Rothwest’s gaze found him unerringly. “Barbarous? No, my dear Ashworth. Barbarous would be taking what I want without the courtesy of marriage contracts and church blessings. This is merely business. Broker gambled what he could not afford to lose. That it happens to be his daughter’s freedom rather than his own is simply… poetic justice.”
He pulled on his gloves, smoothing each finger into place like a knight donning gauntlets. “Forty-eight hours, Broker. I trust you can find your way home unassisted? Or has pride abandoned you along with fortune?”
The Baron said nothing, staring at the cards as if they might rearrange themselves into salvation.
At the door, Rothwest glanced back.
“Oh—and Broker? Do not attempt to run. I have associates in Dover, Portsmouth, and Liverpool. Should a gentleman of your description seek passage, they have instructions. It would be… unfortunate if they were required to act.”
With that, he was gone, leaving behind only the lingering scent of his cologne and a room full of men trying to decide if they’d witnessed a business transaction or the opening move in something far more dangerous.
Ashworth was first to speak, his voice tight with outrage. “Good grief, Broker, you cannot possibly—”
“What choice have I?” The Baron’s voice had aged a decade in as many minutes. He looked around, seeking sympathy, and found only calculating gazes weighing the profit in his ruin. “What earthly choice remains to me?”
***
The journey from Madame Thorne’s establishment to the respectable streets of Mayfair took Baron Broker through a London transformed by desperation. Each gaslight seemed to illuminate his shame; each passing carriage might hold creditors ready to descend like wolves. His hired hack—he’d sold his own carriage a month earlier—smelled of tobacco and despair.
How does one tell one’s daughter she has been wagered like a mare at auction?
The thought circled ceaselessly as familiar streets gave way to the modest townhouse he had managed to retain only through his wife’s increasingly creative economies. Warm light glowed from the windows, mocking his cold dread.
Marsh, his butler of thirty years, opened the door before he could raise a hand. A man did not keep a servant that long without him learning to sense disaster.
“My lord,” Marsh intoned, removing the Baron's coat with the dignity he might have shown had Broker returned from triumph rather than catastrophe. “Her ladyship has retired, but Miss Celine remains in the blue drawing room.”
Of course she does,Broker thought bitterly.Reading, no doubt. Or writing in that infernal journal of hers. Recording all the ways her father has failed her.
He found his eldest daughter exactly as expected: curled in a wingback chair near the dwindling fire, a book balanced on her knee. Her hair, loosed from its evening arrangement, fell in dark waves over her shoulder, catching the firelight like spilled ink touched with gold. She looked up as he entered, and he saw his late mother in the arch of her brow, the resolute set of her chin.
“Papa,” she said, setting aside her book—some Gothic novel, by the look of it. “You’re home earlier than expected. Did luck favour you tonight?”
The irony of the question nearly choked him. “Celine, my dear—”
She was on her feet at once, alarm sharpening her expression. “What’s happened? Is it Mama? The girls?”
“No, no, nothing of the sort.” He moved to the sideboard and poured himself a generous brandy with hands that would not steady. “Your mother and sisters are well. Sleeping peacefully, I’m certain.”
“Then what?” She approached him with the careful steps of someone navigating a room full of broken glass. “Papa, you’re frightening me.”
You should be frightened,he thought viciously.We all should be, for what I have done.
“I’ve had a reversal,” he said at last, avoiding her eyes. “A significant one.”
“Another?” The word escaped before she could stop it, and she bit her lip in instant remorse. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did, and you were right to.” He drained half the brandy in a single swallow. “Another reversal. The last one, as it happens.”
She sank onto the settee, her morning dress pooling around her like water. “How bad?”
“Eight thousand pounds.”
The colour drained from her face so completely that he feared she might faint. But Celine had never been the fainting sort. Instead, she straightened her spine and lifted her chin—that damnable Broker pride that had led him to the gaming tables in the first place.
“Eight thousand,” she repeated carefully, as though testing the weight of the words. “And we have…?”
“Nothing. Less than nothing, if such a thing can be.”
