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What?

That had Diana’s head spinning. So, the Marquess made a bid because he really wanted the prize? Then why had he not claimed it? Was he trying to ridicule her more? Paying for the honor of escorting her and then never doing it? Just because she challenged him?

“Diana, will you ever forgive me?”

If there was ever a perfect opportunity for Selina to ask that, she sure found it. Diana was so flustered by her thoughts that she nodded without thinking.

“Oh, my sweet sister. You’ll see. This is for the best.”

Oh, I seriously doubt that.

CHAPTER 5

Cue Ball

The atmosphere in the gentlemen’s club James had frequented all his adult life had that familiarity that wrapped around him cozily. Especially while he and Richard indulged in a game of billiards. It was the only time James saw his uptight and proper friend loosen up.

“No wager this evening, Crawford?” Richard teased.

James scowled. Familiar or not, there was something different in the way he just was. It irked him that he couldn’t place it. Something was eating at him, and it drove him crazy that he couldn’t locate it and pluck it out because it was taking roots like a weed in his perfectly curated garden. It was disrupting the patterns he carefully planned.

But he was unwilling to let the mask slip. The mask of that effortless charm that took almost all his energy to maintain. Thereputation of the charismatic rake who had no care in the world, who simply had it all.

“If we hit the tables, Seymour, I will gladly make a wager. But with you and that damn stick? I am never winning, and we both know it.”

“I know. You prefer the whim of Lady Luck. I prefer the certainty of skill. I can control exactly what the balls will do, and thus I control the outcome.”

“Where is the fun in that?” James chuckled. “Having control all the time?”

Richard sniggered as if to himself, and the look in his eyes softened. A rare sight on him. One he reserved for his wife.

James still couldn’t believe that Richard of all people was in love.

“Your turn.” Richard pointed at him with his stick.

James scanned the table, trying to decide his next move, but he just couldn’t concentrate. He was not as good as Richard at this, but tonight he was losing the basic functions of his body. Still, he finally found an easy shot and bent to take it.

“Have you called on Diana?” Richard asked.

The stick slipped from James’s hand, and the balls ricocheted aimlessly around the table. When he straightened up, Richard was observing him.

James clenched his jaw. There it was, the wrinkle is his perfectly ironed life.

“No.” He coughed. “Not yet.”

Richard frowned.

It had been days since the auction. Propriety demanded that James would have visited her by now. But James was never about propriety. One does not build his reputation by being respectful.

“You do intend to honor the offer, Crawford, right?”

James smiled that disarming smile of his, but if there was one person on earth who was immune to his charm, it was Richard. It was the main reason he was his best friend. His only true friend.

“I will, of course. You know me.”

“It is exactly because I know you that I am drawing your attention to this matter. This is not some barmaid we are talking about. Not some wanton widow. This is my sister-in-law.”

“I am aware, Seymour. I have paid a ridiculous amount to promenade with her. I mean, the barmaids I could have?—”