Page 10 of A Bet with a Duchess (The Gambling Dukes #1)

TEN

Fynn

I couldn’t face the office on Sunday.

I should have gone in. I knew that. I had the information I needed, the information I had been sure was there. My editor would be chomping at the bit to see me—at least, if they knew I was in London.

Keeping a low profile wasn’t hard. I just let myself back into my tiny lodgings, crashed onto the bed, and tried to move as little as possible.

But when Monday rolled around, I really had no excuse but to go in. So when I stepped off across the street, breathing in the early morning air, my satchel grew heavier and heavier as I stepped along toward the office.

“Monroe,” nodded one of the lads who sold the papers on the streets. “Haven’t you seen you for a while, been away?”

I nodded.

The lad grinned. “Business or pleasure?”

My stomach twisted painfully as I tried to smile, pushing open the door and crossing the entrance hall.

Business or pleasure.

The lad couldn’t know what a pertinent question that was. In a way, I still hardly knew myself.

“I wanted to do this the moment I met you.”

“I wanted you to do the moment I saw you.”

Try as I might, I couldn’t push away every thought of Georgiana as I slowly walked up the staircase to the fifth floor. Everything reminded me of her; the shine of the sun in her hair, the way she smiled at me, half curious, half desiring?—

“Monroe!”

I tried to smile. “Mr. Jordan.”

“God, I’d forgotten you’d be back today, last week flew by so quickly I hardly know what month it is,” said my editor, rushing past me with a cup of tea in one hand. “You got what you wanted?”

I hesitated. I knew the words I should say, the words I had been so desperate to say just over a week ago.

That I had found it, something in the Gambling Dukes’ records that would prove them to be scandalous—perhaps even tricking others out of their fortunes.

“Fynn?”

I blinked. Mr. Jordan was still standing before me, and I still hadn’t answered their question. I still hadn’t decided how I wanted to.

“I need the scoop, Monroe,” my editor said slowly, as though I was an imbecile. “Remember? You went to that goddawful place with that goddawful club?—”

“They’re not?—”

I caught myself just in time, but it didn’t seem to matter. Mr. Jordan wasn’t listening anyway.

“—something funny, no one gets that rich that quickly. Not honestly, anyway.”

I watched them pull their jacket taut, as though they had just proven an impressive point. Others of the office joined in, each of them speculating about how the Gambling Dukes had managed to go from nothing to something.

But I hadn’t seen any sign of underhand dealings.

At least, not any that mattered. Nothing that would have sparked up their ability to win card games, nothing about stealing secrets or paying off jockeys to win when fluttering on the races. As far as I had seen, The Gambling Dukes paid their servants over the market rate.

The Duke of Markham was stealing from the club, yes, and it was clear his friends didn’t know. At least, I thought uncomfortably, Georgiana hadn’t known. I didn’t know about the rest of them.

But who was it hurting, other than the friends themselves?

“Fynn?”

I blinked. Mr. Jordan had snapped their fingers before my eyes.

“We lost you there for a moment,” my editor said with a laugh. “Right then, tell me all about it.”

In that moment, I knew what I was going to say. What I had to say. There didn’t seem to be much choice, which was the strange thing.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

Mr. Jordan blinked. A few other reporters looked up from desks, eyes weary in the case of those who had been in early.

“What?”

I swallowed. I had to make this believable. “There’s nothing to tell, Mr. Jordan. I didn’t find anything.”

My editor stared at me for a moment, utterly at a loss—then for some reason, winked. “Come on, into my office.”

I followed them out of habit more than anything else. I knew what was about to follow, had seen it done many times. But never to me.

The door closed with a snap.

“Come on, Monroe,” said Mr. Jordan as they settled behind their desk. “I know you found something, you always do. Nothing has ever gotten past you, that’s why I keep you.”

The subtle hint was not unnoticed.

“I don’t have anything for you,” I said, stretching my hands out wide as though in apology. “I'm sorry, Mr. Jordan, I?—”

“Don’t give me that nonsense.” All the warmth was gone from the room, and their voice, their beady eye glaring. “I know you found something, and if you’re not willing to talk it means they’ve paid you off. What did they give you?”

It took all my self-control to meet their eye dead on. “Nothing. There was nothing to buy off.”

Vindication roared through my heart. I had made the right decision; Mr. Jordan didn’t deserve to know the inner workings of the Gambling Dukes.

No one did.

I had felt it was right to tell Georgiana, and I still stood by that decision, though it cost me the most precious thing I had to lose.

