Page 21 of Scoundrel Take Me Away (Dukes in Disguise #3)

Chapter Nine

In short order, Thornecliff had procured a deck of cards from one of the massive footmen. Lucy watched, vibrating with tension, as he directed that same footman to set up a small card table with two chairs, into which he and Chicheley settled themselves.

But not before Chicheley transferred custody of Lucy over to the silent footman with a leer and a jovial, “Just in case she gets the urge to wander off again! Keep an eye on her, man. There’s a guinea in it for you.”

The footman only nodded and stood, impassive and enormous, at Lucy’s elbow. He didn’t wrap one of those meaty hands around her wrist; he didn’t have to. His silent presence—along with the single, burning glance Thornecliff had sent her before sitting down—was enough to anchor her in place.

Lucy was surprised to find she knew Thorne well enough to be certain that he was up to something . She was even more surprised to discover that she trusted him enough to wait and see how his plan played out.

And there was also the knowledge that if she fled, she would cause the sort of scene that would undoubtedly make its way to her brother’s ears.

As it was, most of the onlookers had drifted away once it became clear that no one was going to resort to fisticuffs.

Another game of chance, another high-stakes bet, another hand of cards—those things were common sights at Sharpe’s. Not exciting enough to draw a crowd. Which Lucy realized must have been Thornecliff’s intention in proposing this wager.

But what if Thornecliff lost? There was no way she was going anywhere with Viscount Chicheley.

Looking at Thornecliff’s opaque expression as he shuffled the deck of cards, Lucy felt a strange calm wash over her.

Even if he lost, there was no possible way he would let Chicheley have her.

She didn’t know what he would do to stop it, but she knew in her bones that Thornecliff wouldn’t let that man touch her again.

“Let’s keep things simple, in deference to your previous endeavors this evening,” Thornecliff said, all gracious magnanimity in the face of Chicheley’s inebriated confusion.

“I propose a hand of vingt-et-un. I’ll deal, you try to get as close to twenty-one as you can without going over.

Whichever of us is closest wins the woman. ”

Chicheley narrowed his eyes in a way that he might have meant to look discerning; he merely wound up appearing next door to unconscious. “You chose the game. In fairness, that means I should deal.”

Thornecliff shrugged, reclining and hooking one arm over the back of his chair. “Have at it.”

He should’ve looked as sleepy as Chicheley had when he squinted, but instead he looked more like a coiled spring—ready to explode into motion at a moment’s notice.

His eyes tracked Chicheley’s movements as the viscount picked up the deck and clumsily shuffled it, spraying cards everywhere.

Lucy clasped her hands together, sweaty palms itching to grab the deck of cards from Chicheley’s fumbling paws and shuffle them herself.

But finally he managed to coordinate his sausage fingers well enough to get the deck set on the table. With a look of intense concentration, he dealt Thornecliff two cards, faceup, and then himself, one faceup and one facedown.

Chicheley’s showing card was a queen, and when he lifted the corner of his second card to peek at it, a wide smile spread across his face. The smile only grew when he glanced across the table and saw Thornecliff’s cards: a five and a Jack.

Tension caught at Lucy’s chest, too thick to breathe in.

Thornecliff had fifteen—not terribly close to twenty-one, especially given Chicheley’s gloating excitement about his hidden card—and with each face card valued at ten, there were far too many chances for Thornecliff’s third card to go over the limit of twenty-one.

Thus ensuring an instant win for Chicheley.

She bit her lip, unsure what she wanted Thornecliff to do. If he held, putting his score of fifteen up against whatever Chicheley had in his hand, it seemed very likely to come up short. But if he asked for a third card, he was even more likely to bust and lose the hand.

Thornecliff paused for an endless moment, studying Chicheley in a detached manner, as though his opponent was an insect under his magnifying lens.

The fire in those black eyes of his had been banked. With his relaxed posture and slow, curling smile, Thornecliff looked as though he couldn’t care less about the outcome of this game. Her earlier certainty crumbled.

Lucy felt light-headed. She swayed on her feet, but it wasn’t until a large hand clasped her elbow in a gentle grip that she realized she’d been breathing too fast and too shallowly to draw enough air into her compressed lungs.

The footman at her side, a ginger fellow with a bulbous nose and deep-set eyes, gave her an incongruously kind smile.

