Praise for bestselling author
Miranda Jarrett

“Miranda Jarrett continues to reign as the queen of historical romance.”

—Romantic Times

“A marvelous author…each word is a treasure, each book a lasting memory.”

—The Literary Times

“Ms. Jarrett always delivers a memorable story peopled with memorable characters…. You can always count on Ms. Jarrett to gift us with something intelligent, new and vibrant.”

—Romantic Times

Acclaim for Miranda Jarrett’s previous titles

The Golden Lord

“Sexual tension runs high. There are…secrets to be kept, mysteries to be solved and a traditional ending in which sharing truth wins true love.”

—Romantic Times

The Silver Lord

“The characters and plotting are very good and deftly presented.”

—Affaire de Coeur

The Very Daring Duchess

“A vibrant, passionate story, richly told. The Very Daring Duchess will sweep you away to an eighteenth century world of power and danger.”

—USA TODAY bestselling author Jo Beverley

The Captain’s Bride

“Deliciously entertaining, Miranda Jarrett’s The Captain’s Bride blends a swift, rollicking romance between two unlikely characters with a richly textured understanding of the seafaring life.”

—New York Times bestselling author Mary Jo Putney

Star Bright

“Ms. Jarrett’s ability to always draw the reader into a fast-paced tale peopled with likable and realistic characters and a thrilling plot is a crowning achievement.”

—Romantic Times

Rake’s Wager
Miranda Jarrett

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

Woodbury, Sussex, England

1806

C assia Penny sat with her spine pressed tight against the ladder-back chair, her fingers squeezing her handkerchief into a soggy linen knot in her lap. The cheap black bombazine for grieving cut into her throat and wrists, the cloth so hot and wrong on this early spring day that she could feel the sweat inside her gown trickling down her arms and between her breasts and along the backs of her knees above her garters. Though she kept her head high like her two sisters on either side of her were doing, her eyes burned from weeping, and it would take next to nothing to make her cry again.

She was only twenty, yet she felt as if part of her life had died, too. Nothing would ever be the same again, not for any of them.

Mr. Grosse, the solicitor, sat at her father’s now empty desk, using one finger to square the stacked papers of the will into tidy precision.

“I regret to say that your lives must change, ladies.” He heaved a mournful sigh appropriate for the day. “Though that should come as no real surprise, considering your father’s vocation.”

“We know our father was a country vicar, Mr. Grosse,” Amariah said, each word clipped sharp, the way they always were whenever anyone dared cross Cassia’s eldest sister. “We are humbled and awed by the legacy which he has left behind on this earth, and the reward that is certainly now his in heaven.”

Unimpressed, Mr. Grosse looked at her over his glasses. “Alas, Miss Amariah, such good works accumulate little interest in the bank, and your father’s generosity made it impossible for him to save.”

“Father was a kind, good, fine gentleman, Mr. Grosse,” Cassia protested, rising to her feet, “and I—we—won’t hear you say otherwise!”

At once Bethany’s hand found Cassia’s arm, gently pressing her back into her chair. “Mr. Grosse is only stating the truth, Cassia. Father never did worry about acquiring worldly goods, just as we never expected him to leave much of an estate.”

“But we never expected him to die this soon, either.” Cassia sank back into her seat, once again fighting back her tears. Father had been only forty-five; who would have guessed that so great a heart would stop so suddenly, there while he pulled the first spring weeds in the kitchen garden?

“That is why we’ve already begun to plan our future, Cassia.” Amariah’s smile was sad, true, but also filled with a confidence that Cassia couldn’t share. “Father always trusted us to find our way through life, and we shall.”

“You’ll have to find it away from this cottage, Miss Amariah.” Mr. Grosse sighed again. “Sir Cleveland has already informed me that the new vicar will be arriving shortly. He will wish to reside here, as is due with his living. Sir Cleveland regrets the seeming haste of your eviction, but he—”

“He says he is most concerned for the spiritual needs of the congregation.” Again Cassia sniffed back her tears. “And he is most concerned, too, for that nephew of his who’s always wished to take poor Father’s place, the greedy piglet!”

“Cassia.” From Amariah that was warning enough. “Such talk does not honor Father’s memory.”

Hastily Cassia looked down to her lap, knowing that Amariah was right, the way she always was. It didn’t matter that this rambling cottage with its rose garden and duck pond had been the only home that any of them had known, or that they now must part and leave it forever. She needed to be strong and brave like her sisters, and look toward the future, not the past.

Even if she’d no idea what or where that future might be.

Mr. Grosse glanced around the library, noting the crates and trunks that were already swallowing up Father’s books and belongings. “Have you made provisions to remove your things and reside with another family member or friend?”

Bethany smiled serenely. “God helps those who help themselves, Mr. Grosse. Father shared his love of accomplishment and knowledge with us, and we intend to use those gifts to support ourselves.”

Mr. Grosse looked relieved to be spared the guilt of shoving the dead vicar’s daughters into the lane. “You have made plans, then?”

Amariah nodded, all brisk efficiency despite her new mourning. “I am considering an offer from Mr. and Mrs. Whiteside to serve as governess to their daughters at Rushington.”

“And Lady Elverston has invited me to be her special companion at Elverston Hall.” Bethany clasped her hands before her with becoming modesty, as if she couldn’t believe her good fortune. “She most kindly recalled both my play upon the pianoforte and the little suppers I’d arrange for Father and his friends, and she believes such talents would do well at Elverston.”

“How excellent,” Mr. Grosse said with approval. “And you, Miss Cassia? Have you determined your future?”

Cassia’s head bowed a little lower. She wasn’t accomplished the way that Amariah and Bethany were. The things she did best—dressing bonnets and remaking gowns into cunning new fashions, or arranging the Yule greenery in the church to look like a magical Sherwood Forest, or telling silly stories that made the young gentlemen laugh and cluster around her and beg for dances at the Havertown Assembly each month—were not the things that could earn her way in the world, at least not as an honest young lady of good reputation, as the Penny sisters had of course been raised to be.

But it had been more than enough while Father still lived, when she’d been his little popinjay and made him laugh until the tears had streamed down his cheeks when he should have been writing his sermons….

“Cassia will find something soon enough, I am sure,” Amariah said quickly, answering for her. “It is early days for us all, Mr. Grosse.”

“Indeed, indeed.” Mr. Grosse frowned down at the papers before him. “But I do have a certain revelation to make that might ease the immediacy of your situation. To be sure, it may not be the most welcome news, reflecting as it does upon your father’s integrity. But then we can keep everything within this room, among us and no further.”

Her heart beating faster at the thought of more bad news, Cassia inched forward to the edge of her chair. “A revelation, sir? About Father?”

“Yes, Miss Cassia.” He turned to another sheet. “Your father wanted this kept separate from the rest of the will, but I assure you that the inheritance is perfectly legal nonetheless.”

He cleared his throat, looking from one sister to the next. “Long, long ago, a grateful and repentant member of your father’s flock left your father his greatest single possession…a private, ah, social club in London.”

“A social club?” Cassia shook her head. “Father never cared for Society. What would he do with a social club?”

Mr. Grosse cleared his throat with a delicate, embarrassed cough. “There is little society at a London social club, Miss Cassia. That is the polite name. The other one for such a place is a—forgive me, pray—a gambling hell.”

“Father?”

“Yes.” Hastily Mr. Grosse looked back down at his papers. “But while most men would have sold such a dubious bequest, your father saw it as a gift from heaven, a way for him to make right from wrong. He allowed the house’s activities to continue, contributing all the profits to the welfare of orphans and widows, particularly those who had come to sorrow from gambling.”

Cassia pressed her fingers to her mouth. As worldly as Father was about some matters, he’d never countenanced any form of wagers or other games of risk and chance. Yet now it seemed that in London he’d owned an entire house devoted to exactly that. How ever had he kept such a secret for so long?

“Father owned a private gaming club, Mr. Grosse?” Amariah’s brows arched with disbelief. “In London? Our father?”

“I am afraid so, Miss Amariah.” Mr. Grosse shook his head. “I know such news much come as a great shock, after what—”

“Is this gaming club in a prosperous neighborhood?” Bethany asked. “If this is true, then Father must have viewed his involvement as being a latter-day Robin Hood—that he would take from the rich to help those less fortunate. I cannot imagine him doing it otherwise.”

Mr. Grossed glanced down, shuffling through the papers. “I believe the club is in St. James Street, a thoroughly respectable address for such a, ah, such a business. Its name is Whitaker’s, though who Mr. Whitaker is or was seems long forgotten. Oh, here we are—a view of the club from the street.”

He pushed an engraving across the desk toward them, and Amariah took it, tipping the sheet so her sisters could see as well.

