Luck Is No Lady (14 page)

Ignoring the quiver low in her belly, Emma forced a sensible tone to her voice. “Was there something you needed to add to our conversation from this morning?”

“No, not particularly,” he replied.

Something odd flashed in his expression just before he turned away from her to walk to a liquor service set against the wall.

“Would you like a drink?”

Emma stared at his wide shoulders beneath the thin white linen of his shirt. “It is not yet ten o'clock in the morning. It would be unseemly to drink spirits so early in the day.”

He glanced back at her, his expression amused. “Do you always follow the rules of polite society?”

“I do not know that I would consider them rules, but I do believe such things are in place to ensure proper behavior.”

“Out there, perhaps,” he replied with a gesture toward the window. “Here at the club we have cultivated an atmosphere of nonjudgment. Aside from behaving with common courtesy and treating others with dignity and respect, there is no requirement that you hold yourself to the strict dictates of social etiquette, most of which serve no true purpose anyway.” Tilting his head and arching one brow to cast her a questioning glance, he asked, “Now, will you join me in a drink?”

Amusement mingled with the challenge in his eyes. He expected her to refuse. The prim and proper Mrs. Adams would surely not consider imbibing at such an hour.

“Do you have any claret?” Emma asked with a polite smile.

He gave no indication of surprise, and his smile made her wonder if she hadn't just played right into his hands. “Certainly. A claret for the lady.”

As he turned back to pour her wine, she lowered herself into the chair, careful not to relax too deeply into the soft leather. She wasn't sure yet what his reason was for requesting her presence, but she felt compelled to ride it out.

Feeling a need to fill the quiet of the room, she asked, “How has your wound been healing? No infection, I hope.”

“None at all. You are an excellent nurse.”

He returned with a glass of claret in each hand. She tilted her head back as he approached and noted how he focused steadily on her, as if he suspected she might bolt at any moment. Their fingers touched when she took the glass from his hand. The brief bit of contact caused a jump in her pulse that she did her best to conceal as she lifted the glass to her lips. The smooth, lovely flavor rolled over her tongue and warmed her from the inside out.

Lowering her glass, she found herself caught in his gaze. Knowing he had watched her sip her wine made her feel all quivery again.

He flashed another grin before he turned back to take his seat. Leaning against the high back of his chair, he rested his elbows on the padded arms and braced his feet wide on the floor. After taking a drink from his own glass, he lowered it to the surface of one solidly muscled thigh.

Emma's breath became constrained at the sight of him in the relaxed yet commanding posture. His chin was lowered and his blue eyes gleamed from beneath the shadow of his dark brows while his wide, generous mouth curved in an almost reticent smile. Goodness, why did the man have to be so beautiful? She suddenly felt like a common pigeon stranded in the nest of an eagle.

She did not belong here in his reckless world. She was the responsible eldest Chadwick girl. The one who had made a solemn vow to her mother she would take care of her family no matter what. The one who did what was necessary to hold things together when her father fell apart. She was practical and reliable and not at all spontaneous.

So why then did she feel such an overwhelming compulsion to prove otherwise?

She suddenly—desperately—wanted to be more than the responsible manager of her family's misfortune. She wanted to be a little reckless. A little careless and unpredictable.

Wary of the thoughts swirling in her head, yet not willing to ignore them, Emma watched as he took another sip of his drink. The movement was so common, the actual act of drinking not at all unusual. Yet in that instance it took on a deeper connotation. She observed the way his masculine fingers held the delicate crystal, the resting of his lips against the rim and the lush slide of the red wine in the glass. It was mesmerizing.

Resting his glass on his thigh once more, he tilted his head to the side. “I am glad you decided to stay and keep me company.”

“Is that what I am doing?” Emma asked in a guarded tone.

His smile this time was rueful, and he lifted his hand to run it back through his hair, tousling the locks even more. “On occasion, I suffer from a relentless form of insomnia. A likely side effect of the odd hours I keep. No matter how tired I am in body, some days nothing succeeds in calming my mind.” He glanced at the paperwork on the table beside him. “Even dry investment proposals.”

