Chapter Two
Sir Jansen would choose piquet. After all, it was quite popular in all the gentlemen’s clubs—or so she’d been told by her brother Chance.
Joy culled the unnecessary cards from the fifty-two-card deck, creating a proper piquet deck of thirty-two.
Once finished, she thumped the stack onto the center of the table and offered her opponent a graceful nod.
“Be my guest, Sir Jansen. First cut of the cards.”
“Oh no, my lady. That right belongs to you.” He sipped his port and had the audacity to lick his lips again. Full, tempting lips that made her wonder what his kisses would be like.
Pulling in a quick, deep breath and straightening her spine, she refused to reveal how he affected her.
“As you wish, sir.” She cut the deck, then sat back and waited for him to do the same, hoping her card would be the higher so she would be required to deal.
Dealing put a player at a disadvantage, but since six deals completed the partie, it was preferable to deal first so as not to have to deal the last hand.
The disadvantage of the first hand could be remedied, but the last hand could not.
He revealed that her card was the highest. “Luck is with you, my lady. First deal is to you, making you the younger hand this set and me the elder hand. But, of course, you know that. Forgive me for attempting to educate such an experienced lady.”
“Experienced lady?” She fisted her hands in her lap so he couldn’t see how the words affected her. “Do not waste your time on insults, Sir Jansen. I assure you, it will not diminish my ability to win.”
“Forgive me, my lady.” He rested a hand over his heart and locked his disturbingly golden eyes on her.
They were as tawny as the shimmering eyes of the black panther she’d seen at the Royal Menagerie.
“I truly meant no insult or innuendo,” he said.
“Never would I purposely speak to you in such a crude manner. If you wish me to leave your presence, I shall—but I do beg your forgiveness.”
His deep voice rang with sincerity and remorse, making her swallow hard again and commit his soothing, rich baritone to a memory she was sure to replay at her earliest convenience.
“I forgive you,” she said, allowing enough kindness into her tone to assure him she meant it. “This time.”
With his hand still over his heart, he gave her a contrite nod. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome.” She dealt them twelve cards each, then placed the remaining eight face down between them in two piles of three and five, respectively. “I hope you don’t mind my splitting the talon. It’s how my brother and I always play.”
“Not at all.” He gave her another of those grins that made her heart flutter. “Do you ever allow your brother to win?”
“Never.”
“Now, how could I possibly know you would say that?”
She couldn’t resist a smile, but quickly resumed her usual stoic expression that always won the game. She placed a paper and a short stub of pencil that she’d pulled from her reticule onto the table. “Shall I keep score? Or would you rather do so?”
“I trust you implicitly, my lady.” Then he winked. “And I also have an excellent memory when it comes to numbers, but I am sure it would be better if you wrote down the score, so there will be no question when it comes time for me to claim my kiss.”
She almost choked on thin air and was ever so glad that she’d not asked for a drink, or she surely would have spewed it all over him. “I admire your confidence, sir,” she said a little more sharply than she should have.
“Confidence always wins the day, my lady. One’s mind is the first step in achieving anything. If you believe you can—then you will.”
For some odd reason, she didn’t think he was referring to the cards.
She so badly wanted to roll her shoulders to rid herself of that eerie warning tingle he’d set free across her nape, but didn’t dare do so.
It would give her away, revealing how he affected her.
“Then I believe you exchange first, Sir Jansen. I look forward to winning.”
“I shall exchange three,” he said as he placed the cards face down on the table, then drew three more from the talon. “Naturally, I’m permitted to preview the following pair.”
“Of course.” He liked to control things. She would remember that and put it to good use. Here was a man who would become most piqued if he found himself unable to manage a situation. “I shall exchange five when you are finished,” she said.
“And I shall declare carte blanche, my lady. I believe that is worth ten points, is it not?” He revealed his cards to prove his claim.
Damn his eyes. Frustrated by her poor hand, she hid it well with a polite nod and noted ten points on his side of the paper. “It is indeed ten points. Congratulations, sir.”
He leaned across the table and waggled a dark brow. “You see, my lady,” he said quietly, “I have already won by scoring the first points.”
