Chapter 18
THE ARCHANGEL, LATER
The Archangel
Later
The night hadn’t gotten its momentum going just yet, but Blaze could already tell it would be the usual sort as he walked the main floor.
No one—all right, Tessa might—would suspect it of the rogue Blaze Jagger, but the routine of The Archangel didn’t bore him to tears like it should.
Sure, there was the night-after-night repetition of seeing the same fellows having the same night all over again.
But he didn’t see it as stale.
It spoke of a settled world ticking along in an orderly fashion, to his way of thinking.
As he passed through the room they called the study, he glanced at his gold pocket watch.
Half-six.
There.
That was the exact time of evening—to the minute—he should’ve been finished going over last night’s take with Dupratt. Now, he walked the main floor and chatted up the dealers and croupiers and got a feel for how they were getting on. It would be too busy in about an hour.
But those lords and gents who would fill out the numbers later, they had a view of The Archangel different from Blaze’s.
For them, it was all hope and excitement—until the night wore on and their markers were called and…
it suddenly wasn’t. Then they would sleep their losses off and be back the next night or the next week or the next month—the point being they would be back—for another round with that hopeful, excited glint in their eyes.
These environs that were settled and tame to Blaze’s point of view got that aristocratic blood all het up.
At the roulette table farthest from him, he spotted a familiar figure—Lydon.
Blaze set his feet in a different direction.
He could chat up that croupier later.
Lydon had taken to beginning his wastrel nights here—on Blaze’s penny.
The rotter got a right old kick out of it.
And the next day, when Blaze went over the club’s ledgers with Dupratt, he paid back every last farthing. Dupratt didn’t say a word as he put paid to Lydon’s account and moved on.
Before heading to the upstairs office, he instructed Ricard to eject Lydon from the premises in one hour. The old rotter wouldn’t be able to get into too much trouble in that time.
Blaze shut the office door behind him and took a seat at the enormous oak desk.
Here was a new part of his evening routine.
He spent half an hour at this desk reading.
Reading.
It was a slow business, but that chart Viveca had drawn was the key that had unlocked written words for him.
In fact, he was beginning to appreciate that reading itself was an actual, bona fide pleasure.
Or maybe he was on the verge of that appreciation.
Today, at the bookshop he’d taken to frequenting, the bookseller had presented him with a volume. “I’ve been saving this one up specially for you,” he’d said with a waggle of bushy eyebrows.
Blaze knew that eyebrow waggle.
It was the universal language of innocent mischief.
“What you got there?” he’d asked.
“The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling,” said the man.
“A right mouthful, that.”
“It’s your style of book.”
“Is it now?” Blaze asked. “How’d you know I’d keep coming back?”
A knowing glint in his eye, the bookseller shook his head. “You’ve got the book affliction, and there’s no known cure.” His smile broadened. “Except more books.”
Blaze had taken Tom Jones—along with the dozen other books that were presently stacked on the office desk.
Books he was trying not to notice, for they only reminded him of who he’d bought them for.
And who he was trying not to think about now.
The books—all the Shakespeare and Byron in the shop—were part of a plan.
He would have them delivered to Sloane Street at nine o’clock tonight with a note it had taken him the better part of an hour to compose in his mind and put to paper.
Thank you—Blaze
Oh, him being Blaze Jagger, he’d thought up more words than that, but those three said everything that needed to be said in combination with the books. Viveca would take one look at the stack and see it for what it was—a thank you and a goodbye.
They would never have to see each other again.
The thought provoked a constriction of the chest that had become too familiar.
But he had to stop seeing her.
That was all there was to it.
He couldn’t go on tupping her and acting like it was meaningless when he knew differently in his heart.
When, despite her proposal to the contrary, he couldn’t have her as his.
For all his mountain of blunt, he was nothing more than an East End rogue, and she was a capital L lady and to continue to be around her and not have her in the meaningful sense would be torture.
People risked everything for love, and Blaze understood it now.
But to risk everything for a tup?
That was foolishness on the scale of continents.
He couldn’t allow her to risk everything because she liked the way he tupped her.
Naw. She would eventually regret it.
And while she might not have ever loved him, she would come to hate him in that arrangement.
Better to end it now, before the damage became irreparable.
Except that was some grand-scale self-deception, wasn’t it?
