by Laura Parker
Jack’s lips twisted in amusement. He could better imagine that the old fool had given up his goods while watering his breeches.
“Have a care when you leave the spa, my lord. The byways hereabout are dangerous. Jack Law wouldn’t think twice of attacking a person as august as yourself.”
Yet as Threadlesham eyed the aristocrat’s ruthless expression, he revised his opinion. The viscount’s icy disdain and wickedly curving scar would give even the most unregenerate miscreant pause.
“Damned rascal should be hung!” Sir Avery declared in distracted annoyance.
“The very thing, Sir Avery, the moment we catch him.”
“Catch him?” The older man cocked his head in question, much as a dog might. “Demme! What’s to do but he ain’t been nabbed before now?”
Threadlesham looked sheepish. “The thing of it is, Sir Avery, Jack Law’s reputation has gained such polish every venial villain ’twixt London and Cornwall has taken to claiming the sobriquet as his own. ’Twas reported just last August that Jack Law had robbed five different coaches on five different lanes in two different counties on the very same night!”
“Busy fellow,” Jack murmured.
“Hang ’em all!” Sir Avery declared gruffly. “Bound to be among the coffin meat sooner or later.”
“A young woman in the Pump Room declared but recently that she had been robbed by the fellow,” Jack offered in a bored tone. “Perhaps you should engage her services. She claims to have shot the brigand with his own pistol.”
The two men standing with him guffawed their disbelief.
Threadlesham shook his bag-wigged head. “Mind, I do not say she was not robbed but had it been by Jack Law, she would not be boasting of it. Take’s advance, they say.” He made an obscene gesture with his hand.
Sir Avery extended his gold snuffbox toward Jack and flicked open the lid with a thumbnail. “Have a touch of snuff, Lord Darlington. Bucks up a man’s courage for these damned tepid affairs. Can’t imagine why a man of your ilk chose to attend.”
Having involved himself in the business of taking a bit of snuff, Jack was spared the need to reply. As a rule, he detested snuff but it gave him something to do while his patience learned a new degree of self-possession.
On one point Squire Threadlesham was correct. Ordinarily he would not have considered an appearance at a party sponsored by a rusticating lady with too little to occupy her too small mind. Yet, on this occasion, he had actually finessed an invitation.
He looked across the main salon until his gaze narrowed in on a figure, seated among the feminine flock, dressed in striped pink and green silk. Sabrina Lyndsey. He was here because she was here.
He had deliberately stayed away from her for three days to enhance the suspense of their next meeting. He had set himself a task, to humble Miss Lyndsey. Tonight, he would begin that campaign.
He had watched her for the past half-hour, secure in the knowledge that she was totally unaware of his presence. He had recorded her smiles, absorbed the way words formed on her soft round lips. He had committed to memory the exact arch of her neck and gentle inward slope of her back from shoulders to waist, registered her every elegant gesture against the future. Never again would she be within his view and he not recognize her immediately, though she be no more than a silhouette thrown upon a window shade.
Why? Because it pleased him to know more about her than she would ever know about him. For instance, he had learned that when she was nervous she often turned away from the object of her fear. Was it a deliberate provocation, a demand that the offender work to recapture her attention? Twice she had turned her back on Jack Law. Yet, she had not turned away after he had kissed her. She had struck out at him. That was the reaction he intended to provoke in her again. He had not interest in the innocent-seeming miss he observed this night. He wanted to again match wits with the vixen of the highway.
It rankled to admit it but a quite extraordinary thing had happened to him as he lay in wait for Miss Lyndsey these last three days. He had thought constantly about her.
Few women occupied his mind past the hour of their usefulness, and fewer still lingered in his thoughts when they were no longer present. He was not accustomed to lingering preoccupation, or even lingering lust. Yet, at the end of each evening he had found himself pondering the mystery of a pair of violet-blue eyes and wondering about the woman behind that gaze.
It must be that he desired revenge more than he had suspected. Yes, that was all.
