Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Eliza was gaping. She never gaped.
“Miss Elizabeth?” the lordling beside her asked, drawing her attention to the game.
She forced her mouth shut as she straightened, then set her king down with a distracted glance at the others. Hughes groaned and tossed back the dregs of his scotch.
Eliza hardly noted him. Her attention was fixed on her other side, where Sinclair leaned in his chair—a little bemused, with a glass of scotch tucked between his thumb and forefinger. His hand spanned the glass. She’d never particularly noticed a man’s hands before, but his were appealingly large.
“Lord Sinclair,” she croaked in greeting. Her tongue darted out to wet suddenly dry lips, which proved to be a mistake. His dark gaze darted down to her lips before catching her eyes again. He was even more handsome with the sparse club lighting.
“It seems I had no idea just who I was dancing with.” His voice was low, intimate.
“Asked around, did you?”
“Did you enjoy laughing at me?” There was no bite in his tone.
“Only a little.”
“Interesting. I quite enjoyed being the subject of your amusement.”
“So you came to provide me with more opportunities for merriment?”
“I had not thought to find you, actually. I intended to approach your father with an… explanation.”
“Of your sinful nature?”
Sinclair’s gaze dropped to her lips again before traveling lower, tracing the line of her throat. Skimming even lower, he lingered on the curve of her bosom before meeting her gaze once more. His admiration was blatant—so unfamiliar it set her heart racing.
“‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’”
“Oi, are you playing another round?” Hughes asked, claiming her attention again, his newly refilled glass sloshing.
Bash hovered beside Sophie with a pinched expression across his dark brow.
Eliza placed her ante on marriage and drew a card without commentary, a queen.
“And you? This table is for playing, not wooing,” Hughes directed at Sinclair.
“Do you find the two activities to be mutually exclusive?” the latter asked, drawing his card. Eliza was surprised to find that he seemed familiar with the game.
“I— No. I—” Hughes stammered as the deck passed to Sophie.
She blinked, apparently struggling to comprehend the sight of Eliza with Sinclair. Eliza couldn’t recall the last time Sophie had been quiet for as many consecutive minutes.
“Because I, for one, do not. What are the stakes?” Sinclair finished.
“Five shillings to start,” Sophie supplied. Sinclair reached into a pocket and pulled out a handful of coins, then placed them on his ante—king.
“Do you know how to play poque?” Eliza asked him.
“I’ve played a time or two.”
The deck passed to Eliza a second time, and she pulled out an ace.
The others passed her their cards, and she cut the deck before shuffling confidently.
Hughes cut the deck again, muttering about cheating.
The other man still playing, Jennings, was a regular.
Eliza suspected he stayed for the amusement of watching Hughes flounder.
She dealt five cards to each of the players with ease and the next for trump.
Even as she feigned nonchalance, Sinclair’s presence at her side was a distraction of the highest order.
Instead of proper posture and attention devoted to his cards, he perched diagonally across the chair.
His legs bracketed her chair—not touching, but close enough to feel.
Her awareness was overwhelming and made it practically impossible to concentrate on anything, save him.
The spicy, woody scent of him, the heat of his frame, the intensity of his gaze.
“Thank you for the flowers,” she whispered without turning—the sight of him would be the end of her tenuous grasp on sanity. “They’re lovely.”
“I’m glad they pleased you.”
“They did, though they were an entirely proper gift. I thought you were to resort to impropriety.”
“Did you wish for me to resort to impropriety?”
Eliza could not have stopped her gaze from snapping to his for the world. He was intensity and levity wrapped in an impossibly attractive package. His eyes caressed her, a heady sensation, even as the grin tugged at the corners of his lips.
She forced her attention back to the game. And then she felt it. His knee brushed hers beneath the table. Her head whipped around to his on a gasp.
Sinclair’s chuckle burned warm in her chest like a fine scotch. “How are you winning so handily? You’re so expressive.”
