by Liz Carlyle
“What are you staking?” Enders demanded again.
The comte held up one finger, and cut a swift glance at the footmen. “Tufton,” he barked, “is Mademoiselle Marchand still in her sitting room?”
The servant looked startled. “I’m sure I couldn’t say, sir.”
“Mon Dieu, just go find her!” Valigny ordered.
“Are…are you sure, my lord?”
“Yes, damn you,” snapped the comte. “What business is it of yours? Dépêchez-vous!”
The footman yanked open the door and vanished.
“Insolent bastard,” muttered the comte. He ordered the remaining servant to refresh everyone’s drink, then began to pace the parlor’s carpet. Calvert, too, was looking ill at ease. The hand still lay untouched.
“I don’t know what sort of stunt this is meant to be, Valigny,” Enders complained as his glass was filled. “Rothewell and I are winning, so we actually have something left to lose. Your next wager had best prove undeniably tempting.”
The comte glanced back over his shoulder. “Oh, it will, my lord,” he said silkily. “It will. Do I not understand your tastes and your—shall we say appetites?”
“Just who the devil is this Marchand person?” asked Rothewell impatiently.
“Ah, who is she indeed!” The comte returned to the table and lifted his glass as if to propose a toast. “Why, she is my lovely daughter, Lord Rothewell. My half-English bastard child. Surely the old gossip is not yet forgotten?”
“Your daughter!” Enders interjected. “Good God, man. At a card game?”
“Indeed, you go too far, Valigny,” said Rothewell, studying the depths of his brandy. “A gently bred girl has no business in here.”
Their host lifted one shoulder again. “Oh, not so gently, mon ami,” he replied dispassionately. “The girl has spent the whole of her existence in France—with that stupid cow of a mother who bore her. She has seen enough of life to know what it is.”
Enders’s eyes flared wide. “Do you mean to say this is the child of Lady Halburne?” he demanded. “Are you quite mad?”
“No, but you may become so when you see her.” Valigny’s face broke into that all-too-familiar grin. “Vraiment, mes amis, this one is her mother’s child. Her face, her teeth, her breasts—oui, everything is perfection, you will see. All she needs is a man to put her in her place—and keep her there.”
“A beauty, eh?” Enders’s expression had shifted, and when he spoke, his voice was thicker. “How old is she?”
“A bit older than you might prefer,” admitted Valigny. “But she could prove amusing nonetheless.”
“Then perhaps,” said Enders softly, “you had best explain precisely what you are offering us here, Valigny.”
Just then, the parlor door burst open. “Oui, an excellent suggestion,” said the girl who stalked toward the comte. In the gloom beyond the table, she made a sweeping gesture toward the guests. “Just what are you up to this time, Valigny? Lining your pockets, I am sure.”
The comte replied in rapid, staccato French. Rothewell could not make out the words, but Valigny’s expression had suddenly soured. Her back half-turned to them, the girl let fly another torrent of French, shaking her finger in the comte’s face. Her voice was deep and faintly dusky—a sultry bedchamber voice that made a man’s skin heat.
The footman stood in the rear of the room, his face growing paler as the argument rose to a crescendo. He was worried about the girl, Rothewell realized.
“Sace bleu!” the girl finally spit. “Do as you wish. What do I care?” Then she made an angry gesture with her hand, spun round on one heel, and swished toward the table. At once, Enders sucked a sharp breath between his teeth.
It was understandable. Once again, Valigny did not lie. A strange mix of lust and longing stabbed through Rothewell, an almost visceral desire. The girl—the woman—was exquisite beyond words. Her dark eyes flashed with fire, and her chin was up a notch. Her nose was thin, her eyes wide-set, and her lush hair formed a sharp widow’s peak above a high forehead.
In the dim light her complexion appeared surprisingly rich, her hair almost black. She was tall, too. As tall as Valigny, whom she seemed in that moment to tower over. But it was an illusion. She was simply furious.
Rothewell pushed away his brandy. He did not like his reaction to the woman. “Kindly explain yourself, Valigny.”
The comte gave a theatrical bow. “I meet your wagers, mes amis,” he announced, “with one very beautiful, very rich bride. I trust I need not sit her upon the table?”
