Chapter 2 #2
Sir Felix wouldn’t be in this room, anyway.
As the blonde was led onto the dancing floor, her curls bouncing with delight—other parts of her, too—Rhys wove his way through the crowd and into the Grand Salon that for this night was the gaming room.
Every card game one could think of was being played beneath its sky-blue domed ceiling—Piquet… Whist…Faro…Commerce…Vingt-et-Un…Loo.
At a corner table, Rhys spied a familiar shiny patch of bald head.
Sir Felix Mortimer.
Anticipation flared through him.
There, at that table, sat his opportunity to make things right for the first time in his adult life.
In an attempt to make his presence as unobtrusive as possible—a challenge given his height of six feet and two inches in his bare feet—Rhys moved along the wall until he stood only a few yards from Sir Felix’s table.
He saw with no small amount of mean satisfaction that this last year hadn’t treated Sir Felix well.
Sure, he was still in possession of that specific public-school handsomeness that had been bred into him by noble forebears.
But Sir Felix had picked up some premature lines on his forehead…
a subtle note of strain about his mouth and the corners of his eyes.
One thing was the same, however.
Sir Felix remained the smug, smarmy cheat Rhys remembered from a year ago.
And there came another pulse of that fury that had his hands curling into fists.
He experienced a moment’s pause. What was his plan, anyway? To watch and catch Sir Felix out for a card cheat for all to hear and witness?
For here was the thing: as far as Rhys had been able to see over the last few tricks, Sir Felix had betrayed not a single tell.
Which allowed for a possibility Rhys didn’t much like.
Could it have been that Sir Felix had beaten him fair and square when he’d taken Papa’s signet ring off him a year ago?
The hand now over, and having passed the deck of cards to the player on his left to deal, Sir Felix’s gaze lifted and met Rhys’s. Those slitted blue depths held not the faintest whisper of surprise. This last year, he’d been expecting Rhys.
He lifted his hand and scratched his cheek with his pinky, the cabochon emerald flashing brilliant green in the chandelier light.
The rotter smirked—and Rhys knew.
A year ago, Sir Felix Mortimer had cheated.
And tonight Rhys would prove it—and get his father’s signet ring back.
“If it isn’t Lord Rhys Osborne behind that mask, I’ll eat my hat,” said Sir Felix to a few chuckles around the table. “It’s been—what?—a year since we last met?”
Rhys’s teeth wanted to grind together. He didn’t let them, as all eyes appeared riveted by the long-coming confrontation.
“I seem to remember you enjoy a bit of Loo,” continued the rotter to yet more chuckling. “Care to join us for a few hands?”
Rhys couldn’t say no.
And there were a few reasons why.
First, there was his reputation as a known wastrel and rake.
A wastrel and rake wouldn’t say no to a few hands of cards.
And second, if he said no, he would have to take himself elsewhere.
He wasn’t doing that.
Not without the ring.
So, he curved his mouth into the semblance of a rakish angle—an angle that felt creaky and decidedly out of practice—and took the empty seat to the right of Sir Felix. But as he lowered into the chair, something unexpected happened.
A few seats to the other side of Sir Felix, the vibrant blonde he’d noticed in the ballroom joined the table, her markers already out. She was the sort of woman one’s eyes had difficulty deciding where to look. A veritable buffet of a woman, the brighter light of the card room confirmed.
Rhys exhaled a rough breath and fixed his gaze directly in front of him.
He couldn’t allow himself to become distracted.
Sir Felix held no such reservations as he allowed his gaze to indulge in a thorough sweep of the blonde.
Rhys cleared his throat.
Sir Felix’s gaze shifted to meet Rhys’s without the faintest hint of abashment. He slid the deck of cards over. “Why don’t you deal first?”
Rhys grunted and accepted the deck. He didn’t want the first deal. He wanted Sir Felix to deal, so he could get on with exposing the man for the cheat he was and take the ring back.