“Lizzie?” Sophie interjected, a worried note in her voice.
Bash’s “Miss Lizzie?” poured out simultaneously.
Sinclair pulled his knee back, and Eliza gave Bash a reassuring head shake even as she noted the chill of Sinclair’s absence.
“You’d best be sitting proper, Sinclair,” Bash said.
The lord said nothing. Instead, he turned to face forward and displayed his run.
Eliza gave no reaction, waiting until the others had shown their cards before flipping her trump run.
Sinclair reached across the table and passed her the counters she was due with a crooked grin as the game moved into the next stage.
Sophie shifted in her seat in excitement and knocked. Jennings, likely sensing blood in the water, passed that round. Hughes, who was incapable of passing if he had the means, knocked as well. Eliza and Sinclair both knocked.
“Ah, I see,” he murmured as Sophie raised the stakes. “You’re only responsive for me.”
Eliza didn’t understand what he meant by the comment, but the rumble of his voice, the fire underlying his gaze, sent a shiver dancing down her spine. She was certain his comment wasn’t proper and an answering flush rose across her cheeks.
“You should ask Bash about the last man to speak inappropriately to Sophie.”
“Another relative?”
Eliza tipped her head toward the enforcer still hovering with a perturbed crease across his brow.
“Him?” Sinclair scoffed.
She understood the instinct. Sinclair was taller than Bash by an inch and wider by several more. But the dunner was not to be underestimated.
“Lord Pritzker, do you know him?” she asked.
“Barely.”
Eliza only raised a brow in Sinclair’s direction.
Sinclair’s own brows shot to his hairline. “No,” he said, likely recalling the strained, musical note that rasped through the man’s windpipe with every breath. He developed it mysteriously last year—or so the story goes.
“Huh,” he mused, raising the stakes a third time. “Oh well, I’ve taken a punch or two for a good cause. I can think of no better.”
Sophie stayed, and Eliza chose not to raise another time.
Sinclair called it.
“No better cause? Than what? Flirting with me?”
He hummed and flipped his cards over after Eliza’s, his expression revealing nothing of disappointment when he lost the round to her again as they moved on to the final round.
“Giving you cause to respond to me.”
Eliza rolled her eyes before setting her six down with an expectant gaze at him.
This round moved too rapidly for conversation.
Sinclair followed with a seven and Sophie with the eight.
Hughes had no nine and cursed. The trick went to Sophie and she set down a three.
Eliza won the next trick and Sinclair the following when Sophie could not produce a card.
Finally, Eliza was down to her last card, and Sinclair was down to two.
A tension had settled in her lower back—Eliza rarely cared about the results at the gaming table, but tonight…
When he set down a jack, she couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. She was certain Sophie had no face cards, and Hughes had only another jack. Her suspicions proved correct as each was passed over.
The grin that bloomed across her face was self-satisfied.
Sinclair reached out, pushing his single counter to her with a “Well played.”
Sophie passed over her three stakes without her usual commentary. Her expression was off, with none of her usual animation.
Jennings handed his over and abandoned the table with some comment about another drink.
When at last Eliza turned to Hughes, she noted his sweaty brow and sallow complexion.
“Are you well, sir?”
“Well? Well?” A ruddy, splotchy flush rushed to his cheeks, the skin by his collar an unpleasant peppered, purple shade.
“Which word was confusing?” Sinclair asked with a sarcastic note in his voice.
Eliza spun in her seat to deliver a warning glare before facing Hughes again.
The man shot to his feet, throwing his cards across the table. “These chits’ve been cheatin’ me all night. And now you’re helpin’ ’em. They’re whores and you’re a lobcock!”
“I assure you, I’m anything but flaccid.”
Eliza choked and whirled around at him once again. “I beg your pardon?”
“It’s a compliment—”
“Where’re you hiding ’em?” Hughes interrupted.
“My lord, calm yourself,” Bash ordered from where he’d stepped between Sophie and the drunkard.
