Page 3 of Hazard a Guest (Ladies’ Revenge Club #3)

“I’ll call him what I please,” said Ember with as much firmness as she could muster. “What is he suing me for?”

“It’s not a suit, exactly,” Dot said with a queasy grimace.

“It seems he went about the city during the end of the Season, offering to buy any debt cards he could find from absolutely anyone, under one condition: that they came from the Forge. Ember, he has almost eight thousand pounds’ worth of notes. ”

Ember stared at her friend, not quite understanding what was being said. “Eight thousand ,” she managed, her mouth a little dry. “He bought eight thousand pounds of debt? Why?”

“Because,” Dot said with a huffing sigh, “he tried to buy you out some years ago and you … well. You told him something very rude. So now he’s going to force you.”

“What did I tell him?” Ember pushed, her heart starting to thump. “I can’t keep track of every toff who comes in here trying to buy me out. I need more than that.”

“You told him to”—Dot flushed, pink dots appearing high on her cheeks—“to go sit on a peg?”

“Ah!” said Ember, immediately placing the incident. “That one.”

The memory was vague but clear enough that she could make out the outlines of the scene. He’d blown in like Father Christmas, offering to take the Forge off her hands, saying a bunch of pretty things about how she’d earned enough for a life of leisure or a business without so many sharp edges.

All things she’d heard before.

But the angry glint in his eye when she’d told him the Forge was hers and hers alone had given her pause.

She didn’t know if the kit was a standard-issue woman hater or if she’d done something to personally offend him, but he’d reacted with disproportionate rage at his inability to talk her into selling.

He had, of course, met Jones that day.

“What did he want with Silas?” Ember demanded, tapping her nails on the bar and holding up three fingers to the trainee. “People don’t hire a KC barrister without a strong commitment to outcome.”

She heard him faintly in the background asking Jones “three of what?” and being immediately shushed.

“A letter, to start with,” Dot said, heaving a sigh like her body was relieved to finally be free of this news. “He wanted to do things in a way that wouldn’t make him feel like he was extorting a widow out of her inheritance, which is ironic, since that is exactly what he’s doing.”

“Not her inheritance,” Millie said gently. “Ember only inherited the frame. He wants the whole painting.”

“Thank you, Millie,” said Ember.

“It wasn’t a compliment,” the other woman replied, “just the truth.”

Three glasses of sweet wine arrived on the bartop, and each woman wasted no time taking theirs up. The flash of candlelight against the fruity liquid cast shades of gold and bronze onto their faces, delivering the gift of a moment of sweetness and warmth.

Ember, after having her taste, let herself release a bit of air. “Why hasn’t he done it yet, I wonder? The Season has been dead for almost three months now.”

“Because he intends to buy more,” Dot said with a raise of her eyebrows, as though she thought Ember would have already figured this out.

“He told Silas that eight thousand isn’t enough; you might have that on hand to buy him out.

He doesn’t want to hobble you—he wants to remove you. This was just the opening riposte.”

Ember blinked for a brief moment, the only part of her with mobility. “Well, at least he thinks I’m competent,” she said weakly.

“Do you?” Millie asked, reaching forward to lace her fingers through Ember’s. “Do you have eight thousand?”

Ember made a noise, squeezing her eyes shut and opening them again. “I don’t know. Maybe? I could claw it together if I needed to. Why don’t we just find this spalpeen and kill him? I’ve got nothing penciled in for tomorrow.”

Millie laughed. Dot did not.

“Mr. Beck has left London, unfortunately, for the duration of the holiday,” she said, as though she was truly apologetic that they couldn’t go murder the man in a polite timeframe. “He asked us to send any correspondence care of Cornwall until after the new year.”

“Ah, blast and bloody damnation!” Ember cursed, jumping to her feet. “Hell’s own cock on a thimble!”

“Ember!” Dot gasped, reaching to steady her friend.

Millie, however, clearly wanted to know what that last bit meant.

“He’s gone to Blackcove,” Ember said with venom. “To bloody Beecham’s bloody Christmas gathering. This upstart bastard . Of course they would invite him. Of course this rich, smarmy, evil talking top hat gets an invitation! Two years into the game!”

The other women were watching her with a kind of wary fascination.

Jones wasn’t overtly staring, but he had his head turned toward her tantrum.

“I never get invited!” Ember continued to rant, bending her freckled hands into claws. “Never! It’s a direct slight!”

“What is happening?” Millie muttered to Dot, who shook her head.

“It’s a country party,” Ember said, her chest heaving like she’d just run thrice around the perimeter.

“A golden ticket invite for the city’s best-known gamblers and their favorite proprietors.

The stakes are so high that lords have lost homes, titles, and probably a few daughters. It happens every Christmas.”

“Well,” Millie said mildly, “that sounds vile.”

“Said the respectable married lady in a house of sin,” Ember returned with a twist of her lips.

“You know what he’s doing, don’t you? He’s going to gamble with my debt slips, try to double up what he already has.

Every competitor in London will be there, eager to spread the pain around for the little woman who thinks she can take their business. ”

“Maybe that’s how he got his invitation,” Millie suggested, sipping at her wine. “You do bristle against the order of things, Ember.”

Ember waved her hand as though dispelling Millie’s statement from the air.

“Maybe I do, but it isn’t like that in my business.

We’re symbiotic, like bees and weeds. The more gambling hells there are in an area, the more moving business we all get.

They might enjoy having a favor to cash in, but what this Beck is doing is not business as usual. ”

“Why not go to Cornwall, then?” Dot suggested. “Tell the others what he’s doing. Put him out of favor with anyone who might fear he’ll come for them next.”

“And maybe win away some of your debt slips in the process,” Millie put in.

Ember heaved a big, dramatic sigh, dropping back onto her barstool. “Would love to, hens,” she said, shaking her head, “but I’d need an escort. Like I said before, I’m never invited.”

“You know every gambling master in London,” Dot pointed out. “Surely one of them would do you that favor. Surely you know someone with an invite.”

Ember looked down at her feet, frowning. She did have an option, it was just the worst, most complicated sort of option.

“I do,” she said finally, her voice so low, it might’ve been a whisper. “I know one. And he certainly does owe me a favor.”

Nearby, a group of ladies cheered. Someone had won a big pot. But here in this little bubble by the bar, it felt muted somehow.

“Oh,” said Millie.

“Oh, no,” said Dot.

And Ember sighed one more time.

There was only one man she knew who had a standing invitation to Blackcove. The one who’d jilted Dot. The one who’d eloped with Millie’s little sister. The one who’d once kept Ember herself as his contracted mistress.

She was going to have to ask Freddy bloody Hightower, the disgraced Earl of Bentley, for help.