The Gamble

by Laura Parker

  “Double or nothing?” she asked sweetly as she resumed her chair. Buckley nodded. How could she refuse? A doubling of her winnings would allow her to leave Bath on the morning coach.

  “Very well, one game.”

  Buckley reached for the cards before Sabrina intervened. “I believe, sir, it was my turn to deal.”

  He frowned, his hand hesitating over the stack as confirmation whispered through the crowd, then pushed the deck in her direction. “Well, m’dear, I can’t contradict you.”

  She played her first hand conservatively, watching and counting just as Darlington—who seemed to have disappeared—had instructed her. A few tense minutes passed before she realized that she not only held the card Buckley most likely needed but that she was going to win.

  When she spread her cards to reveal the winning hand, she saw his small eyes all but disappear beneath the brooding jut of his prominent brow. He gnawed the corner of his lower lip as she raked in his bank note, bringing her winnings just shy of one thousand pounds.

  Unexpectedly, he burst out in laughter. “Double or nothing again!”

  She hesitated.

  “You’re not the kind to take a man’s money without giving him the chance to win it back, are you, m’dear?” His mouth formed a smug line.

  Don’t be a fool, she told herself. Yet the gazes of those surrounding the table seemed to pin her in reproach. From one thousand she might reap two! It was a more than generous wager. Besides, Buckley played badly, negligently, due no doubt in part to the amount of drink he continued to swill through their play. Luck was with her.

  And, in the deepest secret heart of herself to which she would not quite admit, she wanted to exact revenge for his treatment of Jack Law. She would best him the only way possible.

  “Very well,” she heard herself reply and knew she could not take it back.

  The swell of voices at her back attested to the fact that gambling fever was contagious. Within minutes the onlookers were firmly ensconced in two camps, those who backed her to win and those who chose Buckley as their champ.

  This time he dealt the hand and the moment she saw how he handled the cards, she knew she had made a serious error. When the cards were arrayed before her, he looked up and smirked. His look must have been as merciless, she thought with startling clarity, when he ordered Jack Law flogged.

  He had cheated! She saw it happen. Did not anyone else?

  She turned blindly toward her backers and spied Darlington’s somber face among them. Though the movement was quick and minimal she was certain she saw him give a tight negative shake of his head. Say nothing? He meant her to say nothing? Then he must have seen the sleight-of-hand that might defeat her.

  She sat through the hand, going through the mechanics of the game, unable to believe she could have made so stupid a blunder. She was helpless to prevent him from besting her, not by skill but by guile.

  The moment of defeat, when it came, seemed unreal. She was not now two thousand pounds to the good but a thousand pounds in debt, to a cheat and a scoundrel!

  “Alas, not even Lady Luck is immune from bad fortune,” Healy whispered sympathetically when the hand was done.

  Sabrina sat like stone as Buckley accepted the congratulations of his fellow gamesters. The amounts of some of the side bets wagered made her loss almost insignificant by comparison. Yet, for her, she had lost everything. Gone!

  “Bad luck, m’dear,” Buckley offered with a conciliatory wink. “Care to attempt to clear your debt?”

  “Luck is neither good or bad. It is either present or absent.” Darlington’s voice sounded much closer to Sabrina than before. Then she felt his warm palms cup her bare shoulders. “Come, cousin, you must be fatigued.”

  He drew her to her feet by the pressure of his hands and then she saw flutter past her shoulder a paper he tossed on the table. “I expect all debts are now settled.”

  “Don’t carry her off.” Buckley chuckled lewdly as he eyed Sabrina’s bosom. “I’m certain the lady has her own charming ways of paying her debts.”

  She felt Darlington’s fingers tighten on her shoulders once more and wondered why he was cautioning her against a reckless retort.

  “If rumor be right,” he said in his familiar bored voice, “you are not a favorite of the ladies. They whisper it about that you are better at pulling a cork than sheathing your smallsword.”