As he spoke, Emma finally realized what she had seen as rakish confidence in the relaxed and languid way he moved was clearly physical exhaustion. She noted the shadows beneath his eyes and sensed a vulnerability she had gotten only brief glimpses of in the past.

“Sometimes if I distract myself from the idea of sleep, it allows my mind to catch up to the exhaustion in my body.” He shrugged. “I was hoping you wouldn't mind keeping me company for a while. Perhaps we could play cards.”

Emma stiffened, a quiet panic seeping into her blood. “I do not think—”

“Come now,” he interrupted with a teasing grin. “Even sweet old grandmothers play whist.”

Emma lifted her wine and took a drink to dispel her discomfort at the idea of taking up a game of cards. She hadn't played since her father died.

“You are allowed to have a little fun. I won't spread tales.” He dipped his chin and a thick lock of hair fell over his forehead. His voice was low and tempting. “And I can promise not to beat you too badly.”

Emma was helpless against such a blatant challenge. He would live to regret those words.

She gave a tight little smile. “I suppose I can play for a little while. As long as you do not mind that I am neglecting my duties.”

“That is the thing about duty and responsibility,” he answered jauntily as he stood. “They do not ever go away on their own. The accounts will be just as you left them when you get back to them. And there is something to be said for a rejuvenating holiday from the daily drudgery.”

Emma rose to her feet as well.

He swept his arm to the side. “Shall we adjourn to the table?”

She turned to see a round card table of beautifully carved oak covered in green felt. It was set in the corner of the room, surrounded by four handsome chairs. A chandelier hung from the ceiling directly above the center of the table and cast a soft and even glow over the surface.

She couldn't believe she hadn't even noticed it upon her entrance. Taking her wine with her to the table, she chose one of the chairs facing the fireplace. She took another drink before setting the glass down.

Excitement simmered at the prospect of facing him across the table. It was likely to be an invigorating experience.

Bentley came up beside her and leaned forward to pour more claret from the bottle he had fetched from the liquor service. The scent of him drifted toward her just as he straightened and stepped away to take his seat across from her. His nearness had been brief, but it was enough to set Emma's nerves on edge.

After filling his own glass and setting the bottle aside, he pulled out a small drawer disguised beneath the surface of the table and withdrew a pack of playing cards.

“What shall we play? Lady's choice,” he said as he began to shuffle the deck with expert skill.

Carefully considering her options, she did not answer right away. Then she met his eyes and smiled politely. “How about all fours?”

He gave no reaction to her suggestion of a game more often played in taverns than drawing rooms. With a nod, he continued to shuffle the cards.

Emma watched the cards slide effortlessly under his deft fingers and felt a slow warmth ease up her spine. The smooth texture of the felt beneath her palms, the sound of the cards waterfalling in his capable hands, the anticipation… It was all so familiar with a few glaring exceptions.

Instead of her father sitting across from her, his fierce expression hiding a rising anxiety he could never manage to conceal no matter how much they practiced, she looked at Mr. Bentley. His expression was relaxed, the blue of his eyes reflecting nothing but confidence, his lips curved gently into what was just shy of an actual smile.

Edgar Chadwick had never been able to cultivate such an appearance of ease at the tables. Emma often wondered if that had been his biggest obstacle to winning.

Unlike her father, she had been able to do it instinctively—appear as though none of it mattered, that she played simply as a means to pass the time. No one ever guessed that inside, the desire to win filled every corner of her awareness. Her single-minded focus had begun as an attempt to show her father he did not have the skill to continue risking so much at his favorite haunts about town. But he never seemed to see that. The more she won, the more determined he became to improve, and he would quiz her after every round, demanding to know the details of her chosen strategy.

