The Problem with Seduction - By Emma Locke Page 0,28
I’ve touched a nerve.” She played the last card in the deck.
He collected their discards and shuffled them. After his flare-up, he owed her at least a partial explanation. As much as he didn’t want to talk about it, was there any harm in sharing what every person who traveled in her circles must know? “Deep play costs far more than just your ten thousand pounds. I know, because my father was a gamester. It killed him. I haven’t the stomach for it since.”
Her finger paused, poised over a card. “Then where does your money go, if not to gaming debts?”
He laughed darkly. “I have no money. Father gambled it all away and Montborne is barely able to rub two pennies together without one of them vanishing. My brothers and I try to help, but…” He shrugged. “Some of us help better than others.”
Her attention was on him fully now. Con shifted against the sagging mattress. Perhaps there was harm in telling her. Now she’d pity him.
“Does Lord Darius help?” she asked, causing him to flinch. “Surely the rumors aren’t exaggerated there, too.”
Con struggled to maintain his jovialness while being scrutinized by a woman he barely knew. Not to mention how protective he felt of his twin, who, it was true, hadn’t escaped the family vice. Con didn’t like sounding defensive of Dare, given how much he detested his brother’s scourge. But he wouldn’t let her judge Darius, either. “He’s never got in so deep that the rest of us couldn’t pull him out.”
Her eyes turned to her card stack. “Is that where my money went?”
A quick scan of the window told him it was going to be a long night. “It’s more embarrassing than that.”
Her lips parted. “Oh?” Her eyes flicked to him, then to his card bared on the table. “Now you have my attention. What could possibly be embarrassing for a man of your class? Is it an intimate sort of addiction?” She slid him a sidelong glance. “The privileged may indulge in whatever fantasies they like.”
He squirmed. “Not that.” After rejecting his misunderstood offer to take her to his room, he hadn’t expected her to turn this subject in a direction that risked his sanity. While he was glad to be off the topic of his twin, her suggestive glance did uncomfortable things to his anatomy. It had been awhile since he’d been with a woman. A normal, duck-between-the-sheets-and-that-was-all kind of woman.
“But you do like women.” A small smile played on her lips. She was toying with him.
It took him a moment to realize it. He’d never been teased this way by a woman. “Of course I do,” he replied too quickly. Then for good measure, he added, “I just can’t afford them.”
“If you don’t gamble and you don’t whore,” she said, smiling when he flinched at her foul language, “why, then, are you light in the pockets?”
He shrugged, back to wishing she’d leave off the serious topics. “It’s not difficult to be suddenly short when you don’t have much to begin with.”
She laid her top card on the table and folded her hands over it, abandoning even the pretense of playing the game. “Most people who can’t afford to do so don’t become ‘suddenly short’ ten thousand pounds. What kind of endeavor have I involved myself in?”
He stiffened and folded his own cards into the palm of his hand. He didn’t like it when his brothers swept in and inserted themselves into his doings. It didn’t feel better when a woman whose favors he wasn’t even tasting did the same. “I wouldn’t phrase it that way. You’re not involved.”
“I suppose it is none of my affair.” She tried to look abashed but he wasn’t fooled. “I’m curious, though—and we do have all night. What are you into that has left you ‘suddenly short’ a staggering sum of money?”
What business of it was hers? Verbalizing his bad decisions didn’t make them any more palatable. “I’d really rather not speak of it.”
Her eyes laughed at him as she gathered her cards from the table. She fanned them before her face. “Oh, there is no fun in prying at a man who wishes to keep his secrets. What should we talk about instead?”
If they were to avoid talking about how she’d come to be running from her ex-lover, and give a wide berth to his disastrous credit situation, they had absolutely anything else to choose from. Not that a single more suitable subject came to mind…nor did he