She shook her head slowly.
“I’m afraid I won’t allow you to ruin me, Miss Woodville.”
He said this evenly, but it was no less unnerving for all of that.
She’d never had a more civil yet terrifying conversation. She was far, far out of her depth. She had swum out into the middle of the ocean and unsurprisingly, there were sharks.
She did, she realized, shedidwant someone to tell her what to do. In the absence of that,shewould have to figure it out herself.
She cleared her throat. “Mr. Marchand... please understand that I’m going to get my family’s inheritance money back no matter what it takes, because I have no other option. That is a bald fact. Ruining you is not my intent, but if it somehow seems necessary in order to achieve my goal... that will be unfortunate, but it will not stop me.” Her voice shook. “If all I’m left with is revenge, if all I’m able to do is go from house to house asking every member of Lucifer’s Fall to give all their money back, then maybe that’s what I’ll do.”
He took this in.
And then, the corner of his mouth actually lifted almost ruefully. “Fair enough. On the whole, I approve of ruthlessness.”
Was that what she’d become? She liked the power of the word even as it made her feel bleak. It was simply love that made you ruthless. She had promised her mother, and that was love. She took care of her siblings, and that was love.
He’d probably never loved anyone or anything but the reflection in his mirror and his gaming hell.
“Though I should warn you, no one has ever gotten the better of me, Miss Woodville.”
“Likewise, Mr. Marchand.” She had no idea if this was true, but she liked the way it sounded.
He paused, seeming to consider what he was about to say. “Did you actually think it would work? Confronting the earl about the debt? Asking for the money back?”
“God, no. Not for one minute. I felt like an idiot. And I felt like an idiot at Lucifer’s Fall, too. What do you take me for?”
He stared at her. “I honestly have no idea.” He sounded grimly bemused. And as if he were talking to himself.
“If a tiger chased you up to the edge of a gorge that was about, oh, fifteen feet wide, wider than you’ve ever jumped before, Mr. Marchand, and your choices were either giving up and being eaten by a tiger or attempting to leap to the other side, what would you do?”
“I would seize his whiskers and give them a tug. I hear they don’t like that.”
She fixed him with a quelling glare.
“Leap,” he admitted tersely. “Always leap.”
“Exactly.”
Thusly two leapers frowned at each other, wary of, and not precisely pleased by, this tenuous evidence of some sort of accord.
“So... more desperate than mad, but a little of both,” he said half to himself, as if he’d finally decided upon the answer to her “what do you take me for” question. “Miss Woodville, whether you know it or not, you’re as much of a gambler as any man who walks into Lucifer’s Fall.”
She went warily still, as though he’d winkled out yet another one of her secrets. She hadn’t quite thought of herself that way before. Perhaps taking risks ran in the family?
“I recognize a negotiation technique when I see one, by the way,” he added somewhat grimly. “I know you asked for the impossible first when you came to my office.”
“Guilty as charged, I suppose,” she said. “But! Look where it got me.” She couldn’t suppress a note of marvel in her voice. “All I need to do is get the vase for him.”
“Do you actually know where this vase is?”
“Haven’t a clue. See, you couldn’t tell I was lying, could you?”
At this news, his hands went up to grip his head as though he were afraid it was going to launch from his neck.
He lowered them with some apparent effort.
She gave a start when he put two fingers against his lips and whistled sharply.