His smile warmed as his gaze wandered from Sabrina to an inspection of Charlotte Lovelace. Resplendent in a gown of palest pink silk that made luminescent her flawless bosom and shoulders, she was infinitely more beautiful and naturally more elegant than any other lady present. That fastidious prig of a husband did not appreciate his good fortune. She would be a pleasure to seduce. Yet he was determined to spare her from the folly of entering into an affair with him. He had few scruples, none of them connected to the usual rules of polite society, but he held fast to them in his fashion. Because she reminded him of the only person he had ever loved, Lotte was inviolate.
His eye caught the swaying movement of pink and green silk as Sabrina rose to follow several other women into the card salon. He had been aware of her jealous reaction to his warm greeting of Lady Charlotte in the Pump Room. He had even tested that suspicion by snubbing her in Lotte’s presence and been rewarded by the snap of anger in those violet eyes that gave away too much of her feelings.
Had she been experienced in the art of flirtation she would not have given herself away so readily. She was a novice at the game of seduction. He was not, as she was about to learn.
His left arm just above his elbow throbbed a little, a palpable reminder of the reason for his pursuit. Patience was the first line of assault on a proud heart. He would use Sabrina Lyndsey’s pride to bring her down and before he was done she would even thank him for it.
When he had sniffed and sneezed and dusted away a sprinkling of snuff from his jabot with his handkerchief he said abruptly, “Excuse me,” and walked away from the startled knight and squire.
Chapter Ten
Sabrina sat at a table for four, her cheeks flushed from concentration and annoyance. The countess had staked her with what she had regretfully termed a “pauper’s sum” of fifteen guineas. Yet after no more than an hour’s play the pile of bank notes and coins by her left elbow easily amounted to five times the original. She should have been delighted but the triumph was an experience she wished fervently would end.
Two of her fellow players, both gentlemen, had picked up on her excitement at winning and it had sped through them as a frissom of sexual invigoration. Or perhaps it was the canary that they had been liberally imbibing which fueled their libidinous attention.
“My dear Miss Lyndsey, you’re a deal too coming for me,” said Lord Quince without rancor.
Sabrina offered him a frosty smile. “You are too kind, Lord Quince. I confess I am not a very skilled player for I’ve had so little opportunity.”
“Who needs skill when lucks sits at on your shoulder?” remarked Mr. Shelby.
“Envy that rascal the view.” Lord Quince winked at Shelby. “Fine pair of tits on the filly, what?”
The glance Lady Quince leveled at her husband should have singed his wig.
“Miss Sabrina is indeed favored by the stars,” Mr. Shelby concurred as his face pinkened at the bottom rather like a turnip.
“By all the graces,” conceded Lady Quince in ill humor and then gave forth a distinctive belch that perfumed the table with sour spirits. “Shall we play another hand?”
“Indeed, m’lady. The very thing.” Mr. Shelby offered her a slightly stupid smile. “After all, I’ve still a few coins which Miss Sabrina may wish to make hers.”
“If her luck holds,” remarked Lady Quince sourly and reached for the tumbler that a servant kept full of wine.
Sabrina clasped her hands
together to keep from obeying the impulse to pluck the bank notes from her pile and tuck them in her bodice. It would be poor manners to remove the possibility that they might be won back though she had no intention of wagering a single shilling of the evening’s profit.
As Shelby dealt the next hand, a heavy foot nudged Sabrina’s under the table. Her smile stiffening, she inched her foot away. The foot pressed harder, causing her to look up into the leering drunken countenance of Lord Quince.
He grinned at her, revealing ill-fitted brown-stained teeth. “Nary a man—er, hand has been more eager to fall to your grasp. You’d prefer livelier sport, I’ll wager.”
“You mistake me entirely, sir,” she said shortly and glanced away.
Damn his impudence! His evening coat was spoiled by several moth holes and his wig, over-curled and underpowdered, was a dozen years out of date. With a large-veined nose sporting a strange dark growth on one side, how could he possibly think himself a source of fascination for any woman?