“It’s quite a handsome facade, isn’t it?” Cassia volunteered, not quite sure what else to say. Accustomed as she was to how the vicarage nestled into the green Sussex hills, this town house seemed as welcoming as a cold block of ice, locked tight between its neighbors. The walls appeared to be stone, three floors high, and the tall, square windows without shutters made the front seem even more severe. A solitary gentleman in an old-fashioned cocked hat pointed his walking stick at the unwelcoming entry, four shallow steps and a plain front door.

“It is handsome,” agreed Mr. Grosse. “And from what I can gather, Whitaker’s was once a favorite of gentlemen of the highest quarter of society, even peers of the realm and officers of the Crown.”

Amariah looked up from the illustration. “But it is no longer?”

Mr. Grosse shrugged, hedging. “Not what it once was, no. As an absentee owner, your father let it deteriorate a bit over time. But the property itself is still sound, and finding a buyer should prove no difficulty, at a price that shall allay much of your current distress.”

“But were those Father’s wishes, Mr. Grosse?” Cassia asked, still looking at the grim stone house in the picture. “Did he wish us to sell this—this property of his, or were we to continue to let it do his good works?”

“Yes, Mr. Grosse, you must tell us that.” Now Bethany was perched on the very edge of her chair, and Cassia wondered if she, too, was daring to think the same thing. “‘Balancing the scales of our modern society’ was a favorite theme of his for sermons. If he had been granted such an excellent vehicle for balancing those scales, I scarcely think he’d want us to abandon it now.”

“Yes, yes,” Amariah said. “And if the neighborhood is as respectable as you say, we could reside there ourselves, too, and be self-sufficient. Surely Father would wish that for us, too. Oh, yes, Mr. Grosse, we must consider this from every angle.”

“I cannot say I agree.” Mr. Grosse frowned and shook his head, scattering a fine dust from his gray-powdered wig. “It is unusual enough for a country vicar to pursue such an endeavor, Miss Amariah, but for three virtuous young ladies to continue in such a role, to choose to live above such a den of despair and depravity—why, such a thing is not to be done, and I should counsel you most strongly against it.”

“Is it outside the law, Mr. Grosse?” Cassia asked. The town house in the picture wasn’t close to being her idea of a home, but surely she and her sisters together could make it into one. “Are women forbidden ownership of such clubs?”

“There is no legal reason against it, no, but for the sake of propriety, such an arrangement would be most irregular, most—”

“Is there more you are not telling us, Mr. Grosse?” Amariah ran her fingers lightly across the illustration, as if touching it would make it more real. “Is the house being used for other, more disreputable activities?”

“Good gracious, no, Miss Amariah!” The solicitor’s face flushed a shocked purple at her suggestion. “Gaming is all—and disreputable enough for a lady such as yourself!”

“The world can be disreputable, Mr. Grosse, even for ladies.” Amariah rose, shaking out her black skirts, and Cassia and Bethany quickly followed. “Would you please excuse us for a few minutes, Mr. Grosse?”

Grumbling to himself, Mr. Grosse had no choice but to leave them, turning his eyes toward the heavens with a hearty sigh as he shut the door.

“Well, now.” Amariah sat in a muted rush of bombazine. “I cannot tell if Father has left us a prize, or only a puzzle.”

“A prize—a great prize!” Cassia paced back and forth across the carpet, unable to keep the enthusiasm from her voice. “He has given us not only a way to support ourselves, but also a way to continue his work! And think of living in London, the greatest city in the world!”

“What I’m thinking, Cassia, is how very much we must learn.” Amariah held up her hand, ticking off each ignorance on a new finger. “We have only visited London a few times, and know nothing of the city or its workings. We have no friends there, no one to turn to for advice or answers. We wouldn’t even know where to find a butcher or mantua maker. And we haven’t the faintest notion of how a gaming club such as this Whitaker’s operates, or how it generates its money.”

“We could learn, Amariah.” Bethany smiled eagerly. “We are not fools.”

Amariah glared at her for interrupting. “But we could turn into the greatest fools imaginable with this, Bethany. We don’t know the managers of this club, or whether Father’s trust in their abilities is well-founded. Even Mr. Grosse admitted that the club was no longer as profitable as it had been.”

Cassia swept her hand through the air as if to sweep away her sister’s objections, too. “Then we shall hire people who can improve it!”

“Where would we find such people, Cassia?” Amariah raised her hands. “Why, we don’t even know how to play the wicked games that would be supporting us and Father’s charities!”

“We can learn,” Cassia insisted. “Think of all the things that Father taught us, Latin and Greek and geography and mathematics and all the rest that girls weren’t supposed to be able to understand. We thought he was teasing when he’d said that knowledge would be our dowries, but perhaps he wasn’t teasing at all.”

Amariah looked back at the paper in her hands and frowned. “This would be vastly different from translating The Iliad for Father.”

“It would, and it wouldn’t,” Cassia said. “Consider how quick you are at ciphering and figuring numbers in your head. I’m certain you could learn the games and oversee the accounts.”

Bethany nodded, tapping her fingers on the arm of the chair with excitement. “From what I have read in the London papers, much of the success of catering to gentlemen is to give them a grand and comfortable place for their mischief. They can gamble anywhere, but they would return to our club if the food and drink are better than anywhere else.”

“Which it would be, Bethany, if you were overseeing the kitchen,” Cassia said, giving an excited little clap of her hands. “None of those fou-fou Frenchmen in Elverston’s kitchen can hold a candle to your cooking, and you know it.”

Amariah sighed—not exactly with resignation, not yet, but close. “And what role have you cut out for yourself, Cassia?”

Cassia raised her chin and smiled. She wasn’t nearly as useless as she’d feared at first. She’d only had to find her place.

“I would make the club beyond fashion,” she declared. “I would make it so original a place that everyone who wasn’t there would give their eyeteeth to be able to say they were. It wouldn’t be a hell once we’d done with it. “

“Cassia.” Amariah groaned. “And who knows more about setting the London fashion than three vicars’ daughters from Woodbury?”

“Three handsome daughters,” Cassia said, and as if on cue the three of them glanced across the room to the round looking glass over the fireplace. Even in mourning, with their eyes red from weeping and their copper-colored hair drawn severely back from their faces, they were a striking trio: Amariah the eldest and tallest, with the bearing of a duchess; sweet-faced Bethany in the middle; and Cassia herself, Father’s little popinjay, with her round cheeks and startled blue eyes.

“You can’t pretend we’re not handsome,” Cassia continued, “because we are, or at least handsome enough, thanks to us all having Father’s red hair with Mama’s face. Everyone says so. Wouldn’t we make you curious if you were a bored London beau?”

“Flirting with the squire’s sons at the Havertown Assembly isn’t the same as matching wits with London rakes,” Amariah said. “We could be terribly at sea, Cassia, and not in a good way, either.”

“Then the more proper we are, Amariah,” Cassia said, dipping her skirts in an excruciatingly correct curtsey, “the more mysterious and exotic we’ll seem to them, on account of being proper in a wicked world. And we could change the name, too, to make it our own. We could call it Penny House.”

“Penny House!” Bethany exclaimed with relish. “Oh, Cassia, I do like that!”

Amariah set the picture of the club back down on the desk, and pressed her palms to her cheeks.

“I cannot believe we are having such a conversation with poor Father scarcely gone,” she said softly. “London, and a gaming house named after ourselves, and whether to flirt or not with wicked men—oh, what would Father say to that?”

“He—he would call us his flock of silly geese,” Cassia said, her voice squeaking with a fresh rush of emotion. “And then he would tell us to go do what we believed was right and just, the way he would do for himself. The way he always did.”

Bethany came and stood between them, slipping her hands into theirs. Together they stared solemnly down at the picture of Whitaker’s, sitting on Father’s desk.

“We would be together in London,” Cassia said. “We wouldn’t have to go different ways. Father would have liked that, too.”

Bethany nodded. “If we go there and find that London doesn’t suit us, then we can still sell, as Mr. Grosse wishes.”

“But it will suit us,” Cassia said quickly. “And if it doesn’t, we’ll make it suit us.”

“Of course we will, Cassia, just like that. All London will bow at the feet of the Penny sisters.” Amariah sighed. “You know, I never did want to look after those dreadful Whiteside girls.”

Bethany looked up, her eyes bright with triumph. “And I do believe Lady Elverson will survive without hearing me play for her each night.”

Cassia gasped, not quite believing her sisters had agreed. “Then we will go? We’ll take Father’s legacy, and make it our own?”

“To London.” Finally Amariah smiled, and nodded. “It seems that, in his way, that is what Father wished us to do.”

“To London!” Cassia crowed, and raised their joined hands together. “To London, and to Penny House!”

