Chapter 11 #3
Hart eyed her, wondering, as ever, what it was she hid behind those dark, dark eyes. Piquet was a game for sharp minds, one that separated clever players from merely lucky ones. It rewarded those who could read people, who could deceive and misdirect.
Oh, yes. He could see why she had chosen it.
The little minx.
Hart sorted the cards, discarding those between two and six and setting them to one side. Taking up the remaining deck, he sat back, stretching out his legs and shuffling lazily. “Know how to play, do you?”
“I believe I remember how,” she replied with a little frown. “But you may need to refresh my memory.”
Hart narrowed his eyes at. He’d had cause recently to reevaluate any foolish ideas about women and cards and the notion that they were not capable of being as ruthless as any man. He did not buy her innocent act.
“What are we playing for?” he asked, aware his heart was beating too fast.
She considered, though he felt sure she already knew what she would say. “If I win, you’ll escort us to the heath and then go away.”
He sat up in alarm. “Are you mad? What if those fellows turn up?” he exclaimed, shaking his head and trying his damndest not to notice the strange ache that had begun in his heart. She wanted him gone. Not that he was surprised. It had been inevitable. Plague take the girl, what was she hiding?
“I have a pistol, and it’ll be a deal harder to sneak up on us in broad daylight on the heath. Anyway, those are my terms. Are you afraid of losing then?” she asked him with a mocking smile.
Hart swallowed a groan of frustration, considering her as he shuffled. Well, if she could be obvious, so could he.
“Very well, I agree.” After all, if she could not see him, she need not know he had not kept strictly to their agreement. “And if I win, you’ll kiss me, and not just a peck on the cheek, either.”
The words lingered in the air between them, but she didn’t so much as bad an eyelid, though a touch of delicate pink crested her high cheekbones.
“Naturally,” she said, as if it meant nothing.
Hart swallowed a growl of irritation and dealt the cards with practiced ease, twelve cards each. The remainder formed the talon, eight cards waiting in the middle.
Miss Baxter studied her cards with a small frown pinched between her dark eyebrows.
She looked for all the world like a sweet little debutante, out of her depth and trying desperately to appear worldly.
Then she looked up, and he saw the devil dancing there.
It called to him, beckoning the devil that lived in his own heart. Oh, she was trouble.
Hart watched her over the rim of his glass. “You have the look of someone planning on committing a crime.”
Her beautiful mouth quirked. “If crime it is to rob you blind, then I suppose I might at that.”
Hart returned his attention to the cards, which was harder than he liked to admit. He was the younger hand, she was the elder. Advantage hers, first choice, first discard—first chance to lie through her teeth, he thought, smiling to himself.
Miss Baxter laid her unwanted cards down.
Hart regarded them, his eyes flicking to hers. “Bold.”
“Oh, no. Merely efficient,” she replied, batting her eyelashes at him.
She drew replacements from the talon, her delicate fingers light upon the cards. For a moment Hart imagined those fine, pale hands gliding over his back, and the fire in the hearth seemed to crackle beneath his skin, setting him alight.
Miss Baxter looked up. She did not smile. He could not read her at all, yet he had the disquieting notion she could read him like a book, that words like longing and need and please were written over his face in great, bold letters.
She lifted one elegant eyebrow and Hart reached for his cards, shaken. Get a grip, he told himself severely, but he could feel her studying him, watching him so closely she might count each breath he took. All at once Hart felt he was the debutant, gauche and falling into deep water.
He discarded his cards slower than he meant to, second guessing himself once they were gone. He told himself he was tired. All that ale earlier, and the long ride in the rain. But he didn’t feel the least bit tired, energy surging under his skin and demanding an outlet.
When the exchanging was done, Miss Baxter laid her cards against her bodice, gazing at him expectantly.
“Declaration,” Hart said, clearing his throat as the word came out huskier than he’d meant it. “Point first.”
Miss Baxter inclined her head. “Your point, Mr Cleaver?”
Hart announced his best suit. She didn’t so much as glance at her cards, but replied at once, naming hers.
Hart studied her, a sudden sense of déjà vu making him uneasy. “Sequence?” he demanded.
To his alarm, Miss Baxter declared a run—three, then four, then a longer one that made his eyebrows climb in disbelief. She couldn’t seriously expect him to swallow that?
“You’re inventing,” he accused.
She returned a far too innocent smile. “Am I?”
“Show.”
She laid each card with a precise little snap against the tabletop that seemed to reverberate through him.
He gaped. “Well,” he said, trying to find something sensible to say. “That’s… impressive.”
