by Zoë Archer
“But I dukker to earn my bread,” she felt compelled to point out. “If I fail at my work, I might not eat. The stakes aren’t so high for you.”
“I make sure to keep them high, else there’s no enjoyment in it. Come, now.” With the fingers of his free hand, he tipped her face up so that their gazes met. “There must be some part of you that enjoys reading people, discerning their secrets. Even, dare I say, manipulating the gorgios that come to you for guidance.” Small lines fanned at the corners of his eyes as he smiled.
It took Zora a moment to realize that he had not asked her a question, a question she would be impelled to answer. Instead, he had carefully laid out a series of statements, leaving the decision in her hands as to whether or not she would reveal anything of herself to him. She ought not to feel grateful for this—his dark magic was what forced her to speak the truth. Yet she did feel a strange gratitude. He wanted her to speak of her own will, and hoped that, if she did speak, she would be honest.
“There is ... power in it,” she admitted.
“To make someone think or do precisely what you want them to,” said Whit, “without their ever recognizing how you control them.”
She had never confessed that to anyone, not even her mother. The Rom liked getting the better of gorgios—cleverness and guile were prized amongst her people—but no one ever admitted that they enjoyed bending gorgios to one’s will, taking the yielding wood of their minds and carving it into whatever shape one desired.
“Mostly, I tell the same fortunes, harmless things. ‘You will have three great chances in your life. Be ready to seize the next opportunity.’”
“Mostly,” he echoed, but then noted, “not every time.”
“People who come for dukkering aren’t always shining examples of those manners you gorgios prize.” She hesitated.
He lowered smoothly into a crouch so that his face was level with hers. A searching need gleamed in his gaze, though his face remained a handsome, hard mask. In the candlelight and darkness his eyes were the deep blue of hidden, shadow-strewn pools, and she wanted to submerge herself in them.
“Confide in me, Zora. Tell me your secrets.”
She had no reason to trust him, none at all. Yet the need in his eyes called to her. “An old, rich gorgio wanted me to read the cards,” she said. “He had been rude to everyone in the camp, calling us a band of filthy, thieving vermin, sneering at our men and leering at our women.”
A cold anger hardened his jaw. “You, as well?”
“I am not unused to it.” Still, she didn’t care to be the object of anyone’s vulgar attention, especially not disrespectful gorgios. She was surprised, however, to see such rage in Whit, for she truly believed at that moment that if that old, rich man stood in the room, Whit would make him suffer for a long time before ending his life. Romani men took insults to their women very seriously, but never had Zora witnessed anyone other than direct kin be so angry on her behalf.
“Did you get his name?” Whit growled.
She shook her head. “Names aren’t often given when someone wants dukkering.” She added, “However, I did have my vengeance on the old donkey. I dealt the cards and told him that he would fall victim to a terrible property dispute. If he didn’t take the proper preventative steps, he would lose his estate and be forced to live off the charity of others.”
“The preventative steps were suitably foul, I hope.”
“He had to drink tea made from the droppings of long-eared bats, and sew moldy cheese into the lining of his waistcoats.”
Whit laughed, and the unexpected sound traveled the length of Zora’s body, settling warmly between her legs.
“Appropriate.” He chuckled.
“I saw him a week later, walking through the village. People crossed High Street to avoid coming too close. He also looked a little green.”
“Drinking tea brewed from bat droppings isn’t good for the complexion.” Approval and respect had replaced the anger from a moment before. It surprised her how much she enjoyed seeing that in his face, how she enjoyed being the object of his respect. “That was well done. Standing up for yourself.”
“You don’t think me a mean little Gypsy?”
“I think you are delicious.” His gaze went to her mouth. At the same time, his hand—which she had unknowingly been holding all the while—turned over to grasp her own hands. It wasn’t a hard grip, pinching and punishing, but secure, and his hand was so much larger than her own that he easily enfolded her. Only the most blameless innocent could ever mistake the sensual hunger that tightened him now, the desire in his touch. Zora was neither blameless nor innocent.