Chapter Two

Four months later

London

R ichard Blackley leaned closer to the painting, inspecting the surface for cracks to better judge its age. He didn’t give a fig whether the painting was two hundred years old, or two weeks, nor would he recognize the difference, except for how high the auctioneer might try to run the bidding. He glanced back at the listing in the exhibition catalog: The Fortune Teller, Italian, Sixteenth Century.

That made him smile. The smirking old woman was a bawd if ever he’d seen one, taking the last coin that poor sot in the foreground had in his pocket, while he was busy gaping at the strumpet in the scarlet turban at the window. It was the strumpet he liked best, with her sloe-eyed, sleepy glance and creamy bare breasts. He knew just the place for her, in his dressing room at Greenwood, where she’d amuse him while he was shaved.

He drew a small star before the picture’s number in the catalog. Generally he didn’t care one way or the other about pictures, but this was one he didn’t want to let slip away. What was the use of being a rich man if he couldn’t buy himself a painting that made him smile?

“Excuse me, sir.” A young woman had eased her way through the crowd of other viewers here for the exhibition before the auction, and she now stood squeezed between Richard and the painting—his painting. “I didn’t mean to bump you.”

“Forgiven,” he said, lifting his hat to her as he smiled. It was easy to smile at her: she was a pretty little creature, with bright blue eyes and golden-red hair that her plain dark mourning bonnet seemed to highlight rather than mask. Whom did she grieve for, he wondered idly: a husband, parent, sibling? “Though to be honest, I hadn’t noticed that you’d bumped me at all.”

“Well, sir, I did,” she said, “so of course I had to apologize, to make things right. It would be rude of me not to.”

She stated it as simple fact, a fact that he wasn’t sure how to answer, but because she was such a pretty little creature, he wanted to. She wasn’t being forward, the way a demirep might be to attract his notice; in fact, if Richard was honest, she didn’t really seem interested in him at all. Instead her whole attention seemed focused on the painting before him, and to his dismay she was marking a circle around the same number in her catalog as he had in his.

“You are bidding on this picture, miss?” he asked. “You like it that much?”

“That is the reason one usually comes here to Christie’s Auction Rooms, isn’t it? To bid on the pictures one likes?” She darkened the circle around the listing for emphasis. “Last week I sold three dreary paintings of peasants with cows, and now I plan to reward myself by buying this one.”

“For yourself?” he asked, surprised. It didn’t seem like the kind of painting a young lady—she couldn’t be more than twenty—would choose for herself.

“It’s my choice, yes, though I’m sure my sisters will find it amusing as well.” She leaned closer, studying the surface just as Richard himself had done. “I don’t believe it’s as old as they’re claiming—it’s likely a copy, and not even an Italian one—but the fortune teller in particular is very nicely done, I think.”

“They got that wrong in the catalog, too,” he said. “If that old crone’s a fortune teller, why, then I’ll—then I’ll—”

His words trailed off as he realized his mistake, the kind of mistake that true English gentlemen weren’t supposed to make when addressing English ladies.

“Then what else could she be?” The young woman’s eyes were as blue as the Caribbean itself, and just as ready to swallow him up. “The smiling soldier had just given her his payment, and now she’s holding his hand as she reads his palm, while the other woman watches. His future must be improving, for him to look so jolly. Good fortune overcoming bad. That, sir, is why I wish to buy this particular picture.”

She turned away from him and toward the next picture, and he joined her, unwilling to lose her yet.

“You speak as if from experience,” he said, happy to let her think what she wished about the old procuress in the painting. “About good luck and bad, that is.”

“There’s not a person on earth that’s not had experience with luck of both kinds.” She glanced at him sideways, up through her lashes, and without turning her head. “Unless, sir, you are among those who don’t believe in it?”

“If you mean sitting idle beside a stream and waiting for my luck to change, then, no, I do not,” he said. “But I do believe in seizing the opportunities that fate offers, and making them my own.”

She raised one arched brow, and laughed, a merry, bubbling sound that he instantly wished to hear again.

“That’s bold talk, sir,” she said, “quite worthy of Bonaparte himself.”

“It’s not empty talk,” he insisted, “nor was it meant to show sympathy to the French. It’s how I live my life.”

“I didn’t say your words were empty. I said they were bold, which is a very different thing altogether.” She moved to stand before the next painting, and Richard followed. Clever women like this one hadn’t existed on Barbados, or at least none in the society that had allowed him, too. “You must enjoy gambling.”

He frowned a little, not following her logic.

“I’ve become good at spotting gentleman gamesters, you see,” she explained with an inexplicable triumph in her voice, as if spotting gamesters were a required skill for young ladies, like singing and fine needlework. “If you’re as bold as you say, then you must be the sort of sporting gentleman who enjoys his games of chance.”

He shook his head, sorry to see her face fall. “Not dice, not pasteboard cards, and I’ve no wish to empty my pockets on account of some overrated nag, either.”

“Truly?” she said, disappointed. “You are not pretending otherwise?”

“I did when I was younger,” he said, to make her feel better, “but not for years. Now I’d rather find pleasure in playing for higher stakes than a handful of coins.”

“Indeed, sir.” Her voice turned frosty, her cheeks flushing. “How fine for you.”

He barely bit back an oath, realizing too late that she’d misunderstood him again. He’d meant the dangerous investments and other merchant ventures with high-risk profits that had become his specialty, while she’d thought the stakes were her and her charming little person—her virtue, as ladies liked to call it.

“Oh, blast, I didn’t intend it that way,” he said, taking her by the arm so she’d have to look at him, so she’d understand he meant her no harm “Here now, miss, listen to me. I’ve never had to rely on a wager for a woman’s company, and I’m not about to begin now.”

“No,” she said curtly, staring down at his fingers around her upper arm as if his touch had scalded her. “But then I don’t imagine any woman willingly shares your company, not for the sake of love or money.”

He sighed with impatience, wondering why in blazes she’d suddenly turned so priggish and prim. “Now that’s not what I—”

“Isn’t it, sir?” she said, the curving brim of her bonnet quivering with indignation. “I may be from the country, but I am not completely ignorant of the wickedness to be found in this city!”

Other people around them were beginning to turn with curiosity, and Richard lowered his voice to give them less to hear. “Listen to me, sweetheart, and stop speaking of things you know nothing of. You wouldn’t recognize wickedness if it tripped you in the street.”

“I am not your sweetheart, and I will thank you not to fancy I am.” She jerked her arm free of his hand. “Now leave me, sir, before I demonstrate exactly how much I know of your wickedness, and summon one of Mr. Christie’s guards to have you removed. Good day, sir.”

She gave an angry final twitch of her black skirts as she cut her way through the crowd, as fast and as far from him as she could get herself.

And that was fine with Richard. If ever he’d needed another reminder that London ladies would be difficult, then this red-haired chit had given it to him. He’d thought at first she’d be different, and speak plain, but without warning she’d become just as self-righteous and sharp-tongued as all the rest in this city. Finding one who wasn’t would be his greatest challenge so far.

But he was willing to take his time. He’d decided that, even before his ship had rounded Needham Point and left the last of Barbados behind him. He had made his fortune, and he had bought his fine bespoke clothes and his carriage and horses and an ancient, grand country house awaited him. Now all he needed was a high-bred lady-bride to complete the transformation, and make the world see that Dick Blackley, collier’s boy, had become Richard Blackley, gentleman.

He glanced one last time toward where the young woman in mourning had disappeared. He was sorry she hadn’t turned out to be his match; he’d liked her looks and her spirit, before she’d gone and turned so sour over nothing.

And he’d be damned before he’d let her steal his painting away from him.

The auctioneer had made his way to the podium and stood testing his gavel against the palm of his hand, while his assistant was ringing the bell to signal the beginning of the auction. Most people hurried to find seats on the long benches, while a few others lingered for a final glimpse of the paintings hung and stacked along the walls. A footman carried the first painting, a murky landscape, to the front of the room, taking care to balance the ornate gold frame on the tall easel for all to see.

Richard didn’t sit, choosing instead to stand along the wall where he could keep one eye on his old bawd. He crossed his arms over his chest and tipped his hat over one eye, leaning against the wall as he prepared for a long wait before his painting would be called. He glanced across the benches, but saw no sign of the red-haired woman in mourning. Perhaps he’d chased her off; perhaps she’d never had a real interest in the painting.

Slowly the sun slid across the skylights overhead as the auctioneer droned on, cracking his gavel to seal each transaction as the footman switched paintings. At last the footman lifted The Fortune Teller onto the easel, and Richard stood away from the wall and straightened his hat.

“Next is an Italian painting in oils from the sixteenth century entitled The Fortune Teller,” the auctioneer announced. “Opening with a reserve of five pounds for this very fine work by an old master whose name is lost to time, but not the product of his genius. Five pounds to start, then, who’ll give five pounds?”

Richard raised his hand just enough for the auctioneer to notice. He could see it hung in his dressing room at Greenwood already.

