Despite herself, she was very tempted by the wager Lord Hammond offered. With one turn of a card, her troubles would be over—or at least postponed. Or she could be in even more trouble than before. She shivered to think of Lord Hammond’s hands on her, of those cold eyes looking at her naked body.
But there were no other promising games in the casino tonight, no other prospects. And she was down to her last farthing. That gnawing feeling of desperation deep inside
had become all too familiar. It was time to leap before she looked.
“Very well, Lord Hammond,” she said. She struggled to smile and keep her voice steady. “I accept your wager.”
“Splendid, Mrs. Westman. You are ever intriguing. I knew you would not fail me.” Lord Hammond raised his hand in an imperious gesture and a footman hurried over with a sealed pack of cards. As Sophia watched, Lord Hammond broke the seal and shuffled the cards. He laid the neat stack before her. “Ladies draw first.”
Sophia stared down at the cards. They looked so innocent, mere printed pasteboard. She handled such things every night. Somehow she felt as if they would come to life and bite her when she touched them. She had truly fallen low.
She took a deep breath to steady herself and reached for the top card. Shockingly, her hand did not shake. She flipped over the card, her stomach in knots.
Queen of diamonds. Not bad. But it could be beat.
Lord Hammond nodded and reached for the next card. Sophia held her breath. It seemed as if time itself slowed down as he flipped it over. All the noise around her, the laughter, the chatter, the clatter of the roulette wheel, faded in her ears. She swallowed hard and looked down.
The six of clubs. She had won. She was a thousand pounds richer. A shocked laugh escaped her lips.
“Well,” Lord Hammond said, “it appears luck favors you tonight, Mrs. Westman.” His voice was low and tight and filled with a barely leashed raw fury. She had never heard such a tone from the suave, cool man before.
She glanced up to find him staring at her with burning dark eyes. A dull red flush spread over his face and his hand clenched in a fist on the table. Another shiver slid
down her spine, banishing the rush of victorious relief. Lord Hammond was not a man used to being thwarted.
“It would appear so,” she answered slowly.
Lord Hammond nodded and waved the footman forward again. He spoke a curt word in the liveried man’s ear and sent him scurrying away. “I have sent for the key to my safe. You will understand, Mrs. Westman, that I do not carry such a sum on me.”
“Of course not,” Sophia murmured, still half stunned by what had happened.
“Will you have a glass of wine with me while we wait? I would consider it more than compensation for my sad loss.”
Sophia did
not
want to have a drink with him, or sit here any longer than she had to. His smile had become too congenial, too charming, and those shivers along her spine had become even colder. She had the urge to leap to her feet and run from the casino. But she did have to wait for her money.
She swept a glance around the lavish room. It seemed even more crowded, and the laughter was even louder thanks to the freely flowing champagne. She surely couldn’t get into too much trouble there.
“Thank you,” she said. “A glass of champagne would be delightful.”
Lord Hammond rose smoothly from the table and offered her his arm. Sophia had grown accustomed to acting in the last few years; the life of a gambler, traveling from one spa town to another, demanded constant deception. Yet it took everything she had to stand and slide her hand onto Lord Hammond’s sleeve. She shook out her heavy skirts and gave him a smile as he led her from the main salon into the bar area.
It was no less crowded there. A throng of people, like a merry, fluttering horde of brightly clad butterflies, gathered around the gleaming white marble bar. The gold-framed mirrors on the wall reflected them back in an endless sparkling vista. The barmaids scurried to serve them all.
Lord Hammond was immediately given glasses of the finest pale golden champagne. He handed one to Sophia and held up his own in salute.
“To your great good fortune, Mrs. Westman,” he said. “What shall you do now?”
Sophia shrugged and sipped at her wine. “Try another town, I suppose. This one does not suit me so well as I had hoped.”
“The sad memories of Captain Westman’s demise, I would imagine,” he said, all smooth, polite conversation. “But this place will be dull without you.”
“Dull?” Sophia laughed, and gestured with her glass at the crowded room. “I shall not be missed one jot.”