She felt herself slipping beneath the surface of dark, warm water. It would be so easy to drown in him. She could see he wanted his mouth on hers, and she wanted the same.
Surely, surely, there was good in him. She needed to believe it. If he was a truly bad man, he would not grow so angry on her behalf. He would not take pleasure in her petty revenge, nor be gratified that she had spine enough to defend herself.
He leaned closer until their lips were mere inches apart. All she had to do was tilt her head, just a little, and they would kiss.
“Turn away from him,” she whispered.
“From whom?”
“Wafodu guero. The Devil.”
Whit stilled. “Zora,” he murmured, almost a sigh. He turned his head, but he did not move back, did not release his hold on her.
She quickly went on. “There is goodness in you. I see it. I feel it.” Desperation made her words urgent, but she found that she wasn’t pleading so much for her own freedom as she was for his. “Whatever the Devil has given you, it isn’t too late to reject his gifts and save yourself.”
A shadow passed over Whit’s face. “I never said I wanted to be saved.”
“But—”
He rose from his crouch and, releasing her, braced his hands on either side of the top of her chair. His looming presence threatened to overwhelm her.
“You do not know me at all,” he said, “else you would understand that I want exactly what Mr. Holliday has given me.”
“What has he given you?”
A dark smile curved his mouth. “Control of the odds.”
No greater gift could be offered to a gambler. The need to wager ran through Whit like blood.
He saw that she understood. “Everything I desire shall be mine.”
“Not me,” she said.
His eyes narrowed with the challenge. “Care to wager on that?”
Enforced honesty made her answer, “No.” She added, “However, it will take much more than a roll of the dice or turn of a card to win me, my lord.”
“I hope so. For there is nothing so exciting as beating difficult odds.”
“In this case, the odds are impossible.”
He smiled, purely wolf. “Even better. Makes for a sweeter victory.”
“You might use that power against me.”
His smile faded. “Never. I swear that. And once I vow something, I do not renege.”
Zora cursed the fact that the one time she finally met a man with a spirit equal to her own, they would be set against each other. Cruel, it was. Had circumstance been different ... But it wasn’t different.
He straightened and, stepping back, pulled a timepiece from his waistcoat pocket. It surprised her, that pocket watch, for the case holding it was old and a little dented from use. When he took the watch from its case, she noted that it was well cared for, yet rather plain. Surely a man as wealthy as Whit could afford a new, more ornate timepiece.
“I’m late meeting Bram and Leo for supper,” Whit said. He replaced the watch. “We convene at a chophouse before heading off for our night’s entertainment. Say the word, and I’ll dismiss them.” He nodded toward the playing card propped on the mantel. “I can take that, and you can leave with me. You and I can dine in a private room. Make our own night’s entertainment.” His lids lowered.
She had no doubt that
he would make the night very, very entertaining. “Until you wash your hands of Wafodu guero, my answer remains unchanged.” Which meant that this room would remain her prison, and he her jailer.
“As my lady desires.” He bowed effortlessly, one hand pressed to his heart, the other stretched out in a flourish behind him, and his outstretched leg showed itself very finely. A true gentleman’s bow, the sort that she had never received. She had to admit it was a pretty thing, yet even this courtliness he invested with potent virility. Strange—the bow did not feel ironic, but rather genuinely courteous.
“Don’t wait up,” he advised. “I usually come home after dawn.”
She stood. “I won’t keep your chocolate warm.”
He gave a half smile before turning and striding toward the door. His hand on the doorknob, he said, “Speaking of chocolate, I’d advise not frightening my servants with your ghostly hauntings.”
“It doesn’t matter to me if I scare them.”
“It should, as they’re the ones who bring you food. Or, I could wait on you.”
She frowned. “Teasing your captive is bad form.”
“I’m not teasing. It would give me much pleasure to take care of you, Zora.” The huskiness of his voice revealed him to be quite sincere.