  A hush fell over the room, an awful silence into which a gentleman’s pride could forever perish.

  But Buckley seemed to hesitate over the matter of a perceived insult. “If I knew you, sir, I might believe you were attempting to insult me.”

  Sabrina held her breath as Darlington said, “Then you must strive to know me better. I would not want you in doubt.”

  His hands slid down her arms to the elbows in a clear display of ownership that made her face burn. “Come, cousin. The company begins to bore me.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  A thin gruel-gray broth of a dawn was breaking over the spa town. It had rained during the night. The streets and buildings were dark with slick snail tracks of moisture. Individual sounds echoed eerily through the empty silence. Leafless trees raked charcoal branches against the pearly sky.

  Sabrina stood at the window of Countess Charlotte’s salon looking out, trying to hold her mind back from the moment when Buckley had turned over his cards. The brandy in the goblet clutched in her hands had not been touched. Beyond the parted drapes a new day was breaking, yet she remained hostage to her dark musings on her mistake. She kept going over the moment again and again.

  Suddenly she swung back from the window.

  “You knew he cheated!”

  Jack sat half a room away, legs stretched out before the fire he had laid himself. His brandy glass had been drained twice. He was considering a third refill when she finally spoke. He glanced up, no expression on his face. “What of it?”

  Sabrina took two hurried steps toward him, her face reflecting in exquisite detail her distress. “Then you knew he unfairly took my money?”

  She was backlit by the watery yellow cast of dawn, her curtain of dark hair blacker than night about her shoulders. She wanted comfort. He had comfort to give her, but not the kind she thought she wanted. So, instead, he gave her the truth. “What I know is that Buckley used the opportunity you gave him to relieve you of your winnings.”

  “You say it does not matter that he cheated?”

  Lord, but her sweet voice was tragic. How he longed to reach up and pull her into his lap, to stroke the heavy curtain of her hair back from her cheeks so that he could find and kiss her mouth.

  “Why did you do nothing? No, worse—you abandoned me!”

  Throughout the entire evening he had only for a moment taken his eyes from her, and that was the cause of this present distress. Things had been going extremely well until nature forced him to go in search of a chamber pot, and he had returned to disaster.

  True, he might have warned her that Buckley was a notorious if unproven cheat, particularly when playing women. Yet, he wondered if his warning would have prevented her from taking Buckley’s bet. A gambler in the throws of the fever seldom listened to reason. Therefore, he would stick now to the rational points of his argument. “You say Buckley cheated. Did you not go there to do the same?”

  He saw her stiffen in defense of the accusation. “I did not cheat.”

  “Did not need to resort to it, you mean.” How narrow her waist was! He would, perhaps before the hour was out, span it with his hands. “If you could have, you would have cheated to win. As Buckley did. There is no difference between you, only he was the more clever charlatan.”

  She staggered back, as if his words were blows, and he wondered at the source of the extremity of emotion that drove such a reaction. No, that was wrong, he only cared that she was agitated. The more distraught, the better for his plan. He was a master at turning the wellspring of emotion in a woman from
one font to another. She needed comfort and he would give it to her, but only after she had vented the anger enough to accept the only kind of solace he was prepared to offer her.

  When she had mastered herself she set her untouched brandy aside and faced him as poised as before. “Your accusation is detestable and unjust!”

  Jack reached for her brandy. “Detestable, perhaps. Unjust? No. You, my sweet, became greedy.” He took a quick sip, feeling in need of its bracing qualities. “Restraint is a valuable quality, I’m told. As I’ve never heeded it, I could not say.”

  She flexed her fingers into fists, too proud to rebuke his accusation a second time. It was not greed but enmity that had made her seek to best Buckley.

  The man’s self-congratulatory account of the brutal treatment the highwayman had received at his hands had appalled and repulsed her. Those feelings had made her lose sight of her nearly-won goal. As much as it galled her to admit it, when she had accepted his challenge to a second game of cards, she had no longer been thinking of Kit. She had been thinking of Jack Law.

