Miranda Jarrett - Rake's Wager

Cassia smiled at her sister, hoping she’d just damned Mr. Blackley with the faintest praise possible.

But she hadn’t, not at all.

“I cannot ask you for anything more than the truth, Cassia,” Amariah said. “And I thank you for it.”

While she thought, she patted her palms gently together, the sound muted by her gloves, and Cassia’s heart sank. From the way her sister’s brows had lowered, just short of a frown, Cassia knew she was calculating exactly how much of Mr. Blackley’s money could be pried from his pockets and into their charities. His family and his honor—or their lack—didn’t amount to a pile of garden dirt next to that. Amariah was going to let Mr. Blackley stay, and nothing that Cassia could say now was going to change her mind.

Pratt cleared his throat. “Forgive me, Miss Penny, but we should all be returning to the—”

“And so we shall, Mr. Pratt.” Amariah’s face was once again serene. “Mr. Blackley, you may stay. Dine with us, play at our tables, amuse yourself however you please. But please recall, sir, that Penny House is a respite for gentlemen, and not a Caribbean tavern made for brawling. Even a breath of trouble from you, sir, and you will be banned from here for the rest of your life.”

“Hah,” Blackley said. “There’s nothing like a threat to make for a damned cheerful welcome.”

“As my sister said, Mr. Blackley, you will find only the truth in this house.” Amariah glided past him to return to the others, Pratt and the guards behind her, and Cassia hurried to join them. “Now unless there is anything more you might wish from—”

“Your sister,” he said. “I want her.”

Cassia stopped abruptly. “Mr. Blackley, I am not—”

“As my guide, that is.” His smile was wicked, teasing, knowing she’d misinterpreted exactly as he’d planned. “Since I’m new here tonight.”

“We are all new here tonight, Mr. Blackley.” Amariah nodded back at him, striving now to put him at his ease, as if he were behaving with perfect decorum. “Miss Cassia will be honored to show you the features of Penny House. Won’t you, Cassia?”

Cassia took a deep breath. “I…shall…be…delighted.”

“I’m honored, Miss Cassia.” Even in the tiny room, he was too close to her, too sure of himself, the way he had been when they were examining the painting. He crooked his arm for her to take.

She ignored it, sailing ahead of him and across the black-and-white marble floor of the front hall.

“This is our drawing room, Mr. Blackley,” she said with a perfunctory sweep of her hand when he joined her. “Where gentlemen may gather for conversation, or to read the latest news.”

“You’ve no right to be angry with me,” he said. “They made the scene, not I. None of it was my doing.”

“Oh, no, how could you ever be at fault?” She kept her eyes straight ahead, fighting her own temper. “As you see, Mr. Blackley, we have furnished the drawing room for both comfort and fashion, wishing our gentlemen to feel at their ease.”

“Is this still about the damned painting?” he asked, his voice low so the others around him wouldn’t overhear, though the irritation in his words was unmistakable. “You still believe somehow that I cheated you?”

Cassia stared pointedly at the empty place over the fireplace where the painting should have gone. “You were not honest with me, Mr. Blackley. At the showing before the auction, you let me babble on like a ninny over that picture, not even hinting that you were interested in it for yourself!”

“You weren’t exactly honest with me, either,” he said. “Was the mourning supposed to buy my sympathy?”

“The mourning was in honor of my father.”

“And now that you’ve grieved, you put it aside to bare as much skin as any other actress.”

“We put it aside because it would have seemed too grim for tonight,” she explained defensively, wondering why he should care so much. “Father would have understood.”

He chuckled, scornful. “That may be what you told the gossip sheets, but I ask you, what kind of father would leave his daughters a place like this?”

“A father who wished his daughters to do good in an evil world, no matter what the avenue.” She swallowed back the emotion that knotted in her throat. “My father was a good man, Mr. Blackley, and honorable and kind in ways someone like you could never understand.”

“You don’t know that, lass,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “You don’t know anything of me at all.”

“I know enough,” she said quickly, her heart racing for no reason. “And I know more than enough not to trust you.”

She hurried ahead, her expression so fixed that she scarcely noticed how the other gentlemen were stepping aside for her to pass.

“I’m sorry about your father.” His long legs easily kept pace with her. “And I like your gown, much better than I did the mourning. But I didn’t mean that—”

“Of course you did, Mr. Blackley,” she said, her careful facade of gentility slipping. “Why else would you have said it in the first place if you didn’t?”

“Then you have changed my mind,” he said. “Or am I not permitted to apologize?”

“This—this is our dining room, sir,” she said. She did not believe a single letter of his apology, nor could she let herself slip into that kind of trap. She must keep formal and remote; she must not let herself say what she wanted, especially not to this man. “There is my second sister near the table with the cold offerings. She oversees the kitchen, and you will find her offerings rival anything served in London tonight. Do you wish to dine, Mr. Blackley? Shall I summon a waiter to take your request?”

“I’m not hungry,” he whispered over her shoulder, his words coming unsettlingly close to her ear.

With her fan fluttering in her hand like an anxious butterfly, she twisted around to try to put more distance between them. But turning around only made it worse: now they stood face-to-face, her eyes level with his throat and his perfectly knotted dark-crimson neckcloth, his dark hair mussed and curling over his collar.

“Are you thirsty, then? The evening is—is warm, sir.” But it wasn’t the evening that was warm, not with him standing so close, and she worked to keep her words even. “Perhaps you would wish a selection from our excellent cellar? A glass of port, or—or canary?”

He shook his head, just a fraction. “That’s not why I came here, lass.”

“Miss Penny, sir.” She corrected him unthinkingly with the explanation that Amariah had prepared for them all, concentrating instead on the slight sheen of a dark beard along his jaw. A pirate, a pirate from Barbados. “I am sorry, sir, but for the sake of the house’s decorum, I must ask you to call me that, and nothing else.”

“Very well,” he said. “Then that’s not why I came here, Miss Penny, lass.”

“That’s wrong, sir, and no better.” She sighed, a small, breathy exhale, and glanced down at the blades of her fan. How strange to be standing here with him like this, surrounded by an ever shifting crowd of black-clad gentlemen, laughing, calling, swearing, jostling, like a noisy tide around them. “For the decorum of the house, I must ask—”

“Damn the decorum of the house. That’s not the same woman who crossed me today.” He closed his fingers over the top of her fan, stilling its restless motion. “You can do better than that.”

She thought of all the answers she could make, and how not one of them was either decorous or appropriate. “So you did follow me here?”

“I wish that I’d been that clever,” he said. His gaze had shifted from her face to the fashionably low neckline of her gown, lingering there. “I’d no notion you’d be here tonight. But when I saw you, there at the top of the railing—ah, you seemed like an angel high over my head. Can you fault me for wanting to stay?”