“Hiding what?” Eliza asked.
Hughes’s hand clamped around her wrist and yanked. “The cards! You daft cunt! Te—”
The smack of Sinclair’s chair hitting the floor shocked the man into silence. Quicker than Eliza could comprehend, Sinclair was between her and Hughes, and her wrist was free. He shoved the foxed lord back, and Bash used the opportunity to catch the man by the shoulders and restrain him.
“What the hell is going on?” her father’s familiar voice rained down from upstairs.
“They’re cheatin’ me! And now they’re assaultin’ me! What kind of establishment allows whores to play?”
Without warning, Sinclair’s fist found the man’s stomach. Eliza couldn’t identify his tell, but Bash had thrust the man out to meet the punch.
Hughes collapsed to his knees as Bash dropped his hold. The man cradled his stomach with a pathetic whimper.
Papa was down the stairs by the time Eliza fully comprehended the scene in front of her. He grabbed both of his daughters, inspecting each for injuries. Once he was satisfied, he rounded on Bash.
“Where the hell were you?”
“He was right here, Papa. We were perfectly safe,” Sophie interjected.
He didn’t spare her a glance, still glaring at Bash. “If you cannot perform the primary function of your job, you’ll not have it. Go review a ledger or something. Get out of my sight.”
“But, Papa—”
“No, Sophie,” he snapped.
Bash swallowed, loud in the quiet club before nodding. Eliza offered him a sympathetic look as she mouthed, sorry.
On the floor, Hughes groaned as he struggled to roll to his knees, dry heaving all the while. Sinclair planted a boot on him. “Stay down.”
“And who the devil are you?”
“Benedict, Lord Sinclair,” he said, thrusting his hand out.
Eliza’s father eyed it with a raised brow. “And the man groaning on my carpet?”
Rebuffed, Sinclair retracted his hand, using it to brush through his waves—not one of which was out of place.
“He touched your daughter.”
Her father was unimpressed; instead, he narrowed his eyes. “Why was he so close that he could touch my daughter?”
“Why was he overserved in your club?”
“That is a question I mean to get to the bottom of—”
“It was m—” Sophie began.
“Sophia!”
“The why of it hardly matters. As you can see, she is unharmed. And he’ll not forget himself again.”
Hughes retched pathetically in agreement.
“Is he right, Lizzie? You’re unharmed?”
“I’m perfectly well, Papa.”
“And this is the man responsible for all the fuss?”
“Yes,” she said softly, not sparing a glance for Sinclair—still, she could feel his smug smirk directed at her back.
“You’ve never set foot in my club before. Why now?”
“I wanted to introduce myself.”
“And you thought this was the best method?” Papa asked.
“Over allowing him to touch Miss Eliza with cruelty? Yes, I rather did. I’ll not apologize for it.” Eliza’s heart fluttered at the matter-of-fact tone. Sophie was right; neither of them had been in real danger with Bash there. But Sinclair… He’d taken action before she had time to gasp.
“It wasn’t my original intention, if that matters,” Sinclair said.
“Sebastian!” Papa called. The man appeared from whatever corner he’d found to hide in. “Take Sinclair to my office and ask Augie if he can escort the girls home.”
“I can take th—” Bash offered, as he had often before.
“Absolutely not. Augie. If he cannot, then they will wait in his office until I finish with Mr. Sinclair.”
“Lord—” Eliza corrected, unthinkingly.
“He could be the bloody king and I wouldn’t give a damn.”
Bash merely nodded before mounting the stairs, not turning to see if Sinclair followed. He did, but not without catching Eliza’s eye. The look he gave her was significant, but she couldn’t interpret it.
“When you’ve finished, you can dispose of this one in the alley,” Papa called after Bash.
“Yes, sir,” he called back from the balcony.
Sinclair gave one last look at the scene below, his gaze seeming to linger on Eliza, before he disappeared behind her father’s office door, taking all the air with him.