“You must be mad,” Rothewell snapped. “Get her out of here. We are none of us fit company for a lady, drunk and disreputable as we are—even I know that much.”
The comte opened his hands. “But my dear Lord Rothewell, I have a plan.”
“Oui, a plan of great brilliance!” the girl interjected, lifting her skirts just a fraction so that she might execute a deep, mocking curtsy. “Allow me to begin anew. Bonsoir, messieurs. Welcome to the home of my most gracious and devoted papa. I comprehend that I am now to go—how do you say it?—upon the auction block, oui? Alas, I am une mégère—a frightful shrew, you would say—and my English is thick with the French. But I am very rich”—she pronounced it reesh—“and passable to look at, no? Alors, who will make my loving papa the first bid? I am but a horse on the hoof, messieurs, awaiting your pleasure.”
“Come now, mon chou!” her father chided. “That’s doing it too brown, even for you!”
“Je ne pense pas!” snapped the girl.
Rothewell scrubbed his hand round the black stubble of his beard, which was ample given the lateness of the hour. He was not accustomed to being the only sane person in a room.
Valigny was still looking remarkably pleased with himself. The woman had gone to the sideboard and was pouring herself a dram of brandy as if it were nothing out of the ordinary, but her hand, Rothewell saw, was shaking when she replaced the stopper in the crystal decanter.
Rothewell turned to glance at Enders, but he was ogling the girl, his mouth still slack. A lecher without shame. But was he any better? No, for he’d scarce taken his eyes off the woman from the moment she’d entered the room. Her mouth could easily obsess him, and that raspy voice of hers sent heat into places it had no business.
Why, then, did Enders trouble him so? Why did he wish to reach over and shove that lolling tongue back in his thick-lipped mouth? Rothewell cut a swift glance down, and realized that beneath the table, Enders’s hand was already easing up and down the fall of his trousers.
Good God.
“Look here, Valigny,” said Rothewell, violently stabbing out his cheroot, “I came to get drunk and play cards, not to—”
“What’s she worth?” Enders abruptly interjected. “And I’ll brook none of her insolence, Valigny, so she can put that shrew business aside right now. Just tell me how much this leg-shackle will bring me if I win her.”
Win her. The words sounded ugly, even to Rothewell’s ear.
“As I say, the girl is well dowered,” the comte reassured him. “Her worth will more than meet anything we’ve put upon that table tonight.”
“Do you think us complete fools?” said Enders. “Halburne divorced his wife. She didn’t have a pot to piss in by the time he was finished—and you had to put her up in some drafy old chateau in godforsaken Limousin—so we know her straits were desperate.”
Valigny opened his hands expressively. “Oui, ’tis true,” he acknowledged. “But one must ask, my dear Lord Enders—why did Halburne marry her in the first place, hein? It was because she was an heiress! Cotton mills! Coal mines! Mon Dieu, none knows this better than I.”
“I’m not sure we care, Valigny,” said Rothewell.
“You might soon come to care, mon ami,” the comte suggested lightly. “Because, you see, a bit of it has been left to the girl. She is the last blood of her mother’s family. But first she must find a husband—an English husband, and a man of the—how do you s
ay it?—le sang bleu?”
“A blueblood,” muttered Rothewell. “Christ Jesus, Valigny. She is your child.”
“Oui, and do not the English always barter their daughters to be bred like mares?” The comte laughed, drew out his chair, and sat. “I am just doing it openly.”
“You are a pig, Valigny,” said his daughter matter-of-factly from the sideboard. “Skinny, oui, but still the pig.”
“And that would make you what, mon chou?” he snapped. “A piglet, n’est-ce pas?”
Calvert, who had until now remained silent, cleared his throat harshly. “Now see here, Valigny,” he said. “If I am to be banker, I cannot proceed without Mademoiselle Marchand’s agreement.”
Again, the comte laughed. “Oh, she will agree—won’t you, mon chou?”
At that, the girl hastened from the sideboard, and leaned across the table, eyes blazing. “Mon Dieu, I will agree!” she said, pounding her fist upon the table so hard the glasses jumped. “One of you haggard old roués marry me—immédiatement!—before I kill him. Neither of you could be worse.”
