“I feel I am missing something here?” An understatement when Gal had no clue what the hell any of them were talking about.
“That’s because you have wisely always disappeared before the evening games begin, old chap.” Giles mopped his lips before tossing his napkin on the table. “And are blissfully unaware of the deal dear Vee here has to have done with the devil.”
None the wiser, Gal threw up his palms bewildered, doubly intrigued by the arrival of the wicked glint behind Venus’s beguiling prim spectacles. “What sort of a deal?”
“The sort where Lucifer has guaranteed that she never loses.” Giles threw up his own palms as he shrugged. “No matter what the game, if it involves cards, you don’t stand a chance. Poor Jeremiah has been trying to beat her at something for four years, and every single time she rinses him. It would be most entertaining if she didn’t also rinse me and Hugh in the process, but we are at peace with it.”
Hugh nodded in resignation. “We accept it as one of the divine, cosmic mysteries we mere mortals are never supposed to understand. Whereas poor Jeremiah hasn’t. His hubris will not allow him to accept continual defeat. He is convinced of fraud and it’s eating him from the inside that he cannot prove it—as you can plainly see.”
“I am not a cheat, Galahad.” Venus’s cocky expression suited her. “Merely lucky.”
Jeremiah banged the table, causing all the cutlery to rattle. “Nobody’s luck holds for four years!” He was right, of course, but Gal held his tongue. The sainted Miss Venus was up to something—and he was damned if that didn’t intrigue him. “If she’s not a cheat, then she’s a witch!” Jeremiah slapped the table again. “One of these days, I am going to prove it!”
“And this is why cards have been banned in this house,” said Hugh with a grin while his stepfather seethed. “And why my grandmother’s rare Italian marquetry game table has had to be repaired three times since I married her sister. Venus Merriwell is unbeatable.”
“I’ll wager I could beat her.” Not only because he knew that a schoolteacher with a talent for parlor games was no match for a man who had grown up at the foot of a card table. But also because it gave him the perfect opportunity to spend some time with her as he needed to. That Gal would also get to hide behind the shield of a fan of cards where he was always the most comfortable was the clincher that made him throw the gauntlet down. “That is, if Miss Venus is confident enough that her luck will hold that she is brave enough to take a professional on.”
All the eyes on the table swiveled from him to her expectantly.
She didn’t disappoint, skewering him with her glare. “Oh, I am brave enough, Galahad,andtrust me, whether you are a professional or not, I am still going to enjoy thrashing you.”
Chapter Six
Minerva keeps warning me that reading in the small hours by one candle is going to ruin my eyesight. I have told her that that is poppycock…
—from the diary of Miss Venus Merriwell, aged 16
The tension was palpable as they all traipsed into the drawing room and watched Payne, the Standish butler, prepare the table. Enough that even Vee was nervous. Galahad, on the other hand, was a changed man from the quiet and almost shy gentleman who had sat with them all at dinner. Now he was suddenly all confidence and sinful swagger, and certainly all smiles as he allowed her the choice of game.
“How about whist?”
He quirked one golden brow, his green gaze amused. “An interesting choice. One that requires as many tactics as it does luck.”
As that felt like a loaded statement, she smiled back blandly, trying not to notice how much the twinkle in his emerald eyes suited him. “Unless it’s not to your taste, in which case we can play somethingeasier?”
“Oh, I don’t mind whist.” He folded his big body into one of the chairs at the table, then smoothed his palms over the baize as if he had never encountered the stuff before. Vee found herself mesmerized by his hands—horrifying herself by wondering what they would feellike smoothing over her skin with the same gentle attention. “It feels strange being sat on this side of a card table again. I’m more used to watching nowadays than participating.” Then he frowned at the pack of cards Jeremiah had placed in the center of the table. “Refresh my memory, as it’s been a while—doesn’t whist need four players?”
“It does, but as this is the clash of the Titans, I think you should both be paired with the worst card players in the family.” Giles was already enjoying himself. “Then you are both handicapped and it’s a proper fair fight.” He grinned at his wife. “Which of you wishes to be saddled with Diana and which with the equally incompetent card player Minerva? Both will be a hindrance, but I can guarantee one will be more belligerent than the other.” The final barb was directed at his wife, who curled her lip in disgust but did not argue the point.
“I’ll take Minerva.” Vee was no fool, and Diana had a temper on her as bad as Jeremiah’s when the game did not go her way.
If that bothered Galahad, he hid it with an easygoing shrug. “Five tricks a game and the best of three rounds?”
She nodded, biting her lip at his language when any idiot knew that where whist was concerned they were called rubbers and not rounds. At least here they were. Maybe things were different on the other side of the Atlantic.
“I have hidden away all the sharp knives, my lord.” Payne sighed at the room in general, shaking his head at the lot of them. “But I feel I must remindcertainpeople that there are only so many times that a hundred-and-fifty-year-old table can be fixed, even by the most skilled of carpenters, before it must be consigned to the bonfire.” The butler stared pointedly at Jeremiah. “I should also like to remindeveryonethat many of the servants who work here have to be up at five to light the fires and prepare the breakfast, so would request that you all refrain from the usual shouting and hollering that usually accompanies one of these uncouth card games after eleven o’clock. Furthermore…” At Hugh’s groan, the outspoken retainer smiled. “If you require me to open a book, as I suspect you all do, for the sake of candor I am puttingfive shillings on Miss Vee. No offense, Mr. Sinclair, but she really is a demon.”
“None taken, Payne.” Galahad waved that away with another lazy smile. “I only hope you can afford to lose it.”
They all took their places, Vee opposite Minerva and Diana beside her. At Galahad’s insistence that it was always ladies first, she dealt the cards, which she did without preamble, before turning the last card over.
“Diamonds are trumps.”
While her sisters began to sort their decks, he rifled in his waistcoat pocket for something, then waved a silver coin triumphant. “I almost forgot my lucky quarter.” He winked at her as he snapped it down in front of him. “That could have been disastrous.”
Vee studied it and him surreptitiously as she arranged her own cards, wondering if a man who made his living from gambling really believed in the nonsensical concept of superstition. Perhaps, judging by the state of that silver coin, he did. It was clearly a token he had kept and held for many years, as most of the indentations that had been pressed into it had been worn smooth. He also did not sort his cards into suits; instead he fanned them open to scan them and discarded them while he waited for the rest of their party to be ready and decided to make chitchat the moment the play started. The second Diana laid the two of clubs he laid down the ten. A high card that was wasted so early in the game when any other in the same suit would have done.
Clearly his skills at whist were very rusty indeed.
