Chapter Two
Bishop watched as the table host lay out six identical glasses, each filled with a different shade of sluggish liquid, in two neat rows of three.
Each man rolled to determine who would begin the game.
The highest roll chose first, the lowest last. If you won, you could pick your first drink.
The rounds stopped when only one man was left standing.
All drinks were tainted with something. The goal?
To survive every round without faltering, retching, or forfeiting.
They called the game The Widow’s Poison. Reportedly, it was a game only fools and the suicidally brave played. Well, by all accounts, he was both tonight.
I can’t believe I’m bloody doing this.
He glanced at his rivals.
Lord Silas Deverell, Captain Jonathan Blackwell, Mr. Felix Harcourt, Lord Quentin Vale, and Lord Edmund Price. All young and virile.
So was he.
Mercifully, none of them recognized him.
He could feel her eyes on the table. The burn of them swept over him like a slow touch, crawling beneath his collar, settling hot in his blood. Blazing hell. How easily her presence seared like a flame.
Bishop forced his shoulders loose and dragged his focus back to the game. The order of this round had already been determined. He’d choose a drink fourth.
“Gentlemen.” The table host indicated the glasses as if presenting a tray of sugared cakes. “All prepared with the owner’s particular interest in your entertainment. You know the rules. First round starts now.”
A brief pause followed.
“Get on with it,” Blackwell growled, voice roughened by years of smoke.
Lord Edmund Price leaned forward without ceremony. His jaw tightened as he surveyed the colors, then he selected a glass darkened to the shade of spoiled wine. “To luck, gentlemen.” He tossed the contents back into this throat and after four swallows, slammed the glass back onto the table.
Vale, with his easy grin and bored eyes, chose a brownish drink. “Fortune remembers her favorites.” With that, he downed the glass in one go.
Judging from Vale’s face, he was no favorite of fortune.
What did these fools think were the stakes anyhow?
He hadn’t even asked.
Hadn’t cared.
Vale wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Bloody hell, that’s vile.”
Cheers went up from somewhere behind them.
“Your turn, Lord Deverell,” the table host murmured politely.
Deverell pulled a face. “A toast, then,” he drawled, selecting one a yellowish shade. “May the best man win.” He gulped down the glass, and a few seconds later, a tremor cut through the man’s hand. He struck down the glass down harder than Price, coughed once, then forced a chuckle. “Harmless.”
Harmless his arse.
The table host’s brows arched, expression unreadable. “Perhaps.” The man turned his gaze to Bishop. “Your turn, sir.”
Bishop didn’t bother inspecting the remaining glasses. He reached for the one nearest and brought it to his mouth.
“Not even going to sniff it first?” Vale taunted, sweat forming on his brows.
“No need.” Bishop tipped the contents back, the dark liquid sliding over his tongue like oil and ash. It hit the back of his throat, slimy and bloody disturbing. For a fraction of a second, his stomach rebelled.
“Well?” Blackwell demanded. “That one looked the worst of them all.”
He set the glass down. “I’ve tasted worse.” Lived through worse.
Think of anything else but the taste.
Her.
Think of her.
All or nothing.
Harcourt was next, his nostrils flaring as he tipped his pale grey choice back with a scowl. His face twisted even more. He finished with, “By God’s grace, what the devil was that?”
“Finally, my turn.” Blackwell snatched the remaining glass, a white sludge, raised it in mock salute to the room, and downed the contents as though it were water. Some members shouted their approval. The man shuddered, then grinned. “Reminds me of rations at sea.”
“Then I’m sure you’ll live through it,” Vale mocked.
“Always do,” Blackwell shot back.
Bishop said nothing. The burn of her turned feverish. He glanced up and met her gaze, not missing the recognition that teased the edges of her expression. They stared at each other as Blackwell launched into a recounting of all the bitter rations he’d tasted on the waters.
She looked away.
Not dismissively. Rather, if he were correct, as though she couldn’t bear the memory of him. Or perhaps couldn’t put the man he’d become in the place of the boy she once knew. He couldn’t blame her for either.
His fingers flexed beneath the table.
One thing was beyond dispute. Her awareness of him. And his awareness of her.
The past pressed against the present, taunting.
He hadn’t planned to expose himself so soon, though some would hardly consider twelve years soon.
Crane had saved his life, and he’d owed the man.
Since he’d found a wife and happiness, Bishop had already decided to probe whether it was time to reclaim what belonged to him rightfully.
Of course, he’d never thought he’d ever get back all he’d lost.
And yet, by some damn miracle, he had a chance to recapture her hand.
He had to win.
No other possible outcome existed.
“Round two,” the host declared.
She should not be staring at him. They’d already locked gazes once.
The force of that single meeting of looks alone had knocked the breath from her lungs.
And in that breathless beat, time folded in on itself.
The gallery had swayed. Or maybe she had.
