Luck Be a Lady (16 page)

Her dry humor set something at ease in him. He'd seen glimpses, once or twice, of her ability to laugh—but generally only at him. If they could joke together, they would rub along just fine. “Proper terror, you were, I don't doubt.”

“She certainly wasn't with us for very long,” she said. “But then, it would have been a waste of money. I spent most of my time at Everleigh's, tagging along with my father. That was my true education. He taught me ­everything he knew—or tried to, at least.”

“Ah. Uncommon,” he said. “You don't see many men bringing up their daughters to run a business.”

Now her smile faded. “He thought I had more promise than Peter.”

Sharp tilt to her chin, there. Did she expect him to argue the point? “Sounds like your dad saw things clearly.”

“He did.” She relaxed a little. “He was very good to me. He took me everywhere—into meetings with clients, even. They could hardly believe their eyes when they saw me sitting in the corner. But when somebody would object to it, my father would challenge them to try to distract me into speaking. I could stay perfectly quiet for hours.”

Sounded like a miserable time for a child. But he gathered that she meant to boast. “How old were you?”

She propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand. “I was seven when he first starting taking me to work with him. But it wasn't until I was nine or ten that I sat in on meetings.”

“Nine or ten.” With the easy way she was leaning, she couldn't be wearing a corset. He tried to ignore the notion, the memory of what she'd looked like, stretched across his bed in nothing but her skin. He cut the deck again, making a complex bridge to distract himself. Her eyes widened with delight.

He bit down on a smile. This woman was accustomed to gazing on valuable wonders, which men paid fortunes to own. But she watched his small tricks like he was working magic for her. “Nine's young,” he said, “to keep so still.”

“I should say nine is a fine age for it. Far better suited to study than to heavy labor.”

It took him a moment to realize he'd told her about his work at the dockyards. He snorted. “Given the choice, I would have picked the docks any day. Sitting still wasn't for me. What happened if you spoke up, wanted to go play?”

“I didn't. I preferred Papa's company.”

“Never once?”

Her voice thinned. “I was good at it. At helping him, I mean. And it interested me.”

Telling, how being good was evidently more important than being interested. “No time for cards, then.”

“Nobody to play with, either.” She shrugged. “That would have made a fine sight for the clients—the staff gambling with a child.”

What a contrast to his own youth—brawling in the streets, quipping and conspiring with lads his own age, some of whom he still saw nightly at Neddie's. It hadn't been an easy existence, but he'd rarely wanted for a friend. “Sounds lonely.”

Her face went blank. “It wasn't.”

“Right.”

“I had my father,” she said. “And the work.”

And now she had only the work. He began to understand why she was so desperate not to lose the auction rooms—and why she might have married a man like him, to keep them.

“What of you?” she asked. “Did you—do you have siblings? Did they work at the docks, too?”

“An older sister,” he said. “Much older. Lived here in Whitechapel—Lily's mother, in fact. When my own ma passed, I went to live with her.”

“So you grew up with Lilah—Lily, I mean.” She offered a smile. “I suppose she was great fun as a girl.”

A hellcat, in fact. But Nick wouldn't disillusion her. He looked at her carefully as he reshuffled the deck, noticing the shadows under her eyes, the wan attitude of her pretty mouth. She had nobody to confide in, he supposed. Lily wasn't due back from her honeymoon for a month or two, yet. And Catherine had left her lady's
maid in Bloomsbury, for fear she couldn't trust her to keep secrets.

Lonely, indeed. What she needed was to have some fun.

He split the deck and slapped one of the halves in front of her. “Let's play.”

She sighed. “I just told you, I don't—”

“This is the easiest game on the planet,” he said. “You turn over your top card at the same time as I do. Whoever has the highest card gets to keep both. Winner sticks them into the bottom of his pile, and we both lay down our next card from the top.”

“That's all?”

“That's it. Whoever ends up with all the cards, wins.”

“But that's too easy. What's the point?”