While Rhys shuffled the cards, Sir Felix asked, “Three or five card Loo?”
“Three.”
Each of the six players seated at the table tossed three markers into the center pool.
“And shall we play unlimited?” A dare glittered in Sir Felix’s eyes.
Instinct had Rhys wanting to say no, but he couldn’t. Simply because the Rhys he’d been his entire adult life until a year ago would’ve said… “What’s the point of playing any other way?”
Limited Loo kept the pool fixed and the stakes low.
With unlimited Loo, however, the pool only increased and increased as looed players—those players who stayed in play and lost all three tricks in a hand—were required to match the pool as their pay-in for the next hand, causing the value of the pool to balloon into dangerously high stakes within a few hands.
Lords had lost everything from prized racehorses to unentailed country estates to their father’s emerald signet ring in the course of an hour of unlimited Loo.
Rhys dealt three cards to each player. As Sir Felix was seated to Rhys’s left, he led the first trick with an ace of diamonds, making diamonds the suit as the other players followed.
The blonde, Rhys noticed, played a queen of spades, which meant she had no diamonds in her hand.
As Rhys was the dealer, he was last to play his card—ten of diamonds.
Now, it was time to reveal the trump card.
As all the players except the blonde had followed suit, if the card was a diamond, club, or heart, Sir Felix would take the trick.
Rhys flipped the card.
Seven of spades.
Because she’d played the queen, the blonde took the trick.
A smile twitched about her lush lips that appeared tinted with a touch of rouge, and above her black silk mask, her eyebrows waggled with barely suppressed mischief.
At least someone was having a good time.
As the second trick played out, Rhys experienced déjà vu as he lost—again. Except it wasn’t the blonde who won this time, but some other chap. However, one dim flicker of light in the darkness was that Sir Felix hadn’t yet taken a trick, either—which meant he might start cheating.
On the third trick, however, Sir Felix remedied his losing situation and won—without cheating, as far as Rhys could tell.
Rhys and two others had looed the hand, which meant they each had to pay in the sum of the pool from the last hand, which the three winners were now splitting amongst themselves.
And like that, the stakes took on an altogether different timbre.
No longer was the game light and fun.
The game was now serious business.
Rhys saw that fact acknowledged within every pair of eyes at the table.
Well, everyone except the blonde, who didn’t appear to take anything seriously.
As Sir Felix was the player to Rhys’s left, it was now his deal. Rhys passed him the deck. If the rotter were going to cheat, this hand would be his best opportunity as dealer.
While Rhys watched Sir Felix shuffle the cards and cut sideways smirks his way and leers the blonde’s, a vision of the man Rhys had been a year ago came to him.
A man in his late twenties who was still living like the lordling he’d been in his early twenties.
What had been sowing his wild oats in those earlier years had transitioned into something less fun and less socially palatable.
At some point, without Rhys noticing, wild had tipped into wastrel.
That was the man who had sat across the table from Sir Felix a year ago.
A reckless waster…an easy target.
And that was the man Sir Felix thought he was sitting beside tonight.
Sir Felix dealt them each three cards.
This hand had both some key similarities to the previous hand and some key differences.
A chap across the table took one trick.
The blonde took two tricks.
Rhys looed—again—as did a few others.
And one of those others who’d looed happened to have been Sir Felix.
The thought occurred to Rhys that Sir Felix and the blonde were in league to run the table. But, no, the scowl trenched across Sir Felix’s high forehead told a different story as, with eyes narrowed, he watched the blonde divide the pool with the other chap, two to one.
Rhys found himself at a crossroads.
The pool, as he’d predicted from the start, had ballooned. The buy-in was now over ￡100, which wasn’t prohibitively expensive, but enough to give one pause.
But he’d come this far, and what was the alternative?
Leave the table? Abandon the ring?
No.