She’d averted her gaze, but something—an itch between her shoulders, a whisper behind her ear, a whisper with his voice—had drawn her gaze back.
Alyssia found it hard, almost impossible, to look away again.
Every detail of him felt like a dream she’d dared to forget.
A fevered hallucination from another life.
Except he was real. Which was absurd, since she’d never seen him as an adult man before tonight.
Her gaze drifted to the shadow on his jaw again.
Rough. Rugged. What had he been through all these years?
Where had he been? Had he lived well? The more she watched him, the more her pulse throbbed wildly against her throat.
Her nose scrunched up as he swallowed down another glass of whatever drinks they’d been serving each round. How many had it been? Four? Five? Three men had already toppled over, pale in the face. Three remained.
Laughter. Applause.
Ridiculous.
Giles, however, but for some pearls of moisture across his face, looked better than his remaining opponents.
Alyssia suddenly questioned her life’s choices.
Who would have thought that they would lead back to him?
The boy who’d haunted her dreams. The boy who had disappeared with neither a word nor trace of life.
A boy who seemed to have hardened into a man who battled, and won, empires.
And he fought this game for her. To what end? For what purpose?
Another man at the table collapsed to the ground, leaving only two, Giles showing no signs of being defeated.
How could her breath not catch?
She knew—deep in her bones, in the places where truth outlived memory—that whatever game he was playing down there . . .
He would not lose.
This could not be happening. Nothing had readied her for this. Was it too late to run?
Alyssia backed into the shadows, seeking to calm the roar in her chest. This was not the outcome she’d fortified herself for when she’d left her friend’s house this afternoon.
She’d imagined discomfort. Perhaps nerves.
She hadn’t imagined him. Not here. Not in this den of ruin.
Certainly not looking like that. Commanding, unreadable, impossibly dangerous.
The floor beneath her shifted.
She drew a shaky breath and pressed her fingers against the wall behind her.
Her heart, however, wouldn’t stop pounding.
The longer he remained standing, the more something cracked open within her, threatening to allow everything she’d been holding in for years to spill forth.
Anger. Hurt. Pain. And seeing his face again, more anger.
Lawd, what bitter twist of luck had brought that ghost here tonight?
“You’re not the first lady to come here hoping for one thing,” Mrs. Dove-Lyon, who had left her to her thoughts, said, following her into the shadows, “and walk away with another.”
Alyssia flinched. “He won?”
The widow inclined her head. “He won.”
“He won,” she repeated, as though saying it aloud might make sense of this whole situation. The words, however, tasted like ash.
“Is that not a good thing?” Mrs. Dove-Lyon asked. “After all, it’s better to wed someone with history than a stranger.”
Her fingers curled at her sides. Perhaps, but the man here today might as well have been a stranger.
More than a decade had passed since she’d last spoken a single word to him.
She had changed over the years, so it was only natural for him to have changed as well.
“I suppose he eclipses the others in some ways.”
“And he’s much more stubborn,” Mrs. Dove-Lyon added. “In my experience, stubborn men make for the best partners, or the worst, depending on one’s temperament.”
They had that in common. “What was in those drinks?” Alyssia asked, somewhat concerned.
“That, my dear, I cannot divulge.”
Of course.
“He looks rather well for a man who’s been drinking poison,” Mrs. Dove-Lyon observed.
Poison. It shouldn’t be deadly, should it? A sound between a laugh and a scoff escaped her. “Then I pity the poison.”
The widow chuckled softly. “Would you like a moment to compose yourself before I send him over?”
“No need. I don’t need composing.” The lie quivered on her tongue, so she drew a steadying breath. It was however, better to get the reunion over with as soon as possible and not drag this miserable feeling out. “He’s simply a man.”
Mrs. Dove-Lyon said nothing, merely motioned her hand to one of female guards.
This was happening.
Alyssia couldn’t resist stepping up to the railing again and glancing down.
Below, her once again future husband was indeed standing, or perhaps looming, his shoulders squared.
The last of his opponents was slumped over the table.
Giles, however, didn’t gloat. He didn’t move.
He merely stood as though waiting for the result of his victory.
His eyes lifted up as if sensing her gaze, and their gazes locked, held.
A tremor stole over her.
Simply a man?
More like a dangerous beast!
Even so, the sight of him so composed amid ruin unsettled her more than anything else, and a reluctant bud of pity sprouted. What must he have lived through that not even Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s concoction could bring him low?
“There’s a certain poetry to it, I suppose, to meet as two people both undone.”
“That,” Mrs. Dove-Lyon said, “or both reunited as the man and woman you’ve become.”
That, somehow, was worse. Who had she become? Who had he become? Who would they both become once they wed? She curled her hands tight until her nails bit into her palms. She couldn’t afford to run. But she wouldn’t give this man her heart, her time, or the time of day!
Not again.
Never again.