“Five pounds to the tall gentleman at the wall, a pittance for a work of this quality, of this sensibility, of this—”

“Seven pounds!”

“Seven pounds to the lady in mourning!” the auctioneer called. “The lady knows her art, gentlemen, benefit from her knowledge and—”

“Nine pounds.” Richard had spotted her now, sitting on the far end of one of the benches, with all but the brim of her black bonnet hidden by a fat man in a gray coat.

“Nine to the tall gentleman at the wall, will anyone give me—”

“Fifteen!” The young woman hopped to her feet, her program rolled into a tight scroll in her black-gloved hands.

Excitement rippled through the crowd; no one had expected any serious bidding for this particular lot of paintings, especially not between a gentleman and a lady.

“Fifteen to the lady with a connoisseur’s eye for an old master, fifteen to—”

“Twenty.”

The woman turned and glared at Richard. When he nodded and smiled, she twitched her head back toward the front, refusing to acknowledge him.

“Twenty-five,” she said, her voice ringing clear and loud in the auction room. She wasn’t afraid to make a spectacle of herself, and Richard liked that. What a pity she’d learn soon enough that his pockets were deeper than she’d ever dreamed.

“Twenty-five to the lady!” the auctioneer crowed with near delirious fervor. “Twenty-five for—”

“Fifty,” Richard said, and the audience gasped.

“Fifty-five!” the woman cried, tossing her head for good measure.

Richard smiled. She did have spirit, he’d grant her that.

“Fifty-five to the lady!” His round face flushed with excitement, the auctioneer peered expectantly at Richard over his spectacles. The room was nearly silent, the audience holding its breath together. “Fifty-five for this most excellent work, fifty-five for—”

“One hundred,” Richard said. “Even.”

The crowd exploded, whistling, swearing, applauding, cheering. The auctioneer turned back to the girl.

“One hundred for The Fortune Teller,” he thundered, his voice fair glowing with the importance of such a bid. “One hundred from the tall, dark gentleman for this magnificent work. Do I hear one hundred five? One hundred five?”

But the young woman only shook her head and sank back down onto the bench, behind the fat man.

Obviously disappointed, the auctioneer continued. “Once at one hundred, twice at one hundred.” His gavel cracked down on his desk. “Sold to the tall gentleman for one hundred pounds.”

Another spattering of applause came from the audience, but the contest was done and their interest with it. Few even bothered to turn as Richard made his way to the front to pay for the painting and make arrangements for its delivery to Greenwood. With the picture now leaning against the back wall, the old fortune teller seemed to be laughing at his expense now, too—as well she should, considering how much more than her worth she’d finally cost him.

“So this is how you seize opportunities to make your own luck, sir?” The redhead was standing beside him, her cheek flushed and her eyes flashing with anger. “I told you I wanted that painting, sir, and you stole it away from me from sheer spite. You swoop down and plunder like a—like a pirate, sir!”

“I didn’t plunder anything,” he protested. “I bid for the painting honestly, and now I must pay through the nose for the privilege, too. Show me a pirate who’ll do that.”

Her eyes narrowed, shaking the scrolled program in her hand as if it were a dagger. “You are no better than a pirate, sir. A thieving, incorrigible, rascally pirate, with no sense of propriety or decency!”

“And if you had outbid me, would that have made you the pirate?” he asked. “I come from a place where piracy’s taken seriously. Would the painting have become your righteous plunder instead of mine, hung alongside your skull and crossbones?”

She gasped, sputtering so incoherently as she struggled for words that he almost—almost—laughed. Instead, against his better judgment, he took pity on her.

“If you promise to surrender your sword, lass,” he said, “then I’m willing to make peace over a dish of tea or chocolate.”

“Go with you, sir?” Tiny wisps of red-gold hair had come free from her bonnet and now quivered around her face, echoing her outrage. “Sit with you, drink tea with you? After what you have done to me?”

“That was my intention, yes,” he said, his patience shredding fast, “though you are making it damned difficult to be agreeable.”

“That is because I do not intend to be agreeable to you, sir.” She took one last look at the painting. “Drink tea with you, hah. Even if you were to suddenly play the gallant and give the picture to me, I would not accept it.”

“But I’m not some blasted foppish gallant any more than you’re agreeable,” he said irritably. “The painting’s mine, fair and square, and it’s going to stay that way.”

“I didn’t need a fortune teller to know you’d say that.” She retied the bonnet’s ribbons beneath her chin with short, quick jerks, the black silk cutting against her white throat. “You can try to bend your luck all you want, but someday, Captain Pirate, you’ll find that luck will bend you back.”

He frowned as she turned away toward the door. “Is that meant to be a curse,” he called after her, “or are you telling my fortune?”

She paused just long enough to look back over her shoulder, her blue-eyed gaze so startlingly intense that he almost recoiled. “You’ll have to decide that for yourself, won’t you?”

She disappeared through the door, and slowly Richard turned back to the painting. Likely he’d never see the redhead again, not in a city this large. But he’d been in London less than a week, and already it had come to this.

A fortune, or a curse.

“Good afternoon, Pratt.” Cassia smiled at the old man as he held the door to Penny House open for her. “I hope my sisters haven’t been making your life too miserable today?”

“Like hell itself it’s been, Miss Cassia,” he grumbled, looking down sorrowfully at his leather apron, covered with silver polish, sawdust and general household grime. “Fussing about like an Irish parlor maid, ordered up an’ down those infernal stairs like it was nothing—that’s not why I agreed to stay on, Miss Cassia, not at all.”

“I know, Pratt, I know,” she said, “but after tonight everything will be ready, and we’ll be busy running Penny House instead of just cleaning it.”

She smiled and patted his sleeve. They needed Pratt to be happy. Pratt was the club’s manager, one of the few members of the staff they’d kept on from Whitaker’s. Once valet to the Duke of Conover, his limitless knowledge of who was who in the aristocracy had already proved invaluable to the sisters. He had suggested which noblemen they should invite to form their new membership committee and who should receive their engraved invitations to join, and he’d even known that twenty guineas should be the precise—if shocking—entrance fee to keep the club exclusive.

“I trust you’re right, Miss Cassia.” His sigh was more of a groan as he dabbed his forehead at the edge of his wig with a linen handkerchief. “Your sister may have been born a preacher’s daughter, but she gives orders like she’s lived all her life in a palace.”

“Pratt, there you are!” called Amariah from the staircase, and he groaned again. “You’re needed in the pantry to help move a table, and— Ah, Cassia, at last you’re home!”

“Good day, Amariah,” she said, wishing she could be heading off with Pratt. “You make it sound as if I’ve been away to China and back.”

“Well, you have been gone for hours and hours, and so much has happened since you’ve been gone.” She leaned over the railing, searching the entryway. “Where is the painting you went to fetch? Is it coming later in a cart?”

“It’s not coming at all.” Cassia untied her bonnet as she glanced into the refurbished dining room. “I didn’t buy it. I see the painters have finally taken down their scaffolding, so I suppose the ceilings are done at last.”

“But you told us the fortune telling painting was perfect!” Amariah hurried down the steps to join her, her white linen apron billowing around her. “You left the space on the wall bare specifically for it—a great, gaping, empty hole, with our first night all but upon us!”

“Then I’ll find something else to put in its place.” Cassia pushed open the tall double doors, eager to avoid answering any more of Amariah’s questions about the auction. This was her own fault, really, for gushing on so much about the painting after she’d seen it in the preview, about how cheaply it would be had. It would have been, too, if not for that dreadful man stealing it away from her. “And I know we open tonight. However could I forget?”

“If you decided against that painting, then you should have been here, working with us.” Amariah followed her through the doors. “How things look at Penny House, Cassia—that’s your responsibility, just as Bethany’s is in the kitchen and mine is—”

“To greet our guests, to oversee the gaming staff and to keep the books.” Cassia sighed, exhausted. All three of them were, from working so hard and with so little sleep to be ready for the first night. That was probably the reason that man had irritated her so over the auction; if she hadn’t been so tired, she wouldn’t have paid him any heed at all. “I’m sorry I took so long, Amariah, but it couldn’t be— Oh, don’t the chairs look fine!”

With the protective cloths finally removed and the painters gone, she wandered through the room, running her hands lightly over the tops of the tables and chairs. The old tables had been sturdy enough to keep, but the few original chairs that remained from Whitaker’s had been so rickety they’d needed replacing before some corpulent gentleman plunged through to the carpet.

Cassia herself had scoured secondhand stores along the river to find the replacements, then scrubbed and polished away the old grime from the chairs in the yard out back. None of the chairs matched, but Cassia’s eye for proportion had made her choices cousins, if not brothers, and the overall effect was lighthearted and imaginative and inviting.

