I left the cottage without telling you I was going?”
“How can it be punishment when I’m being extremely reasonable and calm? I’m not shouting at you or making snide remarks. I find I’m being quite pleasant.” She glanced around again. “But you lack a table. I suppose we can sit on the bed.”
Without waiting for his permission or even his agreement, she climbed onto the duvet and sat in such a way that it was obvious she’d folded her legs beneath her, her skirts circling her. She gave him an expectant look that harbored another dare.
He strode over to the decanters. He was going to need whisky for this. “Brandy?”
“Yes, please.”
After pouring a splash of brandy into a snifter for her and a hefty dose of whisky into a tumbler for himself, he carried both glasses over and set them on the table, only then noticing her slippers resting on the floor, as though she’d merely stepped out of them. He didn’t want to contemplate how much he’d enjoy seeing her slippers beside his bed every night.
Tugging off his boots, he tossed them across the room as though if they were anywhere near her slippers, they would be giving him permission to do what he ought not. As though she wasn’t giving him permission with her sultry eyes and her plump lower lip that glistened after she ran her tongue over it.
Grabbing his glass, he launched himself at the foot of the bed, fitting his spine to the post, and stretching his legs out at an angle that stopped any portion of him from touching any portion of her. “What are we going to play then? Whist?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Four-card brag.”
“You have the matchsticks for wagering?”
That smile again, the one that said she knew things, the one she’d never given him before she’d come to his club, before he’d exposed her to the sort of flirtation that did not take place in proper ballrooms. The kind of flirtation that promised a journey into sin.
Watching as her bodice stretched across her breasts, as the visible mounds plumped up as she stretched her arms behind her head and retrieved a pearl comb, he cursed her for ever coming here, cursed himself for ever giving her this place to come to. She was more dangerous to his heart than the dregs that lurked in the darkest corners of London. They’d use a knife to create the sharp pain that would kill him while she used every feminine wile at her disposal to utterly destroy him. When she strolled out of here, he would continue to breathe, but his heart would be going with her.
She set the comb between them. “My wager. If you win it, I’ll let down my hair.”
As though he wouldn’t do everything within his power to gain that reward.
She arched a brow. “You?”
“My neckcloth. But it stays on until you win it.”
“That hardly seems fair.”
“It’s how the game is played. You don’t take anything off until it’s been won.”
“Ah, it seems I misunderstood the details of the game.” She began shuffling the cards. “Since it’s only the two of us, we’ll play a simplified version. Cards are dealt. We’ll toss aside one. Show our hand. The best wins.”
After giving a curt nod, he sipped his whisky and watched as she deftly dealt the cards, no doubt from all her experience at whist. At the cottage, he’d been the one dealing, the one teaching her. She set the deck aside and picked up her cards. With no place to rest his glass, with one hand, he gathered his, managed to fan them out, and rid himself of the lowest card.
“You first,” she said.
He tossed his cards down, face up. A lousy showing, with no matches of any kind, but his jack of hearts beat her two, seven, and nine. And everything inside him went still as he waited for the unraveling.
She moved the comb to the bedside table. He didn’t object. The pearl adornment wasn’t his to possess forever, only for the span of this ridiculous game. Then she was plucking out pins and placing them beside the pearl comb, and he decided he liked the game very much indeed as the coppery curls began to spill around her.
If only he was as unencumbered. If only he could reach across and bury his hands in them. But she was not his to touch. Apparently, however, he was hers to torture and torment. If her victorious smile was any indication, she knew