A chair was abruptly pushed back. Roman let his hand fall and looked over to see Pomeroy stuffing a pocket watch into place. “Gads. Just remembered I’m supposed to be at the Winphors’. The missus is going to have my privates. ’Pologies about leaving midhand. Have an extra five crown on me?” He didn’t wait for a response, just tossed the coin into the pot. “Evening, all.” He rushed from the table like the devil was at his heels.
Downing, at Roman’s left, threw his cards to the center as well. It was obvious that Chatsworth finally had a winning hand. Roman was about to throw his in too when he caught sight of Trant’s eyes, narrowed on Chatsworth, determination in their depths.
Roman placed his cards facedown on the table instead, curling his fingers around the edges of the hard paper.
“Pomeroy was nearly drained anyway. And Chatsworth, I see you are at the end of your night’s credit,” Trant said, after a moment of letting Chatsworth examine the hand he held. “But I’m feeling indulgent, and a bit reckless. What say we up the stakes?”
“Oh?” Chatsworth’s eyes went from his cards to the pot in the center.
Roman felt the rim of the cards denting his skin. The feeling that had been curling in his midsection, the tug, sent out sharp tentacles, waiting, on edge.
A sliver of respect wound through him as, like the others at the table, he watched Trant. The man had finally taken a look at what opportunities surrounded the ladder, broken as it was with Chatsworth’s continued denials and the amounts of money it would require to force him to capitulate. All of the little tells on Trant’s face spoke to his excitement, to his determination and fierce motivation.
Roman could have clapped.
He might have, if his fingers weren’t clutching his cards.
“Say my ten thousand . . .”
Chatsworth’s eyes flashed and lit on his cards once more.
“To your . . . oh, what can you put up . . . say, a night in your daughter’s company?”
Movement at the table stilled. Downing carefully set his drink on the table. Too carefully. Chatsworth’s eyes narrowed on Trant but then turned shrewd and greedy as he reviewed his cards.
Roman kicked back in his chair. “What an utterly tasteless suggestion, Mr. Trant,” he said, as lazily and indifferently as he could manage over the tug of fate, the pull, which was growing stronger, wrenching at him. “I’m shocked.”
Trant didn’t look his way, his gaze concentrated fully on Chatsworth, the only person who mattered to him at the moment. Trying to determine how the man might respond so Trant could react accordingly. “I hardly think you could be shocked by something so banal, Merrick.”
“Banal? This is the most exciting thing that has happened all evening. I applaud your tastelessness in earnest.”
Downing shot both of them black, furious looks, to which Roman issued a lazy grin.
“Chatsworth, don’t be a fool,” Downing said bitingly, turning his body, a cutting move against Trant. “More fool than you already are, that is.”
Yes, Roman had always liked the man.
Chatsworth’s jaw clenched, but there was a glimmer of pause in his drunken, watery eyes.
“Downing, you are out of this hand,” Trant said quickly, and as dismissively as he dared. “You have no say in the wager. You turned down the gentle lady’s presence two seasons ago.”
Roman stroked his finger along the edge of his cards, his dead hand that Trant, even though he had jumped the starting gun in his excitement, in all correct likelihood, expected him to throw in. Roman had given no sign that he had anything other than rat shit.
“That doesn’t preclude me from telling you that you are a bastard to even pose such a bet.” Downing was beyond furious. “And Chatsworth is more ass than fool for not telling you immediately to go to Hell.”
“What do you care, Downing?” Red spots of pride and embarrassment dotted Chatsworth’s cheeks. Embarrassment giving way easily to anger. “Turned my girl down, didn’t you?” He looked back at his cards abruptly. “I’ll take the bet.”
Roman could see the rusty, gin-soaked cogs in Chatsworth’s brain turning. If he lost, he wouldn’t lose everything. Granted, Trant was nowhere near the top of Chatsworth’s high list, but then again, Chatsworth had great cards.
And he
needed
to win a large hand.
Ten thousand pounds more, on top of the already generous pot on the table. Roman could almost hear the devil whispering in Chatsworth’s ear.
“And you seek to ruin her instead?” Downing asked in his deep, clipped tones.
But Chatsworth was ahead of himself in dreaming up new ways to gamble away his prospective winnings—unable to mask the emotions flitting across his face.