That damage was done—and he didn’t see any way of repairing it.
A light knock sounded at the door. “Door’s unlocked,” he called out, closing the primer and Tom Jones, then slipping them into the bottom drawer before the door opened and Ricard stuck his head in. “A lady’s in the club.” Evident discomfort hung about the doorman.
Blaze settled back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head.
This happened every so often. A capital L lady showed up, looking for a rotter husband or wastrel son who was hell-bent on throwing away the family fortune on a toss of the dice or a spin of the wheel.
Not The Archangel’s responsibility in Blaze’s view.
Any gent bent on destroying his and his family’s lives was going to see it done one way or another, be it at The Archangel or some other hell.
“Did you ever so politely inform her that The Archangel is a gentleman’s establishment?”
“She ain’t that kind of lady.”
“Then did you inform her we don’t run doxies?”
The duke had been forwarding thinking in not allowing that kind of business to sully The Archangel.
“She ain’t that kind of lady, either.”
Blaze shifted forward. It was that distinct edginess about Ricard. And when a man with the proportions and sturdiness of a brick wall became uneasy, one needed to perk up and take notice. “That so?”
“This lady says she’s a friend of yours.”
“Lady Beatrix?”
Ricard shook his head slowly. “Not Lady Tessa either, but—”
“But?” A premonition of Ricard’s next words came to Blaze.
“But she has the look of Lady Tessa.”
Blaze shot to his feet.
It could be only one capital L lady who looked like Tessa…
Viveca.
She was here.
“Where?”
“On the floor,” said Ricard, lifting helpless hands the size of hams. “I couldn’t stop her.”
Definitely Viveca, then.
In less than a minute, Blaze was out of the office and standing at the upper-floor balustrade, his gaze scanning heads below.
It took less time than that to locate her, for she was dressed in white muslin, a stark contrast to all the black coats and dark woods and leathers surrounding her.
All light and breezy, Viveca was the visual representation of fresh air.
Blaze’s lungs ached to breathe her in.
The next instant, reality pricked through that bubble.
Her world—society, they liked to call it, as if the rest of folk were heathen tribes who’d only just discovered fire—was going to be set alight when word of this began to make the rounds.
Scandal, that was what they would call it.
Well, Blaze supposed it had always been Lady Viveca’s destiny to be a scandal.
She didn’t think like her folk.
Upon reflection, she didn’t think like anyone Blaze had ever met.
She looked remarkably focused, now that he was getting a good look at her. Neither awed nor overwhelmed by her surroundings, she was fixed on something on the other end of the main floor in the way of a predator stalking its quarry.
Blaze’s stomach plummeted to his feet.
She wasn’t fixed on something, but rather someone.
His feet picked up their pace.
But he was too late.
She’d already taken the place beside Lydon at the roulette table.
She wasn’t even pretending to be interested in the gaming.
Instead, she stood facing Lydon with a little smile perched on her pretty pink mouth.
It took Lydon a few seconds to notice her, but when he did, he did a right double-back.
Blaze couldn’t see the old rotter’s face, but it didn’t take much of a hop of the imagination to conjure the oily smile greased across his mouth.
If the marquess had been possessed of tail feathers, they would be preening.
Feckin hell.
The edge of Viveca’s eye caught Blaze shoving through the crowd, and her gaze shifted and landed square on him. Oh, and wasn’t that mischief dancing a little jig in those blue depths?
Lydon caught her distraction and turned. Upon seeing Blaze, he heaved a blatantly irritated huff. “Can’t you see the lady and me are enjoying a moment—alone.”
Before Blaze could tell the old lecher to sod off, Viveca said, “Oh, you did get one thing correct. I am a lady. But enjoying might be rather wide of the mark, and you and I won’t be doing anything alone.”
Lydon blinked.
Viveca had spoken so sweetly that if one wasn’t paying attention one might miss altogether the content of those sweetly spoken words.
Up until this very moment, Lydon might’ve even had himself convinced his greasy charm was performing miracles on Lady Viveca Calthorp.
Men had an outrageous capacity for self-deception when it came to their appeal to the opposite sex.
Anyway, the deepening furrow of Lydon’s brow said he was being disabused of the notion.
Blaze crossed his arms over his chest and cocked a hip against the table.
Viveca could handle herself.