Chapter 45
Chapter Forty-Five
It was positively lycanthropic the way Blackwood shifted from man to beast in the space of a single breath. His eyes brightened, dancing in the firelight. His grin slipped from cruel and mocking to ravenous. He straightened to his full height, towering over her.
“By all means,” he said, unable or uninterested in hiding the giddy undertone in that statement. “Lady’s choice.”
She allowed herself only the briefest second to worry that she’d made a very poor choice before packing it away.
That reaction was beneficial, no matter how frightening.
He wasn’t subtle at all. He lost his head, his composure at the gaming table.
She could read his every thought in his body.
And she was a Wayland—reading the unspoken language of a man’s face and frame was the family business.
“écarté?” she proposed. The game involved more skill than others that required luck to be on her side.
His brow raised at her choice, but he made no comment as he gestured toward the table. She settled herself primly, as though she were not filthy, crumpled, and stinking of a dying man.
He joined her and set the candelabra on a tarnished, felt-bottom silver tray resting on the table for that purpose. With ceremony, he pulled the deck out of a drawer.
“Stakes?” he asked.
“It hardly matters. You know I’ve nothing on my person. Add or subtract whatever you’d like from my father’s debts.”
“An even grand, then.”
Eliza offered him a wide-eyed expression of astonishment before hiding it with an affected, “Very well.”
He held out the deck for her to cut before cutting it again himself. She drew an eight to his jack. Blackwood then handed over the deck without protest.
Her shuffle was effective but not showy—he needed to think her overconfident. Because, like the men she had played against a hundred times before, he was going to underestimate her.
It was clear in his eyes—he thought the effort was amusing, practically adorable. To him, she was a child presenting their very first drawing to their parents for praise. A child he intended to tear to pieces.
She dealt them five cards each before flipping over the trump, hearts.
“Your father cheated me, you know. But you’re not capable of such things, are you, Miss Wayland?” he asked, baiting her. He wanted to talk about her father, wanted her to defend him.
“I wouldn’t know how,” she said.
He glanced at his cards, gaze snapping back to hers before looking down again. His lips pressed together, the tiniest gesture, less than half a second. Eliza suspected he was dissatisfied with his hand.
“Discard three,” he said, then pushed three cards across the table.
“Go ahead.” She forewent the traditional response. He drew three from the stack. As he looked at them, his lip twitched at the corner, pleased.
Eliza, uninterested in her own cards at the moment, smiled at her hand before grabbing two at random. “Discard two?” she asked, studying him.
“Accepted.” A hint of predatory gleam filled his eyes. He thought her satisfied with the hand.
She set the new cards aside and drew two more. “Do you wish to discard?”
“No, I declare king,” he said before the first trick.
She nodded, certain now that he would win this hand as intended. That was the challenge of intentionally losing at écarté—the drawing and refusal were the only times when one could do the job credibly.
They played the tricks, and Eliza lost three of the five, leaving him at two points to her nil.
His lip twitch was consistent when he was pleased and the lip press when he was unhappy.
Blackwood also raised a brow at certain moments, though it was intentional and she hadn’t yet tied that to a state of mind.
“Another hand?” he asked.
“Double or nothing?”
He nodded, then took the deck from her and shuffled. He snapped the cards in that showboat manner her father pressed his staff to use at the club.
She risked a brief glance at her cards while waiting for his lip twitch. There it was, at the corner of his mouth—a good hand. She plucked two cards from the middle and settled them to the outside of her hand.
“Discard two?” she asked.
“Rejected.”
They played the round, and Eliza forced a displeased pout onto her lips when she lost. This was the sort of man who would expect a lady to both lose and sulk about it.
“Another,” she demanded, affecting the same tone that men like Hughes used when they were certain they could turn their luck around.
“Very well,” he said, that corner of his lip ticking up once more. It was time for her to win the next hand.
He passed her the deck before leaning back in his seat. The chair croaked under his weight. “Tell me, Miss Wayland, which are you?”
“I beg your pardon?” she asked, though she suspected she took his meaning.
“Which daughter are you? I’ll need to pay the men double if you’re the one so plain my son lost the will to sin.”
“Why should it matter?” She dealt the cards and turned over the trump.
In a flash, Blackwood’s lips pressed together and released.
“My son has been… disobedient of late. I’ve already utilized one correction method, of course.
” His gaze darted behind her, and there was no question in her mind that those cool eyes were caressing the stained hide of his whip.
“But my son has always required sufficient inducement to learn his lessons.” The cards captured his attention once more. “I’ll discard three.”
“I refuse the exchange. And I have the king of trumps.” She fought to keep a smile from her lips.