But that was how she’d decorated all of Penny House, from the private card rooms to the bedchambers the sisters kept for themselves on the top floor. Everything was a curious jumble, from the fresh, bright paint and well-used furniture, to the latest political cartoons pinned beside an ancient carving from the East Indies. Yet somehow Cassia had put it all together to make the rooms seem more exotic and fashionable than what the most expensive London architects were creating for their wealthiest clients.

The Fortune Teller was going to have been one of her few indulgences, a costly painting for her and one to be given a special place of honor. Cassia glanced up to the empty spot over the fireplace where the picture would have gone, and muttered furiously to herself.

“So why didn’t you buy the painting, Cassia, if you wanted it so badly?” Amariah was watching her, arms folded over the front of her apron. “You had money from the old paintings you’d sold last week, and this morning you seemed to feel sure it could be had cheaply.”

Cassia gave a dismissive sweep of her hand. “It should have come cheaply, yes. But there was a dreadful, selfish, rude man at Christie’s who stole it away from me, as boldly as any thieving pirate might!”

Amariah listened, her expression not changing. “You mean he was willing to bid higher than you?”

“I mean he drove the bidding so high that I could not compete with him.” Cassia stalked back and forth before the fireplace, unable to keep still. “Before the auction, he saw that I wanted the picture, and then from purest spite he let me bid as if I had a chance.”

She held her hand up, palm open, over the mantelpiece. “He let me bid, Amariah, let me bid in my innocence before he finally squelched me flat as a gnat!”

She smacked her palm down on painted wood for emphasis, showing exactly what the man had done to her hopes.

But Amariah didn’t blink. “How high did he run the bidding?”

Cassia let her hand slip from the mantel, not wanting her sister to realize how her fingers stung after that thoughtless, emphatic little gesture. “The reserve was five pounds, which was fair. His final bid was one hundred, which was not.”

“So evidently he was either a very rich pirate, or a very indulgent one,” Amariah said. “I trust you offered him an invitation to our opening?”

Cassia gasped. “I most certainly did not!”

“Why?” Amariah pulled out one of the chairs and sat. “He is gentleman enough to be at Christie’s bidding on paintings, he is rich and he is impulsive. He sounds ideal for Penny House.”

“But I thought we were only inviting gentlemen recommended by the membership committee!” Cassia protested. “True gentlemen, with breeding and manners, and not boorish and ill-tempered and—”

“Was he handsome, too?”

“Handsome?” Cassia paused, surprised that Amariah would ask such a question. The man was handsome; she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t noticed as soon as she’d bumped into him. His features were sharp and regular, his pale eyes intelligent, and he was so tall she’d had to look up to his face. His dark hair had seemed too thick and heavy to stay in place, and as they’d spoken, he’d had to toss it back impatiently from his forehead. His skin was browned by the sun, as if he were a sailor or farmer, and his hands and the breadth of his shoulders seemed to belong more to a man who worked for his living rather than a gentleman. He’d certainly stood out among the crowd at Christie’s.

Not, of course, that any of that would matter to Cassia now.

“He was handsome enough, in his way,” she admitted with a dismissive little shrug. “In a common way.”

“Indeed.” Amariah sat back in her chair, watching Cassia closely. “Was he young, too?”

“Older than we are,” Cassia said. “Thirty?”

“Young for a gentleman.” Amariah sighed, smoothing her apron over her knee. “Thus the man was young and handsome and rich and impulsive. For all we know, he may already have one of our invitations. Yet because you imagined he’d slighted you somehow, you were every bit as ill-mannered as he was to you.”

“I did not say that!”

“You didn’t have to, Cassia.” Amariah pressed her palm to her forehead and sighed. “You’re saying it now, as clear as day. It’s how you’ve always been with gentlemen.”

“Only when they behave ill toward me first!” Cassia cried. “Don’t you recall how Father said we were to stand up for ourselves with gentlemen, and never let them take advantage?”

“There is a world of difference between taking advantage and behaving like a spoiled, petulant child,” Amariah said. “London isn’t the Havertown Assembly, and you can’t treat the gentlemen here the way you did with the ones at home. There will always be another lady who is prettier or more amusing, and London gentlemen won’t be nearly as indulgent with you if you lose your temper.”

“I wasn’t trying to be amusing,” Cassia protested. That wasn’t what had happened with the gentleman at Christie’s, and it didn’t deserve this kind of talk from her sister. “I was trying to buy a painting.”

“Yet I can imagine all too well what that gentleman must have thought.” Amariah reached out and took Cassia’s hand. “I know you are still our baby, Cassia, and that you’ve worked as hard as Bethany and I these last months—maybe even harder. And I know how set you can be on having your own way.”

Cassia shook her head, even as she thought again about the dark-haired gentleman. If she hadn’t turned so—so tart with him, then maybe they’d be in this room hanging The Fortune Teller now instead of staring at that empty space. “But I didn’t—”

“Hush, and listen to me,” Amariah said with a gentle shush. “We’ve come to London to honor Father’s memory by making Penny House a success, and his charities with it. That must always come first. Neither imagined slights, nor gentlemen who haven’t paid us as much attention as we’d wish. If you let your temper run away tonight, why, then the talk will begin about those disagreeable women at Penny House, and everything will be lost.”

“Not the women. Me.” Cassia sighed, her agitation slipping away. “You should have been with me at Christie’s today, Amariah. It’s simple for you. You are always so calm.”

“I hide the rest, that is all.” Her sister smiled, gently squeezing Cassia’s fingers. “You’ll have a fresh start this evening. Before you act or speak, think, then think again, and you’ll do fine.”

“I’ll try, Amariah,” she said, and she meant it. “For all our sakes, and for Father’s, too, I’ll try.”

A fresh start, thought Cassia. That was what they’d all needed, and why they’d come to London in the first place. Likely she would never see the dark gentleman—the thieving pirate—ever again, anyway. Likely all he’d ever be to her would be a warning, a reminder of how she must not behave.

And she swore to push aside forever that guilty twinge of surpreme satisfaction for having gotten the last word.

Chapter Three

R ichard sat sprawled in a plush-covered chair, his legs stretched out before him and a glass of claret from dinner in his hands, and his temper simmering at a disagreeable, disgruntled point. He should have no grounds for complaint: his rooms here at the Clarendon were the most lavish to be had in the hotel, the fire in the fireplace was burning at a pace to match any Caribbean afternoon, and the dinner sent upstairs to him on a tray had been prepared by one of the best kitchens in the city. He had spent the day getting exactly what he’d wanted, and the proof of it was sitting opposite from him, propped awkwardly across two sidechairs like an unwelcome relative.

But the expensive rooms seemed as crowded and overwrought as the ones in an expensive brothel, the fire had made the room so close that he’d thrown open the windows, and the dinner lay ravished but abandoned on its tray, largely uneaten. Even the claret didn’t seem to help, which considering the extra guinea the bottle had added to the cost of the dinner, it damned well should have.

He emptied his glass and refilled it, staring at the painting opposite him. A gentleman was supposed to collect rubbish like this, and take pride in the possessing as well as the possession, filling entire picture galleries with what they’d dragged home from the Continent.

Yet the longer he studied The Fortune Teller, the more he thought instead of the woman he’d outbid for it. Damnation, he should have been a gallant. He should have either let her bid stand, or made her a pretty gift of it afterward. If for no other reason, he should have done it for the practice. How else would he be ready when the right high-bred lady did come along?

And he had liked the young woman. She’d been full of fire to match the color of her hair, all spark and spit, and nothing like the sultry, languid women he’d known in the islands. Perhaps if she had been, he wouldn’t have made such an ass of himself.

He heard the door from the bedchamber open, then the muted gurgle of wine as the glass in his hand was refilled.

“No more, Neuf,” Richard said to his manservant, still holding the claret bottle. “I’m in a piss-poor humor as it is without dumping more claret down my gullet.”

“As you wish, sir.” Neuf stepped back, cradling the bottle in his arms like a baby. He had taken care to stand with his back to the fire, as close as he dared without dipping the tails of his coat into the flames, and from the contented look in his heavy-lidded eyes, Richard knew he was relishing the warmth that reminded him of their old home on Barbados. “Are you done with your dinner, sir? Should I have it taken away?”

“Done enough.” Richard twisted around in his chair, watching Neuf gather up the dishes he’d scattered about the room. “Tell me, Neuf. How should I entertain myself this evening, other than sitting here alone and drinking myself into oblivion?”

“The theatre, sir? The opera, the pleasure gardens near the river?” His shrugged with morose resignation. He had been with Richard for nearly eight years, through good times and some very bad ones, and he had earned the small freedom of that shrug. “For a gentleman like yourself, London must offer every diversion.”

“I said I wished to be entertained, Neuf, not lulled to sleep.” Richard drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. “You know I’ve no patience for playacting or yowling singers.”