Enders began to laugh, a nasal, braying sound, like an ass with a head cold. “A saucy piece, isn’t she, Valigny? Yes, amusing indeed.”
The girl moved as if to rise, but suddenly, she caught Rothewell’s gaze, and their eyes locked. He waited for her to pull away, but she stared boldly. Her eyes were wide, limpid pools of black-brown rage, and some other inscrutable emotion. Just what was it that lurked hidden there? A challenge? Pure hatred? Whatever it was, it at least served one purpose. It kept Rothewell from looking directly down at the creamy swell of cleavage, which seemed destined to spill from her bodice.
“Come, mon chou!” cajoled the comte. “Stand up straight and mind your tone, eh? You may soon be a baroness if I play my cards poorly.”
“Bah!” she spit, abruptly straightening up from the table. “Play your cards badly, then. I wish to have done with this business.”
“Very well.” Calvert still looked uneasy. “I suppose we may proceed.”
Rothewell shoved his cards away. “No,” he snapped. “This is lunacy.”
“First hear what I offer, Rothewell,” the comte suggested, all business now. “You have eight thousand pounds on the table.”
“Yes? What of it?”
“And Enders has what? Another eight?”
“Give or take,” agreed Enders.
“So I wager the right to marry my daughter against all that is on the table,” said the comte. “If I win, très bien. You go home a little less well-off than you came in. But if I lose, then the winner can marry my daughter—but within the month, s’il vous plaît. Her grandfather’s will settles upon her the sum of fifty thousand pounds on her wedding day, which you will halve with me. Let us call it a finder’s fee.”
“Fifty thousand pounds, halved?” Enders drew back. “But you cannot lose!”
“Oui, but if you win, you win far more than eight thousand pounds,” countered the comte.
“True enough,” said Enders. “But divided, that sum is nothing!”
“Come now, Enders, it is enough to make a man comfortable if not truly rich,” the comte countered. “Certainly it is enough to meet your wagers.”
“And her beauty aside, she’s hardly young,” Enders reminded him.
Rothewell looked back and forth between Mademoiselle Marchand and her father. Something was amiss here. Or being hidden. He sensed it with a gambler’s instinct. The girl’s spine was rigid, her chin still high. But she was casting surreptitious glances at Lord Enders, and her bravado, he thought, was flagging.
She reminded him of someone, he suddenly realized. It was the French accent. That warm, honey-colored skin. Those dark eyes, alight with fury and passion. Good God.
He set his brandy glass away, afraid he might crush it in his fist. “I can think of nothing I want less than a wife,” he gritted. “And plainly, Enders doesn’t want one, either.”
“Nonetheless, it is an intriguing offer.” Enders leaned across the table, leering. “Her age aside, she’s a pretty little piece. Bring her over here, Valigny. Into the good light.”
The comte led the girl by the elbow into the pool of lamplight near the gaming table, a lamb to the slaughter. It was pure hell to watch—and despite his dislike of Enders, Rothewell was no better. He could not tear his gaze from her. It was like an accident happening before his eyes—and he was helpless to stop it. Valigny’s fingers seemed to be almost digging into the flesh of her arm, as if he held her against her will. Without troubling himself to rise, Enders looked her up and down, his eyes openly lingering on her breasts.
Dear God, what manner of man would put his daughter through this? It was just as she had said—she was no more than horseflesh to Valigny. And now Enders was motioning with his finger for her to turn around.
“Very slowly, my sweet,” he rasped. “Yes, very, very slowly.”
When her back was toward him, he watched her hips lewdly as they moved beneath her dark silk gown, an unholy light in his eyes. Perhaps Enders ought simply to ask Valigny to hike up the girl’s skirts so that he might fondle the wares firsthand? At that thought, a strange, disgusting wave of lust and nausea washed over him.
This was not right.
It was also none of his business. He could walk out. Go home this instant and tell Valigny and Enders to go bugger themselves. However desirable Mademoiselle Marchand might be, the woman could obviously fend for herself. He didn’t give a two-penny damn about the money on the table and, he reminded himself, he had no morals to be troubled by.
