“It’s not the same, and you know it.” If you’d said yes, I wouldn’t be in this situation.
“No?” He rocked back on his heels.
“No!” She exhaled on a huff of displeasure. “You were part of a plan.” A plan you then thoroughly mucked up.
His gaze was narrowed on her, as though he could hear her thoughts. “I suppose that makes sense in a strange way.” He turned away from her, stalking across the dark floor of the club, tossing back, “I suggest you return home and await your brother-in-law, Lady Philippa; he will no doubt come looking for you when I tell him that you’re a complete madwoman.”
He could not tell Bourne. Bourne would tell Father, and Father would lock her away in Surrey until the morning of the wedding. Without question. And Pippa would be without the information she required. Without the security knowledge brought. Without the safety of it. She could not allow it.
“No!” she cried across the room.
He turned back, his tone dark. “You are under the mistaken impression that I am interested in doing your bidding, my lady.”
She hesitated. “I didn’t approach him. There’s no harm done. I shall go. Please . . . don’t tell Bourne.”
She might not have said the words at all for the way he ignored her, his gaze having fallen on the hazard table. On the dice she’d left, forgotten, on its mahogany edge.
She took a step toward him, and his gaze swung to meet hers, powerful and direct. She caught her breath. Stilled. “Your dice?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“You wagered?”
“I had been about to,” she said, the words coming quickly. “When a man doth to Rome come, so to speak.”
He ignored her quip. “With Knight?”
“With myself.”
“The terms?”
“I hadn’t decided. I thought . . . perhaps—” She stopped herself, the heat of her embarrassment washing through her. “Perhaps I could . . .”
His gaze turned searing. “You could . . . ?”
She looked to the dice. “I could redouble my efforts to garner your assistance.”
“With your ruination.”
Well. When he put it like that, in this big room, it sounded much more scandalous than before. “Yes.”
“And if not that? What? You’d go home and wait to be married like a good girl?”
He made her sound like a child. As though her entire plan were idiotic. Did he not see that it was imperative? That it was science? “I hadn’t decided,” she said, smartly. “But I rather think I would have considered alternate opportunities. It’s London in season. There is no shortage of rakes to be found to assist me.”
“You’re as much trouble as your sister is,” he said, flatly.
Confusion flared. “Penelope?”
“The very same.”
Impossible. Penelope was proper in every way. She never would have come here unescorted. She shook her head. “Penelope isn’t any trouble at all.”
One ginger brow cocked in wry disbelief. “I doubt Bourne would agree. Either way, Digger Knight is in no way a viable candidate for such a thing. You would do best to run far and fast should you ever see him again.”
“Who is he?”
“No one whom you should have ever encountered.” He scowled. Good. Why should she be the only one to be irritated? “You did not roll.”
“I did not,” she said. “I’m sure you count yourself very lucky indeed for that. After all, what if I had won?”
His eyes darkened. “I would have been a win?”
She nodded. “Of course. You were the research associate of choice. But as I never had a chance to wager, you may count yourself very lucky indeed,” she said, lifting her skirts to leave as elegantly as possible.
“I count myself no such thing. I don’t believe in luck.”
She dropped her skirts. “You run a casino, and you don’t believe in luck?”
He half smiled. “It’s because I run a casino that I don’t believe in it. Especially with dice. There are odds in this game. But the truth, Lady Philippa, is that even odds would have had no bearing on your roll. It is impossible to wager against oneself.”
“Nonsense.”
He leaned back against the table. “There is no risk in it. If the outcome is what you desire, there is no loss. And if the outcome is not what you desire . . . you may simply renege. With none to hold you accountable, there is no reason to follow through on the results.”
She straightened her shoulders. “I would hold myself accountable. I told you. I dislike dishonesty.”
“And you never lie to yourself?”
“Nor to others.”
“That alone proves that you are in no way prepared for that for which you would have wagered.”
“You find honesty to be an impediment?”
“A wicked one. The world is full of liars, Lady Philippa. Liars and cheats and every sort of scoundrel.”
“Like you?” The retort was out before she could stop it.
He did not seem insulted. “Precisely like me.”
“Well then, it’s best that I remain honest, to offset your dishonest balance.”
He raised a brow. “You do not think that affecting your own secret ruination is dishonest?”
“Not at all.”
“Lord Castleton does not expect you to come to his bed a virgin?”
Heat washed over her cheeks. She supposed that she should have expected the frank words from him, but she’d never had this specific topic raised in conversation before. “I still intend to . . .” She looked away. “To do that. I simply intend to be more knowledgeable about the act.”
He raised a brow. “Let me rephrase. Lord Castleton does not expect you to come to your marriage an innocent?”
“We’ve never discussed it.”
“So you’ve found a loophole.”
Her gaze snapped back to his. “I have not.”
“Dishonesty by omission remains dishonest.”
It was a wonder he had a reputation as a charmer. He didn’t seem at all charming. “If he asks, I shan’t lie to him.”
“It must be lovely to live in black and white.”
She shouldn’t ask. “What does that mean?”
“Only that in the real world, where girls are not protected from every bit of reality, we are all cloaked in grey, where truth is relative.”
“I see now that I was wrong in believing you a scientist. Truth is truth.”
One side of his mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Darling, it’s nothing close to that.”
She hated the way the words rolled off his tongue, utterly certain. This had clearly been a mistake. She’d come in the hopes of gaining experience and knowledge, not a lesson in male superiority.
It was time to leave.
