by Zoë Archer
At the word evil, Whit did frown. Clearly, he disliked the sound of it. There again, a trace of who he had been emerged. Zora wanted to reach out to that Whit from before. Yet he shook his head as though to dislodge his earlier self.
“Mr. Holliday granted me an additional boon,” he continued. “While you are my guest, you must tell me the truth. No false words shall pass your lips.” His gaze strayed down to her mouth. She found herself looking at his, the seductive shapes of his lips promising things she would not allow herself to ask for, not from this wicked stranger. She had known him, somehow, before, but now she did not.
The implications of his words unnerved her. Life amongst the Romani was made of spinning yarns and telling hokibens, both to the gorgios who wanted their fortunes told and amongst the Rom themselves. The Romani were expert fabulists and liars—a justifiable source of pride, it meant they were clever and could be trapped by no one. Yet perhaps this sinfully handsome gorgio was himself lying.
He saw that she doubted him. “What is your surname, Zora?”
She wanted to give him the alias she always used, Lee, but instead other words leapt from her mouth as if pulled by an unseen hand. “Grey. I am called Zora Grey.” She bit her lip to keep from saying more.
Duvvel preserve her. It was true. She could not lie to him, thanks to the Devil’s magic.
Whit smiled, pleased with himself, pleased with her.
There was no way out. Not until she gave this dark stranger what he desired. “It’s card secrets you want? As you wish.” She ducked underneath the cage of his powerful arms and strode toward the gaming table. Deftly, she picked up a deck of cards and began separating out the aces through the sixes for piquet. As she did this, she noticed a card nearby lying faceup on its own atop the table. She frowned as she studied it.
“This queen of diamonds has no picture on it,” she noted.
Whit came to stand beside her. He tapped the card with one long finger, and his golden signet ring gleamed. “This is what binds you to me. You cannot be more than twenty feet from this card.”
The cards in her hands fell to the table, scattering like dead leaves, as she reached for the empty queen of diamonds. She tried to pick up the card. Yet she could not lift it. Nor push it across the surface of the table. It was as though it weighed ten stone.
With maddening leisure, Whit strolled over and picked up the card, then ambled toward the fireplace. He propped up the card on the mantel, as one might display a hunting trophy.
“Until I say I am ready to release you,” he said, giving the card a nudge to straighten it. “And no earlier.”
Zora grabbed the poker and swung it at him. His hand shot out and grabbed it with surprising speed and agility. She fought to pull it from his grasp, yet he was too strong, moving not at all as she struggled to wrest free the long piece of iron. Her teeth clenched with the effort. All for nothing. He might be a wealthy gorgio, but Whit was not soft, not pampered. He possessed strength in abundance.
Using every foul Romani word she knew, Zora cursed him. He merely smiled his devil’s maddening, arrogant smile, delighted with his spirited plaything.
“I’m not a toy,” she said through gritted teeth. “Not a doll. Thoughts and feelings and needs—I have them. And they’ve got nothing to do with you.”
“Then tell me what I want to know,” he answered calmly, though menace threaded through his words.
Zora released her grip on the poker and stalked back to the card table. She gathered the fallen cards, snatching them up with hands that felt like talons. If only her fingers were tipped with cutting claws, capable of drawing blood. She would hurt the madness that held Whit, maybe drive it from his body, his soul. But she had only hands, no weapons against madness. Hot anger surged through her as she shuffled the cards, a bitter current through her body that pooled acridly in her mouth, as Whit came to stand beside her.
“To cheat at piquet is mere sleight of hand,” she spat. “The secret of it lies in the shuffling and dealing of the deck.” Her hands flew in neat circular motions, the cards in continuous motion.
His brows rose. “Not in marking the deck?”
Though she wanted to mislead him, the honest answer burst from her. “No, that will only get you caught, and is prone to failure if you are given a strange deck of cards. You must practice your shuffling to ensure you get precisely the cards you want at the deal.” She demonstrated, allowing herself the momentary diversion of the cheat rather than focus on the intolerable situation in which she was now trapped.