Neuf refolded Richard’s napkin into precise quarters before he answered. “Then a ball, sir? A place where you’ll meet young ladies?”

“Not yet, not yet.” Richard rose, crossing the room to stand at the window and gaze down at the street below. There’d be no balls or grand parties yet, not for an outsider like him. He had brought with him letters of introduction from the island’s royal governor to three noble families here in England, and he was determined not to squander them until the time was right. “I’m waiting until Greenwood is done and I’ve a grand home to offer a lady. What’s the use in setting the trap before the proper bait is ready?”

He glanced back over his shoulder at the painting. He’d gone to the auction in search of old paintings to add respectable grandeur to his country house, and this was what he’d come away with—hardly the great work of fine art to impress a future father-in-law.

Would that saucy chit in mourning have liked the painting as much if she’d realized its real subject? Or had she wanted it so badly only because he’d wanted it too, bidding from spite rather than genuine interest?

“Now this, sir, this might catch your fancy.” Neuf was holding out the day’s news sheet, folded to highlight one article with the same precision as Neuf had shown with the napkin. “A new club for gentlemen, for dining and gaming.”

Richard frowned down at the paper without taking it. “I don’t believe in begging fate to find me and strike me down, Neuf. You know I’m done with cards and playing deep.”

“But this house is different, sir,” Neuf said. “Penny House, it’s called, and it’s said to be owned by the three beautiful daughters of a Sussex parson, and all the profits the bank earns will go to charity.”

“What, hazard with the Methodists?” Richard laughed, the concept thoroughly preposterous. “Say a psalm, and throw the dice?”

“But the ladies would be a curiosity, sir—”

“Be reasonable, Neuf,” Richard scoffed. “Have you ever known a woman to combine piety with great beauty?”

“They have the patronage of the Duke of Carlisle, sir,” Neuf said, consulting the article again. “Surely the hero of the Peninsular Wars wouldn’t give his endorsement lightly.”

“He was a man before he was a hero,” Richard said, “and it’s likely more a case of what the sisters have given him first than the other way around. I’d wager a guinea that those three have been plucked from some high-priced brothel to front the house, and are no more country parson’s daughters than you or I.”

“As you say, sir.” The manservant sighed with resignation, and turned the paper back so he could read it himself. “Besides, sir, this says that membership will be most exclusive. Unless a gentleman is already a member of Brook’s, White’s, or Boodles, then he will not be admitted to Penny House tonight unless he has received his invitation directly from the membership committee.”

“Invitations to have your pockets emptied? Give that to me, Neuf.” He grabbed the paper from his manservant’s hands. “Even for London, that’s carrying it too damned far.”

Neuf folded his now empty hands before him. “It’s true, sir. I did not invent it, nor could I.”

“Who in blazes could?” Richard frowned as he scanned the page, feeling more and more as if it were a personal challenge to him rather than a simple scrap of society gossip. Not that any of these fine folk would know his past, or guess that they played at cards with a collier’s son. “They say it’s to ensure the ‘genteel air’ of the club. What’s genteel about drinking so much that you’re willing to toss away every last farthing to your name?”

Neuf shrugged his narrow shoulders. “This is London, sir, and these are London ways.”

“I’ll show them London ways.” Richard tossed the paper on the table, and tugged his shirt over his head, ready to dress for the evening. Walking through the door didn’t mean he’d have to play deep, or even play at all. “I’d like to see those three merry sisters try to keep me out of their precious gaming house because I don’t have the proper scrap of pasteboard.”

Neuf caught Richard’s discarded shirt as it he tossed it toward a chair. “Then you are going to this Penny House, sir?”

“Yes, Neuf, I am.” Richard grinned, his earlier restlessness forgotten. So far his time in London had been dull and proper. Now this evening had a purpose, an excitement. He might have stumbled at the auction house from lack of experience, saying and doing the wrong thing with the young lady in mourning, but a new gambling club run by women of dubious reputation—ah, where else would he feel more at ease?

Neuf nodded, still managing to make his unhappiness clear to Richard. If he’d known Richard long enough for a certain degree of familiarity, he’d also known him long enough to understand the combined temptation that Penny House could offer, and the futility of any warning he might give to his master.

“As you wish, sir,” he said instead. “As you wish.”

“As I damned well please, Neuf,” Richard said cheerfully, his mood improving by the moment. “And may the devil take the man who tries to stop me.”

The man’s face was round and red and very shiny, and he’d had so much to drink that he didn’t notice that the ends of his neckcloth were sticking out on either side of his plump neck like well-starched handles.

But Cassia noticed, and it was hard—very hard—for her not to reach out with both hands to tuck the ends back into the collar of his coat.

“And you say you arranged everything in this house in the very latest taste, Miss Penny?” he marveled, patting the front of his waistcoat. “You’re such a dear young girl that I cannot believe it to be possible!”

“Thank you, Lord Russell,” Cassia said, fluttering her fan as she squeezed back against the wall to let two other gentlemen pass them on the stairs. “Perhaps I did not paint every last baseboard with my own hand, but I did choose the colors, and assemble all the paintings and other little pieces to amuse the eyes of our guests.”

Lord Russell tapped the side of his nose with one finger, narrowing his unfocussed eyes. “That’s what a good English lass is supposed to do with her house, Miss Penny, and so I tell Lady Russell. But she’d rather have an Italian do it for her, fussing with the furnishing until a fellow can’t tell where he’s supposed to sit.”

“Then you shall simply have to return to us, my lord.” Cassia smiled, though her mouth already ached from smiling at gentlemen because she had to. She could not believe how many men had crowded into the house, more men—old and young and in between, handsome and homely, but most of them titled and all of them wealthy—than she’d ever seen together in her entire life in Woodbury. Amariah had been right: this wasn’t like the flirtatious fun at the Havertown Assembly. It was work, hard work, and the tall clock in the hall had yet to chime ten.

Lord Russell leaned closer, swallowing as he glanced along the front of her bodice. “You know, Miss Penny, you are a fine girl, deuced fine, and a good deal easier to talk to than my wife. I’m a generous man, Miss Penny, especially to those I favor, and when you tire of this, we could make an arrangement that would benefit—”

“Have you found our hazard table yet, my lord?” Cassia said brightly, fighting the very real urge to forget her promise to Amariah and shove His Lordship back down the stairs the way he deserved. “It’s in the drawing room at the top of these stairs, just to your right, and we’ve also tables for cribbage and whist, if those are more your pleasure.”

“So you like a man who’s not afraid to play deep, eh?” His Lordship leered, or at least as close to a leer as his baby-round face could manage. “You like a man who’s not afraid of courting danger at the table?”

What Cassia liked was a man who’d play deep and lose badly and make their bank fatter for Father’s charity, which was exactly why Lord Russell had been invited tonight.

Not, of course, that Cassia could say that to him. Instead she deftly twisted away, putting more space between them as she kept smiling over her fan. “I hear the gentlemen have already predicted it will be a lucky table, my lord.”

“Have they now?” He leered again, smoothing his plump, pink hand down the front of his waistcoat. “Up these stairs, you say?”

“To the right of the landing, my lord,” she said with relief. “You cannot miss it.”

“Very well, Miss Penny,” he said with a slight bow. “I shall— What in blazes is that racket down at the door?”

“Doubtless an overeager guest, my lord.” Cassia leaned over the railing, trying to glimpse what was happening below. “I’m sure the staff will sort it out in a moment.”

But Lord Russell was right: it was a racket. Men were shouting at each other, while the house’s servants in livery were pushing and shoving and trying to keep order. Other gentlemen were crowding the doorways, determined to see the source of the excitement. In the very center, Cassia spotted the top of Amariah’s head, her hair bright as a copper coin tossed in the middle of so much dark male evening clothes. For a moment, Cassia thought she glimpsed an arm, gesturing wildly in her direction, and then Amariah looked up and caught her eye.

Pratt appeared magically beside her, his face so purposefully bland that she knew things must be very bad indeed. “Excuse me, Miss Cassia, but Miss Amariah has requested you come to her directly. This way, miss, if you please.”

Cassia nodded, closing her fan with a little click. She gave one last smile to Lord Russell, with what she hoped was sufficient regret, then hurried down the curving staircase after Pratt. The opening was supposed to be genteel, elegant, meant to make gentlemen want to join their club. It was not supposed to degenerate into a brawl.

“What has happened, Pratt?” she whispered. “Tell me! What’s wrong?”

“Nothing that can’t be set to rights in a moment, miss,” Pratt answered discreetly, no real answer at all. “Miss Amariah will explain.”

He cut a path for her through the sea of gentlemen, keeping her moving through the crowd still clustered in the front hall, while newcomers at the door tried to make their way inside. “Excuse me, my lord. This way, miss, if you please, this way.”

