Never Judge a Lady By Her Cover: Number 4 in series (The Rules of Scoundrels series) (14 page)

… With the three owners’ impressive marriages in the last twelve months, we recommend that women on the hunt limit their search to members of a certain casino. We are coming to believe that there is something remarkable in its water supply…

The gossip pages of
The News of London
, April 24, 1833

“Chase is halfway to sleeping with Duncan West,” Bourne said, taking his seat at the owners’ table, tumbler of scotch dangling from his fingers.

She’d done her best to avoid her partners since the embarrassing incident involving West and Temple two days earlier. In fact, she’d almost skipped the faro game that stood for the owners of the Angel every Saturday evening. She’d almost taken to her rooms in frustration and embarrassment.

But she was not a coward, and her partners would have happily called her one if she’d missed the card game.

Nevertheless, it did not mean that she was required to tolerate their questioning.

She pretended Bourne had not spoken, and leaned forward to collect her cards from the table, used only for this game. She, Temple, and Cross played while Bourne occupied the fourth chair with his scotch. The Marquess of Bourne had lost everything in a game of cards on the day he’d turned eighteen, and had not played since.

Unfortunately, he attended the games nonetheless, complete with his foolish grin. He did not seem to care that she had not replied to his initial overture. Instead, he continued, “Though it sounds to me that there would not have been much sleeping involved.”

“I should never have saved your asses all those years ago,” she said.

Six years earlier, Temple and Bourne had been running dice games on the edge of Seven Dials, and they’d made more than a few enemies. On the night Georgiana had decided to offer them the chance to enter into partnership with her, she’d saved them, quite luckily, from a group of ruffians who would have taken their money and left them for dead.

“Probably,” he said happily as he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “But lucky for all of us, you didn’t.”

She scowled at him. “It is not too late to have you handled.”

“As you are occupied with handling West, I cannot imagine you would have the time for Bourne,” Cross said as he took the round.

She tossed her cards to the table, turning wide eyes on him. “You, as well?”

He smiled, there, then gone. “I’m afraid so.”

“Traitor.” She looked to Temple. “And you? Do you have insults to add to the pile?”

Temple shook his head as he shuffled the cards, the waxed paper flying through his fingers before he dealt the cards expertly around the table. “I want nothing to do with this. In fact, if my memory of the event were wiped clean, I would not be unhappy about it.” He closed his eyes. “Like seeing one’s sister in the nude.”

“I was not nude!” she protested.

“It was close enough.”

“Was it?” Bourne asked, his curiosity piqued.

“It was nowhere near close enough,” she insisted.

“But you would have liked for it to have been?”

Yes. No.
Perhaps.
Georgiana pushed the unwelcome response aside. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Bourne turned to Temple. “Do you think we should tell her that she didn’t answer the question?”

She looked down at her cards, cheeks hot. “I hate you.”

“Which one of us?” Temple asked, playing a card.

“All of you.”

“It’s a pity, as we are your only friends,” Bourne said.

It was true. “And asses every one of you.”

“They say you can tell a man by his friends,” he replied.

“It is a good thing I am a woman,” she said, discarding.

“Which Temple can now confirm.” Bourne paused. “Why do you think none of us have ever had cause to see for ourselves before now?”

Death was too kind for Bourne. He deserved some kind of torture. She glared at him, considering any number of medieval devices. Temple laughed. “We’ve already established that she’s more sister than seductress. None of us would consider it.”

“I considered it,” Bourne said, refilling his drink. “Once or twice.”

The entire table looked to him.

“You did?” Cross asked, voicing all their shock.

“We can’t all be as saintly as you are, Cross,” Bourne replied. “I thought better of it.”

She raised a blond brow. “By ‘thought better of it,’ I assume you mean that you realized I wouldn’t have had you if you were the last man in London?”

“You wound me.” He placed a hand over his heart. “Truly.”

In the six years since the owners of The Fallen Angel had come together with the singular purpose of proving themselves more powerful than the aristocracy, there had been little time and even less interest for anything that detracted from such a goal. Truly, it had only been in the last year, once the club was everything they had planned it to be, that Bourne, Cross, and Temple had made time for love.