“I will miss you very much.” He studied her closely over the edge of his glass until she had to glance away. “I do wish you would reconsider my offer, Mrs. Westman. I could certainly give you far more than a thousand pounds.”
Sophia fidgeted with her glass and studied the array of bottles behind the bar. Where on earth was that blasted safe key? She wanted to be far away from here as quickly as possible. “Your offer of a walk in the garden, Lord Hammond?” she said, trying to feign wide-eyed innocence.
“Oh, come, Mrs. Westman. I have made no secret of my admiration for you,” he said, a note of impatience in
his voice. “I am a wealthy man. I could give you whatever you wanted.”
Sophia wondered what Lady Hammond, rumored to be an invalid back in England, thought of that. But the poor woman was probably quite used to it all. Sophia never wanted something like that for herself. She only wanted to be her own woman at long last. Free to make her own way, to see the world on her own terms…
And perhaps find another man who made her feel like Dominic St. Claire once had. A man who, unlike Dominic, would think her the only woman he wanted.
“You are so kind to flatter me like that, Lord Hammond,” she answered carefully. “But I am so recently widowed. I need time to mourn properly. I couldn’t possibly think of a man other than Captain Westman just yet.”
His eyes narrowed. “Quite understandable, my dear. But I hope when you are ready to cast off your widow’s weeds that you will think of me.” Suddenly he reached out to lightly stroke a fingertip over the ribbon at her throat.
Sophia flinched and fell back a step before she could stop herself. Lord Hammond gave a humorless laugh.
“You deserve to wear diamonds and pearls,” he said. “I could give you that. Just remember, my dear, one day you are going to need me even more than you do now, and I will always be waiting.”
Sophia desperately hoped not. She turned to set her glass down on the bar, and to her relief she saw the footman returning at last with the safe key. Lord Hammond brushed away the man’s apologies for the delay and took Sophia’s elbow in his hand to lead her out of the bar.
“Come, Mrs. Westman, let us collect your winnings,” Lord Hammond said as they made their way through the
soaring domed foyer and down the marble steps to the lower level where the wealthier patrons kept their guarded safes. Lord Hammond was now all brisk efficiency, leading her along without another word or untoward touch, but Sophia couldn’t shake away that urge to run. Especially as the noise of the casino faded behind them and there was only the whooshing echo of their footsteps on the cold stone floor.
He led her past the guards and along the row of iron safes until he found the one he sought. He turned the key in the lock and swung open the heavy door. Sophia glimpsed bags of coins, stacks of bank notes, and black velvet jewel cases. It was a veritable Aladdin’s cave of riches, but she had only a glimpse before he hastily removed one of the stacks of notes, put them into a bag, and pressed it into her hands.
“There you are, Mrs. Westman, your fair winnings,” he said. “Feel free to count it.”
Sophia shook her head and held on to the bag tightly. It felt like such a slight thing in her hands, yet it was her salvation. “I trust you, Lord Hammond.” As far as she could throw him. But yet she doubted he would cheat on a gambling debt, even one to a woman.
“Just remember my offer, my dear. I will be waiting.” He reached for her free hand and raised it to his lips for a lingering kiss.
Sophia could bear his touch no longer. She snatched back her hand and spun around on her heel to hurry out of the casino. She pushed past the people in the foyer and rushed out of the doors and into the gardens to the public walkway. She didn’t stop until she was in her hotel room with the door locked behind her.
She dropped the bag onto the end of her narrow bed and fell down onto the pillows with a sigh as her gown billowed around her like a black cloud. Only one more night here in this cursed place, and then she could catch the morning train for home. One more night with the likes of Lord Hammond just beyond the door, waiting to snatch her up when she stumbled. One more night not knowing where her next meal was coming from.
She was free. Almost.
Sophia rolled over and reached beneath her pillow to draw out a book. It was quite old, bound in cracked brown leather with the pages yellowing at the edges. But that book had been one of her best companions since she left home with Jack all those long months ago. Every night she read a precious entry before she went to sleep and she didn’t feel so very alone.
