My Once and Future Duke (The Wagers of Sin #1)(21)

He tilted his glass in mocking salute. “A deadly sin.”

She made a noise of rueful agreement. “Is Philip a terrible liar, then?”

Jack gave her a cold look and said nothing.

“Am I overstepping my place by asking that?” She sounded amused, incredibly. “You said he broke his word to you not to gamble. I see him all the time, you know. Mostly at Vega’s, but sometimes at the assembly rooms. If you think he’s losing all his money to me, you’re sadly misinformed.”

“I never supposed that.” Jack thought of the bank draft he’d just written to Sir Leslie Bagwell, and drank the last of his brandy. “How badly have you fleeced him, now that you bring it up?”

She glared at him. Jack realized he’d been watching her and got up from his chair. He went to pour more brandy because one glass was clearly not going to be sufficient. On impulse he poured a glass of sherry as well and brought it to Mrs. Campbell.

“Thank you,” she said in surprise. She tasted the wine, and her eyelashes fluttered closed in patent delight. She sipped again, and her lips glistened wet with sherry.

Jack stared. God, her mouth. He resumed his seat, eyes trained on her. He was damn near bewitched by everything she did. When she opened her eyes again, he made himself look away from her bare ankle and her shining hair and most of all her mouth.

“A few hundred pounds at most,” she said in belated answer to his question. She tilted her head and faced him. “Not all at once, of course, and I do lose to him from time to time.”

“But not often, I take it.”

She swung her feet up onto the cushion, pulling her knees up under her chin. She took another sip of sherry before setting the glass down. “No, not often. He plays recklessly.”

“How so?”

The firelight flickered on her face, giving her a pensive air. Jack tried not to notice that her bare toes were peeking out beneath the hem of his dressing gown. She’d kicked off the plain pair of slippers, which no doubt belonged to Mrs. Gibbon. It was completely unlike the vision he wanted to have of her as a scheming charlatan, angling to seduce her victims into ruin. It could be an elaborate play to persuade him of her innocence, but if so, it was the best Jack had ever seen.

“He never plays the odds,” she said after a moment. “He always raises the stakes, even when he should not. And then . . . Well, there’s no other way to put it. He’s got dreadful luck.”

“Not like you,” Jack murmured.

Her smile was twisted. “His luck is nothing like mine.”

There was an undercurrent in the words he couldn’t place. “Then that means he’s got no sense, either, if he persists in playing recklessly without even the veneer of good luck to carry him through.”

“He persists because he doesn’t fear losing.” She rested her chin on her knees and smiled at his expression. “I presume that is due to you.”

“Not as a general rule.”

“The last resort is almost as reliable,” she said, unperturbed by his clipped response. “Especially if one knows it will always be there when needed. Gambling is about risk, you know, and a guarantee is rare.”

He knew all that. In his younger days, before he was a duke, Jack had been fond of a good wager himself. Never dice, and rarely cards; his wagers had been more personal. Could he beat his mate Stuart Drake in a carriage race from London to Greenwich? Yes, he could, and win twenty guineas in the process. Could he bag more birds on the heath than the other gentlemen out shooting? Yes, he could, for another ten pounds. Could he win a dance with the prettiest girl in any assembly room they passed, without telling her his title—-which, Aiden Montgomery had once alleged, was outright cheating? Yes, he could, and lighten every friend’s purse by another handful of guineas.

But then he’d inherited and abruptly such frivolous pursuits were beneath him—-not that he had time for them anyway. His father had expected to live to age ninety, not drown just shy of fifty. Jack had expected to live the carefree life of an heir, not inherit every responsibility before he turned thirty. Wagering on carriage races became a quaint, almost childish thing.

“Is that what appeals to you?” he asked instead. “The risk?”

She laughed, although without much humor. “Oh no. I prefer to think of it as the chance of winning rather than the risk of losing.”

Of course. Jack tore his gaze away from her bare toes again. “Spoken like a true sharper.”

“Which you believe me to be.” Another twisted smile.

“Are you not?” he drawled. “You frequent a gaming hell and routinely relieve people such as my brother of large sums of money. You admit you were eager to relieve me of five thousand pounds.”

“You proposed the wager,” she said, unrepentant. “I’d like very much to know why.”

Hoist by his own petard. Jack drained his brandy and contemplated the empty glass. Two was enough. Any more and his wits—-already lacking this evening—-might desert him entirely and lead him to do something irretrievably stupid. Her bare toes tormented him. “Nothing but a useful device,” he murmured.

“To separate me from Philip?” She scoffed. “If so, it was completely unnecessary. I already told you I didn’t wish to play hazard with him. He interrupted my evening and maneuvered me into the game. I know well enough to be wary of Philip.”