“Don’t worry, lady,” he rumbled in what probably passed for a whisper when one was the size of a mountain. “Your man knows what he’s about.”

“He’s not my man,” Lucy said automatically, but wasn’t he? At least in this moment, when he held her fate in the palm of his hand.

“What’s the matter?” Chicheley taunted, evidently running out of patience. “I’m ready to be done with this and move on to more pleasurable pursuits. Just play your hand so I can go ahead and win.”

But Thornecliff was impossible to rush. He glanced at Lucy, their eyes meeting in a strange, distended moment of connection. Lucy couldn’t read anything in their depths, no fear, no pride, no anger. He was just…blank.

Shaken, Lucy clutched her hands together and tried to convey, with every ounce of her being, how very unhappy she would be if he lost.

Thornecliff looked away, as though bored, and tapped the table once, indicating he’d like another card. A ripple of trepidation went through Lucy.

She didn’t like Chicheley’s triumphant smirk as he passed Thornecliff the card, facedown.

Without so much as the flicker of an eyelash to show a reaction, without even looking at the card himself or taking his eyes off Chicheley’s smug face, Thornecliff flipped the card over.

A six.

A six of spades sat next to the jack of hearts and five of diamonds.

Six plus ten plus five.

Twenty-one.

Lucy sucked in a breath, her gaze darting to catch the fall of Chicheley’s expression. All the overweening confidence drained from him. He looked like he’d been slapped in the face with a dead fish.

Still without breaking eye contact, Thornecliff reached across the table and flicked Chicheley’s remaining card faceup.

A ten of clubs. Together with his first card, the queen of hearts, he had twenty. A very good hand, indeed.

Just not good enough to beat Thornecliff.

Chicheley stood up so quickly he knocked over his chair. Lurching back from the table, he stomped off without another word. Certainly without handing over the guinea he’d promised the footman.

Breathing out a languid sigh of satisfaction, Thornecliff stretched like a cat in a beam of sunlight before rising from the table.

He withdrew a gold sovereign coin from a small pocket of his coat and handed it to Lucy’s guard. The giant footman bobbed his head and glanced up at the balcony where his employer still watched impassively, before shuffling back to his place at the wall.

“Shall we?” Thornecliff offered her his arm, all gracious politesse, as free and easy as though they’d been for a walk in the park rather than a round of cards in which Lucy’s body was the prize.

The wave of relief that had swamped Lucy when she saw Thornecliff’s winning hand receded abruptly, a tide eddying out and leaving nothing but raw anger in its place.

What a ridiculous situation to be in, she thought furiously, with two ridiculous men cutting cards for her as if she was a pound note lying on the table between them. Humiliation scorched the back of her throat like bile.

And Thornecliff, with his smooth smiles and empty black eyes—it was all the same to him. Why should he care what happened to Lucy? He clearly didn’t care.

Refusing his arm, Lucy turned on her heel and stalked toward the large set of double doors leading out of the card room. To her intense irritation, his long, lean legs easily kept pace with her as she escaped into the quiet of the club’s foyer.

“You seem upset,” he commented dryly. “Sharpe’s not delivering all the excitement and drama you were hoping for?”

“You bet my body on a game of chance,” she hissed, collecting her wrap from the impassive majordomo, who did a very good job of pretending he didn’t have ears to hear their argument.

“I won, didn’t I?”

“Purely by luck! There’s no skill involved, you said it yourself. You could just as easily have lost.”

“I said there was no skill involved in hazard. Vingt-et-un is a different game, one governed by mathematical rules of probability.” She was still refusing to look at him, but she could swear she heard the frown in his voice. “And I didn’t lose .”

Lucy was struck with a sudden memory of her debut Season in London, five years ago.

She had begged Bess, who’d been acting as her chaperone, to let her attend more interesting events than the endless round of daily social calls and walks in Hyde Park.

They’d would up at a scholarly lecture on the new mathematics… and Thornecliff had been there.

She’d always wondered what interest a man like him could have in the new mathematics. She supposed she had her answer now.

“Fine,” she said, her jaw stiff. “You played the odds. You still could have lost. You will pardon me if I don’t find the risk involved to be acceptable—given that I was the only one risking anything at all.”

Lungs and cheeks burning, eyes prickling, Lucy stomped away from the majordomo toward the exit that would let her put this awful evening behind her.