Chapter Two
Jackson Cole, the Duke of Grandfellow, slammed his hand on the table, the China set on top of the mahogany rattling dangerously. “This is madness!”
A single hand of cards had stood between him and victory. Thirty-three cards dealt and played. Most in the discard pile. Six on the table. One blasted hand possible with a higher count than his. Less than two percent odds he’d lose.
And he’d lost.
Not some measly fortune. It would take a catastrophic loss at every gaming hell in England to deplete the accounts of his estates. No, what he’d lost was more precious.
“You are welcome to refuse, Your Grace,” Mrs. Dove-Lyon said from her seat on the red velvet settee, the teacup and saucer in her hand not sporting so much as a drop of tea out of place after his outburst.
‘Refuse’?
No, he bloody well couldn’t. There was more than his bachelorhood on the line.
The woman dug the knife deeper. “You knew the stakes.”
He did. Win and he pocketed a bit of extra change—and slid one step closer to taking down his target.
Lose and he set the Home Office’s investigation back six months.
Lose and he’d owe the Widow of Whitehall a favor.
But . . . he was a duke. He owned six properties. Had royal connections. Mrs. Dove-Lyon could have asked for a kingdom. Which begged the question . . . “Why marriage?” Aside from what was said to be a matchmaking fee the size of the palace grocer’s bill paid by rich women with poor reputations.
There was a curl of those red lips through the black lace. “You are a duke.”
And that was that. What wouldn’t a lady marred by scandal do to become a duchess?
What couldn’t be bought?
Another favor.
Just his luck.
He’d known the risks. What he didn’t know was how the spider had rigged the game.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Mrs. Dove-Lyon said.
That you’re catering to a local counterfeit ring to undermine British authorities?
“I highly doubt that,” Jackson said. He’d cleared Mrs. Dove-Lyon and all those working under the proprietress in the gaming hell of being in bed with the criminals, but that didn’t change the fact that the ring was funneling their money somewhere.
What better place than a gaming hell with a dubious reputation for poison drinks and underhanded matchmaking?
The few bits of evidence the Home Office had uncovered—receipts, common criminal acquaintances, city location where the fake pounds had been spent—had all led back here. The Lyon’s Den.
Mrs. Dove-Lyon lifted her teacup to her veil but did not drink. A trick to distract and unconsciously lead a mark to following your lead. Ask what I know, that look said. Be at my mercy.
A trick Jackson had used countless times.
He wouldn’t take the bait.
At last, the woman set down her cup, though something in the set of her shoulders told Jackson she was amused at his unwillingness to play her game.
“You could always forfeit your membership,” she said.
Not what he’d expected.
“There is no membership at the Lyon’s Den,” he said, controlling his tone.
A small laugh. “Believe that at your own risk, Your Grace.”
It was a threat. A well-placed one.
The woman was suspicious. Of him or his subtle inquiries into the Den’s clientele, it didn’t matter. Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s guard was up. Rightly so and within her profile. A widow didn’t singlehandedly run the most notorious gaming hell in London by being insouciant.
Jackson’s fist clenched in his lap, but he made himself sit back and cross one ankle over his knee. A man at ease with his power. “You would make an enemy of a duke?”
The spider didn’t flinch. “You would ruin your family’s long-standing reputation over a simple wager?”
‘Simple.’
“Matrimony to a stranger hardly fits the bill,” he said dryly.
Dragging some poor, unfortunate woman into his life of light and shadow was too morally gray for even his blackened heart.
Whatever scandal that had led the women to this entanglement wasn’t worth the duchy.
He’d get out of this ridiculous bet if he had to dive through the window and meet the cobblestones face first.
“Hardly a stranger,” Mrs. Dove-Lyon said. “By all accounts, the young woman made it sound as if you were well acquainted.”
Jackson’s attention snapped to the veil, searching for any hint of the woman’s true expression. His acquaintances were vast, crossing international waters. Mostly men, all older. If a woman was claiming such familiarity, it must have been a plant, some foreign agent looking to get closer.
“I assure you, Mrs. Dove-Lyon, I have no designs to marry. As such, I keep my distance from young women of marriageable age.”