He opened the door to the small anteroom reserved for the porter, and held it ajar just long enough for Cassia to squeeze through. Two of the largest of the house orderly men were holding a gentleman tightly by the arms, keeping him from breaking free, his broad-shouldered back to her. His dark hair was mussed, and there was a rip in one sleeve of his jacket, testimony to the scuffle in the front hall that had brought him here now.

“Thank you for joining us, Cassia.” Her sister stood at the end of the tiny room, another orderly man on one side and Pratt on the other. With her hands clasped over the royal-blue gown, Amariah still clung to her usual serenity, though her cheeks were flushed and the fingers of her clasped hands so tightly clenched together that the knuckles were white. “I am sorry to have disturbed you, but this gentleman here has posed quite a quandary for us, and you, it seems, are part of it.”

“Cassia.” The man being held repeated her name with relish, almost as if he could taste the word on his tongue. He tried to twist around to see her, but the two guards jerked him back to face Amariah. “So that’s the young lady’s name? Cassia? She would be called something rare like that.”

Cassia pressed her hand over her mouth so he wouldn’t hear her gasp. She recognized that voice, even without a face to it: he was the man from Christie’s who’d stolen The Fortune Teller away from her.

But why was he here now at Penny House? How had he known where to find her? Or had he followed her here, intent on further humiliating her?

“What the lady is called is of no importance to you, sir,” Pratt ordered, his eyes hooded. “You would do far better to consider your own situation, and how it will be viewed by a judge. Forced entry, trespassing, threats of violence against the people of this house—such charges will not be taken lightly by a court of law.”

“But as they are all lies of your making, they shall not be considered at all.” The man paused, and Cassia knew he must be smiling. “Now what would those selfsame courts make of your treatment of me, I wonder? A respectable gentleman of wealth and position, treated like some sort of thieving scoundrel—but you can vouch for me, can’t you, Cassia? You can tell them what kind of man I am, can’t you?”

She flushed at the intimacy he implied, but before she could speak, Pratt answered for her.

“Do not reply, miss,” he said. “The rascal has no right to address you, let along to ask you to speak on his behalf.”

“Very well, then,” the man said. “Forgive me my rascally ways, my dear Cassia. I shall defend myself.”

Cassia took a step forward, stunned that he’d dare be so presumptuous. He’d no right to say such things, or to shame her this way before the others, and she longed to tell him exactly that. But she’d promised Amariah she’d behave, and as hard as it was to keep quiet, Cassia did, biting back the rebuttal the man deserved.

“Sir, you still do not seem to understand.” Amariah’s smile was tightly polite. “Penny House is a club for the first gentlemen of this country, where they can amuse themselves among their peers. Admission tonight is by invitation only, sir, and regardless of what my sister says of you, you were not invited.”

“But I should have been.” With his arms still restrained, he tossed his dark hair back from his forehead with an impatience that Cassia also recognized all too well. “You should all be on your knees to beg me to stay, instead of tossing me out in St. James Street like yesterday’s rubbish.”

That was more than enough for Pratt. “What is your name, sir?” he demanded. “Your home?”

“I am Richard Blackley, of Greenwood Hall in Hampshire,” the man answered, the pride in his voice unmistakable. “Recently returned from my plantations in the royal colony of Barbados, and presently residing at the Clarendon.”

“You lie, sir.” Pratt’s words were clipped with contempt. “The true owner of Greenwood Hall is not you, but Sir Henry Green. The estate has been in his family for centuries.”

“But no longer.” Again Cassia guessed the man—he had a name now, Mr. Richard Blackley—must be smiling, despite the edge that had crept into his voice. “Shortly before I sailed, Sir Henry and I engaged in an evening of cards in a tavern in Bridgetown. He was drunk, and he lost. I wasn’t, and I won, and now own Greenwood.”

Pratt’s expression didn’t change. “Is there anyone here who can vouch for what you claim, sir?”

Blackley shrugged, or would have, if the other two hadn’t held his arms. “I doubt it, not in this crowd. Best to ask poor Sir Henry himself. If you can find him, that is. Ruin can make a man damned near invisible.”

Cassia listened, shocked. Since coming to London, she’d heard many stories of men who’d played deep and had lost everything, but the stories had always been remote, as distant as a nursery tale. Rich gentlemen lost money they could spare, and Penny House’s bank would profit for the sake of the poor.

But this careless, offhanded description by one man who’d stripped another of his patrimony had such a grim ring of reality that Cassia couldn’t look at Mr. Blackley the same way. At the auction she had called him a pirate and a thief. How could she have known how true that was?

“Cassia.” Her sister’s inflection dragged Cassia back to the little room. “Is this the gentleman you met today at Christie’s?”

She nodded, and the two guards released him. He shook himself free, squaring his shoulders and shooting the cuffs of his black coat. He took another second to smooth back his hair, and then, ready at last, he turned around.

“Miss Cassia Penny,” he said, his bow more an athlete’s than a courtier’s. “How happy I am to make your formal acquaintance. But will you now say the same of me, I wonder? Can I trust you to speak the truth?”

Cassia lifted her chin, determined to meet his eye without flinching. He was even more handsome in his evening clothes than she remembered from this afternoon, and the advantage it gave him was decidedly unfair.

“You can trust me to be truthful, Mr. Blackley,” she said, her voice slow and deliberate, “because this is a square house in every way, you know.”

“So you do know him, Cassia?” Amariah asked. “This is the man?”

“The man who outbid me fairly for the painting?” Cassia forced herself to smile, opening her fan before her in a graceful arc. He was daring her to blush, daring her to look away or stammer, and she would not do it. She would treat him like every other gentleman here tonight, no better nor no worse. “Yes, Amariah, it was Mr. Blackley.”

He bowed again, though not as low, so he could keep watching her. “Your servant, Miss Penny,” he said softly. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

Swiftly she looked away, back to her sister. “But that is all, Amariah. Beyond Mr. Blackley’s paying a preposterous amount for a very average painting, I cannot speak for his family, his estate or his honor, and that is the truth.”

Cassia smiled at her sister, hoping she’d just damned Mr. Blackley with the faintest praise possible.

But she hadn’t, not at all.

“I cannot ask you for anything more than the truth, Cassia,” Amariah said. “And I thank you for it.”

While she thought, she patted her palms gently together, the sound muted by her gloves, and Cassia’s heart sank. From the way her sister’s brows had lowered, just short of a frown, Cassia knew she was calculating exactly how much of Mr. Blackley’s money could be pried from his pockets and into their charities. His family and his honor—or their lack—didn’t amount to a pile of garden dirt next to that. Amariah was going to let Mr. Blackley stay, and nothing that Cassia could say now was going to change her mind.

Pratt cleared his throat. “Forgive me, Miss Penny, but we should all be returning to the—”

“And so we shall, Mr. Pratt.” Amariah’s face was once again serene. “Mr. Blackley, you may stay. Dine with us, play at our tables, amuse yourself however you please. But please recall, sir, that Penny House is a respite for gentlemen, and not a Caribbean tavern made for brawling. Even a breath of trouble from you, sir, and you will be banned from here for the rest of your life.”

“Hah,” Blackley said. “There’s nothing like a threat to make for a damned cheerful welcome.”

“As my sister said, Mr. Blackley, you will find only the truth in this house.” Amariah glided past him to return to the others, Pratt and the guards behind her, and Cassia hurried to join them. “Now unless there is anything more you might wish from—”

“Your sister,” he said. “I want her.”

Cassia stopped abruptly. “Mr. Blackley, I am not—”

“As my guide, that is.” His smile was wicked, teasing, knowing she’d misinterpreted exactly as he’d planned. “Since I’m new here tonight.”

“We are all new here tonight, Mr. Blackley.” Amariah nodded back at him, striving now to put him at his ease, as if he were behaving with perfect decorum. “Miss Cassia will be honored to show you the features of Penny House. Won’t you, Cassia?”

Cassia took a deep breath. “I…shall…be…delighted.”

“I’m honored, Miss Cassia.” Even in the tiny room, he was too close to her, too sure of himself, the way he had been when they were examining the painting. He crooked his arm for her to take.

She ignored it, sailing ahead of him and across the black-and-white marble floor of the front hall.

“This is our drawing room, Mr. Blackley,” she said with a perfunctory sweep of her hand when he joined her. “Where gentlemen may gather for conversation, or to read the latest news.”

“You’ve no right to be angry with me,” he said. “They made the scene, not I. None of it was my doing.”

“Oh, no, how could you ever be at fault?” She kept her eyes straight ahead, fighting her own temper. “As you see, Mr. Blackley, we have furnished the drawing room for both comfort and fashion, wishing our gentlemen to feel at their ease.”