Roman should have cut the man off three hands and two whiskeys ago and sent him packing, but he’d been thinking about other things, distracted.
Thinking about the man’s daughter, ironic as that was now.
The lady who was about to find herself gracing the bed of the man to his right. For Trant held the best hand. It didn’t take Roman’s well-honed instincts to sense it. Trant had waited for just the right hand to make the bet. Had waited for Chatsworth to get into his cups and to have some decent cards.
Had waited to place the bet when only two men would witness the wager. One, a man who was utterly devoted to his wife, and whose wife was a close friend of the lady of the bet. Who would hold the scandal secret. The other, a man who held the debts and markers of over half of London’s citizens. Who would make sure the wager took place. Who wouldn’t interfere—for it was his business not to interfere.
It was his business to be impartial and ruthlessly fair. Their gaming halls and the collateral exchange thrived on their lack of meddling. It was part of what made their reputations so fierce and successful. As long as you kept within a Merrick law, you were fine, but step one foot outside . . .
Trant was going to win this hand, no matter what Chatsworth could scrounge from the deck. He would take Chatsworth’s daughter. Ruin her. Use it to gain her in marriage, as he no doubt sought. And for quite a cheap price.
Roman should be pleased with this turn of events. He knew how Trant worked, knew how to manipulate him, if he chose. And given a year or two, Charlotte Chatsworth would undoubtedly need a lover. He could lie in wait, possibly strike up a rummy friendship with her. Be there just when she needed a shoulder to cry on. One-eyed Bill swore by the tactic.
Roman had never been patient, however. That was Andreas’s cold trait. Roman would much rather seduce her into descending the latticework next to her window. To throw her over his shoulder and carry her into the night.
And the vision of the girl he had met earlier that day lying beneath another man, his for the night, to do with whatever he wished, made Roman’s hand twist around his cards, nearly crushing them. His dead cards.
“Ten thousand, Chatsworth.” Trant shrugged idly. “To my dismay, it does look as if your luck is turning.”
His
nearly
dead cards.
Luck and fate that Roman needed one particular card. The card near the bottom of the deck, a deck that couldn’t be moved from its position without causing comment. A very particular card indeed.
Roman felt the hard smile slip over his lips as Chatsworth nodded tightly, accepting and confirming the wager again. A coiled, springy sensation tightened in Roman’s gut. A sensation he hadn’t felt since he’d been on the streets, throwing dice for bread, needing that extra bit of luck so they wouldn’t starve.
Andreas was going to kill him.
“Stanley.” Roman called over one of the young boys who ran errands between the tables and rooms. “A round of drinks for the table.” He motioned a circle with his finger. “And tell Andreas to come round. To bring the luck of the streets for Chatsworth.”
Stanley’s head bobbed, and he disappeared from view.
Chatsworth was avidly examining his cards, a tight smile about his lips.
Liable to do something stupid?
Roman had thought no more than a minute previous. Sometimes his revelations had the rottenest timing.
Trant was silently gloating. Downing looked as if he were contemplating murder. Two of them. Possibly even throwing in Roman for good measure if he thought he could get away with it.
It didn’t take the whisper of twenty ticks of the standing clock before Andreas appeared in the doorway, eyes moving around the room in short order. Trying to determine if there was a physical threat he hadn’t been alerted to.
“Merrick,” Downing greeted, eyes returning back to the table’s participants and hardening again. He tapped his fingers against the table. “Come to witness the debacle?”
Andreas met Roman’s eyes. Fiercely questioning what the bloody hell was going on.
Roman gave a tilt of his head. “A bit of an extra bet to oversee. Tonight, Trant chooses to amuse and annoy.”
Trant shot him a look but said nothing.
It was a lovely trick of theirs. For even with Roman’s tendency to be chatty with the aristocracy—so much easier to extract information when people thought you a friendly face—when the two of them were together, even weathered old dukes grew silent. Intimidated. Unsure of the disparities they displayed and the absolute hardness that snapped together when they chose. Of course, too, Andreas could sometimes just be a fiendish beast.
Andreas strode forward, passing behind Roman, behind Trant, continuing to the right side of the room and standing in front of a messy pile, where he withdrew a ledger. He turned to face them, leaning back against the counter and lifting a pen. “What should I record?” he asked in the perennially bored, irritated tone he used in public and with anyone not close to him.