  Her thoughts now derailed upon the very logic that had driven her game. Mercy’s grace! She had risked and lost everything … because of a stolen kiss on a moon-dark night.

  Guilt swarmed over her in stinging nettles of shame. Everything lost! For the sake of a thoroughly unrepentant blackguard who no doubt deserved every punishment the law would exact from him. How could she have been so selfish, so foolish? Kit’s future depended upon her!

  Jack watched her expressions ripple and change like sunlight upon the surface of a lake, from righteous anger to stubbornness to doubt and finally to some private shame that made her drop her gaze before his. “I warned you, gambling is a game for the dispassionate dissembler.”

  Her gaze came shyly back to his as she spread her hands in a little pleading gesture. “I was doing so well. I had won enough!”

  The simple gesture of surrender was right in line with Jack’s expectation. He had never met a soul less able to disguise her feelings. She was ready to respond to any display of kindness on his part. Why then, he pondered absently, was he not feeling triumphant? “Pray tell me, when is enough ever enough?”

  She turned away from him, not wanting to see his gloating expression. If only she had quit while she was ahead. If only she had not been blinded by feelings unworthy of her goal. Perhaps she should have stayed and played on. All she had needed to win was one more hand!

  “There will always be one more hand.”

  She glanced back sharply, stung by his astute comment.

  “The lament of the loser is always the same,” he commented dryly. “ ‘If only I had not bet one more hand’, or ‘If only I’d had the wherewithal to wager one more hand.’ ’Tis the siren song of chance, my sweet.”

  She crossed her arms under her breasts, lifting them forward, and it was all Jack could do to keep from reaching for her. “ ’Tis a dirge you are much familiar with, my lord?”

  “I’ve sung a chorus or two in my time.”

  He looked away toward the fire. But the image remained in his mind’s eye of her superbly molded figure and the thrust of her beautifully rounded bosom. Did she know how effortlessly she taunted him? No, she would run for her life, and her virtue. He heard the tantalizing whisper of her silk stockings as she drew closer.

  He looked up to find that she had moved to his side, exactly where he planned her to be, ripe for his ruthless brand of consolation. “The difference between us, sweeting, is that I can afford the loss, whereas you cannot.”

  Her face, lit by the firelight, crumpled in pain. “Do not remind me!”

  “Struck a nerve, pet?” He almost felt sorry for her. She had fewer defenses against his manipulations than he had supposed. He had expected she would be more of a challenge. The seldom-roused emotion of pity insinuated itself into his feelings, but he squelched it. Where would the predator be if he backed off from weak or unprotected prey?

  He gazed covetously at her, exchanging pity for purpose. “Why not confess to me the real reason behind your need for money? If it be an entertaining enough tale, it might just persuade me to loan you the purse.”

  “What is this?” She angled her head in defiance. “Will you now offer to loan me money? A week ago you would not return what was rightfully mine.”

  Touché. She had not lost her spirit, thank the gods. He had no taste for sacrificial lamb. “I never explain myself.”

  She hugged her arms to her breasts, and he watched, willing the fabric to lose its battle to contain its luscious burden. “Then neither will I.”

  “Pride is an expensive commodity. Are you certain you can afford it?”

  He saw disdain reenter her gaze along with the wit he admired. “I am curious, since you know nothing of my plight and find my actions ridiculous, why did you pay my debt to Buckley?”

  He swallowed the brandy warming on his tongue. “The simple truth? I prefer that you be in debt to me.”

  “Why?”

  He stared at her, a burning seductive look that could not be misunderstood. “I don’t think I’d enjoy you as much if Buckley had been at you first.”

  He saw her blanch and wondered how she could look so erotically appealing and remain so naive. “That’s disgusting!”

  He shrugged. “My motives are no less honorable than Buckley’s, only more honest. ’Tis common practice for ladies to redeem their gaming debts on their backs.”

