One Good Earl Deserves a Lover (6 page)

Knight tilted his head. “You’re sayin’ your men aren’t loyal to the Angel for the money?”

“The Angel offers them more than financial security.”

“You, Bourne, and Chase never could resist a poor, ruined soul,” Knight scoffed, standing. “I always thought that particular job best left to the vicar. Gin?”

“I know better than to drink anything you serve.”

Knight hesitated in pouring his glass. “You think I’d poison you?”

“I don’t pretend to know what you’d do to me if given the chance.”

Knight smiled. “I’ve got plans for you alive, my boy.”

Cross did not like the knowledge in the words, the smug implication that he was on the wrong side of the table here—that he was about to be pulled into a high-risk game to which he did not know the rules. He took a moment to have a good look at the inside of Knight’s office.

He’d been here before, the last time six years earlier, and the rooms had not changed. They were still pristine and uncluttered, devoid of anything that might reveal their owner or his private life. On one side of the small room, heavy ledgers—insurance, Knight called them—were stacked carefully. Cross knew better than anyone what they contained: the financial history of every man who had ever played the tables at Knight’s eponymous gaming hell.

Cross knew, not only because a similar set of ledgers sat on the floor of his own offices, but also because he’d seen them that night, six years before, when Digger had thrown open one enormous book, his ham-fisted henchmen showing Cross the proof of his transgressions before they’d beaten him almost to death.

He hadn’t fought them.

In fact, he’d prayed for their success.

Knight had stopped them before they could finish their job and ordered Cross stripped of his money and thrown from the hell.

But not before setting Cross on a new path.

The older man had leaned in, ignoring Cross’s bruised face and his bloody clothes and broken ribs and fingers.
You think I don’t see what you’re doing? How you’re playing me? I won’t kill you. It’s not your time.

Cross’s eyes had been swollen nearly shut, but he’d watched as Knight leaned in, all anger.
But I won’t let you fleece me again,
the older man had said.
The way you feel right now . . . this is my insurance. You come back, it will get worse. Do yourself a favor and stay away before I have no choice but to destroy you.

He’d already been destroyed, but he’d stayed away nonetheless.

Until today.

“Why am I here?”

Knight returned to his chair and tossed back a swig of clear alcohol. With a wince, he said, “Your brother-in-law owes me ten thousand pounds.”

Years of practice kept Cross from revealing his shock. Ten thousand pounds was an exorbitant sum. More than most men would make in a lifetime. More than most peers would make in a year. In two. And definitely more than Baron Dunblade could ever repay. He’d already parceled off every bit of free land from the barony, and he had an income of two thousand pounds a year.

Two thousand, four hundred and thirty-five pounds, last year.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep a roof over Dunblade’s wife’s and children’s heads. Enough to send his son to school, eventually. Enough to provide an illusion of respectability that allowed for the baron and baroness to receive coveted invitations from the rest of the
ton.

Cross had made sure of it.

“How is that possible?”

Knight leaned back in his chair, rolling the crystal tumbler in his hands. “The man likes the tables. Who am I to stop him?”

Cross resisted the urge to reach across the table and grab the older man by the neck. “Ten thousand pounds is more than liking the tables, Digger. How did it happen?”

“It seems the man was given a line of credit he could not back.”

“He has never in his life had that kind of money.”

Knight’s tone turned innocent and grating. “He assured me he was good for it. I can’t be held responsible for the fact that the man lied.” He met Cross’s eyes, knowledge glittering there. “Some people can’t help it. You taught me that.”

The words were meant to sting—to recall that long-ago night when Cross, barely out of university, bright-eyed and cocksure, had played the tables at Knight’s and won. Over and over, he’d mastered
vingt-et-un
—unable to do anything but win.

He’d gone from hell to hell for months, playing one night here, two there, convincing every onlooker that he was simply lucky.

Every onlooker but Digger. “So this is your revenge? Six years in the making?”

Knight sighed. “Nonsense. I’m long past it. I never believed in revenge served cold. Always liked my meals hot. Better for the digestion.”

