The Problem with Seduction - By Emma Locke Page 0,48
he wanted to tell Elizabeth something he’d never told anyone else. “My brother bet five hundred on Lucky Strike two weeks ago. The horse went lame and was shot before the race. Tony—Lord Antony, I mean—would say to let him stew in his own misery in King’s Bench. Bart and Montborne would agree. I would, too, but I can’t, by God. It could kill him.”
And the smell. God, just remembering the smell was enough to make his dinner churn in his gut.
She nodded as though she understood, but she couldn’t.
The fetid stench of desperate men started to suffocate him. He inhaled sharply. “I haven’t got it. Darius is going back to gaol…and I’m a hairbreadth away from joining him.”
“Why?” She looked perplexed. “What do you have to do with his losses?”
He was hardly better than his brother when it came to making impossible wagers. He laughed darkly. “We dance, he and I, taking turns taunting the clink. I put up; he wins back enough to cover it. He loses a small fortune; I scrape together a payment or two. You asked why I’m so far gone, and I only told you the half of it. Every time Dare finds himself with one foot in prison, I sign an IOU to cover what he owes. Now you know what a rotter I am. The moneylenders are out for my blood almost as much as Darius’.” Or, they had been. He’d been doing well since striking his deal with her. He’d been almost entirely free, until Darius had broken down yesterday and revealed his situation with Lucky Strike.
“Nonsense,” she said matter-of-factly. “You have me. What are friends for, if not for bailing siblings out of King’s Bench?”
What little good feeling was left inside him withered at her words. “That’s hardly why I told you something so personal.”
“It isn’t?” She looked completely taken aback.
“I’m not asking for help.” He grimaced. He didn’t want her pity. He’d just wanted… What? To unburden himself to someone. His brothers thought he was just as worthless as Darius when it came to managing cash, and in a sense he was. He’d never told them how many times he’d kept Darius out of prison. He couldn’t bear for them to know how deep in his twin was, or how close on Dare’s heels he followed.
He reached for the plate of cake and pulled it around so he could jab at it with his fork. Dinner wouldn’t end until he was finished, unless he wanted to be unpardonably rude and leave early. Which he just might.
“My apologies,” she murmured. She reached for her own dessert. “I’m so used to being propositioned, I didn’t think you might simply be confiding in me.”
She sounded so genuinely sorry, he paused in his attack of the cake. “I’m not used to confiding in people who have so much money they can toss it at any fellow who happens by with a sad story,” he said, a bit too sharply.
Her knuckles whitened against the table covering. “You’re not just ‘any fellow’ I’m entertaining for a night.”
The cake, so good a moment ago, turned to chalk in his mouth. He didn’t want her pity, or any more of her money. And he certainly didn’t want her fixing problems that had nothing to do with her.
But he didn’t want to be ill-humored with her, either. He forked up the cake until it was gone and there could be no more delay to his leaving. “It’s my turn to apologize. I’m not used to this.” It was the best he could do under the circumstances.
“Having a friend?” she asked.
When he looked up, she was smirking at him. The same expression on a man would have set his back up, but with her it was an insight into her world. She’d changed masks again. She wanted him to think she didn’t care. She wanted to hear him say it. They were friends.
He wasn’t falling for it this time. He could give her that much. He reached for his wineglass, but his eyes never strayed from the woman across from him. He’d known right from the start that she was different. Given her career, that hadn’t been a giant leap, but there was more to her uniqueness than her past. She teased him and she made him desire her, but she also made him think. Their lives were entangled now, whether he wanted them to be or not.
Oddly enough, he did want them to be. She made him feel