And yet he was not leaving, was he?
Because she reminded him of someone. Because he had felt fleetingly drawn into the swirling black pools of her eyes. Fool. Oh, what a bloody damned fool he was.
To shut out the wild notion edging nearer, Rothewell squeezed his own eyes shut.
But there was another reason for staying. A reason that cut deeper still. He knew what it was to be thrown to the dogs as if you were no more than a piece of rancid meat. Dear Lord, why must his long-dead scruples resurrect themselves at a time such as this?
Because Enders was going to take that beautiful girl. Take her to his bed and make her do God only knew what—or with whom—heaven help her. And she was but an innocent. Had Rothewell doubted it, the faint hint of fear he saw in her eyes at that instant when she glanced down at Enders would have convinced him.
An awful chill ran through him. Oh, Mademoiselle Marchand might be full of fire and spirit tonight, but men like Enders knew just how to beat that out of a woman, and more often than not, they enjoyed the doing of it.
Enders had finished leering at her arse. That much, at least, was over. Mademoiselle Marchand cut her gaze away from the men and closed her eyes as if steeling herself for something worse.
Enders touched her lightly on the wrist, his plump lips turning up in a lascivious smile as he leered up at her. “So you need a husband to tame you, my pet?” he whispered in his nasal voice. “I begin to find the notion perfectly delicious.”
The girl did not open her eyes but drew a deep, steadying breath, her nostrils flaring wide. For an instant, Rothewell thought her knees might buckle. Enders had begun to stroke her wrist over and over with his wide, plump fingertips—a deceptively gentle gesture, given his predilections—and Valigny was doing nothing. And in that moment—that sad, sickening instant of understanding, when he was nothing like himself, but instead a stranger whom he had never met and could not possibly comprehend—Rothewell grasped what was about to happen. What had to happen.
Well, what the hell difference would it make to him?
The thought freed him. Almost. Good God, he was no hero. He must be as mad as all of them.
Enders and Valigny were still watching the girl. Calvert’s face was turned away.
Across the table, Rothewell caught the footman’s gaze. He set one finger to his lips, then eased his other hand over to fumble beneath the table and felt a moment of triumph.
A stiff flap of paper was wedged deep into the crack between the table leaves.
“By God, I’ll have her!” Lord Enders’s booming voice fractured the strange silence.
Rothewell jerked back his fingers, and deftly slid Valigny’s card beneath his waistcoat. Only the footman observed him.
“With an arse like that, she’s worth the twenty-five thousand and the inconvenience,” Enders went on. “Been thinking of taking a wife anyway. Perhaps, Valigny, we can make a deal without another hand?”
The comte beamed.
“No,” said Rothewell gruffly, sweeping up the previous hand in one smooth motion round the table. “No, shuffle this, Calvert, and by God, we shall play.”
Enders narrowed his eyes. “Will we now?”
“Yes, why not?” he said.
“But you’ve swept up the hand.”
“I have money on the table, and I wish to replay it,” Rothewell demanded. “That was Valigny’s proposal.”
“Mais oui,” said the comte. “A new hand and a neutral dealer. Come now, Enders. Calvert shall wield the pack.”
Rothewell cast a glower at his host. “Sit down, then, Valigny, and play this godforsaken game you’ve thought up.” He turned in his seat, and jerked out the adjacent chair. “And for pity’s sake, let us be quick about it.”
It was indeed quick, mercifully so. Calvert dealt one card down to each of them, then hesitated.
“Go on,” said Rothewell curtly. “We’ve already agree to stake it all.”
Calvert nodded, and went round again. The gentlemen tipped up the corners of their cards. In that fleeting moment, Rothewell made his move.
“Lord Enders, do you stand?” asked Calvert.
For a long moment, there was nothing but the sputter of the lamp. Finally, Enders spoke. “I am content, thank you.”
“Valigny?” asked Calvert.
The comte tapped the table with his knuckle, and Calvert slid him one more card.
“My lord?” Calvert turned to Rothewell. “Will you draw?”
Rothewell shook his head. “I stand.” Then, with one flick of his fingertip, he turned his cards faceup.