“Is this still about the damned painting?” he asked, his voice low so the others around him wouldn’t overhear, though the irritation in his words was unmistakable. “You still believe somehow that I cheated you?”

Cassia stared pointedly at the empty place over the fireplace where the painting should have gone. “You were not honest with me, Mr. Blackley. At the showing before the auction, you let me babble on like a ninny over that picture, not even hinting that you were interested in it for yourself!”

“You weren’t exactly honest with me, either,” he said. “Was the mourning supposed to buy my sympathy?”

“The mourning was in honor of my father.”

“And now that you’ve grieved, you put it aside to bare as much skin as any other actress.”

“We put it aside because it would have seemed too grim for tonight,” she explained defensively, wondering why he should care so much. “Father would have understood.”

He chuckled, scornful. “That may be what you told the gossip sheets, but I ask you, what kind of father would leave his daughters a place like this?”

“A father who wished his daughters to do good in an evil world, no matter what the avenue.” She swallowed back the emotion that knotted in her throat. “My father was a good man, Mr. Blackley, and honorable and kind in ways someone like you could never understand.”

“You don’t know that, lass,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “You don’t know anything of me at all.”

“I know enough,” she said quickly, her heart racing for no reason. “And I know more than enough not to trust you.”

She hurried ahead, her expression so fixed that she scarcely noticed how the other gentlemen were stepping aside for her to pass.

“I’m sorry about your father.” His long legs easily kept pace with her. “And I like your gown, much better than I did the mourning. But I didn’t mean that—”

“Of course you did, Mr. Blackley,” she said, her careful facade of gentility slipping. “Why else would you have said it in the first place if you didn’t?”

“Then you have changed my mind,” he said. “Or am I not permitted to apologize?”

“This—this is our dining room, sir,” she said. She did not believe a single letter of his apology, nor could she let herself slip into that kind of trap. She must keep formal and remote; she must not let herself say what she wanted, especially not to this man. “There is my second sister near the table with the cold offerings. She oversees the kitchen, and you will find her offerings rival anything served in London tonight. Do you wish to dine, Mr. Blackley? Shall I summon a waiter to take your request?”

“I’m not hungry,” he whispered over her shoulder, his words coming unsettlingly close to her ear.

With her fan fluttering in her hand like an anxious butterfly, she twisted around to try to put more distance between them. But turning around only made it worse: now they stood face-to-face, her eyes level with his throat and his perfectly knotted dark-crimson neckcloth, his dark hair mussed and curling over his collar.

“Are you thirsty, then? The evening is—is warm, sir.” But it wasn’t the evening that was warm, not with him standing so close, and she worked to keep her words even. “Perhaps you would wish a selection from our excellent cellar? A glass of port, or—or canary?”

He shook his head, just a fraction. “That’s not why I came here, lass.”

“Miss Penny, sir.” She corrected him unthinkingly with the explanation that Amariah had prepared for them all, concentrating instead on the slight sheen of a dark beard along his jaw. A pirate, a pirate from Barbados. “I am sorry, sir, but for the sake of the house’s decorum, I must ask you to call me that, and nothing else.”

“Very well,” he said. “Then that’s not why I came here, Miss Penny, lass.”

“That’s wrong, sir, and no better.” She sighed, a small, breathy exhale, and glanced down at the blades of her fan. How strange to be standing here with him like this, surrounded by an ever shifting crowd of black-clad gentlemen, laughing, calling, swearing, jostling, like a noisy tide around them. “For the decorum of the house, I must ask—”

“Damn the decorum of the house. That’s not the same woman who crossed me today.” He closed his fingers over the top of her fan, stilling its restless motion. “You can do better than that.”

She thought of all the answers she could make, and how not one of them was either decorous or appropriate. “So you did follow me here?”

“I wish that I’d been that clever,” he said. His gaze had shifted from her face to the fashionably low neckline of her gown, lingering there. “I’d no notion you’d be here tonight. But when I saw you, there at the top of the railing—ah, you seemed like an angel high over my head. Can you fault me for wanting to stay?”

She had to stop this now, before anyone noticed. She tugged her fan free of his hand, and turned toward the stairs.

“Of course you must wish to see the gaming rooms, Mr. Blackley.” She raised her voice so others would hear her. “Up these stairs, sir, and you shall find the hazard table. If you wish to play, I shall introduce you myself to Mr. Walthrip, the table’s director, and he can introduce you to the—”

“I’m not playing.” He stopped on the step below her, making her stop as well. “Not tonight.”

“But what of that story you told my sister, about how you’d stolen some poor gentleman’s house away from him?”

“I didn’t steal it, Miss Penny. I won it.” Standing on the stairs, their eyes were nearly level. He wasn’t smiling now, and with a shiver Cassia thought again of a pirate. “Luck has been very good to me, and like every good mistress, I don’t treat her lightly.”

“Then surely you would wish to play tonight of all others, Mr. Blackley.” She tried to smile, but what had worked so effortlessly with Lord Russell seemed forced and false with Richard Blackley. “In honor of Penny House’s opening, that is.”

“Or else I will not be welcomed back?” His gray eyes seemed cold, almost ruthless. “If I do not play and promise to lose, like every other good little titled gentlemen of breeding and no brains here tonight, then you won’t speak on my behalf again, will you?”

“I didn’t say that!” she protested, but he hadn’t waited for her answer, and had already passed her on the stairs. “Mr. Blackley, please!”

She grabbed her skirts to one side and hurried after him, dodging between other men gathered on the stairs. By the time she reached the top, he had disappeared into the noisiest and most crowded of the gaming rooms, the one with the hazard table. Although the gentlemen in the doorway stepped aside for her, she hung back.

Pratt had advised all three of the sisters never to enter this room, at least not when a game was at play. It was, he’d warned, not a fit place for ladies: with such substantial sums being won and lost each time the dice tumbled from their box, the players often could not contain their emotions, or their tempers.

And from what she could glimpse from the doorway, Pratt had been right. The gentlemen stood two and three deep around the oval mahogany table, covered with green cloth marked in yellow. The low-hanging fixtures cast a bright light on the top of the table, and strange shadows that distorted the faces of the players. Mr. Walthrip presided behind a tall desk to one side, the only man who kept his silence. Everyone seemed to freeze and hold their breath as one while the dice clicked and rattled in the box in the caster’s hand. But as soon as the dice tumbled onto the green cloth, the men erupted, shouting and cheering and swearing and striking their fists on the top of the table so that even Cassia, who did not know the exact rules of the game, could tell who had won, and who had lost.

Then she saw Richard Blackley, leaning into the circle of light to toss a handful of pearly markers onto the table. All around him men exclaimed and pointed, making Cassia realize the wager must be sizable indeed. The dice danced from the box to the table, and two other piles of markers were pushed to join Blackley’s. Another roll, and the pile became a small, pearly mountain before him, while the other men applauded, or simply stared in uneasy awe.

The caster was losing, his luck as sour as Blackley’s was golden. The man’s face gleamed shiny with sweat, his collar tugged open, and this time he was holding the box in his hand so long that others began to protest. At last he tossed the dice, and as soon as they stopped, the long-handled rakes again shoved the markers toward Blackley’s mountain. He looked down at it and frowned, then turned toward Walthrip.

“I withdraw,” he said, loudly enough that everyone heard. “I am done for this night.”

“But you can’t!” cried the caster with obvious panic. “You’ve only begun! You must let luck turn, and give us try to win back what we’ve lost!”

“True, true,” another man beside him said, glaring at Blackley. “No gentlemen leaves the table when he has won so deep.”

“Hear, hear!” called the heavy-set man standing beside Cassia at the doorway. “It’s not honorable this way! A gentleman doesn’t quit when he’s ahead!”

But Blackley didn’t care. He bowed toward Walthrip, ignoring the others. “I believe the bank here gives its winnings to the poor, at the ladies’ request. You may add my winnings to that gift for the night.”

He stepped back from the table and away from the furor he’d just created, and sauntered through the crowd to the door as if every eye in the room and the hall outside weren’t watching him. He came through the door, and stopped before Cassia.

“You said you wouldn’t play,” she said, her chin high, challenging him back. “You said—”

“I lied,” he said. “But that was what you wanted of me, wasn’t it?”

Her fingers tightened around the blades of her fan. “You said you wouldn’t take luck for granted.”

“I like to think I soothed whatever feathers I ruffled with my offering to Bona Fortuna. Sufficiently generous, don’t you think?” From his pocket he drew one of the markers, a flat, narrow fish carved from mother-of-pearl, and pressed it lightly to his lips. “Good night, Miss Penny, until we meet again tomorrow evening.”

He smiled, and before she could stop him, he tucked the fish-shaped marker into the front of her gown, the mother-of-pearl cool and shockingly sleek against the skin of her breasts.

Then he turned, and was gone.

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