Page 64 of One Night with a Rake

Nate had to sweeten the guard’s salary considerably, but finally Manfred Hock, a great hulking fellow with a cauliflower ear, one eye, and a game leg, agreed to take the post on Lackaday Lane.

If nothing else, Mr. Hock’s face alone will scare away potential ne’er-do-wells, Nate decided as he counted out the fellow’s pay a month in advance. Hock was ordered to report to Mrs. Throckmorten at once.

At White’s, Nathaniel wasn’t a bit surprised to find Lord Gobberd at the same poque table where Nate had left him a few weeks earlier. The gentleman had assembled a new gaggle of willing victims, all of them emptying their pockets into the pot.

“Do you want in, Colton?” he asked with a calculated lift of a wiry brow.

“No, but I’d like a private word if you can spare it, my lord.”

Even if Gobberd couldn’t, Nate would have his word in any case, but it never hurt to act the gentleman. At least while in the hearing of others.

Gobberd squinted at his cards and tossed them down. “Deal me out for the next couple hands, but don’t give away my seat. I’ll be back.”

He waddled to a distant corner and settled his bulk into a booth with his broad back to the wall. Dissolute and just shy of disreputable, the earl was known for shady business dealings and, it was whispered, occasional cheating at cards, though no one had ever called him out on it. But Lord Gobberd still didn’t seem the type to stoop to murder.

Any man is capable of it, Nate reminded himself. Beneath the lace and superfine, man was still an animal, with a barely suppressed predator’s instinct for both self-preservation and aggression.

“Bring us a pot of that Jamaican stuff that just came off the boat,” Gobberd ordered the waiting servant. “Good beans, those.”

While they waited for the coffee to arrive, Nate studied his companion. Lord Gobberd was an accomplished poque player. Whether he held a winning hand or nothing at all, his heavily jowled face never revealed a thing.

It stood to reason the earl could just as easily cloak murderous intent behind his pale, vacant-seeming eyes.

“I know what this is about,” Gobberd finally said, obviously tired of the silence.

Nate didn’t answer. He just continued to meet his opponent’s steady gaze.

“I don’t care what you say.” Lord Gobberd leaned forward and cast Nate a gimlet stare. “You won it fair and square. I won’t take it back.”

Nathaniel frowned in confusion.

“Now look. Right now, over at that table, I’ve got a viscount, a newly elevated baron, and his American friend who seems to be the heir to a shipping magnate or some such thing on the string. I’ve been letting them win all night, but I know their tells and the tide is set to turn,” Gobberd confided. “If you want, you can use it to buy into the game now. Toss it into the pot and be done with it. Easy enough to lose a hand when a body means to, isn’t it? Between the pair of us, we’ll pick the others clean.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The deed to that whorehouse, of course,” Gobberd said. “Don’t tell them what it is, or even where it is, for God’s sake, and I’ll let you bluff your way into the game without a single pence from your pocket.”

Nate exhaled noisily. If Gobberd didn’t want the deed to the House of Sirens back, he was evaporating from the short list of suspects rather rapidly. “Did you lose the property to me on purpose?”

Gobberd shot him a frown of derision. “No, there was too much else in that pot for that, but I suspected I was about to take a tumble. I had an inkling you’d come out on top and, to be perfectly frank, I couldn’t bear not to give you a little grief for it.”

He smiled unpleasantly.

“Abominable place, isn’t it? Roof leaks like a sieve. Rotten to the rafters. And don’t get me started on the madam who’s the tenant,” Gobberd said. “Never met such a whiny, demanding bitch in all my life and I’ve been married three times!”

“I bought out her lease and sent her packing.”

Sadie O’Toole had screeched like a banshee, but in the end, she went because she knew she had no legal recourse. Nathaniel hadn’t seen or heard from the former madam since.

“Did you, now? Well, that’s one problem solved.” Gobberd gave him a nod of grudging respect. “But given the house’s location, I doubt you’ll attract any other tenants besides vagrant rats.”

“On the contrary, the House of Sirens’ rooms are all full,” Nate said.

Nearly full, he amended silently, remembering that Vesta’s chamber was now empty.

Then he went on to tell Gobberd how he’d become involved in Lady Georgette Yorkingham’s crusade to improve the lives of fallen women.

“Wouldn’t have figured you for a reformer, Colton. Don’t seem at all the type to go for that sort of meddling.” Gobberd gave him a slant-eyed squint. “What are you—some kind of secret Methodist?”