Eventually, the desire to win became more personal as Emma discovered the thrill that came with managing to turn a terrible hand her way. She realized she was not capable of playing cards simply as a pleasant diversion. She played to challenge herself, to beat the odds set against her, and always to get the better of her opponent.

She took another drink of her claret, only barely acknowledging how the potent wine was going down easier with each sip. Then with unhurried movements and a relaxed gaze, she took up the hand she had been dealt.

And the game began.

“You like to win, don't you?”

His question, uttered with smooth nonchalance, came about a half hour into the play.

Emma looked up to meet his gaze across the table. His eyes were bright and intense, one corner of his mouth quirked up in a challenging smirk.

“Is that not the exact purpose of playing? To win?”

He gave a little shrug, as if he could, in fact, think of a few other reasons. She would have asked him what, but he spoke first.

“What do you say we make this game more interesting?”

The idea of playing for money filled her with cold fear. She had never wanted to find out just how much like her father she might be. “I do not wager, Mr. Bentley.”

He sighed and leaned back in his chair, looking rakish and dangerous. “I wish you could get past such formality and call me Roderick.”

“I am sorry,” she replied with an apologetic smile. “I suppose I struggle with such familiarity, given that you are my employer.”

“Do not consider me your employer right now. Consider your work done for the day and we are just a couple of friends playing a relaxing game of cards.”

Emma held back a laugh. They both knew by now that despite their casual facades, they played in full earnest.

“If you were my friend, wouldn't I know more about you than the fact that you keep odd hours and feel a strong animosity toward arithmetic?”

He lifted his brows. “Good point. What would you like to know?”

She considered all of the many things she wished to know about him and settled on what she believed to be the most innocuous.

“Perhaps you could tell me about your family.”

“My mother was the daughter of a marquess, whose family disowned her when she found herself impregnated and discarded by a married lord of the realm. She never managed to adjust to the difficult circumstances so different from what she had been raised to and died when I was sixteen. I have no other family.”

Emma's stomach clenched with regret. How could she have forgotten? Though he spoke without any emotional intonation, it was clear the pain of his childhood was with him still. “I am sorry.”

“That I am a bastard? You certainly had nothing to do with it,” he teased. Then he lowered his chin for a moment before lifting it again and giving a wide, sweeping gesture. “The walls of this club contain a world I created, where I am lord rather than a cast-off spawn. Here, I am not a bastard. Out there…” He shrugged. “I am whatever they decide to see me as.”

“I do not believe that is true,” Emma argued. “You are who you are no matter how people see you. Bastard is a label of birth, not the nature of a man. So is lord for that matter.”

He stared at her for a moment. Then his lips quirked upward in a smile that made her toes curl. It seemed her words had pleased him. A great deal. And that in turn made her happy, the warm sort that spread out to her fingertips.

She smiled back.

“How did you come to be the proprietor of a gambling club?”

He shifted in his seat, crossing one leg over the other as he tapped the deck of cards he held in his hand against his thigh.

The neck of his shirt fell open to one side, giving Emma a delightful glimpse of his chest. She felt a swift rush of heat through her blood. This was not the warm rush she had felt a moment ago. This was stark and hot and direct, angling straight to her center with searing awareness. She pressed her knees together in an effort to contain the sensation, but it only increased the reaction low in her body.

She looked up to his face. He seemed gratefully unaware of her private discomfort.

“After my mother died, I spent years in a sort of reckless fog. I did not bother with worrying about perils or consequences. But eventually a man starts to grow up, despite himself.” His smile twisted ruefully. “I realized there was more to life than dissolute days and nights of depravity. By then, I had discovered an affinity for knowing when something was a good bet, on the tables and on the exchange. I started making a lot of money and wondered why I was spending it all in someone else's establishment when I could have a place of my own.”

“You should be proud of what you have accomplished.”

“I am. Until days like today, when sleep eludes me and I find myself pacing about the room like a madman, muttering to myself.”