She gave him a tilt of that head, the veil slipping to reveal striking, red lips curling upward. “Why don’t I introduce you, then, and you can tell the young woman of your disposition yourself?”
The woman is here? Waiting in the other room?
Neck prickling, Jackson nodded in acceptance.
And when Mrs. Dove-Lyon crossed to the other door that led into a private waiting room, he leaned down under the guise of brushing lint off his boot—while his other hand slipped inside the leather and extracted a sharp blade thin enough to hide in the sleeve of his coat.
Mrs. Dove-Lyon rapped her knuckles on the door and stood back, her gaze behind the veil seeming to watch Jackson with rapt interest.
Jackson had stood as the widow had found her feet, as much to show respect for a woman as to place himself in a better defensive position, but as the young woman in question stepped over the threshold, familiar eyes of verdant green caught his.
The same dark, red hair. Skin smooth and as pale as cream. The same stubborn set to her jaw.
Jackson’s balance wavered.
Anna.
“Your Grace, may I present Miss Annabeth Greene,” Mrs. Dove-Lyon said. “Miss Greene, you know the Duke of Grandfellow.”
‘Know.’ Yes, they knew each other well.
Blood roared in Jackson’s ears. His heart, that atrophied muscle, swelled with life, painful and aching after so long without use.
He made to step forward, his hand reaching, needing to feel she was real—
But Mrs. Dove-Lyon shifted, breaking his trance.
Jackson’s feet stayed rooted, and his arm fell to his side. Anna was here . . . and lovelier than ever. To be in the same room with her again, to have those eyes of hers meet his once more.
Hope, that damn fickle flame he’d snuffed out so long ago, flared. And Jackson didn’t think before he made a delicate sign with his hand at his side—a minor pressing of his thumb to his middle finger. A signal—their signal—a language they’d used since children.
Are you well? that small movement asked.
His heart slumped as the seconds ticked by and she did not move. Then—
A quick rotation of her pointer finger. I am well.
She remembered. His heart pounded as he tipped his hat to distract Mrs. Dove-Lyon as he made his next-hand signal: Meet at the trees. It was an old signal, one that had meant the great oak tree on the edge of the Grandfellow property, but one he knew she’d understand meant the park down the lane.
Her pinkie tapped her thumb twice. I’ll be there.
“What is your decision, Your Grace?” Mrs. Dove-Lyon asked.
Jackson’s mouth opened, but he hesitated to speak. His circumstances hadn’t changed; he was still a spy for the Home Office, still a man with enemies and secrets. If there was a way he could persuade Mrs. Dove-Lyon out of the match—a large sum, perhaps, he could—
“Jackson.”
Everything stilled.
That husky tone. His name from her lips.
The past six years were ripped away in an instant, and he was back in the grove at Grandfellow Hall.
Their bodies pressed close. Her silky lips against his fingertips, only to be replaced with his own lips.
The day he’d held her in his arms for the last time.
The day he’d lost everything that had mattered.
A log in the fireplace cracked, and Jackson jolted back to the present with his chest aching and new determination curling his fingers into fists at his sides. This time wasn’t like six years ago. Now he was the duke, and he wouldn’t walk away a second time.
Whatever the reason, however she had found her way into this spider’s web—God, what scandal would force her hand—he could no more leave her than he could drop his investigation.
Expression blank, he turned to Mrs. Dove-Lyon.
“I accept your terms.” He buttoned his coat.
“A special license will be procured, and we will be married by week’s end.
” A slight, if not obviously shallow, bow to Mrs. Dove-Lyon.
Then a deeper bow, one with the weight of his heart lowering him nearly perpendicular at the waist for the woman who still stood too far away. “Good day, Miss Greene.”
He walked out the door and refused to look back, no matter how his hands trembled at his sides with the need to touch her again.
To taste that lush mouth. To hear her laughter.
To relearn every freckle, every scar on her skin .
. . and to learn all the ways in which she’d changed over the past six years.
Anna.
His Anna.
Jackson cut across the road and into an adjacent alley that provided a clear view of the blue house off Cleveland Row.