Whit whistled in appreciation as she shuffled and dealt three times, each time dealing hands that made her the winner.
“It takes long hours to get the technique right,” she said.
“Yet you’ve a gift for it.” He watched her, his gaze sharp and also admiring. “I have seen many cardsharps, some of the best in England, and you make them look as clumsy as bears.”
In his words, his face, he emerged, the same Whit he had been back at the encampment. Untouched by the Devil’s influence. It was like catching sight of the sun after a cold, mist-shrouded night. And it was to this Whit she responded, gratified by his appreciation. Strange, so profoundly strange, to have found the one man, a gorgio at that, who could truly value her skill. She could only wish he hadn’t bartered himself to Wafodu guero.
“Nonetheless, there must be more to your art than simply controlling the shuffle,” Whit pressed.
“As I said, it’s also in the dealing,” she confirmed. Maybe she could still reach him, beneath the guise of revealing her card secrets. “You can either deal the second card or deal from the bottom of the deck.”
“I know about those techniques—and when we played I watched your hands.” These last words were a silken murmur. “I never saw you do either.”
She flushed to think of him looking at her hands, curiously intimate. “Simply because you could not see it does not mean it didn’t happen. Watch.” She immersed herself in the deal, her fingers barely whispering over the cards as she worked.
His hands, large and warm, covered hers. Stilling her. Yet she was far from still. His touch ignited cascades of awareness through her, darkly brilliant. The falsely named Mr. Holliday must have gifted Whit with some other enchantment, some power of seduction, for how else might she explain the hot need flooding her at Whit’s touch, the rough desire that spared no thought for her heart or her mind? He is your captor. Yet there’s another man within him, an imperfect, searching man who longs for meaning.
“Slower.” His voice was deep, a shadowed rumble.
She pulled her hands out from beneath his, feeling the drag of his hot skin against hers. Air became scarce, thick.
“Like this.” She demonstrated again her dealing technique, slowing down her movements so he might see them. It felt awkward and graceless to slow her actions. Yet she must. She might not reach Whit, free him from the Devil’s influence. If so, if he was lost, and the sooner he learned her skills, the sooner she could leave and return to her family, her people.
She went through the process one more time before Whit’s hand came to rest atop hers again. And again she felt the heat of his touch travel in incendiary waves through her body.
“Now me,” he said.
She pushed the deck of cards into his hand, wanting distance. He gave her none. His tall, masculine presence kept too close as he stood beside her. Now it was her turn to watch his hands, large yet dexterous, the tendons of his wrists whilst he shuffled the cards.
Her life was spent studying hands and the lines upon them. They revealed much—not the future, not what was to be, but the person who possessed them, the paths the person had taken and the truths of that individual’s life. Grime beneath fingernails, calluses, knuckles swollen from overuse, strength. Soft hands, barely lined, fresh and lavender scented, adorned with rings or very lightly stained at the tips from pinches of snuff. Professional habit had her observing a person’s hands within moments of meeting that person.
Hands were not sensual, not alive with sexual promise. They were business to Zora. Nothing more.
Watching Whit work the cards changed her mind. She saw his fingers glide lightly over their printed surfaces and could not stop vivid images blazing through her thoughts. Those long fingers toying with her body, cleverly stroking and touching her to fevered arousal. The breadth of his palm, cradling her head as he kissed her deeply.
She ruthlessly shoved those thoughts aside. Desire was a drug trying to lull her into compliance. He was no longer the man he’d been. Difficult to remember that, when they shared these moments together not as captor and captive, but man and woman, as they had been before.
The erotic potential of Whit’s hands captivated her. More than that. In their quick movements and the speed at which he learned this new art, she saw further evidence that his mind was incisive, adept. He might be born into privilege, but he was no thoughtless gorgio blue blood, whose brains had been systematically bred out of him. She furtively glanced up at his face. His brows were drawn down, the line of his mouth firm, his blue eyes clear and sharp. He concentrated, giving his full attention to the task of mastering the cards. Nothing so arousing as a handsome man immersed in complex thought.