But despite my fine words to her just days before, it was only when I had returned to London that I realized sharing a personal betrayal wasn’t in the public interest. It wasn’t in anyone’s interest.

Only hurt was going to come from this revelation.

My heart contracted painfully. Had Georgiana already confronted him? Had the Gambling Dukes exploded, imploded, ended before it could truly see its potential?

Mr. Jordan slammed a hand on their desk. “I’ll fire you.”

“Fine, fire me,” I said calmly.

I hadn’t thought it would come to this, but the moment they said the words, I knew what my response had to be. There was a calmness in me I hadn’t expected; no tension in my shoulders, no twinges of regrets.

This was right.

“Fire you?”

I nodded slowly at my editor’s amazement. “Fire me. Nothing is worth betrayal.”

“You’ve played your hand, and you’ve lost,” said Mr. Jordan with a dark laugh. “And I admire you for continuing to try to play the game, but the newspaper world is a small one, Monroe. Get fired here, you might not find it as easy as you think to find somewhere else.”

“I know that,” I said quietly.

And I did. My career in the papers was over, I knew, but it was a simple and obvious price to pay if it meant Georgiana could try to tangle up the crap Markham had left her with—and privately.

Besides, I’d been betrayed before. My stepfather had been one of the few people I trusted, and look where that had got me.

I wasn’t about to betray someone else’s trust. Not while I was in love with?—

“Don’t be a sore loser, Monroe,” grinned Mr. Jordan. “I’ll get it out of you, you know—or I’ll send someone else. Someone better. Someone able to charm the truth out of that Gambling Dukes club of theirs, or charm the clothes off them, it doesn't bother me. A little scandal might sink that ship just as easily as?—”

“Damn you, Jordan,” I spat, finally goaded beyond all endurance. “This was supposed to be a financial investigation, for the good of the people, not a smear campaign!”

“Then tell me,” they said quietly. “Tell me the truth.”

I took a deep and steadying breath. I looked at my editor, perhaps one of the few people I would have trusted before this week.

Now I only trusted one person in the world, and she was miles away, determined to hate me I was sure.

“I may have lost the hand,” I said quietly, “and I may have lost my job. But I didn’t even know what I was gambling until the cards were dealt, and now I’ve lost the only thing worth losing. And it’s not this, Jordan. It’s not this.”

With a wave of my hands around the small room that reeked of cigar smoke, I threw open the door and strode out of the office for the last time.

Georgiana

The whiskey in my glass shone bright amber as the sunlight rushed through it. I had poured it almost an hour ago, according to the delicate hands of the longcase clock which was chiming through the open window, but I’d barely taken a sip.

Wasn’t that what you supposed to do, after heartbreak? Lose yourself in alcohol?

I’d never seen the appeal.

The late afternoon sunlight glittered through the aquamarine light of the lake. I’d asked Harris to set a few chairs outside for me, certain a swim would improve my mind, but I hadn’t even been able to bring myself to go in.

So here I sat, on a chair, with a whiskey in my hand and worries on my heart.

I could almost laugh. I sounded like a terrible folksong. And the only trouble was, if you ignored the impending doom of the club we had built from nothing, and the loss of a man I was almost sure I loved, I still hadn’t talked to?—

“There you,” said Markham as he stepped out of the house, through the doors where I had first seen Fynn. “I thought you’d returned to London.”

I smiled weakly. Everyone had, even Lilah, under protest. There had been such a kerfuffle yesterday that no one had thought to ask me when I was leaving. Or whether I was leaving.

London felt too close to Fynn.

Which was ridiculous. I had lived the last few years in London and never come across Fynn—and I was unlikely to now. Now I knew to avoid him, and any places journalists frequented. He was not likely as a mere commoner to be invited to the sorts of balls and dinners which were always open to me, and so…so I would never see him again.

Markham settled on the chair beside me and removed his hat. “Bright out.”

I nodded, twisting my glass slowly so that the ice remaining rattled. Perhaps my friend would get the hint; that I just wanted to sit here, not drinking, in peace.

“You’re quiet.”

Markham was perceptive, as ever. Damn.

“Just thinking,” I said airily, as though nothing in the world had ever touched my heart, and never would. “That’s all.”

My friend examined me. “Thinking?”

I nodded. I wasn’t going to let my pain spill from my lips, not yet. I had to have a plan, had to think about how I was going to approach this. Approach him.

