Page 50 of Rules for a Wicked Wager

“Talk about carriage designs?”

“Stare into space and mutter about ideas. He tends to overflow with them when in his cups.” She gestured with her free hand as one of his secretaries slipped into the room and sat down, pen and paper at hand. “Mr. Harper is here to record whatever comes out.”

“His ideas are good?”

She shrugged. “Only one or two in a hundred. But it doesn’t matter. He has so many.”

“One or two good ideas could set a man up for life.”

She nodded and was strangely pleased that he understood her father. She’d heard the whispers about her father. He was an odd-duck bourgeois. A town cit who had delusions of grandeur. Only his family knew the true genius of the man. And now, perhaps, Lord Whitly.

“Is that what you talked about?” she pressed as they headed for the front door. “Carriages in India?”

“Some.” They parted at the door to accept hats and gloves from Horace. “He is sending around a marriage contract for me to peruse.”

Her step hitched, and her heart beat painfully in her throat. “Oh?” she said, scrambling to keep her voice from a high-pitched squeak of alarm.

“Don’t be concerned. It’s the initial gambit. The terms will be outrageous, and if I accept them without argument, your father will likely ban me from the house.”

If she was alarmed before, now she verged on horror. “What?”

“It’s the game of negotiation. Surely you’ve seen it before. A suitor appears avidly at your side, and then abruptly disappears.”

Well, of course she had. Scores of times. “Because they didn’t accept the terms of the negotiation?” How humiliating to have her future dickered over like a meat pie at market.

“Or they were insulted. It’s one way your father tests the men who come for your hand. If they don’t understand how to barter, then they won’t manage your dowry well. And that, I gather, would be a capital crime.”

She didn’t know how to answer. She’d never thought deeply about her marriage contract. She had been more interested in the man than the money.

He winked at her. “Never fear. I know this game very well.”

“And do my wishes matter to either one of you?”

He gave her hand a fond pat. “Of course they do. A great deal.” His expression shifted into devilry. “But that has nothing to do with the marriage contract. In that, I think your father and I shall take a great deal of joy in growling at each other like distempered dogs.” They stepped onto the walkway and began a pleasant pace toward Hyde Park. “We have that in common, you know,” he added. “Your father and I.”

“Acting like dogs?”

He chuckled. “A love of negotiation. I never realized how much fun it was until I got to India, where my entire livelihood depended on well-struck bargains.”

She shook her head. “I dislike it intensely. I rely on knowing what an item is worth and then paying that much and no more.”

“Which works extremely well for a pair of shoes or a horse, but not so well with a wife.” He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to the back. “If we had to measure your worth, I would be beggared paying for you.”

A pretty compliment made more striking because he said it without inflection. It was a statement, not flattery, and she turned mute from the heat his words generated. Warm, liquid yearning. That pushed her into an irrational state of panic. Desire, after all, was much too wayward for her.

So she rushed her words, everything spoken without forethought. “What do you know of Lord Rossgrove? Have you ever met him? He would not be in your set, though naturally your father would know him. They’re both political. And the men of money often speak together. But I’m not sure if you know anything of him, because you’ve been in India for a long while.”

She bit her lip, cutting off her abrupt flow of words. He arched a brow, his expression bemused. “Is Lord Rossgrove the tolerant uncle of Oscar Morgan? Also the disinterested father to Stephen who has a prune-faced wife and a love of sugar plums?”

She blinked. In one question, he’d told her more than she’d learned in an afternoon of searching. “I-I believe so,” she stammered.

“Then I am somewhat familiar with him. Why do you ask?”

“I mean to impress him tomorrow, and I wish to know how.”

His head jerked slightly as he stared at her. “That’s a fool’s gambit if ever there was one.”

“Why?”