Yet vanity was not always harnessed to good sense, Sabrina supposed. He was of that variety of English lord who preferred horses and hounds to the fashionable doings of the Beau Monde. No doubt he believed a loud voice, vulgarity, and despotic constitution were equitable replacements for manners, culture, and a pleasant appearance.
“Whiskey, hounds, and the hunt, that’s enough for any man,” Lord Quince had declared at the onset of the game, “That, and a bit of muslin sport.”
Well fortified by spirits, he had taken every opportunity during their card play to lean in her direction, supposedly to peek at her cards yet his gaze never rose from an insulting appraisal of her bosom. Once, when a coin slipped off the table into her lap he had grabbed and squeezed her thigh under the pretext of trying to catch it.
Perhaps it was ungracious to wish to blazes the very people who had made possible her evening’s good fortune, yet she wanted nothing more than to leave the room and forget their existence.
She sent a pleading glance Lady Charlotte’s way but the countess, seated at another table at the far end of the room, did not chance to meet it. She seemed inordinately absorbed in her own hand. By the look of the quilting between her auburn brows, her game was not going at all well.
“Are you wagering, Miss Lyndsey?”
Sabrina blinked and returned her attention to the cards she had been dealt. “Why, I suppose so, yes.”
“Not I.” Lady Quince rose though it was difficult to judge that at first, for she was so short that standing made no great difference in her height. “I’ve had quite enough. Lord Quince!” Without parting, she turned and left the table.
Relieved, Sabrina dropped her hand and rose. “In such case, gentlemen, I think we should adjourn.”
“Are you done fleecing your betters, Miss Lyndsey?”
That voice! Sabrina swung around, her heart pounding in unexpected fear and delight. The delight died a precipitous death at the sight of the man who stood behind her chair. “Lord Darlington.”
“You need not be so demonstrably happy to see me,” Jack remarked of her sudden crestfallen expression.
“Rather I am unmoved by the thought, my lord,” Sabrina remarked coolly, totally out of charity with the entire evening and equally exasperated with herself. How could she have mistaken the viscount’s voice for another? Jack Law, even if he were a nobleman, he would have better sense than to tempt fate by confronting one of his victims in public. Yet, for one all too brief moment that is exactly what she had thought was occurring.
Sizing up the stranger, as a rival to his nonexistent claim on her, Lord Quince’s tone was distinctly belligerent as he stepped between the pair. “Miss Lyndsey doesn’t appear to be cheered by your company, sir.”
Darlington gave him no more attention that he might have a moth flitting past. His silvery gaze remained on her. “I have come expressly to play a hand with you, Miss Lyndsey.”
“You would find little joy in it, my lord,” she said carefully. He was, after all, her superior and if her snub were observed she might soon find herself de trop in Bath society. “I am not equal to your skill.”
Amusement tugged at the left side of his mouth. “Is that how you choose your partners, only those you believe you can best?”
Sabrina shot him a murderous glance as her two gaming companions stiffened at the implication. “Nay, my lord, for then I should never play cards at all.”
He inclined his head. “A pretty save. One might even say a clever one.”
“Who the devil are you?” demanded Quince.
Sabrina turned to the slighted man in faint annoyance with all concerned. “Permit me, Lord Darlington, to introduce to you Lord Quince and Mr. Shelby.”
“Darlington?” Lord Quince barked, determined, it seemed, to make fresh headway toward disaster. “Don’t know a Darlington. Ain’t even wearing a wig. Should that name be known to me?”
His rapier-sharp gaze trapped the countrified peer in its gleam. “I could make it so, with pleasure.”
Darlington’s tone stirred the hair on the nape of Sabrina’s neck. “I’m certain the baron would prove amicable to another hand of cards,” she suggested into the short silence.
“He may prove himself amiable by favoring us with his absence.”
