one. Still… “A year ago, Sir Felix cheated it off me.”
Understanding lit within her eyes. “And now you want it back.”
“Yes.”