“Then clear the debt.”

Knight laughed, his fingers spreading wide over his mahogany desk. “We’re not
that
even, Cross. The debt stands. Dunblade’s a fool, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m owed. It’s business, I’m sure you’ll agree.” He paused for a long moment, then, “It’s a pity he’s a peer. Debtor’s prison might be better than what I have in store for him.”

Cross did not pretend to misunderstand. He ran a hell himself, after all, and knew better than anyone what secret punishments could be meted out to peers who thought themselves immune to debt. He leaned forward. “I can bring this place to rubble. We’ve half the peerage in our membership.”

Knight leaned forward as well. “I don’t need half the peerage, boy. I have your sister.”

Lavinia
.

The only reason he was here.

A memory flashed, Lavinia, young and fresh-faced, laughing back at him as she pulled ahead on her favorite chestnut mare along the Devonshire cliffs. She was youngest by seven years, spoiled rotten and afraid of nothing. It was no surprise that she had come to face Knight. Lavinia had never been the kind to stay quiet—even when it was best for everyone.

She’d married Dunblade the year after Baine had died and Cross had left home; he’d read about the marriage in the papers, a fast courtship followed by an even faster wedding—via special license to skirt the issue of the family’s state of mourning. No doubt their father had wanted the marriage done quickly, to ensure that
someone
would marry his daughter.

Cross met Knight’s brilliant blue gaze. “She is not a part of this.”

“Oh, but she is. It is interesting how ladies manage to get themselves into trouble, isn’t it? No matter how hard one tries to keep her at bay, if a lady has it in mind to meddle, meddle she will,” Knight said, opening an ornate ebony box on his desk and extracting a cheroot and tapping the long brown cylinder, once, twice on the desk before lighting it. After a long pull on the cigarette, he said, “And you have two on your hands. Let’s talk about my new acquaintance. The lady from yesterday. Who is she?”

“She is no one of consequence.” Cross caught the misstep instantly. He should have ignored the question. Should have brushed past it. But his too-quick answer revealed more than it hid.

Knight tilted his head to one side, curious. “It seems that she is very much of consequence.”

Dammit.
This was no place, no time for Philippa Marbury with her enormous blue eyes and her too-logical mind and her strange, tempting quirks. He pushed back the thoughts.

He would not have her here.

“I came to discuss my sister.”

Knight allowed the change in topic. Too easily, perhaps. “Your sister has character, I will say that.”

The room was warm and far too small, and Cross resisted the urge to shift in his seat. “What do you want?”

“It isn’t about what I want. It’s about what your sister has offered. She’s been very gracious. It appears the young lady will do anything to ensure that her children are safe from scandal.”

“Lavinia’s children will remain untouched by scandal.” The words were firm and unwavering. Cross would move the Earth to ensure their truth.

“Are you sure?” Knight asked, leaning back in his chair. “It seems they are rather close to quite devastating scandals. Poverty. A father with a penchant for gambling away their inheritance. A broken mother. Add all that to their uncle—who turned from family and society and never looked back, and . . .” The sentence lingered, completion unnecessary.

It wasn’t true.

Not all of it.

He’d never turned from them.

Cross narrowed his gaze. “You’ve lost your accent, Digger.”

One side of Knight’s mouth kicked up. “No need to use it with old friends.” Knight took a long pull on the cheroot. “But back to those lucky young boys. Their mother is a strong one. She’s offered to repay me. Pity she doesn’t have any money.”

It did not take a brilliant mind to hear the insinuation. To understand the foulness in the words. A lesser man would have allowed rage to come without seeing all the pieces in play, but Cross was not a lesser man.

He did not simply hear the threat. He heard the offer.

“You will not speak to my sister again.”

Knight dipped his head. “Do you really believe you are in a position to make such a pronouncement?”

Cross stood, transferring his coat to the crook of one arm. “I will pay the debts. Double them. I’ll send the draft around tomorrow. And you will steer clear of my family.”

He turned to leave.