“Oh, I doubt Chatsworth will want it on the books, isn’t that so?”
Chatsworth looked up, and something about the whole bet seemed to be sinking in to his gin-soaked mind, because a fine line of sweat had gathered on his brow. “No, no, leave it off.”
Andreas snapped the book closed and turned his back to toss it to the counter, obviously annoyed. “Well then?”
“Chatsworth has just put up a night with his illustrious daughter against Trant’s ten thousand.”
Andreas stilled, his fingers tightening on the pen as he replaced it in the well. Just for a hair of a moment. Too short for anyone else to catch it. Anyone who hadn’t been tossed to the streets and then spent twenty years with another person, scrapping together, watching each other’s backs, forming an uncompromising bond.
Andreas didn’t turn around, didn’t look at Roman. He didn’t have to. Every line of his body said what he was thinking.
Neither of them needed to win a hand for a paltry ten thousand pounds.
A boy entered with drinks, pulling the table’s attention briefly as he set them down. Roman turned his attention to the boy as well, keeping the movements of the other men in his peripheral sight. Andreas’s boots harshly struck the boards behind, his long strides eating up the floor, as he brushed Roman’s chair. Roman leaned forward, catching the falling paper surreptitiously as it slid down his back, then scooting his chair forward to cover the actions.
“Consider it witnessed,” Andreas said without turning, as he strode from the room, anger in motion.
“Your brother is barely polite these days, Merrick,” Downing observed, a little too casually. As if his own fury had suddenly been partially contained. Vibrating under the lid of its box.
“He’s never polite.” No, Andreas was angry. Furious.
Livid.
Enraged in the way that Roman knew he was going to be called every obscenity in his brother’s vast vocabulary—every gutter jab known to the lower east side, every intellectual snub the hoi polloi used as verbal swords. “But he comes through.”
Roman folded the fan of his cards and slid Charlotte Chatsworth’s fate in between, discarding the dud into his sleeve in one easy motion. He tapped his cards on the table. “Now then, I don’t have a daughter to bet, so I believe I’m in for ten thousand as well.”
He pushed a marker to the center of the table, and the wild, coiled sensation exploded.
C
harlotte descended from the carriage, lifting her skirts to avoid the puddles that littered the road. Not giving in to the volatile impulse to drag the edges through. To dirty the far-too-expensive gown.
“Your father is sure to be displeased.” A grim, sardonic little smile curved Viola Chatsworth’s lips. “Marquess Binchley watched you behind his glasses of port all night, and you didn’t speak with him more than two minutes at a time. Tut, Charlotte, you will be old and unmarried, and we will be poor and ruined if you don’t fall in line with your father’s
grand
plans.”
Fall in line. As if Charlotte had been anything other than a foot soldier her entire life. She had coolly made her way through each party tonight—and had done everything short of violently flirting with all of the men and women alike. Of course, she
hadn’t
flirted, she’d likely give the whole of London the vapors should she be seen frolicking.
And speaking with Binchley required fortitude. Two minutes was an eternity.
Charlotte met her mother’s gaze steadily, nodding in agreement with the words of her failure. Charlotte had learned long ago simply to agree with her mother. For her unpredictable moods, especially around anything concerning her husband, could prove devastating otherwise.
The creases around Viola’s eyes pinched, and she crisply handed their items to the butler. “I believe I feel an oncoming megrim,” she told the butler. “Send Anna up with my herbs. I doubt I will be available come the morning. Tell anyone who comes by tomorrow that I am with Aunt Edith.”
Viola strode into the bowels of their house without further comment.
Charlotte’s stomach tightened. She had failed at that communication as well, as her mother was obviously displeased with her response. What Viola wanted with her these past few weeks, with her sharp glances and steady looks, confounded her. She had come to depend on the steady melancholy punctuated by raging fits her mother had displayed for years. This sudden change had upended Charlotte’s life further.
Charlotte gazed blankly at the floor, pressing the heel of her hand to her forehead. Trying to deal with her mother’s vagaries these days was almost as hard as dealing with her father’s demands. Too many crystal expectations. And far too many encased in shadow.
Father would yell that explanations were for the weak. That she should always know what to do. That she needed to be perfect.
But Father wouldn’t be back until the morning, so she had a respite before she received her castigation about her lack of ducal offers. Or her failure to entice the marquess that eve.
