Chapter Two
I f Felix had known he’d be asked to play a child’s game to win a wife, he would not have answered the black widow’s summons so quickly.
“Do not look so sulky, Lord Foxton,” the dame herself said from a chair in the corner. “’Twill not win you a wife. Only cunning will do that.” With her black clothing and veil, she seemed part of the shadows.
Yes, cunning. This sort of game required all of one’s wits.
That was the very reason he liked the Lyon’s Den.
Its games were challenging, unlike in other places where the usual games had become a bit boring.
This game… annoyingly childish, yes, but still…
a battle of wits. All to win a wife he’d never met.
Fascinating . Risky because who the hell knew who she was, what she’d look like, how she’d behave.
She would not be terribly offensive. The widow would not have that.
The women she helped wed possessed… quirks…
but they were not fools. Still, the allure of the unknown made the game irresistible.
Thank God he’d not indulged in a drink before coming.
Life buzzed through him more potent than a dram of whisky would have.
So too did memory. He’d probably forgotten more riddles than he knew, and he knew them all. Thanks to Caro.
“What are the rules?” Felix asked.
“Five riddles,” the dealer said, his voice odd, low yet… high at the same time. “The man to answer the most riddles correctly wins.”
“And what if there is a tie?” Lord Quinleet asked. The young fellow was just out of university and eager to prove himself a man.
The dealer kept his gaze on the table, hat brim low. What Felix could see of the man’s face above his lips was masked. “If there is a tie, then I offer another riddle, to be answered only by the two gentlemen who have tied. The winner gets a wife. Everyone else loses a house.”
“And before you ask,” Mrs. Dove-Lyon said, her voice sharp as if no veil could muffle the power of her law in this place, “I am prepared for the final two to tie more than once. I am always prepared for any eventuality.”
“I do not expect anyone to tie with me,” Felix said.
“Such hubris,” the dealer muttered. That voice. High and low. Confused. Grating.
The gentleman to Felix’s left, the Earl of Beckwith, tugged off his gloves, cracked his neck left then right. “I believe you’ll be trying to tie with me , Fox.”
Felix raised a brow, offered a challenge.
“Didn’t realize you were in the market for a wife,” Beckwith grumbled.
“It’s time.” More accurately, Felix had run out of time. Grandfather had asked him to marry before he died, and he swore he was knocking on death’s door. That, probably, a bold lie, but Felix couldn’t deny the only person alive whom he loved.
No chance of him courting a woman, though. Too much trouble. Much better to win one. No flirtation required, no pretending. Simply a recognition of marriage as a transaction. No need, even, to spend time choosing a lady.
And if he lost… no loss really. The Black Widow could have Hawthorne House. He’d only planned to let it rot.
“Time to cut the chatter, gents,” the dealer said. “Are you ready for the first riddle?”
Felix’s three competitors narrowed their eyes in concentration on the squares of paper placed before each of them, picking up their stubby pencils. They nodded.
The dealer’s attention seemed alive and crackling on Felix for a moment. Apparently, the man waited for some indication from Felix.
Leaning back in his chair, Felix stretched his hand lazily on the table, flicked his fingers toward the dealer. Yes, ready.
The dealer answered by pulling a bit of paper from his jacket pocket and unfolding it. He cleared his throat, and said, “At night I timely go to rest, and early with the sun appear. When mounted high, I am at the best. ’Tis my delight to please the ear. What am I?”
Beckwith’s brows shot together. The other two gentlemen collapsed against the back of their chairs with groans.
Felix almost laughed.
He knew the answer. Didn’t even need to think.
He’d watch the others squirm for a moment before writing it down.
Surely they would figure it out, too. The notorious Black Widow of Whitehall would not have invited them were they lacking in wits.
She’d want a good game. And fools answering riddles would not offer that.
Beckwith scribbled, the other two leaned low over their papers, and the dealer watched them all—presumably—from beneath the brim of his too-large hat.
Curious man. He wore that hat so low over his face, nothing showed but the bottom of a black domino, a tipped-up nose, and red lips.
Curious lips. Not the sort that usually occupied a man’s face. Full and as curvaceous as a woman’s figure.
Felix grunted away the observation, picked up his own pencil, and scrawled the words half-heartedly across the page: 1) A lark . He flipped the paper over, the better to keep his answers from prying eyes.