He laughed. “Now, that's what I like about cards, right there. You learn something about the person you're playing with, regardless of the game.”

She stiffened. “Fine. Let's play.”

“No, by all means, let's add some savor to it. Five rounds. Best of five wins, and the loser owes a favor.”

“A favor,” she said slowly. “What kind of favor?”

“That's up to the winner.”

“Oh, I think not.” Where had she gotten those witchy eyes from? Who had taught her to use them so boldly? Even in Whitechapel, girls batted their lashes. But Catherine Everleigh, Lady of Business, stared him down without so much as a flutter. “I never make a contract without elucidating the terms first,” she told him.

There was something deeply fetching about such brisk, mannish words spoken by a rosy, thoroughly feminine mouth—a mouth, if he wasn't mistaken, that was fighting a smile. Her gaze dropped from his, and
she ran one finger over the baize tabletop. “Unless,” she said, “you're having second thoughts about your chance at winning?”

Now,
that
was saucy, or he was a priest. She had some idea of her effect, then. She simply knew she didn't need to bat her lashes to achieve it.

“All right,” he said, smiling himself. “How about—”

“The favor cannot break the terms of any prior contract we have agreed upon.” As she met his eyes again, color rose to her face.

Ah.
He bit hard on his cheek, delighted. She didn't know it, but she'd just showed her hand. He knew now that her thoughts had been turning toward bed as well. “Fair enough,” he said. The contract forbade sexual congress that might beget a child. That left a world of possibilities. “Let's play.”

She frowned. “Don't you have any terms of your own?”

“Sweetheart, so long as it doesn't involve killing a man or betraying a friend, I'm game for it.”

Her frown deepened as she looked down at her cards. “Very well. But mind you, an oral contract is as binding as any written agreement. You're leaving me a great deal of scope.”

“I'll survive, I think.”

“Suit yourself.” She turned over her first card.

He flipped his in reply. “Look there, you've a talent,” he said as she scooped up his six of hearts and tucked it into her pile with a ten of diamonds.

“Don't patronize me,” she said pleasantly.

“Don't dawdle, then. This is a game of speed.”

She had a competitive streak. He should have guessed that, maybe; couldn't be a woman in business
if you lacked ambition. She whipped down the cards faster and faster, until he could barely bother to keep up, much less track who was winning each round. It was better fun to watch her—the ferocious concentration on her face, and the quick glances of annoyance she flicked at him when she realized that he wasn't bothering to look at the results.

“It seems you want to lose,” she said as she gathered up the winning pair, leaving him empty-handed.

“That was only the first round,” he said. “It's best of five.”

She snorted. “A loser's philosophy. The odds have tipped in my favor now. An enterprising man would be concerned.”

Was she teasing him? He couldn't tell. “I hate to break the news, sweetheart, but there's no skill to this game. It all comes down to chance.”

She arched one slim brow as she handed him the cards to shuffle. “Naturally. But we'll see if your story changes, in the unlikely event you win.”

His laugh came out startled. This was banter, all right—pointed and spiky, the kind he'd expect from a bloke. A blunt tongue in an angel's body: it was the devil's own recipe to enamor him. “You've found me out,” he said with a grin as he shuffled. “I've no talent whatsoever. Saddest tale you'll ever hear—the man who never won a round, and decided to open a gambling club to make up for it.”

The corner of her mouth hitched. She was biting back a smile. “Now you're angling for pity. It's a wasted effort, sir. I don't lose.”

“I'll bet you don't.” As he dealt out the cards again, he allowed himself the occasional admiring glance. In
the lowered light, with her long braid hanging heavy and thick over her shoulder, and her color high from the fun of the game, she looked like a different woman. Tousled. Touchable.

She caught him watching, and held his eyes. “That won't work, either.”

He lifted his brows. “What?”

Her gaze broke from his, and her color deepened. That right there was his own little victory. He gathered his hand, and threw down again.

She took the next pair, and showed no grace in gloating about it. “I can't imagine what your patrons would say if they knew of your sad record tonight.”

