Mine Till Midnight (The Hathaways #1)(49)

"You're leaving me?" St. Vincent asked, looking perturbed. "For how long?"

"For good, actually."

As St. Vincent absorbed the information, his pale blue eyes narrowed. "What will you do for money?"

Relaxed in the face of his employer's displeasure, Cam shrugged. "I already have more money than anyone could spend in a lifetime."

The viscount glanced heavenward. "Anyone who says such a thing obviously doesn't know the right places to shop." He sighed shortly. "So. If I'm to understand correctly, you intend to eschew civilization altogether and live as a savage?"

"No, I intend to live as a Roma. There's a difference."

"Rohan, you're a wealthy young bachelor with all the advantages of modern life. If you've got ennui, do what every other man of means does."

Cam's brows lifted. "And that would be?

"Gamble! Drink! Buy a horse! Take a mistress! For God's sake, have a little imagination. Can you think of no better option than to throw it all away and live like a primitive, thereby inconveniencing me in the process? How the devil am I to replace you?"

"No one's irreplaceable."

"You are. No other man in London can do what you do. You're a walking account book, you've got eyes in the back of your head, you've got the tact of a diplomat, the mind of a banker, the fists of a boxer, and you can put down a fight in a matter of seconds. I'd need to hire at least a half-dozen men to your job."

"I don't have the mind of a banker," Cam said indignantly.

"After all your investment coups, you can't deny?

"That wasn't on purpose!" A scowl spread across Cam's face. "It was my good-luck curse."

Looking satisfied to have unsettled Cam's composure, St. Vincent drew on his cigar. He exhaled a smooth, elegant stream of smoke and glanced at Westcliff. "Say something," he told his old friend. "You can't approve of this any more than I."

"It's not for either of us to approve."

"Thank you," Cam muttered.

"However," Westcliff continued, "I urge you, Rohan, to reflect adequately on the fact that while half of you is a freedom-loving Gypsy, the other half is Irish—a race renowned for its fierce love of land. Which leads me to doubt that you will be as happy in your wandering as you seem to expect."

The point rattled Cam. He had always tried to ignore the gadjo half of his nature, lugging it around like some oversized piece of baggage he would have liked to set aside but for which he could never find a convenient place.

"If your point is that I'm damned whatever I do," Cam said tersely, "I'd rather err on the side of being free."

"All men of intelligence must eventually give up their freedom," St. Vincent replied. "The problem with bachelorhood is that it's far too easy, which makes it tedious. The only real challenge left is marriage."

Marriage. Respectability. Cam regarded his companions with a skeptical smile, thinking they resembled a pair of birds trying to convince themselves of how comfortable their cage was. No woman was worth having his wings clipped.

"I'm leaving for London tomorrow," he said. "I'll stay at the club until it reopens. After that I'll be gone for good."

St. Vincent's clever mind circumvented the problem, analyzing it from various angles. "Rohan... you've led a more or less civilized existence for years, and yet suddenly it has become intolerable. Why?"

Cam remained silent. The truth was not something he was readily able to admit to himself, let alone say aloud.

"There has to be some reason you want to leave," St. Vincent persisted.

"Perhaps I'm off the mark," Westcliff said, "but I suspect it may have something to do with Miss Hathaway."

Cam sent him a damning glare.

St. Vincent looked alertly from Cam's stony face to Westcliff's. "You didn't tell me there was a woman."

Cam stood so quickly the chair nearly toppled backward. "She has nothing to do with it."

"Who is she?" St. Vincent always hated being left out of gossip.

"One of Lord Ramsay's sisters," came Westcliff's reply. "They reside at the estate next door."

"Well, well," St. Vincent said. "She must be quite something to provoke such a reaction in you, Rohan. Tell me about her. Is she fair? Dark? Well formed?"

To remain silent, or to deny the attraction, would have been to admit the full extent of his weakness. Cam lowered back into his chair and strove for an offhand tone. "Dark-haired. Pretty. And she has?quirks."

"Quirks." St. Vincent's eyes glinted with enjoyment. "How charming. Go on."

"She's read obscure medieval philosophy. She's afraid of bees. Her foot taps when she's nervous." And other, more personal things he couldn't reveal?like the beautiful paleness of her throat and chest, the weight of her hair in his hands, the way strength and vulnerability were pleated inside her like two pieces of fabric folded together. Not to mention a body that had been designed for mortal sin.

Cam didn't want to think about Amelia. Every time he did, he was swamped with a feeling he'd never known before, something as acute as pain, as pervasive as hunger. The feeling seemed to have no purpose other than to rob him of sleep at night. There wasn't one millimeter of Amelia Hathaway that didn't attract him profoundly, and that was a problem so far outside his experience, he didn't begin to know how to address it.