His partner, Roberts, materialized from the shadows of the building, his dark threads and common mannerisms that of a jarvey looking for his next fare. Instead of one of the most skilled enforcers on the Home Office’s payroll.
“How did it go?” Roberts said.
Straight to hell.
Never had the price of patriotism been so high. But to see Anna’s face again, to know she would be his in less than three days . . .
“Congratulate me, Roberts,” Jackson said without inflection. “It seems I am to take a wife.”
“‘A wife’?” Roberts’s wide eyes settled on the blue building across the street before he turned back to Jackson with a sly grin. “Got you good, did she?”
“It appears the spider’s skills were not exaggerated,” Jackson managed through gritted teeth.
“Or the rumors about the woman’s matchmaking.” Roberts’s good humor faded, coming to realize the shite hole they’d stepped in. “Couldn’t you refuse? Leads have all dried up here, anyway. Not like you need to stay in that woman’s good graces.”
“Not dying of thirst yet, man.” Jackson walked toward the end of the lane where he’d stabled his horse for the duration of his meeting. “And no, I couldn’t have refused.”
Roberts whistled. “The spider that bad, eh?”
Mrs. Dove-Lyon had nothing to do with it.
However Anna had gotten mixed up with Mrs. Dove-Lyon, it couldn’t have been good. To think of that wager, of another man stepping in to take his place—Jackson shook his head. No, he couldn’t think of that and keep his composure. Anna wouldn’t marry another man because she would marry him.
Old uneasiness coiled his stomach into knots.
Anna hadn’t said more than one word to him.
After the way he’d left things between them six years ago, he’d expected scorn, shouting.
The fiery Annabeth Greene had never tempered a single word in his presence, no matter that he’d held the secondary title of marquess before his father had died, and she’d been the only daughter of a humble locksmith at the time.
“What now, Your Grace?” Roberts asked.
Jackson left off the concerning reasons Anna had been at the mercy of Mrs. Dove-Lyon. He’d learn the truth of their connection soon enough, while somehow keeping his connection to the Home Office quiet.
Paying the boy at the stable, Jackson patted Charger’s flank before he passed the reins to Roberts. “Take my horse; I need you to update the secretary and have another agent assigned to watch the Den immediately while I make preparations.”
The next few days would be critical. The counterfeiters had been unnaturally quiet over the past week, most likely keeping their heads low before their next handoff.
They’d have to push their product soon. The longer the criminals waited, the more likely the local authorities would uncover the fake notes.
A large stack of counterfeit money was about to find its way to the Lyon’s Den. Jackson knew it in his gut.
“What is your dearly intended’s name?” Roberts asked.
“Annabeth Greene.”
If Roberts made the connection between Henry Greene and his daughter—and of course he did; Roberts loved locks almost as much as he loved stealing secrets—he merely nodded.
“After my visit to Sidmouth, I’ll grab the special license while you break the news to your family,” Roberts said, cutting into Jackson’s reverie.
Jackson stared at the smaller man. “What?”
Roberts’s bushy brows rose. “You need to inform your relations of your impending nuptials. Better sooner than later, I’d imagine, since no reading of the banns will set tongues wagging.”
Jackson nodded, his brain reorganizing. Of course, he was to be married. Anna was to become his duchess. Personal preparations were as necessary as his business ones.
Jackson would have to inform his brother . . . and his mother.
“Ah, hell,” he cursed.
Roberts laughed. “Wish I could be a fly on the wall when you break the news to the old witch.” He scratched his dark, stubbled chin.
“Wouldn’t think of waiting to make the announcement until after I go securing the bishop’s approval, would ya?
A jaded man like me can hardly find entertainment to suit my tastes anymore.
An irate lady ready to commit violence is right up my alley. ”
“Roberts,” Jackson said, unamused.
“Aye?”
“Leave before I shoot you between the eyes.”
Roberts—the windsucker—saluted. “Good luck, Your Grace.”
Jackson didn’t dismiss the well wishes. Not when he’d need all the luck in London after he told his mother that the house of Grandfellow—a royal title and estate that went back to the beginning of the fourteenth century—was about to add a locksmith’s daughter to their noble history.