Chapter Twenty-Three
“You look delightfully…refreshed, Holt.”
Sunderland sprawled in a chair in the townhouse dining room as he sipped coffee from a steaming cup.
“Wish I could say the same about you,” Ian replied.
The duke’s hair fell rakishly over his forehead and his necktie dangled around the open collar of his shirt, which was also stained with an unmistakable stamp of lip rouge.
“It’s not what you think.” Sunderland flashed him a wicked grin. “Actually, scratch that. What are you thinking?”
“How we survive tonight.” As he downed his own cup of scalding coffee, Ian wished he’d stayed in bed with Diana. He’d only slipped out to run to the bakery so he could buy some pastizzi for her breakfast.
“Crotchety in the morning, aren’t you?” Sunderland clicked his tongue against his teeth. “My evening involved little sleep, but I’m much more pleasant about it.”
Ian didn’t want to visualize what the duke’s evening had involved. Or hear about it. “Everything ready at the Porto Rosso?”
“My team is in place at the hotel,” Sunderland confirmed. “I take it you and Miss Rives agreed on stakes. Should you care to relay all the details of your negotiations, I’m an excellent listener.”
He ignored the duke’s taunt. “Diana has agreed to stake the Ever Hart.”
“Her Majesty’s government will not be amused if you lose a ship of that caliber.”
“If I lose, there’s more to worry about than upsetting half a dozen bureaucrats.”
The trace of the smirk faded from the duke’s face. “You’re going to need a strategy if things get dodgy.”
“The best option is to let the polizia capture me when they raid the game.”
Sunderland scratched his chin. “Could take a few days to get you out of the clink.”
“It’s a last resort. And I’ll only do it if you swear you can get Diana out of Florence when all hell breaks loose.”
“That I can arrange.” He leaned back in his chair. “My sources also received a report that a shipment of gunpowder went missing from Genoa three days ago. No one’s talking about it because, allegedly, three women stole it.”
Wearing oilskin coats and woolen caps and probably brandishing his pistol, Ian would wager. Since Birdie’s betrayal, they’d been waiting for Widow’s operatives to make some move.
“They wanted the necklace to trade for information about Il Gioco so they can eliminate some of the most powerful traffickers in Europe in one go,” Ian surmised.
“They’re getting reckless if they’re planning to plant explosives at the hotel. Hundreds of innocent people could die.”
Ian dreaded telling Diana. “Is the threat credible?”
“Hard to say, old man. Usually, the only way we confirm these things is after the fact.”
When people and buildings lay in pieces.
“It’s too much of a risk to have Diana at the game.” His throat grew tight at the prospect.
“On the contrary. She’s a deterrent against the Stags doing anything too rash,” Sunderland argued. “Widow needs Diana’s fortune to fund her operation. They won’t let anything happen to her.”
The duke swallowed a final swig of his coffee. “On the other hand, you, Holt, they’d have no qualms about killing.”
That evening, while she put the final touches on her toilette, Diana renewed her appreciation for the power a beautiful dress could grant.
She’d come to love the men’s clothes she’d worn during their travels. Free from the underpinnings of corsets and petticoats and bustles, she was more in tune with how her body moved. She didn’t have to second-guess her posture, and that kind of liberty was intoxicating.
As she smoothed her hand down the fitted bodice of her red silk evening gown, she willed the nerves fluttering in her stomach to settle.
To ensure no outsiders discovered they were holding a high-stakes illegal card game, a masquerade reception at the Porto Rosso would serve as a cover for Il Gioco.
Diana’s costume was conspicuous by her choice.
The low-cut neckline and shimmering beaded silk set off a ruby pendant nestled in an array of diamonds forming a flower.
Beneath the robe-style gown, she donned a leather harness that the excellent staff of the townhome had purchased from a local acrobat troupe. Neither Sunderland nor Ian knew she’d taken this precaution, but after what had happened in Menton, Diana had taken redundancy planning upon herself.
She glided down the narrow staircase of the townhome and took distinct pleasure in the way Ian’s gaze consumed her.
The sight of him in his costume threatened her own composure.
His tailor-made dress blacks paired with an obsidian shirt, tie, and a silk waistcoat that matched her ruby made him look like the devil himself.
The Porta Rossa was a short walk away. Despite the anxious energy pricking them both, they didn’t rush.
Diana’s throat was too clogged with emotion to say anything.
They were barreling to the end of the mad adventure she’d set them on, and she was terrified that by the end, neither of them would keep the promises they’d pledged to each other the night before.
When they reached the steps of the hotel, Ian pulled a black domino from his pocket, and she lifted her red silk and feathered mask from her reticule.