However, he’d come prepared. From an interior coat pocket, he pulled a scrap of paper and a pencil. He scrawled ￡100 across the surface and tossed the vowel into the pool. “This should suffice, no?”
Levelly, he met Sir Felix’s gaze, then lifted an eyebrow for good measure.
Rhys knew it was now his own eye glinting with a dare.
A trio of seconds ticked past with Sir Felix on the spot. Then Rhys watched as if from a dream as the rotter tugged Papa’s signet ring off his pinky and dropped it into the pool. “And I reckon that will suffice.”
The blonde, shuffling the deck, as it was her deal, said, “Yeah, I reckon it will.”
The blonde…
In all Rhys’s predicted scenarios for how this night could twist and turn, he hadn’t accounted for her.
Plainly, she was having a night.
Which was slightly infuriating in and of itself, for she didn’t seem to care all that much.
It was as if she would’ve been just as happy losing.
Like it was all a lark to her.
Rhys felt his back teeth grind together.
She dealt the cards.
He looked at his cards. Objectively speaking, he held a hand that wasn’t precisely terrible, but legitimately bad.
Judging by the undiminished scowl on Sir Felix’s face, his hand wasn’t any better.
And the blonde kept smiling in that carefree way of hers.
So, who knew.
One couldn’t read her.
The player to her left led the first trick with a queen of diamonds. Rhys played the ten, and Sir Felix the king.
And the blonde… Of course, she played the ace.
She flipped the trump card—three of diamonds.
The blonde took the first trick.
Sir Felix had gone a subtle shade of green, his skin looking as though a sheen of sweat had slicked a thin layer across his body.
Rhys knew the signs, for the same thing was happening to him.
What in the blazes was going on?
For the second trick, a seven of spades was played. Rhys had no choice but to follow with the eight. Sir Felix played the jack. The blonde didn’t follow suit and instead played the jack of diamonds.
The breath seemed to have been sucked out of this corner of the room.
Word of a high-stakes game tended to get around.
The trump card flipped…
Two of diamonds.
The blonde won—again.
Though Rhys felt this night slipping away, he understood he still had a chance to win Papa’s ring.
Everything—his entire life, it felt in this moment—hung on the next trick.
If he managed to take it, he would use all the skills and charm in his armory to convince the blonde to take everything in the pool, including his ￡100 vowel, but leave him the ring.
Besides, he’d saved his best card for last.
Further, he felt the wind of good fortune blowing his way when the trick opened with the jack of hearts.
The blood roaring through his veins, sweat coating his palms, on the brink of redemption—at last—he played the king of hearts.
Face utterly impassive, Sir Felix flipped the ace of clubs. As he couldn’t play the suit, he would be praying for the trump card to be clubs.
At last, it was the blonde’s turn.
She flipped her card.
Staring up from green baize for all to see was none other than the ace of hearts.
Time stopped, and suddenly it was as if Rhys had wool in his ears.
He blinked, the plain facts of the situation refusing to register.
He hadn’t won—and neither had Sir Felix.
Meanwhile, the blonde was going around the table and exchanging markers for guineas. She was cashing out.
Then it was her laughter filling the air and floating in her wake as she exited the room, her step light and devastatingly joyful.
Flabbergasted, Rhys met Sir Felix’s smirk. “Thought tonight was your night, eh?” And the rotter laughed, making it clear he’d never cared about the ring. But he’d sure had fun needling Rhys with it, hadn’t he?
Rhys shot to his feet. With the blonde gone, he was at risk of losing the ring forever.
No, no, no.
He could not let that happen.
He would not let that happen.
His feet were on the move. He wasn’t sure how, but somehow the blonde had cheated. No one had that kind of luck.
Oh, yes, he would find her, and she would tell him what her game was.
And she would give him the ring.
Tonight—this entire last year—would not be a complete loss.
He understood it wouldn’t fully redeem him in Papa’s eyes, but it was a start.
What level of hell had that bubbly blonde card sharp come from, anyway?