Because I had to. Fynn was right, damn him, as he was about so many things. I couldn’t simply let this go, I couldn’t ignore what Markham had done. I couldn’t pretend the damage he had done to our club, our reputation, would never be found out.

If Fynn had found it, someone else would. Before you knew it, no one would gamble with us anymore, invitation rescinded, vouchers to Almack’s declined, Society unimpressed…because everyone had thought that everything was above board.

And it wasn’t. I knew that now.

I could never un-know it.

“Sorry for interrupting, then, I suppose,” said Markham with a wry smile.

I tried to match it. I hadn’t thought ask what he was still doing here, why Markham hadn’t gone back to London. Though in fairness, I hadn’t justified my presence, and he hadn’t asked me to.

I smiled. My friend. Why would I believe Fynn over him?

Surely the records were falsified. Fynn had been so eager to find something, anything, I told myself, there was no knowing what he would do to find a story. Make a story. Concoct something that would?—

“Fynn’s gone, then.”

My thin smile immediately disappeared. I couldn’t maintain it in the face of hearing that name again. “Yes.”

Markham looked at me closely. “You know, Kineallen thought you were foolish, inviting him here.”

“He’s not the only one, as I recall,” I said dryly.

I sipped my whiskey. It was mostly water now, the ice almost completely melted. I should have spoken to Kineallen before he left. I should have asked him his opinion, what I should do about Markham.

If I should do anything.

He was the eldest, my eldest friend. He had cared for us all in different ways when our spouses had died, even when he had lost his own.

He would have known what to do.

“Well, you said it wouldn’t matter,” said Markham matter-of-factly. “Inviting him here, I mean. It was not like we had anything to hide.”

I couldn’t help it. Even in the sunny afternoon glow of the day, there was something wrong when a secret was being hidden from me. Between friends, there shouldn’t be secrets.

Not like this one.

I raised my eyes to Markham’s.

“Blast,” he said quietly. “You know.”

Shame rushed through me, mirroring what I knew he was feeling. My friend, my darling friend. What have you done?

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” I whispered, tears sparkling in my eyes, unshed for the moment but dancing along my bottom eyelid. “Markham, how could you?”

“I didn’t mean to—it isn’t as simple as that,” Markham said fiercely.

I could see the panic in his lungs, every breath rising his fear, and knew I shouldn’t have admitted I knew. Now I had lost him, lost his trust. Just as he had lost mine.

And he had lost me more than that. The health, the reputation of the club.

Fynn.

“Oh, Markham,” I said wearily, resting a hand on his shoulder. “You should have told us.”

“I couldn’t, not after—well, the first time doesn’t feel like anything, and the third time it feels easy, so easy,” Markham said, his words spilling out, thick and fast, “and before I knew it I couldn’t stop, and how could I go to you then, how could I tell you I was?—”

“Stealing from us,” I said flatly.

All the warmth had gone from the day. I sat there, staring at the man before me, a shadow of the man I knew. My friend’s hand hung low, his hands twisting together, shame pouring through him but I could do nothing to alleviate it.

Not now.

“I wish you had told me, long before Fynn came but especially then,” I said quietly, gripping his shoulder now, trying to hold onto what mattered. “I could have helped you, could have protected?—”

“Once you invited that journalist, I knew it would come out,” Markham said dully, not meeting my eye. “I should have left.”

“You should have returned the money.”

He shrugged, pushing my hand away. “You think I still have it?”

My heart twisted painfully. Of course he didn’t. Markham had the tastes and expenses of a duke.

Oh God, what had he been doing with that money?

“But there’s nothing in the newspaper,” my friend said eagerly, finally looking up at me. “Whatever you did, whatever you said to that journalist, Georgiana, he didn’t publish. There’s nothing?—”

“You idiot, you think because it’s not out today it’ll never come out?” I couldn’t help it, rage and frustration poured from my tongue as I realized just what I’d lost.

Fynn had been right.

“You think I falsified the ledgers?”

“Anything can be done with pen and paper.”

I should have trusted him, should have asked for his help—should have at the very least not accused him of lying, the worse sin, from both our pasts.

And now I had lost him.

“I’ve thrown away the hand of a lifetime,” I said quietly, thinking of Fynn, of the happiness we had already found in such a short amount of time.

Markham laughed bitterly. “You can’t be that good, if you lost so easily.”

I glared at my friend. “You stacked the deck against me by lying, Markham. Lying. I could never have won. And now we’ve lost…we need to decide whether the game is over.”