She wanted to tell him to shut his gob and play, but refused to give him the satisfaction. “Indeed. But the game has just begun, dear sir. Do not let down your guard and crow too soon.”
A dark curl fell across his forehead, making him appear even more devilish. Joy inwardly cursed, then immediately felt guilty because Mama would most definitely not approve and, since Mama was in heaven, most likely had access to thoughts as well as oaths sworn aloud.
“So unfair,” she said under her breath while eyeing her cards.
“What is so unfair, my lady?”
“My mother is able to hear my thoughts and inward cursing,” she said without thinking, then jerked back to her senses. “Beg pardon, sir. I did not mean to say that.”
“But of course you did, or you wouldn’t have said it.” His expression struck her as one of admiration. “I find that to be one of your best qualities, my lady. Your brutal honesty.”
“When have I ever been brutally honest with you, Sir Jansen? We have barely spoken a handful of times.”
“Ahh…but I have watched you at every event, my lady.” He chuckled, and it washed across her with the lightness and warmth of an affectionate touch. “And I have heard the complaints of those stung by your tongue.”
She didn’t know whether to be insulted, intrigued, or fearful because he’d just confessed to watching her at every gathering the two of them had attended.
Surely Aurelia would have warned her if her brother was…
dangerous. She fiddled with her cards, re-sorting them in her hand as if that would both change them and this stressful situation.
“I only sting when provoked,” she said. “Ask Aurelia. She often sides with me.”
“Aurelia adores you,” he said with a seriousness that not only enraptured her but made her lower her cards to the table. “As do I.”
“As do you?” she squeaked, then swallowed hard for the umpteenth time, silently cursing her heart’s infuriating habit of lodging in her throat since he had entered the library. “As do you?” she repeated in a more controlled manner. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“As I said, I adore you. Always have. Ever since I first set eyes on you at Lady Burrastone’s opening ball the Season before last. You wore the blue silk that matched your eyes.
” He gazed off as if reliving the night, then shifted with a heavy sigh.
“And then you were the angel that came to me when I was shot on the battlefield in Greece.” He pulled in another deep breath and bowed his head.
“I almost died that day, but my angel, that vision of you, saved me by giving me the will to fight and return to you.”
Good heavens. Why hadn’t Aurelia told her that Sir Jansen was stark raving mad?
But the sincerity in his eyes made her heart hurt for him and gave her a rush of emotions that threatened to make her cry.
Everything he had said was so…so…nice, and he sounded as if he truly meant it.
This man was not some dowry-hunting lordling spouting endless nonsense to impress her. He was…real.
“I am glad you didn’t die that day,” she said ever so softly, then cleared her throat and tapped on the table. “I believe it is your play, Sir Jansen.”
He gave another heavy sigh, made even more rumbly with a low, throaty growl.
His jaw tightened as he studied his cards.
“Indeed. It is my play and time to choose an action.” He threw the cards down onto the table, grabbed her by the shoulders, and kissed her more soundly than she had ever imagined a kiss could be.
He tasted of port, desperation, and determination, and oh my goodness, she couldn’t help but kiss him back.
The way his lips pressed against hers. His tongue.
His touch. The searing heat of the intimate bond.
Heart pounding, she reached across the table and slid her hands up his broad chest, his muscular neck, and tenderly cradled his face.
She breathed him in as she opened to his claiming, to the urgency and yearning he offered, to the temptation of giving herself over without the least bit of fuss.
And then a yearning moan escaped her, sharpening the awareness that she needed to break this dangerous connection before she did something she shouldn’t and would most definitely regret. She jerked away.
“Oh my goodness, you must stop. We must stop.” She pressed her fingers across her throbbing lips as she rose from her seat and backed across the room, putting as much distance as possible between them.
The game was over. Both the card game and the dare.
She had satisfied the rules. She needed to escape as soon as possible.
But there he was with those golden eyes filled with so many things she wished she could ignore.
He was a wounded man. Probably a little crazed.
She couldn’t let sympathy cloud her good sense or tip her over into something even more dangerous—like caring, or affection, or, heaven forbid, a desire for an attachment.
“Take the money, Sir Jansen. You most definitely won the game.”