Or, rather, that love had ensnared them.

She played another card. “God protect Lady Bourne, as she surely has her work cut out for her. I feel I should apologize to her for my hand in your match.”

Georgiana had been instrumental in matching each of her partners with their wives – none more so than Bourne’s. Lady Penelope Marbury had once been betrothed to Georgiana’s brother, but the match was imperfect, and Georgiana had used her own scandal to extract the Duke of Leighton from his impending marriage, leaving Lady Penelope a spinster for nearly a decade… until Bourne desired her for himself.

Georgiana had been only too happy to repay her debt to the lady.

Temple laughed. “You don’t regret a moment of your meddling.”

She’d played a similar hand in Temple’s match to Miss Mara Lowe, now Duchess of Lamont. And in Cross’s match to Lady Penelope’s sister, Lady Philippa, now Countess Harlow.

Bourne grinned, all wolf. “Nor should she regret it. I ensure my lady is quite happy with her match.”

She groaned. “Please. Say no more.”

“Here is something,” Cross interjected, and Georgiana was grateful for the impending change of topic.

There were a dozen things he could have said. A hundred. The four present ran a casino. They traded in secrets of the richest and most powerful people in Britain. The building they were in boasted a remarkable collection of art. Cross’s wife cultivated beautiful roses. And yet, he did not speak of any of those things. Instead, he said, “West is not a bad choice.”

She turned surprised eyes on him. “Not a bad choice for what?”

“Not what,” he corrected. “Whom. For you.”

She wished there was a window somewhere nearby. Something through which she could leap. She wondered if she could ignore the statement. She looked to Bourne and Temple, hoping they might find the statement as preposterous as she did.

They didn’t.

“You know, he’s not wrong,” Bourne said.

Temple spread his massive legs wide. “There’s no one else who matches her in power.”

“Except us,” Bourne said.

“Well, of course,” Temple said. “But we’re spoken for.”

“He hasn’t a title,” she said.

Temple’s brows rose. “That’s the only reason you don’t consider him a reasonable choice?”

Dammit. That’s not what she’d meant at all. “No,” she said. “But it would help if the rest of you remembered that I’m in need of a title. And I’ve selected it. Langley will not meddle in my affairs.”

Cross laughed. “You sound like a villain in a romantic novel.”

She rather felt like one with the direction in which this conversation was moving.

As though she had not spoken, Bourne added, “West is talented, rich and Penelope seems to think he’s handsome. Not that I have any idea why.” He grumbled the last.

“Pippa feels the same way,” Cross said. “She says it is an empirical fact. Thought I myself have never trusted grown men with hair that color.”

“You realize you haven’t a leg to stand on when it comes to hair color,” Temple said.

Cross ran a self-conscious hand through his ginger locks. “Irrelevant. It’s not me Chase thinks is handsome.”

“I am sitting right here, you know,” she said.

They did not seem to care.

“He’s a brilliant businessman and rich as a king,” Bourne added. “And if I were a betting man, I’d lay money on him eventually holding a seat in the House of Commons.”

“You are not a betting man, though,” Georgiana pointed out. As though it would stop him.

“He doesn’t have to be. I’ll put money on it,” Cross said, “I’ll happily mark it in the book.”

The betting book. The Fallen Angel’s betting book was legendary – an enormous leather-bound volume which held the catalogue of all wagers made on the main floor of the club. Members could record any wager – no matter how trivial – in the book, and the Angel bore witness, taking a percentage of the bets to make certain the parties were held to whatever bizarre stakes were established.

“You don’t wager in the book,” Georgiana said.

He met her gaze. “I shall make an exception.”

“For West running for Minister of Parliament?” Temple asked.

“I don’t care about that at all,” Cross said, throwing a card down. “I’ve one hundred pounds that says that West is the man who breaks Chase of her curse.”