He was thinking that he could have charged admission. A dozen gentlemen would gladly have paid to watch her, lording it over him with such cheeky humor. “You know what they say, Kitty. Pride goeth before the fall.”

“They also say the devil cites scripture. How wise they are!”

“So it's the Lord you're fighting for tonight,” he said. This run of ill luck certainly began to make him wonder about divine influence. The cards had never broken against him so regularly. “Beat the devil at his game.”

Smiling, she opened her mouth—then saw the next card he threw. Her face fell, and she glumly shoved her nine of hearts toward his ace.

“That's more like it,” he said. He took the next pair, and the one after that, and she bestirred herself from her sulk to give him a narrow, sharp look.

“You're not cheating, are you?”

“I'd like to know how I'd manage,” he said. “A game of luck can't be rigged.”

The idea seemed to strike her. “That's why I never depend on luck.”

“Is that so?” He was oddly glad when the next round went to her. “You like to plan things out, I take it.”

“Always. To do otherwise is base foolishness.” She hesitated. “I imagine we're not so dissimilar, in that regard. Surely you can't have managed your . . . rise in the world, were you not a man who planned carefully.”

“Planning wasn't the key to it,” he said. “I spotted opportunities, I grabbed them. Didn't hesitate, didn't give in to fear. And when I saw a problem brewing, I didn't wait for it to grow; I went to meet it head-on. That's all it took. Throw down, then.”

She started and looked down at her half of the deck. “Oh yes.” She laid down the top card, a two of clubs. This time the loss did not seem to trouble her. “That's a man's privilege, you know. To go out into the world and face things. A woman doesn't have that luxury.”

“Bull—” He caught himself. “Rubbish, and you know it. What do you call your proposal to marry me, if not facing the problem head-on?”

Her head bowed, concealing her expression as she turned over her next card. “That was . . . unplanned,” she admitted in a low voice. “Entirely unlike me.”

He studied the part in her hair, painfully straight and neat. The precision of it, the tightness with which she'd braided back her hair, seemed suggestive somehow. Here was a woman who liked to imagine herself a tightly buttoned, disciplined creature. But he'd seen another side to her in that bed. It still haunted his dreams. She'd fought against it, but he'd pulled it out of her, regardless.

It had frightened her. He understood that. Maybe he understood it all the better now. Her kind of childhood,
the unnatural restraint she'd been trained to show, all for the sake of that company that seemed bound up with her memories of her dad . . .

Well, no wonder if she tried to keep her life tightly laced, planned out, and controlled. She'd never been taught that good things could come of letting loose.

He threw down his last card, and she flicked hers over.

“I win,” he said, and took the deck.

“So you do.” Her mood seemed to have tipped into somberness; when the grandfather clock chimed, she shifted in her seat. “It's late,” she said. “Perhaps we should table this till tomorrow.”

“Only a coincidence, I suppose, that you say so after losing a game.”

That got her attention. Jaw firming, she said, “Deal, then.”

They played the next game quickly, in utter silence. Another victory to him. As he dealt one final time, she leaned forward, watching his hands with searing concentration.

At last, he could not help but chuckle. “You really think I'm cheating.”

“I don't, in fact. But it pays to be certain.” She paused. “It occurs to me that those rings you wear might be designed to distract the eye from what your hand is really doing.”

“Ah, you've caught me out.”

She looked up, startled. “Is that really why you wear them?”

He hesitated as he gathered up his hand. “No. They're . . .” A relic of an older time, when the fact of having enough money for three square meals, and
plenty besides, had seemed strange and intoxicating and bound not to last. “When I was younger,” he said, “I had a taste for flash. And I needed something to spend my coin on.” Something that would announce to the world that he had come into money, and was not to be discounted; that he was a man, in fact, to be reckoned with.

Something he could sell, too, if circumstances changed. He'd never admitted that part to himself until he'd finally found a better place to put his coins—into properties and buildings.