Miranda Jarrett - Rake's Wager

She had to stop this now, before anyone noticed. She tugged her fan free of his hand, and turned toward the stairs.

“Of course you must wish to see the gaming rooms, Mr. Blackley.” She raised her voice so others would hear her. “Up these stairs, sir, and you shall find the hazard table. If you wish to play, I shall introduce you myself to Mr. Walthrip, the table’s director, and he can introduce you to the—”

“I’m not playing.” He stopped on the step below her, making her stop as well. “Not tonight.”

“But what of that story you told my sister, about how you’d stolen some poor gentleman’s house away from him?”

“I didn’t steal it, Miss Penny. I won it.” Standing on the stairs, their eyes were nearly level. He wasn’t smiling now, and with a shiver Cassia thought again of a pirate. “Luck has been very good to me, and like every good mistress, I don’t treat her lightly.”

“Then surely you would wish to play tonight of all others, Mr. Blackley.” She tried to smile, but what had worked so effortlessly with Lord Russell seemed forced and false with Richard Blackley. “In honor of Penny House’s opening, that is.”

“Or else I will not be welcomed back?” His gray eyes seemed cold, almost ruthless. “If I do not play and promise to lose, like every other good little titled gentlemen of breeding and no brains here tonight, then you won’t speak on my behalf again, will you?”

“I didn’t say that!” she protested, but he hadn’t waited for her answer, and had already passed her on the stairs. “Mr. Blackley, please!”

She grabbed her skirts to one side and hurried after him, dodging between other men gathered on the stairs. By the time she reached the top, he had disappeared into the noisiest and most crowded of the gaming rooms, the one with the hazard table. Although the gentlemen in the doorway stepped aside for her, she hung back.

Pratt had advised all three of the sisters never to enter this room, at least not when a game was at play. It was, he’d warned, not a fit place for ladies: with such substantial sums being won and lost each time the dice tumbled from their box, the players often could not contain their emotions, or their tempers.

And from what she could glimpse from the doorway, Pratt had been right. The gentlemen stood two and three deep around the oval mahogany table, covered with green cloth marked in yellow. The low-hanging fixtures cast a bright light on the top of the table, and strange shadows that distorted the faces of the players. Mr. Walthrip presided behind a tall desk to one side, the only man who kept his silence. Everyone seemed to freeze and hold their breath as one while the dice clicked and rattled in the box in the caster’s hand. But as soon as the dice tumbled onto the green cloth, the men erupted, shouting and cheering and swearing and striking their fists on the top of the table so that even Cassia, who did not know the exact rules of the game, could tell who had won, and who had lost.

Then she saw Richard Blackley, leaning into the circle of light to toss a handful of pearly markers onto the table. All around him men exclaimed and pointed, making Cassia realize the wager must be sizable indeed. The dice danced from the box to the table, and two other piles of markers were pushed to join Blackley’s. Another roll, and the pile became a small, pearly mountain before him, while the other men applauded, or simply stared in uneasy awe.

The caster was losing, his luck as sour as Blackley’s was golden. The man’s face gleamed shiny with sweat, his collar tugged open, and this time he was holding the box in his hand so long that others began to protest. At last he tossed the dice, and as soon as they stopped, the long-handled rakes again shoved the markers toward Blackley’s mountain. He looked down at it and frowned, then turned toward Walthrip.

“I withdraw,” he said, loudly enough that everyone heard. “I am done for this night.”

“But you can’t!” cried the caster with obvious panic. “You’ve only begun! You must let luck turn, and give us try to win back what we’ve lost!”

“True, true,” another man beside him said, glaring at Blackley. “No gentlemen leaves the table when he has won so deep.”

“Hear, hear!” called the heavy-set man standing beside Cassia at the doorway. “It’s not honorable this way! A gentleman doesn’t quit when he’s ahead!”

But Blackley didn’t care. He bowed toward Walthrip, ignoring the others. “I believe the bank here gives its winnings to the poor, at the ladies’ request. You may add my winnings to that gift for the night.”

He stepped back from the table and away from the furor he’d just created, and sauntered through the crowd to the door as if every eye in the room and the hall outside weren’t watching him. He came through the door, and stopped before Cassia.

“You said you wouldn’t play,” she said, her chin high, challenging him back. “You said—”

“I lied,” he said. “But that was what you wanted of me, wasn’t it?”

Her fingers tightened around the blades of her fan. “You said you wouldn’t take luck for granted.”

“I like to think I soothed whatever feathers I ruffled with my offering to Bona Fortuna. Sufficiently generous, don’t you think?” From his pocket he drew one of the markers, a flat, narrow fish carved from mother-of-pearl, and pressed it lightly to his lips. “Good night, Miss Penny, until we meet again tomorrow evening.”

He smiled, and before she could stop him, he tucked the fish-shaped marker into the front of her gown, the mother-of-pearl cool and shockingly sleek against the skin of her breasts.

Then he turned, and was gone.

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