Page 26

FOURTEEN

Lilah

I was not going to panic. I was not going to panic. I was not going to?—

“Why are you panicking, Lilah?” my friend Kineallen asked quietly.

Shooting him the deadliest glare I could manage, which in truth wasn’t that impressive, I resumed my pacing up and down the drawing room as we waited for the newest members of the Gambling Dukes to arrive.

The potential members, I mentally corrected.

Because it all came down to this. All the hard work, those stupid posters with my face on them, the practice I’d done with William on my public speaking…

“You think you can do any better? You think you could just drop a speech that is an improvement?”

I swallowed. Why was my mouth so incredibly dry?

I had to get this right. It was all my fault—well, not entirely my fault. Markham had put us in this awful position in the first place, and the Anderley brothers had made it impossible to win back our favor with all good Society, but I was determined to make things right. Make things better.

Make it possible for the club to actually continue, not fall apart and?—

I couldn’t think like that. Not only because I needed to focus on what I was going to say when all the people with thousands to wager walked into the drawing room, but because each time I thought about it, my hands started to sweat, my heart began to race, and my breakfast…

Well. It may have made an appearance, if I’d had time for breakfast.

“Stop pacing,” said Kineallen curtly.

I glanced at him without ceasing my pacing.

Since when did Kineallen get nervous about anything? He was the ice duke, nothing ever really affected him. It was kind of irritating, actually.

Which made it all the more disconcerting that he was so evidently nervous now.

“I can’t stop pacing,” I said shortly, reaching the end of the room and turning on my heels.

“You could at least try,” my friend snapped.

He was carefully moving around the large room, straightening the paintings on the wall.

Not that they needed straightening. But that was Kineallen all over. He always had to feel as though he could fix something, even if it was impossible.

“What, you think it’ll help?”

“Yes, I think you not marching back and forward, back and forward, would help,” muttered Kineallen. “Got to be better than this, right?”

I glared but there was no real malice in his words.

I don’t think I’d ever seen Kineallen get really angry. It wasn’t his style. Aloof irritation, that was more his thing .

Try as I might though, I couldn’t stop the pacing. It always helped in the past, and I was certain if I just kept going, eventually the rhythmic movement would help calm me down.

Glancing about the place, I couldn’t help but smile. This room had been one of my favorites when I’d moved into the building. It was elegant, spacious, full of light. I hadn’t wanted it to look like just any old drawing room that a boring, old fashioned family could have.

No, I wanted it to look. Young. Modern. Forward thinking. Like we were.

Like we are, I told myself fiercely as I continued to pace. This wasn’t it. It wasn’t over. The Gambling Dukes wasn’t going to fall apart. Not if I could help?—

“Oh, hell.”

Kineallen’s face was pale as I glanced over at him.

“What?” I snapped.

Great, now I was snapping at my friend, who hadn’t done anything to warrant this.

Probably. I wouldn’t put it past any of the Gambling Dukes to pry into my personal affairs about this. I mean, look how they’d treated Georgiana after she had decided to marry a commoner. If it had been me…

“Have you seen the news?” he said quietly.

Kineallen was staring into the paper as though the bank had just pulled the mortgage suddenly from under us. They hadn’t, had they?

I swallowed, mouth dry. “What the hell has happened?”

“The Anderley brothers,” he said softly.

My stomach lurched.

Oh, come on. Hadn’t I suffered enough? Hadn’t my world already fallen apart the last few weeks?

First having to put up with William, then falling in love with him again like an idiot, giving myself to him—then discovering he had never betrayed me the first time we’d been lovers but had now betrayed me with the Anderley brothers…

I couldn’t be blamed for finding this exhausting, could I?

“Don’t tell me,” I said wearily, falling into a chair and dropping my head into my hands. “I'm not sure if I can take any more bad news.”

And where was Markham? The big joker had promised to be here, to present a united front as best we could. The idiot hadn’t even turned up.

“Bad news?” Kineallen repeated, his voice in a strange sort of haze. “I wouldn’t call it bad news.”

Now that got my attention. How could it be anything but bad news?

“Take a look,” my friend said, thrusting the newspaper toward me.

I had to stop pacing to read it, which was perhaps his plan all along.

But no. He was right: it was good news.

ANDERLEY brOTHERS ADMIT FALSEHOODS ABOUT GAMBLING DUKES

“Dear Lord,” I breathed.

