Chapter 10
W hen Arabella and Julia entered Flynn’s gaming hell together an hour later, the eyes of the room turned toward her immediately.
She smiled like she was a queen ruling over the regard of so many.
Yes, some leered and only saw her as a prize to be won, but that was what men did and it only made them easier to control.
The rest saw her as powerful, desirable. She had the respect of a great many of them for the way she had handled herself in this life. They were willing to negotiate with her in a way no other woman was ever allowed to do, at least directly.
She also saw friends. Other courtesans, a female boxer she’d met a few years before, the owner of a dress shop whose real money was made creating toys for lovers. These were her people. This was where she belonged.
Julia gripped her arm a little tighter. “Oh, I see Bianca Reynolds over there. She just parted ways with her protector and we’ve been meaning to chat. I’ll come find you to game later?”
Arabella nodded and watched her sister skip off to her friend. Eyes followed her as she did. Julia might be hesitant to pick her next conquest, but she wouldn’t be hurting for options. Arabella could ensure she had even more when the time came.
She pivoted and looked into the crowd again and that was when she spotted Silas.
He was coming toward her from the back of the hell.
He was slightly slack-jawed as he looked her up and down and suddenly she was very happy she’d made herself up to be her most alluring.
It was all for him, wasn’t it? She could pretend otherwise, but that was the truth of it.
And she felt just as stunned as he appeared. He was so entirely beautiful, after all. Like a god plucked from Mount Olympus. That broad-shouldered, lean-hipped line of him was as perfect in clothing as it was sprawled naked across a bed.
He thwarted Societal expectation by the fact that he clearly hadn’t shaved. His day-old scrub of stubble across his jaw only made her long to feel it brush her thighs. When he reached her, his green eyes were bright with desire but also delight, as if seeing her was some singular pleasure.
And she was warmed by him. Such an odd thing to feel.
“Good evening,” she managed to choke out without revealing too much in her tone.
He took her hand and lifted it to his lips, his warm breath leaving tingles in its wake. Then he stepped back to see the full effect of her. “My God, look at you,” he murmured.
She laughed and spun around in a circle to let him see it all.
She’d chosen her favorite dress for hunting, deep red, scandalously low cut, highlighted with pink silkiness.
The flowers in her loosely done hair were also blood red.
The gown was purposely created to make her, as she had always said, all shoulder and décolletage .
Other courtesans always laughed when she said that, but they all knew the truth: what she was doing was making herself a mouthwatering treat right here on display in public.
And this was the man she most definitely wanted to unwrap her and try it all.
“I’m glad you came,” she said.
He nodded. “I’m very glad I came now that I’m seeing you here like this.” Many men would have continued with seduction, but he seemed in no hurry. Instead, he looked around. “I don’t think this hell existed before I left London.”
Arabella pondered that. “I suppose it didn’t. I think Flynn’s opened just three years ago, but it’s all the rage. As you can see by how well attended and fine it is.”
They looked out into the hall together. Many tables were laid out in a neat pattern and every one of them was full or nearly full of patrons playing various card games.
“Are you good at cards, Silas?” Arabella asked.
He winked at her. “A cad like me? Very good. And that isn’t just me being a self-congratulating shit. I doubled my fortune playing cards, you know.”
She lifted her brows in surprise. Though the specific number wasn’t known when it came to Silas’s inheritance, whispers said it was no tiny sum. If he had truly doubled it through his skill at card play, that was impressive.
“In America?” she asked.
He stiffened a fraction, almost as if thinking of that time was difficult. “Yes. They even have these riverboats where they game. That was becoming quite popular when I left.”
“What fun,” she said. “I love the idea of sailing around, being debauched.”
“Who was the woman you arrived with?” he asked.
She smiled. “My youngest sister, Julia. She went to speak to a friend, but I’m sure you’ll meet her tonight. For now, why don’t we join a game? You can teach me a few things, it sounds like.”
He snorted as he placed a hand on her lower back and guided her through the crowd toward a table with two open seats.
“Me? I doubt that. I think you, Miss Comerford, are probably very good at everything you’ve ever tried.