Lord Quince harrumphed but did not offer a challenge for the danger that ran like a deep current through the viscount’s bored speech had cut through his alcohol fog. Defeated, he looked like the puffed-up drunken lecher he was. “Damnation, me wife’s waiting. Another time then, Lord Darlington.”
As he turned away he caught Sabrina by the arm just above the elbow and pinched it hard. “Look to your own, Miss Sabrina. That London rake is after more than your shillings. Red-gold, that’s the coin of his realm.”
Sabrina did not respond to his vulgar warning as he sauntered away.
Jack turned to the remaining man. “You will now equally oblige me by removing yourself.”
The contempt in the compelling glance that Jack turned upon the commoner so weakened his knees that Shelby stumbled a little as he backed away.
“That was very rude of you, my lord,” Sabrina said softly as she extracted a silk scarf embroidered in gold thread from her chair and draped it about her shoulders.
“Then I am mistaken and you enjoyed being pawed by that manure-reared bully.”
Sabrina smiled in spite of herself. “I did not think anyone noticed.”
“Then you must revise your opinion, Miss Lyndsey. We were all aware.” He sat down before lifting his gaze significantly to hers. “The company found it most entertaining to witness the torment of a pretty helpless creature.”
Surprise lifted Sabrina’s expression. “You make me sound a victim.”
“I thought you a silly young woman to put up with it.”
The set-down stung even though it did not surprise her. Lord Darlington seemed incapable of civility. No other man in the room would have continued to sit while a lady stood in his presence. Yet she was discovering that she enjoyed measuring her wit against his. “I can’t then imagine why you should bother to speak to me.”
“Can you not?” He shuffled the gilt-edged playing cards with remarkable ease, his long fingers moving swiftly in patterns of long familiarity. “I like to test the odds in every situation. For instance, my mere presence at your side offers the room more reason for speculation. Ladies who are long in my company are usually suspected to have forfeited their good sense or their good reputation. Which will you be accused of forfeiting, I wonder?”
Unperturbed, Sabrina turned a smile of complete confidence upon him. “All this may be accomplished by so small a thing as sharing a table with you? I am impressed by the potency of your reputation, my lord.”
His gaze flashed something—amusement?—and was gone. “You are not afraid of me? I rather thought you would be too proud to realize your full danger. I am grateful to learn that it is so.”
If he hoped to
trip her up, to make her agree to something that she misunderstood, he was doomed to disappointment, Sabrina decided. “You expect me to now play cards with you?” Sabrina said as he began dealing hands.
He looked up at her. “Do you always require reassurance, Miss Lyndsey? ’Tis a tiresome habit more in keeping with a young woman who believes her charms insufficient to retain a man’s attention. As any quizzing glass can assure you of your beauty, your petulance gives one the impression that you are querulous by nature.”
“For a gentleman known to be both dangerous and ruthless you sound remarkably like a nanny and a scold, my lord,” Sabrina returned with some heat and sat down.
He glanced across at her and the merciless expression in his gaze was for once absent.
Sabrina drew a breath of astonishment. She had forgotten that he did not smile. The emotions that most often shaped his mouth were contempt, disdain, aloofness, or mocking sneer. Yet in this moment, the amusement that animated his face could be labeled friendly.
He was sinfully handsome. Why had she not noticed so before? Perhaps because she had been too preoccupied with her own concerns on the only other occasion they had stood face to face, in the Pump Room. Lords were, to give their due, routinely described as handsome. But with Lord Darlington, the designation was appropriate. She had not noticed before that he was soberly dressed in black with few touches of lace. By denying the fripperies of the day, the force of the man alone came fully into play.
A strange thrill moved through her as she regarded him with a consideration she had never before shown any man. The wide forehead and jutting brow balanced his bold nose and gave his lean cheeks and hard chin a counterpoint. His deeply hooded eyes held a fascination that was equal parts engaging and sinister. It was not a tender face or a perfect one, but so wholly masculine in its sun-bronzed leanness that by contrast the features of every other man present seemed to be made of unbaked dough.