Within a few minutes, Whit shuffled and dealt with an expert’s touch. His movements were as swift as her own. Had she not known what trick he used with the cards, she would never have realized he cheated.
“An adept student,” she said.
She did not realize she had spoken aloud until his eyes gleamed with pleasure at her compliment.
“A skillful teacher,” he murmured.
Their gazes connected, held. She felt herself drawn closer, pulled toward him by a force greater than her sizeable will.
She almost forgot. Forgot that she was here against her will. She could not rely on him.
Zora glanced away, breaking the connection.
“You have what you wanted,” she said.
“Do I?” His question was casual, yet want pulsed beneath.
Her jaw tightened. “My secrets at cards. I’ve given them to you.”
“Is that all of them?”
“Yes. And I can’t lie to you, so you know I speak the truth.” She tipped her chin up. “When it comes to card games, I have shown you everything I know.”
“Not everything.” He was an unyielding presence without even touching her. “There are still your secrets to telling fortunes with cards.”
She turned back to him. “A nobleman and gambler hasn’t a need to dukker. You didn’t even want your fortune told at the camp.”
He gave a shrug that only seemed indolent. Strength and potential simmered beneath the careless movement. “Now I want to know how.”
“Let me go,” she whispered. “Back to my people. Back to my life.” Her eyes grew hot and damp as she stared up at him. To keep herself from placing a pleading hand upon his arm, she twisted her fingers in her skirts. “My family will be worried about me.”
Another flare of shadowed regret in his gaze. He looked at her then, truly looked at her, and she willed herself still to return his look. Lifetimes passed, or mere seconds. A war was being fought behind the crystal blue of his eyes, where his desires and his principles battled against one another. She prayed that he was not so far gone, that the muscles of his conscience had not withered after probable years of disuse, that he had the strength to fight the Devil within.
His hand drifted up to his coat, finding the spot where a button had once been. The coat was fine, well-maintained. It seemed strange that a button would come loose and fall from it. But its absence seemed to strike a note in him, reminding him of something.
“No.” It was he, this time, who turned away. “There are secrets you possess I still want.”
Zora shivered, cold. Daylight had nearly broken, and violet shapes emerged outside, revealing themselves to be trimmed hedges of a walled garden, and beyond the wall, the forms of other imposing, heavy gorgio homes. The quiet of night slowly retreated. Someone was in the mews between houses, singing as he went about his work. Servants were awakening and making everything ready for their slumbering masters. From the growing sounds of many voices, many carts and carriages in the lane, the multitude of chimneys rising up against the dawn sky, Zora realized she was in London. Not the part of London she knew, not Smith-field for the St. Bartholomew’s Fair, not Tyburn to ply the crowds watching the hangings. This was wealthy London—a London she had never known. His home. Over which the sun struggled to rise and break from the thick haze of smoke and soot.
“I want to leave,” she pressed.
“Perhaps tomorrow. Or the day after that. I have yet to decide.” His expression shifted, darkened. A mask sliding into place, obscuring who he once had been. He took her measure again, slowly and thoroughly. A boldly sexual look. As if he imagined the shapes their bodies would make when intertwined. “You intrigue me so.”
“God,” she said bitterly, “how I wish I didn’t.”
He took a step toward her. “Come, Zora. It need not be this way between us. We might enjoy one another. I promise you, I can give you quite a lot of pleasure.” His confidence was indisputable, and she did not doubt him. He murmured, smiling, his lids lowered, “Let’s to bed together.”
“Will you force me,” she asked, then added acidly, “my lord?”
He looked startled. The mask slipped. “Never,” he said at once. The notion seemed to appall him.
Good. Maybe there was yet hope for him, and for her. “That is what it will take to get me into your bed.” Her voice was cutting. “Force. I won’t go otherwise.”
His eyes narrowed. “Do you hate me?”