He didn’t say anything as she crossed the room, headed for the exit. He didn’t speak until she had pushed back the curtains and opened the inner door, suddenly eager to leave.
“If you’re going to wager, you should do it honestly.”
She froze, one hand holding a heavy length of velvet. Surely she had misunderstood him. She turned her head, looking over her shoulder to where he stood, tall and slim. “I beg your pardon?”
He slowly removed one hand from the pocket of his coat and extended it toward her. For a moment, she thought he was beckoning her.
For a moment, she almost went.
“You’ve come all this way, Pippa.” It was the first time he’d called her by the nickname, and she was struck by its sound on his tongue. The quick repetition of consonants. The way his lips curved around it. Teasing. And something more. Something she could not explain. “You should have a real wager, don’t you think?”
He opened his hand, revealing two small, ivory squares.
She met his calculating grey gaze. “I thought you did not believe in luck?”
“I don’t,” he said. “But I find that I believe less in making a wager with oneself, thereby forcing the outcome to accommodate your adventure—”
“Not adventure,” she protested. “Experiment.”
“What’s the difference?”
He couldn’t see? “One is silly. The other is science.”
“My mistake. Tell me, where was the science in your potential wager?”
She did not have an answer.
“I’ll tell you . . . there was none. Men of science don’t wager. They know better. They know that no matter how many times they win, the odds remain against them.”
He moved closer, crowding her back into the darkness. He didn’t touch her, but strangely, it didn’t matter. He was close enough to feel, tall and lean and ever so warm. “But you’re going to wager now, Pippa, aren’t you?”
He was muddling her brain and making it very difficult to think clearly. She took a deep breath, the scent of sandalwood wrapping around her, distracting her.
She shouldn’t say yes.
But somehow, oddly, she found she couldn’t say no.
She reached for the dice, where they lay small and white in his broad palm. Touched them, touched him—the brush of skin against fingertips sending sensation coursing through her. She paused at the feeling, trying to dissect it. To identify it. To savor it. But then he was gone, his hand falling away, leaving her with nothing but the ivory cubes, still warm from his touch.
Just as she was.
Of course, the thought was ridiculous. One did not warm from a fleeting contact. It was the stuff of novels. Something her sisters would sigh over.
He moved, stepping back and extending one arm toward the hazard field. “Are you ready?” His voice was low and soft, somehow private despite the cavernous room.
“Yes.”
“As you are gaming in my hell, I shall set the terms.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
His gaze did not waver. “When we wager at your tables, my lady, I shall be more than happy to play by your rules.”
“I suppose that is logical.”
He inclined his head. “I do like a woman with a penchant for logic.”
She smiled. “The rules of scoundrels it is, then.”
They were at one end of the long table now. “A roll of a seven or an eleven wins on the first roll at the Angel. As you are wagering, I shall allow you to name your price.”
She did not have to think. “If I win, you tell me everything I wish to know.”
He paused, and she thought for a moment he might change his mind. Instead, he nodded once. “Fair enough. And if you lose . . . you shall return to your home and your life and wait patiently for your marriage. And you will resist approaching another man with this insane proposal.”
Her brows knit together in protest. “That’s an enormous wager.”
He tilted his head. “It is the only way you have a chance at gaining my participation.”
Pippa considered the words, calculating the probability of the roll in her head. “I don’t like my odds. I only have a twenty-two and two-tenths chance of winning.”
He raised a brow, clearly impressed. Ha. Not a muttonhead after all.
“That’s where luck comes in,” he said.
“That force in which you do not believe?”
He lifted one shoulder in a lanky shrug. “I could be wrong.”
“What if I choose not to wager?”
He crossed his arms. “Then you force me to tell Bourne everything.”
“You cannot!”
“I can, indeed, my lady. I had planned not to, but the reality is this: You cannot be trusted to keep yourself safe. It falls to those around you to do it for you.”
“You could keep me safe by agreeing to my proposal,” she pointed out.
He smiled, and the flash of his white teeth sent a very strange sensation spiraling through her—as though she were in a carriage that had taken a turn too quickly. “It’s much easier for Bourne to accomplish the task. Besides, I like the idea of his locking you in a tower until your wedding day. It would keep you away from here.”
From him. She found she didn’t care much for the thought.
She narrowed her gaze on him. “You are making this my only choice.”
“You are not the first gamer to feel that way. You won’t be the last.”
She rattled the dice. “Fine. Anything other than a seven or an eleven, and I shall go home.”
“And you shall refrain from propositioning other men,” he prompted.
“It was not nearly so salacious as you make it out to be,” she said.
“It was salacious enough.”
He had been nearly na**d. That bit had been fantastically salacious. She felt her cheeks warm and nodded once. “Very well. I will refrain from asking any other men to assist in my research.”
He seemed satisfied with the vow. “Roll.”
She took a deep breath, steeling herself for the moment, her heart pounding as she tossed the ivory dice, watching as one knocked into the curved mahogany bumper at the opposite end, bouncing back to land near its sister on a large, white C—the beginning of the word Chance, curling down the table in extravagant script.
Nine.
Chance, indeed.
She had lost.
She put her hands to the cool wood of the table, leaning in, as though she could will one die to keep turning until the game was hers.
She lifted her gaze to her opponent’s.
“Alea iacta est,” he said.
The die is cast. The words Caesar had spoken as he marched to war with Rome. Of course, Caesar’s risk had won him an empire; Pippa’s had lost her this last, fleeting opportunity for knowledge.