No answer or biting reply came to her. All she could feel was stunned, uncertain. He was neither hero nor villain, but something in between, and this confused her deeply.
With a final, smaller bow, he left the room. She expected—hoped—to feel relief after he had gone.
Instead, she was beset by a strange and unwelcome emptiness.
Chapter 5
The scent of roasting animal flesh hung heavy in the air of the Snake and Sextant. A burnt carbon smell, strangely both enticing and repellant. Whit wondered if this was the smell of the Inferno, sinners eternally roasting upon spits like so many beefsteaks. It wasn’t a pleasant image or thought, so he forced it from his mind as he pushed into the tavern. Though the hour was relatively early, few empty seats remained.
Familiar, this place. Its heavy, scarred floors, its chipped green settles and battered tables, its aggressively cheerful fire that beat back London’s gloom but filled the tavern itself with smoke. For years, the Hellraisers had been coming to the Snake and Sextant, fortifying themselves with meat and ale before the night’s carousing. To be sure, taverns were more plentiful on Fleet Street, but the Snake’s location just off Haymarket won out. Close to Covent Garden, Bram’s demand, and a fairly short ride to the clubs on St. James’s Street, Whit’s demand.
Someone shouted his name. He knew without looking who called him, and from where. Whit began weaving his way through the tavern to find his fellow reprobates. Ensconced at their favorite table sat Bram and Leo. Bram already had a girl upon his lap, her arms around his shoulders as she left red bite marks upon his neck, and Leo wryly watched the spectacle over the rim of his tankard. Like Whit, his friends were dressed for evening.
“Good thing your company is so amusing,” Bram said as Whit approached the table. “Else we would have left an hour ago.”
“Business kept me at home,” Whit answered.
“Business has lovely dark eyes, doesn’t she?” drawled Leo.
“And a figure to rival Isis,” added Bram. He caressed the girl in his lap, his movements habitual, made without thought. Whit could not begin to guess at the number of women Bram had petted in a similar manner, and he was certain Bram had no idea of the tally. “Have you tupped her yet?”
“Given the way Whit looks ready to rip your arms off,” Leo said, “I’d wager that he hasn’t.”
Whit forced his hands to unclench, his snarl to relax. This was new, uncomfortably new, both the sudden surge of emotion and the jealousy. Only the gaming tables ever witnessed or provoked any strong feeling in him. In all other aspects of his life—including women—he drifted in a kind of amicable indifference. Which horse to ride in the park. Whether he preferred that afternoon to practice his swordsmanship or his marksmanship. If Whit picked out an opera dancer for the night’s diversion and Bram or Leo lured her away, it mattered not at all. Whit simply found another girl.
It was not the same with Zora.
“Tonight, she enlightened me on the practice of fortune-telling,” he said.
Bram shook his head. “Christ, has it been so long that you’ve forgotten how to bed a woman?”
“Not so long,” answered Leo before Whit could speak.
“That passel of courtesans at John’s place, before we left for the country. As I recall, Whit retired to a chamber with the blond one who had the big—”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Whit growled, though, in truth, the encounter had left barely a ripple in his memory. That night had been about slaking a body’s need, and little else. The moment it was over, he’d dressed and gone to a club, and he remembered more about the sound of dice as he played hazard than the sound of the blond courtesan’s voice.
“Then what—” Bram broke off as the girl in his lap attempted to lick the scar that ran down his jaw and neck. He pulled her back. “None of that. Leave us alone, Betty.”
“It’s Kitty,” the girl pouted. True to Bram’s taste, she was a very pretty girl, pale skin, fair haired, but Whit could take note of her looks only as if from a great distance. He had but one image, one woman, burned upon his mind’s eye, and she was captive in his gaming room.
Bram gently set the sulking girl on her feet. “Go on, now. Bring us steaks, artichoke and oyster pie, and another round of ale.”