His self-deprecating tone was an obvious attempt to hide the truth Emma suddenly saw very clearly. Even though he had built a mini empire and had filled it with people he trusted, in many ways he had been alone for a long time.

What it must have felt like to grow up as he had and then lose his mother when he had been such a young man. She had grown to adulthood surrounded by family. She had her little sisters, and before her mother's illness, her parents had a strong and caring union. It wasn't until after her mother died that things started to fall apart.

The challenges he had faced in childhood and as a man without family had gone a long way in defining how he saw himself. Emma wished he could see how far he had come beyond the stigma of his birth.

Settling his gaze on her, his smile slid into a wolfish sort of grin.

“Your turn,” he said, his voice low and suggestive.

Emma shifted in her seat, feeling that voice down to her toes.

“My turn for what?” she asked, though she knew perfectly well what he wanted.

“Friends know things about each other, right? So tell me.”

Emma stalled by reaching for her wineglass and realized it had gotten dangerously low once again. She was drinking far more than she was used to, and it was starting to go to her head. That much was evident by just how relaxed she had become with the man across from her.

She wanted to tell him—everything. But she was not quite so tipsy that she would.

After taking a generous drink of her wine, she tilted her head and gave him a smile. “I am afraid the truth has consequences that affect more than myself. I cannot put those I love in jeopardy.”

Rather than argue as she expected, he nodded. “I know.”

A strange thrill of awareness raced down her spine at his words. Just what did he know?

But he had already shifted his attention.

Leaning forward, he started to shuffle the cards. The moment had passed.

When he finished dealing, Emma reached to pick up her cards. She was prevented from doing so as he abruptly covered her hand with his, pinning it to the table.

His hand was warm and the breadth of it completely covered her own. Something hot and intimate passed to her through his touch, jolting her senses. She looked up in surprise.

His eyes sparkled with wickedness as he caught her gaze. “We were going to make the game more interesting, remember?”

Despite the tingling fire igniting in her blood, she held her composure. “
You
wanted to make it more interesting. I said I do not wager.”

“Why not?”

Not expecting the blunt question, Emma hesitated. She tried to pull out of his grasp, but he curled his fingers and folded her hand in his.

“I cannot afford to be so irresponsible,” she replied, feeling a quiver of weakness in her voice as he turned her hand to rest in the cradle of his palm.

His vivid gaze held hers. “No one plays like you do without a fire of recklessness burning in their belly. I understand your need for restraint, but it is unnecessary here. Take a risk, Emma, if just to see what it feels like.”

His voice flowed with temptation, and his gaze flashed with the kind of knowledge Emma knew nothing about. She was so far out of her depth, it was ridiculous, but again, she felt that internal urging to wade out a bit deeper.

“I take my responsibilities seriously,” she explained, even as she wondered at how easily he held her captive by the pressure of his thumb in the center of her palm.

It had to be the wine that made her feel so languid and relaxed despite the intimate nature of the moment.

“Of course you do,” he said with an understanding nod, “but that does not mean you must deny yourself a few moments of selfish enjoyment.”

Her pulse sped at the suggestion in his tone. Somehow he must have known, because he shifted his hold to sweep his thumb across the rushing veins at her wrist. The gentle pressure of his touch on the sensitive spot cause heat to bloom fiercely in Emma's belly, and she experienced a slight tilting of her axis.

“There is no rule saying we must wager for money,” he added.

“What are you proposing?”

He smiled, and the pleasure in his expression made her limbs go weak. A frightening and exhilarating anticipation claimed her.

“A simple wager.” As he spoke, he released her. She immediately reached for her wineglass and took a bracing sip. “For each round I win, I place a kiss on your hand.”

Emma frowned. It seemed an odd request. Men kissed women's hands all the time. It was such a common thing. By the wickedness in his eyes, she had expected him to request something more risqué. More dangerous.

She was disappointed he had not. “And what shall I get if I win?” she asked.

His smile was wide and confident. “What would you like?”