She opened it where she had left off, carefully turning the brittle pages closely written in faded brown ink in a careful hand. But first she smoothed her fingertip over the inscription on the first page.
Mary Huntington, Her Book, Gifted in the Year 1665.
Mary Huntington, the first Duchess of Carston, and a woman completely unknown in Sophia’s family. Unlike every other ancestor on the family tree, there were no portraits of her on the walls, no heirloom jewels that had once belonged to her. Sophia had never heard of her until she found this dusty book on a neglected shelf in her grandfather’s library one boring, rainy Christmas. When she began to read, it was as if Mary had come back to life and began to speak to her. As if Mary were a long-lost friend, a woman just as impulsive and wild-hearted as Sophia was.
A long-lost friend with a sad tale to tell. Mary was terribly in love with her handsome husband but was miserably unhappy. He left her at their country house when he went off to Charles II’s merry court, and Mary wrote of her loneliness and longing, all the storms of her emotions and the ways she kept herself busy in the country. Sophia felt as if Mary were reaching out to her over the decades. She took the diary with her wherever she went, and somehow she never felt alone.
She never wanted to be like Mary, with her whole life, all her emotions and everything she was, wrapped up in a man. Sophia had fallen prey to such fairy-tale dreams before, and she couldn’t do it ever again.
Sophia traced a gentle touch over the worn leather cover. “Everything will be fine now, Mary,” she whispered. “I can go home and start again. Things will be better in England.”
If only she could make herself believe that. England had seemed such a distant dream ever since she made the romantic, foolish, impulsive decision to run off with Jack. Her sheltered, pampered life there hadn’t seemed real. But the England she was going to now, and the life she would make for herself, would be very different.
Sophia slid the diary back under her pillow and sat up to reach for the bag of bank notes. They were all there, a thousand pounds worth. She fanned them out and looked down at them as she tried to make herself believe they were real.
The bag fell to the bed and Sophia heard a rustling noise from inside. Curious, and half hopeful there was yet more money inside, she reached for it and peered into its depths. It wasn’t bank notes but a sheaf of documents sealed with official-looking red wax.
As she started to take it from the bag to examine it closer, there was a sudden noise at her door. Startled, Sophia dropped the bag and sat up straight, every fiber of her body tense and alert. The doorknob rattled as someone tried to turn it. When it held, there was a scraping noise against the old wood, as if that person attempted to pick the lock.
Hardly daring to breathe, Sophia slid off the bed and tiptoed to the door. She held her skirts tight against her to still their rustling with one hand and reached for a straight-backed chair with the other. She wedged it under the knob and stood back to listen, holding her breath.
“Hier!”
she heard the hotel’s stern owner cry, muffled through the door. “I don’t allow people who are not paying guests to wander the hallways at all hours. This is a respectable establishment. Who are you, anyway? What do you want with Frau Westman?”
“A thousand apologies,” a man said, his voice deep and echoing, indistinguishable through the door. “I was merely returning something Frau Westman left at the casino.”
“Then you can leave it with me. She already owes me enough for her stay…”
Sophia listened as the stranger was bustled away from her door and their voices faded. She turned and hurried to the window to watch from the shadows as the hotel’s front door opened. A tall figure clad in an elegant evening cape emerged, and Sophia felt that panic clutch at her deep inside again. It was Lord Hammond.
She had to get out of there. Quickly.
Sophia slid back from the window and pulled the valise out from under the bed. She could pack her meager belongings in fifteen minutes and be on the first train out before it was light. It was past time for her to go home.
The Daughters of Erin
Countess of Scandal
Duchess of Sin
Lady of Seduction
“As powerful and romantic as McKee’s fans could desire. McKee shows readers she is a force to be reckoned with, an author who can turn a villain into a delicious hero. The action, romance, suspense, and intriguing historical details all add to readers’ pleasure.”
—
RT Book Reviews
“Book three in the Daughters of Erin Trilogy is riveting, exciting, and oh, so romantic… Readers will love this page-turner!”