Knight spoke from his place. “No.”

Cross stopped, looking over his shoulder, allowing emotion into his tone for the first time. “That is the second time you have refused me in as many days, Digger. I do not like it.”

“I’m afraid the debt cannot be repaid so easily.”

Digger Knight had not made his name as one of the most hardened gamers in London by playing by the rules. Indeed, it was Knight’s penchant for rule-breaking that had saved Cross’s hide all those years ago. He’d enjoyed the way Cross’s mind had worked. He’d forced him to reveal how he counted the deck, how he calculated the next card, how he knew when and how much to bet.

How Cross always won.

At the tables, at least.

He turned back to his nemesis. “What, then?”

Digger laughed, a full-throated, heaving-bellied guffaw that had Cross gritting his teeth. “What a remarkable moment . . . the great Cross, willing to give me whatever I want. How very . . . responsible of you.” There was no surprise in the tone, only smug satisfaction.

And that’s when Cross realized that it had never been about Dunblade. Knight wanted something more, and he’d used the only thing Cross held dear to get it.

“You waste my time. What do you want?”

“It’s simple, really,” Knight said. “I want you to make my daughter a countess.”

If he’d been asked to guess the price Knight would place on his sister’s reputation and the safety of her children, Cross would have said there was nothing that could surprise him. He’d have been prepared for an offer to become part-owner in the Angel, for a request for the Angel’s floor boss or bouncers to come work for Knight’s, or for Cross himself to take up post at Digger’s hell.

Cross would have expected extortion—a doubling of the debt, a tripling of it, enough to level a financial blow. He would even have imagined some proposal of joint partnership between the clubs; Knight loathed the way The Fallen Angel had catapulted to aristocratic success in a matter of months after opening, while Knight’s remained a mediocre, second-rate hell that collected the peers rejected by the Angel’s rigorous standards of membership.

But never, ever would he have imagined this request.

So he did the only thing one could do in this situation. He laughed. “Are we listing the things we would like? If so, I should like a gold-plated flying apparatus.”

“And I would find a way to give it to you if you held in your hands one of the few things I hold dear.” Knight stamped out his cheroot.

“I was not aware that you held Meghan dear.”

Knight’s gaze snapped to Cross’s. “How do you know her name?”

A hit.

Cross considered what he knew of Knight’s only child, the information he’d learned from the files kept locked away in the inner safe of the Angel. The ones that held the secrets of their potential enemies—politicians, criminals, clergy with a love of fire and brimstone, and competitors.

The information was as clear as if Knight’s file were spread on the desk between them.

Name: Meghan Margaret Knight, b. 3 July 1812.

“I know quite a bit about young Meghan.” He paused. “Or should I call her Maggie?”

Knight collected himself. “I never cared for it.”

“No, I don’t imagine you did, what with the way it oozes Irish.” Cross draped his coat over the back of the chair, enjoying the small amount of control he had gained. “Meghan Margaret Knight. I’m surprised you allowed it.”

Knight looked away. “I let her mother name her.”

“Mary Katharine.”

Mary Katharine O’Brien, Irish, b. 1796, m. Knight—February 1812.

“I should have known you would have information on them.” He scowled. “Chase is a bastard. One day, I’m going to give him the pounding he deserves.”

Cross folded his arms at the reference to his partner, and founder of The Fallen Angel. “I guarantee that will never happen.”

Knight met his eyes. “I suppose I should be grateful. After all, you know about the girl already. It will be like marrying an old friend.”

Residence: Bedfordshire; small cottage on the High Street.

Knight sends £200, 4th of every month; does not visit and has not seen the girl since mother and child were sent away, October 1813.

Girl raised with a governess, speaks mediocre French.

Attended Mrs. Coldphell’s Finishing School for Girls—day student.

“Since when do you give a fig about your daughter?”

Knight shrugged. “Since she’s old enough to be worth something.”

There was one more line, written in Chase’s bold, black scrawl.

NB: Girl required to write to Knight weekly. Letter posts Tuesday.

He does not reply.