He insisted on helping her tie hers. As his deft fingers fastened the ribbons slowly, he bent toward her ear. “When this is over, I want to spend hours with you wearing nothing but this mask.”
“Devil,” she murmured. Her cheeks heated beneath the silk. “Now promise me you won’t invent some excuse to prevent me from joining you tonight.”
“It would be a waste of energy. You’d eventually wrangle a way in.” His fingers caressed the sensitive skin on the back of her neck. “But you need to promise me you’ll stick to the plan.”
Diana didn’t waste breath arguing that she’d depart from the plan the minute she sensed his life was in danger.
She flashed him a seductive smile and ushered him into the foyer.
Their invitation card secured them an escort through a series of stairways and back corridors until the faint murmur of voices and clinking glassware drew them through a gilded door.
Before them, a set of stairs led to a sunken reception room, where spectators circled the perimeter of a card table staged in the center of the parquet floor.
Along the upper floor, more people mingled between pillars wrapped with gauzy fabric.
Like Ian and Diana, they were all dressed in rich costumes.
“I didn’t think there would be so many observers,” she remarked as Ian led her around the game table.
“Recognize anyone Widow would employ?”
“Not yet.” They could have been in the crowd somewhere, which made her stomach clench. “Your capo and his men are at the back, behind the table.”
Ian drew her to a shadowed corner of the wall, where they had a clear view of the entrance. “Before this all starts, I need to tell you something.”
“Is it how lovely I look in this dress?”
“You bewilder my senses in that dress,” he rasped. “One of the many reasons I want you by my side tonight. But we are going to have to separate.”
“Like hell—”
“Excuse me, I wasn’t finished.”
How he could be so sharp and so soft at the same time baffled the breath out of her.
Her chest, in fact, was smarting with a sharp, familiar pain. They’d pledged to be truthful with each other merely hours before, and Ian was already backsliding from it.
His attention flicked away from hers, and while she mentally composed the tirade she’d throw at him for not having the bollocks to look at her while he was shirking his promise, she registered what had captivated him.
A brown-haired woman circled the upper floor overlook. She wore an exact copy of Diana’s red dress. And had her arm entwined with the Duke of Sunderland.
The two scoundrels had conspired to use the Stags’s shell game to shut her out of Il Gioco.
“You always were a quick study; I’ll give you that.” Diana wriggled, but Ian held her arm in a viselike grip.
“Everyone is watching,” he warned.
“Then I shouldn’t have worn this dress.”
“My love, you could wear rags and still gather every eye in this room.”
The low pitch to his voice and the underlying warmth in his eyes beneath his mask abated her anger.
Momentarily.
“You and Sunderland hatched this scheme some time ago, if you secured additional players,” she threw at him.
“It was the duke’s idea, and he was right to insist on it. We’re going to have to split up for the game. This is an added layer of security.”
“And you didn’t think to consult me in that discussion?” She huffed. “It makes me think you won’t ever truly trust me. Like we’ll never be on the same side.”
She had a horrible, nagging sensation that if they didn’t rectify it now, they’d continue trying to outplay each other forever.
“I’m always on your side, Diana,” he said softly.
He relaxed his hold on her arm and drew her hand to his mouth to press a searing kiss against her gloved palm.
“And you’re the person I trust more than anyone else in the world.
Which is why I’ll risk your anger and frustration if it means keeping you safe. ”
She locked her spine and raised herself to her full height. “Waiting until the last moment to tell me this is no different from the way my mother manipulated me.”
His mouth parted on a jagged breath.
The accusation was an extraordinary defensive maneuver.
And Ian’s sudden stillness told her he was at least partly impressed by it.
She held his stare until he finally muttered, “You’re right. It was a despicable move.”
He still expressed no regret about it. But she could not overlook the glances he kept sliding around the room to evaluate who was observing them.
Sunderland and her doppelg?nger crossed the room.
There was no time to argue and press her case to dissuade him.
“I am only agreeing to this because you’ve backed me into a corner.
But do not, for one second, believe it means I forgive you for it.
We will have this out between us after the game.
And you’ll never dream of pulling this kind of stunt again. ”
“I welcome that challenge.” Ian pressed another fervent kiss on her gloved hand.
He nodded to the potted ferns beside the bar, but as he steered her toward Sunderland, a hush fell over the room.
Diana turned to the entrance. A gaggle of men stood at the top of the stairs. Titus descended the steps first, trailed closely by Costa. As they sauntered to the table at the center of the room, that would decide her fate, the sight of their arrogant smiles made her flesh crawl.
She’d barely recovered her repose when Jared strode down the stairs after them.