Every time she had thought of anything marriage-related, though, the balloon had simply extended. Knuckles bathed in blood and light eyes dark with promise pushing into her thoughts instead.
Why she would be thinking such things was the question foremost on her mind. For she was used to her father’s threats and her mother’s apathy and cutting remarks. No reason to feel the need to rebel now. Perhaps just knowing the end was near . . . but, no, she needed to keep to the plan. Nothing could go wrong as long as the Chatsworths followed the plan. As long as her father didn’t do something stupid.
As long as
she
didn’t.
Her fingers brushed a bright swath of pink fabric that had been placed over the banister rail, forgotten by its owner two weeks past, finally sorted from the rack to be returned to an armoire above stairs. Charlotte pulled her fingers along the pink. Perhaps she could ask . . . yes. The thought brought a smile to her lips. One that didn’t pull or hurt. Her schedule could be rearranged surely for a few days next week?
An abrupt banging interrupted her forming plans.
She turned to see her father stumble inside, brushing off the butler’s helping hands.
“Let go of me,” he roared, eyes bloodshot. The butler’s face remained stoic as he closed the door and stood to the side, waiting.
Charlotte swallowed, fingering the pink fabric. She couldn’t remember the last time her father had returned home for the night.
He looked up, his eyes meeting hers, rage in their depths. She froze—surely news of her lack of success that night had not circulated so quickly? She bowed her head, pretending deference, watching his physical movements for any sign of his emotional state, which might indicate how she should respond. The shaking of his hands seemed to indicate some sort of personal devastation.
“Girl, follow me. Now,” he barked.
She stiffly followed, still fully dressed in the elaborate navy-and-white gown she had worn all evening. It was hard not to feel as if the bare walls and surfaces she passed had been bled, leeched, into the cloth encasing her. Stripped paint and sacrificed heirlooms clinging to her, demanding she make everything right once more.
“A good evening to you, Father,” she stated as she entered his study and closed the door behind her so that any remaining servants would have to press an ear to the door to hear. “It is a pleasure to see you this night.”
He ignored her, violently shuffling through the piles on his desk.
She stood for a minute watching. “And I was thinking perhaps Emily—”
“Emily?” He didn’t look up as he searched unsuccessfully through the scattered papers. “Bloody peasant fodder. And as useless to me tonight as always.”
Charlotte tried to control her own anger.
Caution.
“I was thinking—”
He sliced a hand through the air. “Don’t
think,
for god’s sake. Just get rid of her in the morning. Send her back to the country. God knows she can’t keep her gob shut.” Though his ruddiness pointed to obvious alcohol consumption, there was something overly controlled about his movements and words.
Charlotte’s unease grew. “She is already in the country, Father. She has been for two weeks. In fact, I thought perhaps I too could—”
“What?” he asked coldly, running a hand through his hair, causing it to stick out in strange angles. The strands were thin now, where they had once been thick and strong. “Go to the country? Hide with your useless sister?”
Charlotte held herself still, stiff. “Emily is not useless. And yes, I—”
“You can’t, you have an appointment tomorrow night in the
heathen’s
den,” he spat.
Ladies didn’t sweat.
It was a rule.
Nevertheless, Charlotte could feel the brimming moisture in her hairline—cold, not hot—frosty like the icicles gathering in the very marrow of her bones. “I believe I heard you incorrectly, Father.”
She wasn’t sure how her voice remained so even because she was certain she had heard quite correctly, indeed, no matter her words.
Bennett Chatsworth looked away for a moment, fingers playing at the flap of his disheveled jacket, stroking the pocket watch there, an ill look to his features. The rage momentarily gave in to the devastation that simmered beneath.
“You will be staying the night elsewhere tomorrow. I will have your mother make your excuses to the Drumhursts.”
She felt the cold certainty spread to her stomach. She unconsciously clutched the silk of her skirt. Of her
investment.
One of many that cluttered her wardrobe, robbing the rest of the house of its once-glorious grandeur.
Unreal. Like a dream. She’d wake and find herself in the country, three years younger and eagerly awaiting her debut, everything in the past two years a fading nightmare. “I am also expected at the Mandells’ and the—”
“Yes, yes,” he said sharply, interrupting her wooden recital. “I’ll have your mother cancel everything. Only thing she is useful for these days.”