  He saw her tight head-shake of denial as he drained the glass. “I have a suspicion you would have been insulted and called Buckley a cheat. And that, my dear, would have been to your detriment.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Buckley is the kind of brute who would have demanded retribution for your slander.” He glanced up and down at her, deliberately making her aware of herself as a woman. “You are a commoner while he is titled. I’ve no doubt he would have resorted to rape and felt justified.” Her look of outrage did not deter his speech. “I, on the other hand, want you in my bed for our mutual pleasure. The debt will end there, with one night.”

  “You are hateful.”

  “You’ve said as much before.” He looked at her empty glass and wished it refilled. “Face the truth. You are a very bad loser.”

  “And you are—”

  “Hateful.” He looked up, tenderly amused, into her outraged expression. “I know.”

  Sabrina did not know why but the tender expression on his handsome face seemed more of an insult than any look before it. Her rage, already simmering, burst forth as she lifted her hand and stepped forward to strike him.

  He was faster. He leaned in, grasping her swinging arm by the wrist so tightly she gasped in pain. “I don’t like being struck. You wouldn’t like what would occur if you did.”

  “Let go of me!”

  “No, I don’t think I will.”

  She stared at him, mute and furious, and he knew no man had ever physically assaulted her. Touching her now, feeling the surge of emotion that had set her atremble, he marveled at the power of self-control exerted by the men in her life before now. Alas, he lacked that control, and a conscience, and a heart.

  He drew her down against him by her wrist and then snaked an arm about her waist to hold her there. “This, at least, is one debt you can pay yourself.”

  He saw alarm widen her eyes but she looked more abashed than afraid. “You’ve been wondering what it would be like to touch me.” There was steel in his velvet voice. “Admit it.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself!” She struggled briefly but did not say anything more.

  After a moment he released her wrist and ran a hand up under the black fall of her hair to cup the back of her head. As his fingers spread through the silky strands, he pulled her fully into his lap until she sat on his spread legs. “I’ve been equally curious, Sabrina. Let us see what, together, we find mutually attractive in one another.”

  Sabrina braced a hand against h
is chest, telling herself that she would look ridiculous if she screamed and fought him. After all, they were beneath the Lady Charlotte’s roof. He would not dare seduce her on the carpet. What harm then if he kissed her? Insufferable bore!

  She looked across the scant inches that separated them into his triumphant smile. He thought himself irresistible, did he? She supposed she should be impressed to find herself in the arms of a viscount, yet it was very much the man she resisted, with his scented clothing and privileged airs.

  Jack felt her animosity. It burned in her dark eyes and flushed her delectably trembling lips. The sight was quite arousing. Yet he knew better than to force her. He would show her what she thought she could resist and how absolutely futile resistance was.

  His fingers moved to her chin, which he tilted up. “You do know how to kiss a man, do you not, sweeting?”

  His thumb stroked her lower lip, a tantalizing feathery caress. Sabrina knew she should speak, say something biting and clever. But she could not think. Could not look beyond those silver eyes softening and heating with desire. And she knew then that her life was about to change forever.

  She closed her eyes a moment before his mouth touched hers, hoping to blot out the actuality of the event. Instead, it exaggerated it.

  His long, slow, drugging kiss went on and on. He clasped her head tightly, massaging it with his fingers, sending chills down her back and linen chasers of heat.

  Sabrina felt oddly disconnected from her body until his fingers slid from her hair and rested ever so lightly on her breasts above the deep neckline of her gown. His touch was that of a man burning with fever. She held her breath as his lips continued to caress hers, softly, persuasively, nudging and rubbing, begging and provoking a response from her until she no longer wanted to hold back. Her mouth softened under his, lips molding onto lips until there was no separate space. She felt as if she were melting under his tutelage. The sensation was something new, so why this sense of vague remembrance? Was it dreamed of or only hoped for?