A Gentleman Undone Read Online Free Page B

She wasn’t for him. She pleased his eye and engaged his imagination, yes, but that hardly made her unique among women. When the time came to share himself with a lady again, he would look for a few qualities more. He’d yet to even hearMiss Slaughter speak; for all he knew she might open her mouth and prove an empty-headed shrew.
    Indeed he rather hoped she would. She’d be less of a distraction then.
    Whatever had kept them so occupied as to forgo supper, they’d apparently had their fill of it by the time card play resumed. Roanoke took his seat at the vingt-et-un table and this time his mistress sat on his knee. Gone was the attentive poise with which she’d conducted herself at whist. She leaned back and rested her head on the man’s shoulder, watching the play idly from under half-lowered lashes, her entire aspect suggesting a lioness who’d just gorged herself on a kill and needn’t think of eating, or think of anything at all, for at least a week.
    Will fixed his eyes elsewhere. He had a purpose here, a mission. He had a plan that required three thousand pounds and God knows the odds were enough against him with his wits entirely engaged.
    Three o’clock came, and then four—he knew this from Cathcart’s jeweled pocket watch set down between them, the room being provided with no clocks—and he was nearly two hundred pounds to the good. Men were betting with sluggish brains; some men falling asleep outright and having to be prodded awake by a neighbor when their turns came. A fellow who kept his head might do quite well here, over time.
    The viscount poked him with an elbow and, when he glanced up, nodded in the direction from which he’d rigorously kept his gaze. Roanoke’s head lolled on his left shoulder. His chest rose and fell with slumberous breaths. Still against his right shoulder was Miss Slaughter, who’d helped herself to his cards and was considering them with languid attention. Her hands, he could not help noticing, were still bare. Perhaps her gloves lay even now on that library floor. His skin prickled unhelpfully at the thought.
    “Does she play?” No other lady had sat down to the table all evening.
    “I’ve never seen it.” Cathcart had been coming here a good deal longer and would know. “But she looks as though she has it in mind, doesn’t she?”
    And indeed, when the play passed to Roanoke she made no attempt to wake him. Without the smallest sign of unease she took fifty pounds from his stake and added it to his bet, eyeing the banker expectantly.
    The card sailed in and she lifted its corner. “Stick,” she said. And Will’s whole body vibrated to the tone of her voice.
    Even on an austere syllable with more than its share of clicking consonants, she put in texture, and rounded the corners somehow. A man could savor that sampling, a sweet small dose like a cordial in a dainty glass. A man could very well get drunk on a larger amount, and bathe in an abundance. She’d reserved a place already in his dreams; now he knew she would speak, unceasingly, while she was there.
    She would not, however, play vingt-et-un. Sadly she proved to be no proficient. She chewed at her lower lip while studying her cards, and wagered erratically, and went bust in three of the five hands she played before fortune finally took pity on her with an ace and a ten, and the deal. Meticulously she gathered in the cards, staggering them together to break apart the turned-up hands even before shuffling, as though by thorough discharge of this new duty she could somehow compensate for her lack of tactical skill. She shuffled, had her neighbor cut the deck, and dealt.
    And Will began to lose. He drew on a hand of twelve, and a king put him over. He stuck at nineteen, and she proved to have twenty. Even when he worked his pulse-pounding way to twenty-one, eight-seven-two-four, she turned up an ace and two fives to tie—to win, rather, thebanker always having that advantage. Five straight times she dealt,