Emma swallowed hard against the words that pushed up through her throat. “I cannot think of anything,” she lied.

He leaned back in his chair. Spreading his knees wide, he relaxed his arms and rested his hands on the surface of his strong thighs. Flashing a rakish grin, he looked the epitome of the reckless rogue. “Come now, there must be something you want from me.”

Did she dare admit it?

Emma stared at him while her heart beat faster and faster and her blood warmed with the thoughts swirling in her head. From the moment she had walked into his office the day of her interview, there had been one thing she had wanted from him: another kiss.

Not on the hand, but on the mouth. She wanted to know if it would be as consuming as she recalled so often when she lay in bed at night.

And why should she deny herself? It was just a kiss.

There was no one she need worry about offending or betraying. No husband in her future, no one to call her out for the indiscretion. In truth, if she were ever to experience such a thing again, now would be the opportune time. Ensconced in the privacy of the club, she was far removed from the society that would condemn her for such impropriety.

Feeling uncharacteristically bold, she forced aside any remaining reluctance. He was right. She did have a recklessness burning deep within, and right now, she wanted to explore it.

“All right, Roderick,” she began with a slow smile, “for each round I win, you will kiss me. On the mouth.”

She waited for his grin to turn to an expression of shock and disbelief at her brazen response. But it didn't. The only change was a slight lowering of his eyelids and what she thought was a flare of heat in the depths of his gaze.

The man was exceptionally good at controlling his reactions.

But so was she. She kept her smile steady as she waited, determined not to show just how wildly her insides were rioting at the possibility of what might come.

After what seemed like an eternity of staring across the table at each other, he slowly leaned forward and swept his cards up in his hand. “Agreed.”

The game began again and there was no escaping the new air of intensity hovering about the table. Every glance was filled with expectation, every card tossed onto the felt brought them closer to some undetermined fate. It was frighteningly close, but in the end, Roderick took the first round.

Without preamble, he reached across the table with his palm up.

Emma took a breath and placed her hand in his. His fingers curled in a gentle grip, but he didn't lift her fingers toward his mouth as she expected. She watched curiously as he first ran his thumb over the back of her hand, tracing the path of the veins that ran from her wrist to her knuckles. His movements were unhurried and purposeful, as though he needed to complete the task before he could go any further.

Each pass of his thumb increased the tingle of expectancy in her blood.

Then he shifted his hold. Emma thought he would kiss her then, but he carefully turned her hand over so her palm faced up.

She glanced to his face, wondering what he was about. But he was focused on his task.

She watched with growing anticipation as his thumb lightly circled her palm in a spiral from the outer edge to the sensitive center. It was all she could do to prevent her fingers from twitching at the strange and subtle jolts of sensation created by the simple caress.

Her breathing slowed even as her pulse sped furiously. She felt as though he were working some magic over her, lulling her into a quiet submission.

She had nearly forgotten what the initial purpose of his gentle exploration was when he leaned forward and lifted her hand to accept the touch of his lips in the very center of her palm. The pressure of his mouth was warm and sure as he held her hand to his mouth for a long moment. Her fingers rested softly against the side of his face. She felt the rough texture of hair growth along his hard, angled jaw, and the rush of his breath.

The kiss could not have lasted more than a few seconds, but in that time, Emma felt a wealth of changes in her body and in her overall awareness. The heat of the room was suddenly stifling and her clothes felt unbelievably restrictive. Her breath went shallow and her stomach fluttered with a distinct kind of nervousness. She did not even realize she had closed her eyes until he lowered her hand to the table and released her.

She blinked a few times as the world came back into focus. A blush burned her cheeks as she saw him watching her. His blue gaze remained intent on her face. She wondered if he saw the flutter of her pulse in her throat or the dreamlike haze that had obscured her gaze for a moment.

With more poise than she thought herself capable of, Emma took up the deck of cards to shuffle for the next round, trying for all the world to appear as though nothing at all out of the ordinary had happened, though every cell in her body trembled.