My eyes tried to quickly scan the article, but it was almost impossible for me to take in a single word, my heart was racing and my vision blurred.

“I’ve known the Anderley brothers for a little while ? —”

“You think that’s going to make it better?”

After everything I’d thrown at him, was it possible William hadn’t betrayed me in the manner I thought after all? Could it be that…I had been wrong ?

“You don’t think William had anything to do with this, do you?”

I looked up, stomach lurching. “What?”

“Well, you said that he was working against us, but I'm not so sure of that,” Kineallen said slowly, holding out his hand for the newspaper.

I handed it back to him. “If he was helping us, why didn’t he say?”

Try as I might, the bitterness of my words were palpable.

Was I just an idiot? Had I been played, first this way, then that? Was it even possible for me to untangle how I felt about William after all this time?

“Anyway, I don’t…I don’t want to talk about William. Mr. Parry,” I said quietly. “Not now. We…we need to focus on what’s before us. The meeting. The Count of Guadalencia. I…I won’t let you down, Kineallen.”

Blinking back tears, I tried to hold his gaze.

I wasn’t going to let him down. Not any of them.

“Look, we can do this,” said Kineallen quietly. Then he did something he’d not done in…well, years.

He pulled me into an embrace.

“I'm sorry I haven’t really been there for you, with this whole Parry thing,” he said gruffly in my ear, pulling me tight. “I just…you know me, I'm not any good at this stuff.”

‘This stuff’ being my own embarrassing failure, my pathetic heartbreak, and my ability to make it all somehow bring down the club, too.

Oh, fantastic.

“You don’t have to,” I said awkwardly, pulling out of the hug. “I mean, you have the whole club to worry about. You don’t have to?—”

“Lilah, the Gambling Dukes is important, but it’s not more important than you,” Kineallen said fiercely, with a strange sort of passion I’d never seen in him before. “Any of you. I may not have made that clear enough in the past, but…hell, they’re here.”

I straightened up. Footsteps were echoing along the corridor outside the drawing room. Several pairs of feet. I could just about hear the murmur of a group of people chattering.

This was it.

Everything I’d prepared, everything William had taught me—I couldn’t ignore it, even if I had lost the chance to have him in my life.

The door opened.

“Ah,” the Count of Guadalencia said with a wide smile. “I see that you’ve been entertaining other offers since our last conversation. Impressive.”

I blinked in astonishment, then glanced over at Kineallen who was awkwardly adjusting his cravat.

“Other offers?” he said blankly. “No, Lord Guadalencia, we haven’t…”

His voice trailed off but I couldn’t blame my friend. I wouldn’t be able to keep talking either.

We’d expected the Count of Guadalencia and his three associates…not this. Not the Duke of Considine and the Right Honorable Daniel Dickens. Not the Hill-Becker sisters, who last I heard had been deep in talks with the Anderley brothers.

And certainly not the man who followed them.

“Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” said William Parry cheerfully, closing the door behind him and not quite meeting my eye.

The damned rogue—what the hell did he think he was doing here ?

And why did my treacherous heart leap with such joy to see him?

William

“Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” I beamed.

Apparently not. Lilah looked more likely to tear open my chest and eat my heart than tell me that it was all going to be fine.

Ah. Right.

“—lovely to meet you in person,” someone was muttering.

“Oh, and the same from my perspective,” came the polite reply.

I glanced about the drawing room and saw precisely what I had hoped for.

Lots of bowing and curtseying.

It could only bode well. There was going to be a great deal made here today, I was sure of it. In a moment, Lilah was going to thank me for bringing in all these extra guests, and she and I could?—

“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” Lilah hissed as she grabbed my arm and pulled me roughly aside.

I almost lost my footing, but that was partly because I was swiftly breathless in her presence. How had I forgotten just how damned attractive this woman was? How desperately I needed her, how I wanted to?—

“William?” Lilah snapped, shoving me in the arm. “What are you thinking? You’re working for the Anderley brothers—my enemies? Remember?”

Ah. So not all of the message had got to her, then. “Lilah, I’ve formally disavowed them. ”

She blinked. Evidently that wasn’t the response she’d expected. “You…you have?”

“Of course I have—how are you?” I asked, unable to concentrate on such matters when she was before me.

“What do you mean, how are you?” Lilah blinked, evidently completely wrong footed by my appearance. “I don’t—you hurt me, William, and—this isn’t the right time. We need to?—”

“What the hell is this?” came a voice behind me.