Miss Baxter did not bat an eyelid.
“Set?” he asked, before announcing his. Good, but hardly spectacular.
He watched her, wondering how it was he felt so at sea with a girl who was barely out of the schoolroom—certainly compared to him and his years of carousing. Not to mention the bloody war. What was happening here?
She named hers, and Hart laughed. What else could he do?
“You think it funny that I won?” There was an edge to her voice, a challenging note that did not escape him.
He shook his head, rueful now. “No. I think it funny that you demolished me.”
Her gaze held his, the devil he’d seen flickering there bright with triumph. “I should get used to it if I were you.”
His heart gave an erratic thud in his chest, and the urge to throw the cards aside and drag her into his arms and do something most inadvisable, was hard to resist.
Clearing his throat, he dragged his mind—what remained of that sorry article—back to the game.
“To the play, then. Tricks.”
Miss Baxter led. A small card. Nothing dramatic.
Hart followed suit and won the trick. “Ha!” he exclaimed, relief flooding him despite telling himself it was ridiculous to get so het up over a stupid card game. They weren’t even playing for money. But then he wanted that kiss more than anything else he could name at present.
Miss Baxter said nothing, merely took the next card, and the next trick, and the one after.
The nagging suspicion that she had let him win the first trick was hard to swallow, but he was not dim enough to ignore what was right in front of him.
He was good at cards and won far more often than he lost, but Miss Baxter was something else.
It was like she could see into his brain, like she could see everything.
He forgot the cards then, watching her instead.
“Who taught you to play?”
Miss Baxter paused, a card suspended in mid-air for a moment before she laid it down. Hart played and muttered a curse. She’d won the next trick, devil take the girl.
“I used to play with my grandfather.”
“The one who was sweet on a girl who rode the high toby,” he remarked, considering this. No proper lady—at least not one as young and apparently innocent as she was — ought to play like this. What kind of man had her grandfather been?
Miss Baxter did not reply, though amusement flickered in her eyes as she played again. Another small card.
Hart took it and immediately realised he’d walked into a trap.
Her lips curved.
“Oh,” he said, and laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. “You wicked little—”
“I hope you are not a bad loser, Mr Cleaver,” she said, sitting back and regarding him from under her lashes.
“Never,” he murmured, unable to look away.
A pink tinge bloomed over her pearly skin, and she turned her attention back to her cards. All business.
“Your lead,” she said briskly. She was all hard edges, and he knew then that she would crucify him rather than let him win that kiss.
Hart studied her, aware of something shifting in his chest, something new and… and rather inconvenient. He put his cards down with a soft laugh. Well, he’d wanted to know if a woman could like him, trust him for who he was, and now he had his answer.
“I think you’ve proved your point,” he said with a smile, though he did not feel like smiling.
Not even a little. He’d thought they’d got to know each other, a bit at least, that she’d like him, but this well-crafted scene rather suggested otherwise.
“I know a rout when I see one. You are an accomplished player, Miss Baxter, and one with powerful motivation, it appears. You want me gone. Don’t worry.
I won’t breathe down your neck whenever you do what it is you need to do, and I’ll see you safe wherever you are going, just to be certain those villains are not still after you, and then we’ll go our separate ways. ”
She stared at him, a mistrustful glint in her eyes. “Just like that?”
He shrugged, trying to read her, to see past the mask that seemed suddenly impenetrable. Wouldn’t she protest, just a little—tell him she’d miss him? “That’s what you want, isn’t it?” Hart held her gaze, willing her to admit that it wasn’t, not in the least, but she only shrugged.
“Certainly.”
He nodded, gathering up the cards and returning them to his pocket.
“I’ll see you to your room,” he said, for he was a gentleman first, last, and always, and would never let a woman wander about a public hostelry alone.
So, he opened the door for her and followed her up the stairs, too depressed to even enjoy the way her bottom swayed as she climbed. When they reached her door, she looked up at him, her expression somewhat uncertain as she turned to bid him goodnight.
But Hart did not puzzle over it. His mind was in enough turmoil as it was.
Everything was a muddle all at once, and he did not know what to do about it, about her.
Not being the kind of fellow to make a cake of himself over a woman, he should know it was best to accept the situation.
Just forget it, forget her, and—and do what, he didn’t know.
He couldn’t think. He only knew he did not want to let her go, but he could not force her to let him stay, not if she didn’t want him to.
“Good night, then,” he said, too distracted to say more, to notice whether she opened the door as he walked away, back to his own room.