Whit expected Kitty, or Betty or whatever her name was, to object tumbling from gentleman’s paramour to servant in a matter of seconds. But the mulish expression suddenly lifted from her face. After smiling and bobbing a curtsey, she flitted off to carry out Bram’s directive.
“Mr. Holliday’s doing,” said Bram. “That is nothing. Only this afternoon, with our esteemed friend’s gift, I persuaded two of London’s most obnoxiously virtuous young widows to share my bed.”
As Whit sat, he said, “It must have been crowded.”
“You’ve never seen Bram’s bed,” Leo noted. “There’s room enough for a baker’s dozen of obnoxiously virtuous young widows.”
“A pity there are so few,” Bram sighed.
Three full tankards were brought to the table, and as Whit took his first drink, he wondered whether there would ever be enough young widows, pretty barmaids, or opera dancers to satisfy Bram. Even now, after recounting his afternoon with not one but two willing women, Bram all but hummed with a restless, shadowed energy pushing him forward, keeping him from any measure of peace. In an unthinking gesture, Bram ran his thumb back and forth over the raised mark of his scar, as if confirming the presence of a lingering sickness.
If Mr. Holliday’s gift of persuasion could not ease Bram’s disquiet, could anything?
Unaware of Whit’s thoughts, Bram continued. “Spending your nights at hazard and piquet has turned your manners coarse. No wonder you can’t get the Gypsy wench under you. Shall I persuade her on your behalf?” His animal grin showed that Bram did not mind this duty at all.
Whit grasped the handle of his tankard so tightly his knuckles whitened. “My thanks, but that is unnecessary. If—when—Zora becomes my lover, it will be through my own unaided seduction, not magic.”
“Then you’ll never have her,” Bram said.
Whit’s smile felt thin, though he knew his friend meant nothing by his jests. Scant days earlier, Whit could have borne it all—Bram’s teasing, the possibility of losing or sharing a woman—without complaint or anger. But in a short span of time, he felt altered, his poles reversed so that his sense of direction found no purchase.
“And what of you?” Whit asked Leo, sitting opposite him. “Have you used your gift in similarly sybaritic ways?”
Leo raised a brow. “I’m no Lothario like Bram. A wonder his cock hasn’t fallen off, or he hasn’t gone mad from the pox.”
“Preventative measures, Master Le
o,” Bram pronounced. At twenty-eight, Leo was only four years younger than Bram, but that never stopped Bram from addressing him like a youthful novitiate. “There are some women on Half Moon Street who sell the most useful devices—sheaths, if you will—of thinnest sheep’s gut, which you tie on with a ribbon to your—”
Leo scowled. “I know what they are. Even callow social climbers are schooled in such things.”
A reply was prevented by the fortuitous arrival of their food. Betty or Kitty set three steaks before them, as well as the artichoke and oyster pie, ale, and an unasked-for tureen of early spring pea soup. The Snake and Sextant was not the most fashionable tavern in the Haymarket, but the food was good and, with Bram’s new persuasive abilities, plentiful.
The girl’s ready smile widened farther when Bram dropped more coins than necessary into her apron pocket. When she moved to sidle in beside him, he waved her away. “We want privacy, sweetheart. Don’t come back until I call for you.”
“Yes, my lord.” She sauntered off, happily jingling the coins.
Unlike Bram, Leo, and the rest of the patrons of the tavern, Whit did not stare at her swaying, deliberately provocative progress as she walked away. He would rather watch Zora’s unconscious grace than a room full of flirtatious barmaids. Trouble was, Zora’s demonstrations of her lithe agility often came when fleeing him.
“The answer is no,” Leo said, cutting into his beefsteak. “I haven’t been employing my gift to roger the fair ladies of the town.” He amended, “Not that I have trouble finding a willing woman, but even if I wanted to use magic to tup a woman, the ability to prophecy future financial disasters by touching coin isn’t precisely useful in that regard.”
“Than what bloody good is it?” demanded Bram as he sliced the artichoke and oyster pie.