Chapter 3 #2
The other gentlemen at the table were wagering much larger sums, and the dealer cast a skeptical glance at her poor little single guinea, but she wouldn’t risk more than that.
Not just yet.
Slow, and steady. That was how it was done.
She ended the first round with twenty to the dealer’s seventeen, and slowly, one careful wager at a time the small pile of guineas in front of her began to grow.
Four pounds, then five, then eight on a particularly astute wager.
Eight pounds was a mere pittance at a club like Hart’s Ace, but in addition to the seven from last night it was nearly enough to see her, Percy and Jenny safely to the end of their visit.
One more hand would do it. She glanced around, but the gentlemen surrounding her were far too invested in their own wagers to pay the least bit of attention to her.
She turned back to her cards, her mind made up.
One more hand would be safe enough. One more hand, and that was all.
He was back. The boy who’d stolen ten pounds from him last night was back.
He was wearing the same clothing he’d been wearing the night before, his cravat and the wide brim of his hat still obscuring most of his face, but this time, he bypassed the Lottery table and took the only vacant seat at the Vingt-et-Un table.
Interesting. Vingt-et-Un wasn’t the game for the faint of heart. Was the boy playing deep tonight?
The lad placed a guinea on the baize.
A single guinea.
Well then, that answered that question.
Hart was either amused or infuriated at such an insulting wager. In that moment, he couldn’t have said which, but he abandoned his place at Faro and made his way to the Vingt-et-Un table, taking care to remain out of the boy’s sight.
One way or another the lad was destined to make the acquaintance of Armitage Hart tonight, but it wouldn’t do to reveal himself too soon.
No, this was a moment to watch and wait.
Once again, the small pile of coins in front of the boy grew steadily, one minuscule wager at a time.
It was painstakingly slow—one guinea became two, then five, then eight, then ten.
The play was quick, as it always was, but not as quick as this boy in his ill-fitting cloak and cheap muslin cravat.
There was no question the lad was counting cards. Hart had encountered enough cheaters in his time to know when he was being fleeced. This was a slow subtle fleecing, yes, but a fleecing, nonetheless.
The boy’s eyes darted back and forth, back and forth. He took in every card that landed face up on the table, counting, and calculating, but he wasn’t greedy. Avarice was the downfall of every thief sooner or later, but this boy didn’t have the habits of a hardened gamester.
No, what this boy was, was a mathematician.
He placed his wagers so carefully, so judiciously, that after an hour at the table he hadn’t amassed more than ten pounds worth of guineas.
Ten pounds! It was nothing. The gentlemen who frequented Hart’s Ace wagered hundreds, even thousands of pounds in a single night. If they remained at the tables long enough they invariably lost their money, but on the rare occasions they won, they walked away with staggering sums.
It wasn’t about the money. The boy’s paltry ten pounds wasn’t worth his trouble.
Indeed, if he’d been in his right mind, he wouldn’t have bothered with the lad at all. He’d have fetched Duncan, ordered him to dispose of the boy, and never given him a second thought.
He didn’t tolerate cheaters at his club.
He was Armitage Hart, after all. No one made a fool of him.
Except this nameless boy, it seemed.
Hart drew closer, then closer still. He might have lost his wits entirely and peered over the lad’s shoulder to see his cards, but he never got the chance.
Once again, without warning the boy rose to his feet, and just as he’d done last night he swept up his winnings and made his way across the salon toward the cashier.
He was leaving again, with no more than ten pounds in his pocket!
Ten bloody pounds. It made no sense. Gamers weren’t known for their restraint, and it wasn’t as if anyone was paying attention to the boy.
No one else realized he was counting cards, not even Cyril, who was manning the Vingt-et-Un table tonight.
The boy might have remained at the table for hours and won himself a significant amount of Hart’s money.
Perhaps even thirty whole pounds!
But he was already halfway across the room, the loose sole of one of his half boots dragging against the thick carpets. He was mere steps away from vanishing as suddenly as he’d appeared, without anyone being the wiser—
Wait. Half boots? What sort of gentleman wore half boots?
Hart stopped in the middle of the blue salon, his patrons swirling around him and his mind churning. A half boot with a loose sole…now where had he seen that before?
The beach. The mad redhead. Her boot had had a loose sole, as well.
The hat hiding the boy’s face, the absurdly capacious cravat, the strange, ill-fitting clothing, the narrowness of his back and shoulders and the slender delicacy of his hands as he fingered his chips…
God above, why in the world hadn’t he realized it sooner?
The lad wasn’t a lad at all, but a lady!
Not just any lady either, but a wily, beguiling lady with a headful of red curls, a sharp tongue and a penchant for risk, not to mention a brilliant head for numbers. A thief as well, of course, but a thief with a conscience.
She was unlike anyone he’d ever encountered before, and he couldn’t let her escape him a second time. Not because of the money. He didn’t give a damn about the ten pounds. She might keep her ill-gotten winnings, and welcome.
There was only one thing that interested him.
Her.
He rose from his chair and hurried after her, and if it hadn’t been such a bloody crush tonight he would have caught her in the outer salon, but he lost sight of her amongst the crowd.
He pushed his way past the dozens of perspiring gentlemen, searching for that absurd hat and earning himself quite a few surprised glances as he knocked shoulders with his patrons.
Damn it, where had she gone? She was small, yes, but unless she was a magician as well as a mathematical prodigy she couldn’t have simply vanished into—
Ah, there she was! Curse it, she was two paces away from slipping out the door and into the night. If he lost her now, he might never find her again. No one in Brighton seemed to know who she was, and he didn’t know her name.
He rushed for the door—one step, then another. He’d nearly caught up to her, but when he was only ten paces from the door, the strangest thing happened.
Suddenly she hesitated, and then, almost as if she could feel the weight of his gaze on her, she turned.
Their gazes locked, gray eyes clashing with green.
Not an emerald green, and not forest green, but a soft, pale green, the same tender green as spring plants newly emerged from the soil.
Never, in all his life, had he seen eyes like hers.
“Wait.” Had he said the word aloud? Or only mouthed it?
In the end, it made no difference, because she didn’t wait. She hovered for one instant, like a bird about to burst into flight, her cheeks as pale as moonlight.
Then she whirled around and ran out the door without a backward glance.