“Yes,” she said immediately.
Again, his surprise. As if he found himself suddenly on stage in the middle of a play and discovered he was performing not the role of the hero but the villain. “Do you desire me?”
The magic that controlled her would not allow her to lie. “Yes.”
A quick blaze of triumph in his face. “Let me show you how I desire you.” He stepped nearer. His head lowered, bringing his mouth close to hers. She felt the warmth of his breath as his lips hovered a scant inch from hers, the heat of his body as strong as a fever. This close, she saw stubble along his jaw, intoxicatingly male, the short dark fringe of his eyelashes, a multitude of tiny details imprinting themselves on her mind and her deepest self.
His kiss would devastate her. She knew that if his lips met hers, she would mistake him for who he had been, not who he was now, and the resistance she needed would burn to ash.
She turned her head to the side. His breath fanned her cheek. “By force alone. That is the only way you’ll ever have me.”
For a moment, she thought she had pushed him too far. His expression grew shadowed. Animal need gleamed through him, tightening him. He reached for her and she stiffened, readying herself. She would fight him, if she had to.
He did not grab her. Did not haul her to him, or use bruising, punishing hands.
Instead, he ran a fingertip lightly down her neck. She shivered.
“Care to bet on that?” he asked.
She had to answer, yet before she spoke, he turned away.
As if speaking to any guest, he said, “A bedchamber will be readied for you.”
The thought of sleeping in a gorgio bed, in a gorgio house, felt like entombment. She had seen their cumbersome beds and thought them massive and terrifying, especially the ones with hanging draperies like shrouds.
“If I’m held prisoner in this place,” she said, “then I will stay in this room.”
Of her many responses, this was one he hadn’t anticipated. He looked around at the room, frowning. “You can’t stay in the gaming room.” This was a clear fact to him. Nobody slept in a room not designed for sleeping. Typical gorgio.
“Until you let me go, this is where I’ll stay.” She folded her arms across her chest.
“The other chambers are much more comfo
rtable.”
“Not to me.”
Whit studied her for half a moment, as though she truly were a fox that had somehow been trapped within his home. A strange, wild creature in a place where it didn’t belong.
He bowed, smiling. A gentleman’s bow, elegant and effortless, highlighting the sleek muscularity of his body. “As my lady wishes.”
“I’m not your lady,” she fired back. “Not as long as the Devil has his claws in you.”
He frowned, seemingly torn between his two selves. Then he gave another bow, retreating behind his aristocrat’s polished veneer. “Good night, Zora. Or rather,” he said, eyeing the pale dawn sky, “good morning. If you change your mind about wanting a bed, any bed, it’s yours for the taking.”
She knew exactly which bed he wanted for her. Before she could spit back a retort, he strode from the chamber. He paused in the hallway, and she saw him pick up her ring, then put the bauble into the pocket of his waistcoat before walking off.
The room felt oddly empty without him in it. Of course it would, she reminded herself. The Whit who kept her here was her jailer. The dark magic of the Devil swirled around him like a cloak. She might not reach the uncorrupted man beneath that cloak, which meant she was alone, merely a Romani girl held against her will, far from home, far from her family and friends.
With him gone, exhaustion filled her, weighting her limbs. Zora sank down to the plush carpet. Rest. She had to rest. The night had been long, filled with events she still could not fully comprehend. Had someone told her yesterday that she would come face-to-face with the Devil himself, that she would become the prisoner of a handsome, wealthy gorgio who was himself a prisoner of the Devil’s magic, she would have laughed and chided the person for telling stories too outrageous to believe.
Now she knew differently.
She rose up onto her knees when she heard the door open. Servants came trooping in, holding blankets, pillows, a chamber pot, a folding screen, a nightstand. Two footmen carried a narrow bed, but the quality of it was fine, the mattress thick. It hadn’t been taken from a servant’s room. As she watched, amazed, the large round card table was pushed to one side, and the servants began to set up everything as if the game room were, in fact, a bedchamber.