This existence she now found herself in was real, of course. She had painfully pinched herself far too many times in the past only to have the throb remain. She schooled her expression, closing the cold pane over her features, not allowing anything to show on her face. “Very well, Father. And where might this heathen’s den reside?”
“It doesn’t matter. No one will know of it, not even your mother, and the less you know the better.”
Bitter laughter bubbled, and she fought to keep it down. What was he planning to tell Viola? That Charlotte was spending some choice time with his mistress in order to learn the trade? “Afraid I’ll do something to ruin our marriage chances?”
“Don’t get smart with me.” He shook a finger in her direction, darkness in his expression. “Trant will fix things should they go awry.”
So he had lost to Mr. Trant. And somehow a bet had been undertaken before that loss. Given his attention in the past few weeks, Trant was hardly a surprise aspirant for her hand. But she hadn’t anticipated that other aspects might be negotiated first.
She should only be surprised that it had taken her father this long to venture down this avenue. Selling her to the highest bidder in marriage was little more than stringing together a lifetime of sold nights.
“I see. You chose to skip the direct route to marriage. I thought you were aiming for an earldom. Trant won’t even make your grandson a peer.”
“If only that were it.”
She narrowed her eyes on his face, watching the expressions that he had once kept close to his chest—it seemed so long ago now—expressions that every day grew more obvious, furtive, and desperate. “Who exactly did you lose to, Father?”
“It is of no consequence. He did it on a lark, as he seems to do everything.” Bennett Chatsworth fisted his watch. “Makes money hand over fist, despite it.
How?
Blasted nobodies. His reputation though . . .” Her father shuddered. “He will
destroy
us if the bet is not satisfied.”
The ice turned to dead stone as the circumstance grew tangible. “What did you do? Who did you sell me to, Father?”
Overheard conversations overlapped her lifeless thoughts.
Charlotte Chatsworth doesn’t know how lucky she is. Did you see her standing there, nose in the air? She thinks she is better than all of us.
Those girls in the retiring room had no concept of the definition of “lucky.”
Her father turned without answering. “I will tell your mother you have taken sick.”
Nothing felt closer to the truth.
“I—you can’t mean for me to spend the night alone with some gentleman?” Or with someone who couldn’t . . . even be deemed such.
His silence was answer enough.
“What-what if it gets out?”
These things always did.
Years of scraping and posing, holding together her pride under constant barrage, showing calm in the face of gathering anxiety and increasingly pressing desperation. All lost to her father’s gambling and greed. And Emily . . .
“It won’t.”
“But—”
“Then you’ll do what needs to be done to fix it,” he said harshly. “That is all, Charlotte.” He moved toward the door, conversation finished.
She reached out and gripped his sleeve. “Father.”
Please,
echoed, unsaid.
Don’t do this to me.
Everything she had endured. For
him.
For the family. For her own small, desperate longings.
He ripped his sleeve from her grip and strode from the room, taking her remaining courage with him, along with what was left of the packed snow dripping from her chipped ice.
So lucky. So arrogant.
Having to stand there night after night and hold herself together with pick, with axe, with painfully gathered snow.
She sank onto a hard wooden chair in her beautiful ball gown and tried not to let the tears fall.
Tried not to think of what would happen to Emily.
Tried not to think of what would happen to
her.
Tried to pull together cold pride to save her once more. For one day soon, she was simply going to melt and drain away instead, just like her tears.
Roman watched his brother throw back a shot of coarse whiskey. Andreas was angry. Furious. Livid, as expected. But had said nothing until they were alone. Also, as expected.
“Tell me again why I should not throttle you, Roman?”
“Because you love me more than your flesh-and-blood kin?”
Andreas shot him a look of distaste. Roman was used to it. Used to Andreas darkly stomping the sensibilities of all in his path. But Roman didn’t allow much to faze him, and long ago he’d waited out Andreas’s savagery and found the man beneath.
And beneath was a man who would die defending those he loved. Of course, Roman only knew two people who fit that bill, so to most people Andreas was a bit of an ogre.
“That measure is in place for
emergencies.
The virginal fate of some fool’s daughter is not an emergency, Roman.” Andreas’s arms were clenched so tightly that Roman was afraid they might splinter right off his tall frame. “I could murder you where you stand.”