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“Better company here,” Bobby said with honesty. “No luck at the hell. Plenty of gentlemen losing their shirts, but the oiks in question never turned up.”
Judith sent her a gentle smile. “Ah, well. Never mind. Are you coming to bed?”
Bobby’s heartbeat quickened. Judith in her fine lawn nightgown and nothing under it was a beautiful thing to behold.
Bobby regretfully jerked her thumb at the door. “I should kip down the hall. I reek like a chimney sweep.”
Judith’s warm smile heated the room. “Leave your clothes over there, and all will be well.”
Bobby’s heart banged even harder. “What an excellent idea.”
She disrobed with all speed and soon was burrowing into the comfortable nest Judith had made. Judith turned down the lamp, softening the room with delicious darkness. All as it should be.
Bobby returned to the Adam for three more nights, determined to not let Mrs. Holloway down. She gambled sparingly, making herself walk away from a losing game, and each night she came home perhaps five guineas poorer than when she’d left.
Judith was always in bed when Bobby returned, ostensibly reading the same book. She never seemed to make any headway with it, marking the same spot every night before she closed it to welcome Bobby home.
Bobby didn’t question her. If Judith wanted to pretend she was nonchalantly absorbed in reading whenever Bobby wasn’t there, she could do so.
On the fourth night at the Adam, Bobby’s vigil was rewarded. Lady Coulson’s offspring, William and Terrance Makepeace, swaggered into the Adam Club and eventually joined the card game at Bobby’s table.
Chapter Three
The Honorable Terrance, in fact, did all the swaggering. His older brother simply looked worried and out of place.
Another man had come in with the brothers and now hovered at Terrance’s shoulder as the lads seated themselves at Bobby’s table. This gentleman—Bobby gave him the label with reservations—was about double the age of the brothers, wore a well-made suit complete with gold fob-watch, and observed the two with an eagle-like stare.
Bobby had no idea who he was. She recognized nearly half the gents in this place, most of them sons of peers and wealthy nabobs. Many had either gone to school with her brother or now rubbed elbows with him at the grand palaces of White’s and Brooks’s.
The other half were the up-and-comers who’d made their fortunes in trade and wanted to hobnob with the peers. They might not be admitted to the closed clubs of St. James’s, but they could meet and consort with sons of dukes and earls at the Adam Club without restriction.
This man appeared out of place even here. He had a soft face and a full but well-trimmed beard, and his shoulders spoke of much exercise. His eyes, on the other hand, were like steel ball bearings, devoid of any sort of warmth.
He watched Terrance with an intense gaze, though he did nothing to interfere with Terrance’s choices of cards or wagers. If the man was helping Terrance cheat—perhaps signaling what others held in their hands—he was damned subtle. Bobby caught no twitch of fingers or brows that might be guiding Terrance, and in fact, Terrance lost a good deal more than he won.
Now that Bobby had located the lads, she wasn’t certain what to do. Note all she observed, she supposed, to relate to Mrs. Holloway.
Her focus on the pair was so avid she lost a hand she could have won if she’d been paying attention. As Bobby slid her markers over, she realized she was twenty guineas down. That was her signal to leave the table or the club altogether. Instead, Bobby took a hefty pull on her cheroot and accepted another round of cards.
Not long into that hand, she found the hard-eyed chap’s gaze upon her. Maybe she’d been too obviously staring at Terrance and William. Or perhaps he thought he’d found another mark to fleece.
Bobby drained her glass of whisky in a practiced way and let out an expletive when her hand was beaten. The man’s contemplation of her sharpened.
Dash it, Bobby was nowhere near as good at this investigation business as McAdam. He’d know how to find out information without giving himself away.
Bobby held on to her courage and continued playing.
Neither Terrance nor William ever glanced her way, or at anyone else at the table, for that matter. Terrance was fixed on the game, his eyes glittering. William kept his attention on Terrance, except for fearful glances at the hard-eyed man.
William’s spying on him too, Bobby realized. Trying to decide how to save his brother from his influence.
The game was not going well for either brother. Terrance was playing very deep, and Bobby doubted William could stop Terrance racing to his ruin.
The hard-eyed man gave Bobby another assessing glance, then he removed a folded paper from his coat pocket and handed it to the nearest gentleman at the table.
This gent flicked through the cards inside the paper, grinned, and passed them to the next man in line. Bobby’s curiosity grew as the pack moved from hand to hand around the table.
She opened the paper when it reached her, revealing flat pictures in gray monochrome colors. Ah. Naughty photographs. Gentlemen often shared such things at the clubs—some of them had whole books of ladies in various stages of undress.