I have pegged you for a talented bluffer and I can’t wait to see you strip every man at that table of his coin… and probably his dignity.”
She laughed even though the weight of his fingers against her spine was shockingly distracting. “Even you?”
“Probably me first,” he said, and they took their places and began.
* * *
A rabella didn’t strip him of his dignity, as Silas had teased her, but it was impossible not to be impressed by her skills at cards as he played against her.
She knew how to bet, which was often more important than what to play.
She wasn’t reckless, but she had few tells, so when she did bluff, she was almost always successful.
She was also charismatic beyond belief. Every person at the table hung on her every word, and not just because she looked like a goddess.
She was simply that good at handling people.
It was no wonder she was so sought after as a lover.
And yet she was giving her time to him without expectation or demand. There was something about that which gave him a sense of…pride. She was the sun and somehow she’d chosen him briefly as her moon, and that was worth a great deal in the midst of the upheaval he was experiencing at present.
But now the night was growing long. She glanced toward the door and gave him a little smile that brought heat to his blood. He pushed back from the table and said, “I think we may have to take our leave, gentlemen.”
Lord Archibald, the second son of some earl or another, who had been playing and losing to Silas for the last hour, glared at them. “You can’t go now, Windham. You must give me the chance to win my blunt back.”
“You didn’t win it back over the last fifteen hands, there’s no chance you’re winning it back in the next fifteen and I’m finished here.
” Silas barely sent the man a glance as he took Arabella’s hand and pressed it between his own.
Her smile widened. It was clear they were already playing a very different game.
Together they rose, but Lord Archibald got up too, banging into the table with his thighs as he did so and rocking it slightly.
“Bollocks, Windham. You’re a cheat.”
That did snap Silas’s attention to the man. There were many things he would proudly admit to being, but a cheat was not one of them. He arched a brow. “Do you want to repeat that? Or take it outside?”
Arabella’s hand tightened slightly in his, like she was trying to draw his attention back to her. But it was quickly becoming too late for that.
“Why not settle it here?” Lord Archibald staggered around the table and shoved Silas. He released Arabella and shoved back. The eyes of the entire hell were now on them as official employees of the club started toward them.
But they weren’t needed. Without fear of two slightly tipsy men who were much larger than she was, Arabella wedged herself between them. Her hand flattened against Silas’s chest and she lightly pushed him back even as she met Lord Archibald’s eyes.
“Now, now Archie, you don’t want to make a scene, do you? That won’t do at all.”
Some of the starch went out of the other man’s expression though he glared at Arabella. “My money—” he began.
“Look over there at the table two rows over,” she said and motioned one elegant hand.
“That’s the Duke of Beckingham and he is so deep in his cups that he’s barely upright.
Everyone knows he’s far too loose with his wagers even when he’s not.
So why don’t you take what you have left and go sit there?
I would imagine you’ll end up tripling your money before two hours have passed. ”
Lord Archibald stared off at the table which contained the duke and then back to her. As Silas watched in wonder, she stepped up to the angry gentleman and patted his cheek lightly. “Off with you now.”
Without further argument, Lord Archibald gathered up his sad little pile of money and headed off to do just as she had suggested. Once he was gone, she gathered up the blunt she’d won from the other men at the table and smiled to the group at large. “Best of luck to the rest of you. Good night.”
Then she grabbed Silas’s hand again and together they moved away. He glanced over to her. “You handled that with great aplomb. I’m impressed.”
She shrugged. “There are times for a brawl at a hell and times where such a thing must be diffused. I’m adept at diffusing angry men.”
He frowned at the idea that she’d had to be over her life. Men who had been meant to protect her, he was certain. Perhaps other men before that. In the life she’d led before she was a courtesan, long before he’d seen her in the garden.
He stepped to the right to dodge another gentleman and when he moved rapidly, he found the room spinning just slightly. She laughed and clung to his hand a little tighter. “I’m just as good at tending to men who are in their cups. You’re good at cards even when you’ve had two too many.”
“Was it two exactly?” he asked with a smile.