Blackwood’s jaw worked beneath closed lips, but he said nothing. The curtain behind him fluttered. While she knew it was from the draft out of the broken window, it felt like evidence of his irritation.
He placed his jack, and she snapped her queen beside it. She dragged both cards to her side of the table.
“I find myself a little flummoxed,” she said in a conversational tone. “If I am so repulsive as to prevent a man from achieving a cockstand, why would my presence here be a punishment for your son?”
Another trick, another win for Eliza. “Surely there is nothing you could do to me that would encourage your son to behave in one way or another.”
He gritted his teeth but won the next trick, though she won the fourth and fifth.
“Three points to me, how lucky.” She waited for his flummoxed gaze to lift from the table and meet hers. Once she had captured the attention of those eyes, she raised a single brow in challenge.
“Another,” he demanded. She would have chuckled at the mimicry of her earlier order, but there was nothing save sincere indignation in his tone.
For the first time since she’d felt the familiar weight of the cards in her hands, Eliza’s fear rose again.
Blackwood’s tolerance for losing was much lower than what she was used to.
Whether it was losing at all, losing to a woman, or losing to a Wayland, she couldn’t be certain. She’d grown too confident too quickly.
Unfortunately, when she looked at her hand, her stomach dropped. Her lowest card was the jack in the trump suit. It was clear from Blackwood’s expression and general demeanor—he would deny her request to exchange—if only on principle.
She took a deep breath, the hairpin pinching into her skin like a talisman.
“Exchange one,” she said. It was risky. She could tell he wasn’t happy with his hand by the set of his mouth.
In denying her, he denied himself the opportunity to draw for a better hand.
She wanted to exchange all five, desperate for a worse hand to calm him.
But if he denied her, as she suspected he would, she would be forced to reveal her cards with each trick—forced to out herself as throwing the round.
“I refuse,” he said.
Eliza steeled herself. She had counted on more rounds before his rage reached a fevered pitch—had intended to occupy his time for several hours, winning just often enough to keep him invested. But it seemed even one win was too many.
“My son has a soft, weak heart. However little he wants you, he’ll suffer knowing you’re paying for his sins.” Eliza’s heart panged for the horrors Benedict had suffered, even as it trilled with terrified recognition of her own tenuous situation.
Blackwood nodded at her to play her trick. She won the first and the second before she braved a glance at him. His pale skin had an angry red tinge to it now. The third and fourth she won as well.
Her heart hammered as she set down the final card, her jack of spades, with a silent prayer that he had a king of spades in his hand and had forgotten to announce it in his fury.
When he set down the king of hearts, tears pricked her eyes. A vole. She blinked back the moisture before meeting his gaze.
“How are you doing it?” he demanded. “How are you cheating?”
“I’m not,” she insisted, hating the way her voice had gone small and high.
“You’re exactly like your father. A filthy cheat!”
“I haven’t cheated. My father never cheated you either!”
He shot up, knocking the table between them to one side with a dull thunk and clatter. Eliza recoiled and her chair landed with a thud on the floor. She scrambled back, but her foot caught in the rungs and sent her toppling to land in a heap beside it.
“You have—you have and I know it, you deceitful bitch!” In a single step, Blackwood advanced. Looming over her, he snatched her arm in a viscous grip and hauled her to her feet before whirling her around.
“You’ll taste the sting of my whip and beg to tell me how you cheated before I’ve finished.” He groped behind him blindly, feeling for the wall and the promised retribution.
Eliza gasped at the strength of his hold as she pried at his digits with her own.
The hairpin—her precious salvation—poked at her belly in reminder.
Abandoning his fumbling for the lash, Blackwood raised his other hand and wrapped gnarled fingers around her neck.
She spat in his face.
He recoiled, offering her the single second she needed to draw the pin-knife from its busk sheath.
By the time he’d wiped the spittle from his eyelid and turned his attention back to her, she had the pin clasped in her fist. Eliza slashed wildly, frantically, at his face.
Blackwood reared back, grasping his cheek. His foot caught on the fallen chair, sending him careening backward. He landed with a painful snapping sound.
That was the moment Eliza noticed the searing, agonizing heat.
Fire.
The flames of hell gorged on the curtain beside her, licking at the walls and floor. Thick, noxious smoke rose in vile plumes to pool on the ceiling. Before her, in front of the door, Blackwood lumbered to his feet, clutching his wrist to his chest.
The blaze burned hotter, surrounding her with each agonizing breath—every heaving gasp drew more caustic soot into her lungs. Her chest protested, an excruciating, heaving cough racking her as the world around her started to dim.
And then—the most beautiful sight in the entire world appeared behind Blackwood’s staggering frame—Benedict.