The answer released a memory. Sitting in the dirt with a little girl, his spindly boy’s legs rubbing against the edges of her summer-stained skirts. I bet you can’t guess this one, Felix. He hadn’t guessed it. But he’d kept it. Like a raven keeps a shiny thing. A treasure.
When everyone had done the same, the dealer’s gaze dropped to his own paper once more, and he said, “Twenty-four I do contain. They change to thousands in the main. Fair ladies court me, and dispute by me, although myself am mute. What am I?”
Felix added his second answer—the alphabet—before flipping it over once more, seeing on the empty back another memory—the two of them under the piano one candle-lit evening, listening to the adults speak of things they couldn’t understand yet, and playing the riddle game she adored.
This one is easy, Felix. It had not been. He’d groused about it.
Feeling the memory curve his lips, Felix’s gaze floated up. He caught sight of the dealer. That man stared at him, the visible curves of his cheeks and jaws… were they paler than before?
Why were his lips so damn familiar?
The other men labored over their answers, and Beckwith wrote his down last, shaking his head as he did so. And much the same occurred through the next two riddles.
With only one riddle remaining, Felix bristled with confidence. Who knew acquiring a wife would be so easy? Half an hour’s idle pursuit would see him engaged to be wed.
“You seem happy with the riddles so far,” Beckwith said before taking a long draw of his drink.
“They are old friends of mine.” Felix finally allowed himself a sip of the fine wine each player had been gifted upon sitting.
The sound of crumpling paper shot through the room like a log collapsing in a fire.
The dealer’s hand had become a fist. When he realized everyone looked at him, he bowed his head even more.
“Pardon me.” The voice quieter, softer. Then he cleared his throat and smoothed out the paper on the table. “Shall I read the final riddle?”
“Are you well, Mr. Maxwell?” the Black Widow inquired.
The dealer raised a hand, waved away Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s concern.
“Of course.” He pulled up tall, which was not tall at all.
“Ears open, gents. The final riddle is this. There is a thing both long and stiff, and at the end there is a cliff. Of moisture from it doth flow, and makes fair lassies pleasant grow. What am I?”
Beckwith barked out a laugh. “Long, stiff, pleasing the lassies. How naughty of you, Mrs. Dove-Lyon.” He slashed an answer onto his paper then folded it. The other two gentlemen followed suit.
“Not my riddle.” The widow chuckled, the trajectory of her hidden gaze on the dealer. “Though someone is certainly naughty.”
The dealer watched them with a faint curve of his red lips.
The halting chords of a guitar floated up from somewhere, riding the faint and raucous rumble drifting up from the main gambling room.
Felix tapped one fingernail on the polished tabletop, considering.
This riddle was new to him, and it seemed to have been composed to be purposefully provocative.
If Caro had ever heard it, she’d not sense its double meaning.
Pampered, protected, innocent Caroline. Nothing like him .
It had been years since she’d annoyed him with her riddles, months since he’d last seen her.
He barely thought of her at all anymore.
But the riddles had brought her roaring back to life. He shifted, uneasy.
He must focus on the answer, must figure out which one to give. There was the answer the other men were so confident of, the one that appealed to their prurient minds. And there was the other one—the innocent one that would tumble from Caro’s red lips.
The dealer’s lips were red, and they’d shaped the riddle with glee, lingering over words like long , moisture , and lassies .
Back to Caro, then. Damn riddles. Of course that’d tug her into his mind, knocking down everything else. He rubbed his forehead above his brows and took another sip of wine before writing down his answer. “Done.”
“Last to finish, Lord Foxton,” the dealer said. Those lips… they were not… the lips of a man.
Bloody hell. What an odd thought. But once he’d had it, he couldn’t shake it away.
They were not the lips of a man. And more than that, those cheeks had never seen a razor, had never known the need for one.
The delicate curve of that jaw—hardly the hard-boned promise of manhood found in boyish years.
He couldn’t unsee it now—rosy cheeks and long-lashed eyes.
The whole of the dealer’s face surrounding that mouth . Which meant…
“Mrs. Dove-Lyon,” Felix said, relaxing into the back of his chair and stretching out a leg beneath the table, “when will you introduce the bride?” He knew only that she was eight and twenty years of age, attractive, of good social standing, and wealthy.