“Who are those expensive flowers from?”
“Lord Dorchester.” The ostentatious hothouse arrangement on the mantel wasn’t to her taste, but she wasn’t going to admit that to him.
His smile was smug. “Ahhhh… our waltz worked, then, as I’m guessing he’s never sent you a bouquet before?”
She most certainly was not going to admit that he was right about that, too, so she offered him a stony glare over her cards while Minervalaid the jack. One that told him in no uncertain terms she took her whist seriously and wasn’t in any mood for small talk.
Olivia, however, nodded like a woodpecker. “After months of never sending a single bloom, that lot came yesterday after Vee failed for the second week in a row to attend his mother’s reading salon.” The traitor shot Gal a loaded look. “She was too busy, apparently, which was most unlike her when she usually finds any excuse to bury her nose in a book.” She was going to murder Olivia once this game was over.
“It’s a sensible tactic.” Amusement danced a jig in his annoying green eyes. “Miss Venus has finally realized that absencealwaysmakes the heart grow fonder.”
She refused to dignify that insufferable quip with an answer but punished it swiftly by playing a trump and laying the two of diamonds on Minerva’s jack to take the first trick. Then she smiled sweetly as she helped herself to one of the counters that kept score.
Throughout the whole of the next three tricks, he played only slightly less clumsily, because he wouldn’t stop talking. Only this time it was to ask his partner questions about her latest investigation. As Diana had more interest in that than she did whist, Vee won two of those tricks and Minerva the third. At last, he seemed bothered that Vee was trouncing him and concentrated for the first time, flicking his lucky quarter backward and forward across his fingers in silence as he occasionally frowned at the three counters sat by her elbow. He won the trick, the wretch, but only because he wasted his last decent trump card to do it. Which meant, by the end of the hand, that he had nothing left to stop her and Minerva stealing the game with the required five tricks to his one.
Because she hated dealing, Diana passed the messy deck of cards to Galahad to distribute, and he gathered the pile slowly into a neat stack. To remind him of his failings, Vee couldn’t resist mirroring him by piling up her four shiny counters in a precise column, too.
“I told you I would win.” After his annoying perceptiveness aboutthe depressing Lord Dorchester situation, she was keen to put him back in his place.
“As the British like to say, one swallow doesn’t make a summer, Miss Venus.” His gaze flicked up from the cards and he sighed. “But I’ll confess, I find no incentive to win when I play for buttons.” He gestured to her counters before leaning closer across the table in challenge. “What say you we up the ante? Play for something that will get my competitive juices flowing?”
“How much do you have in mind?” As she really hadn’t punished him enough for the “absence always makes the heart grow fonder” dig, she decided to be a bit reckless. “Shillings orsovereigns?”
He scoffed at that idea, picking up his lucky quarter again and weaving it idly through his busy fingers. “Where’s the fun in you losing money?” He swept a hand to encompass the entire drawing room. “When there’s no shortage of that here in Mayfair or, not to brag, in my pocket? No…” He shook his golden head, smiling. “I want to play for something that matters.” Those emotive green eyes bored into hers. “Win something that matters to you. Something you wouldn’t want to lose.”
“Such as?”
He cast his eyes around the room until they settled on the open book she had left lying facedown on the arm of the sofa. “Your precious copy ofMuch Ado About Nothing.” He turned back smiling in challenge, not giving her the time to refuse. “When I beat you, I want it to sting.”
“In that case…” Vee nodded toward his hands, not needing any time to decide what to steal from him. “I want your lucky quarter.” The merest twitch of his brows before he nodded told her that, like him, she had chosen something that really mattered. “Deal the cards, Galahad, and may the best woman win.”
“I admire your confidence, Miss Venus. I really do.” He winked as he picked up the neatened pack and cut the cards in half, weighing them briefly in each hand. “Let’s hope your vanity isn’t misplaced.”Rather than shuffling them like any normal person would, suddenly he was an expert because, like the coin, those cards wove through his fingers at lightning speed, flipping and twisting as if he controlled them all with naught but magic.
“I say,” said Hugh, beyond impressed. “Somebody’s been hiding their light under a bushel.” Her brother-in-law looked her way wide-eyed. “If I were you, I’d be worried now, Vee.”
She was worried, because she suspected she’d been had, but it would be a cold day in hell before she let any of them see. “I’d expect a man who owns two gambling hells to be a master of showmanship—but a fancy shuffle is little more than artful deception. Much like Galahad’s feigned gentlemanly manners.”
He winked again as he effortlessly dovetailed the two halves of the pack together with a flick of his thumbs. The flirty gesture unsettled her because she liked it. “Showmanship and artful deception are the most essential skills of my job and the easiest way to keep my customers happy. Never underestimate the power of seducing someone with a few cheap tricks, Miss Venus. Sometimes performing them is essential to winning them.”
As he dealt them, the cards whipped and spun fast around the table and all landed practically on top of one another in front of their intended player, but again, when he fanned his, he made no attempt to sort them into suits.
Almost as if he realized that made things harder for her.
This game was more evenly matched, but despite his superior shuffling skills, and thanks to her sister’s atrocious playing, his wandering concentration, and his need to chat, his skills at whist weren’t anywhere near as impressive. He won the second rubber by a whisker on the last trick—more by luck than judgment—because his last low trump card was higher than hers and he laid it on the king of clubs.
Everything hinged on the last hand dealt, and her hand was magnificent. Magnificent enough that she purposefully allowed him to win the first two tricks to make him use up all his best cards because shewanted to annihilate him. She stole the third without breaking a sweat, but because spades were trumps and she still held three, including the unbeatable ace, she had to work hard not to give away the fact that she had already won.
While Diana stared at the two cards left in her hand as if praying for divine intervention, he asked Vee a question. “Have you dealt with any spider emergencies since I last saw you?”
“Thankfully no spiders. But the Claypole twins did put jam in Mrs. Witherspoon’s bedroom slippers a few days after, so they are in serious trouble with her and have been sentenced to a month of the same bedtime as the little children as punishment, exactly as she had threatened.” Like an idiot Diana laid her ace of hearts, leaving her holding a useless two of spades by Vee’s best estimation because she had been scowling at her hand in disgust this whole game and always saved a trump till the bitter end no matter how the game went. Usually the wrong trump.
“Who is Mrs. Witherspoon again?”
“The matron of the orphanage. She lives there and tries very hard to be terrifying—but really is as soft as butter.” With nothing else to beat Diana’s card, Galahad had no choice but to play a trump card to win the trick.
As he studied his hand with a bland expression, he picked up his lucky quarter again and flipped it faster than before. Perhaps in panic? “If they knew the punishment in advance, why do you think that they still went out of their way to put jam in her shoe?” He snatched a card, for once more irritated than lazy, and tossed it down.
It was the queen of spades.