She narrowed her gaze on the ginger-haired genius, recognizing the words. She’d made the same wager an age ago. She’d won.

“You shan’t have my luck,” she said.

He smirked. “Care to wager on it?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “I shall happily take your money.”

“Mistake,” Bourne said. “He’s clearly after you. It’s a good bet.”

“Well, he’s after Anna, at least,” Temple corrected.

“It’s only a matter of time before he puts two and two together and discovers that Anna
is
Georgiana. Especially now that he’s…” Bourne waved a hand in her direction. “Sampled the wares, so to speak.”

She’d had enough. “First of all, there was no
sampling
of
anything.
It was a kiss. And second of all, he already knows that Anna and Georgiana are one and the same.”

The other three went silent.

She added, “Well. Miracle of miracles, I’ve rendered the three of you silent. The rest of London would be shocked beyond reason to discover that the owners of The Fallen Angel were nothing more than chattering magpies.”

“He knows?” Cross was the first to talk.

“He does,” she said.

“Christ,” Bourne said. “How?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does if others know, too.”

“No one else knows,” she said. “No one else has looked too long at Anna’s face. They’re too interested in her other assets.”

“But West has looked at her face. And Georgiana’s. And realized the truth.” This, from Temple.

“Yes.” The word made her feel guilty. As though she could have changed the situation. And perhaps she could have.

“You should never have brought him into this,” Bourne said. “He’s too quick. Of course he discovered you are both women. He was bound to. He likely knew the moment he agreed to help you land Langley.”

She did not reply.

“But he doesn’t know about Chase?” Cross asked.

She stood from the table, moving to the stained glass window that covered a full wall of the room, massive and menacing, depicting the fall of Lucifer. Hundreds of pieces of colored glass meticulously assembled to reveal the enormous angel – four times the size of the average man – as he tumbled from Heaven. From the casino floor, far below, it appeared that he was cast from light into darkness, from perfection into sin.

Destroyed and, in destruction, renewed. A king in his own right, with power unrivaled by all but one. Georgiana sighed, suddenly keenly aware of how powerless second-most-powerful could be.

“No,” she said. “And he won’t know who Chase is.”

That, she could promise.

“Even if he did,” Temple said. “He’s to be trusted.”

Georgiana had spent years working with the worst of humanity – learning them, judging them. She knew good men and bad. A day ago, she would have said that Temple was right. That West was to be trusted.

But that was before he’d kissed her.

Before she’d been drawn to him as she’d been drawn to another, long ago. One whom she’d trusted with her heart. With her hope. With her future.

One who had betrayed her without hesitation, and taken everything she’d given, ensuring that she would never be able to give it to another.

Ensuring that she would never want to.

Now, she did not trust her instincts around West. Which meant she had to rely on a different set of skills. “How do we know that?” she asked Temple, setting her cards on the table, no longer interested in the game. “That he is to be trusted?”

Temple shrugged one massive shoulder. “We’ve trusted him for years. He’s never betrayed us. You’re paying him handsomely with Tremley’s file… there’s no reason to believe that he’ll do anything but help. As always.”

“Unless he discovers Chase,” Cross said. “Now that she’s under his skin, he’ll be livid if he feels he’s been duped.”

Bourne nodded. “There’s no ‘feels’ about it. He
has
been duped.”

“I don’t owe him anything,” she said. The three men cut her identical looks. “What is it?”

“He knows you’re not simply Anna,” Cross said.

“And he’s not able to keep his hands off you,” Temple said. “If he finds that you’re also Chase…”

She did not like the words, or the implication that West was more connected to her life than she imagined. Nor did she like the way that implication made her feel – as though she couldn’t quite take a deep breath. She’d felt this way before, and she did not fancy feeling it again.

She channeled Chase, remembering the shadow that had crossed his face as he’d discussed the Earl of Tremley.
Eleven years
. Remembering the threat he’d voiced – the hint that if she did not provide him with information on Tremley, he would release her secrets. He was a smart man – one who knew what he wanted. “What do we know about him?”

Bourne’s brows rose. “West?”