No Good Duke Goes Unpunished (The Rules of Scoundrels #3)(108)

To another man.

And instead of being at Dolby House, in her bedchamber, in her arms—giving them both a final taste of mutual pleasure—he was here, in one of London’s darkest corners, now lit in brilliant celebration of his own impending marriage.

Knight had not been able to resist glorying in paternal triumph. Cross was to marry Meghan Margaret Knight and gaming hell royalty would soon be born; if that did not call for a night of sin and debauchery, nothing would.

A group of men at a nearby hazard table cried out their excitement, as the roll turned in their favor, and Cross turned to watch as the little ivory dice were raked up and returned to the head of the field, where Viscount Densmore kissed the cubes and threw them down the table again. Three. Four.

The entire table groaned their disappointment at the loss, and Cross took perverse pleasure in the sound. No one should be happy tonight if he could not be. No one should have pleasure if he could not take it.

It had been four days since he’d touched happiness—fleetingly. Four days since he’d brushed against pleasure, all soft skin and breathless words. Four days since he’d had Pippa in one perfect, devastating night. Four days that had stretched like an eternity, every moment taunting him, tempting him to go to her. To steal her away and keep her from scathing words and judging eyes.

He had twenty-five thousand acres in Devonshire where no one ever needed to see them, where she and Trotula could roam. He would build her a house for her scientific research. He’d give her everything she needed. Everything she desired. And he’d roam with them, he and their passel of children as, in his experience, rustication tended to facilitate breeding.

He’d do everything he could to keep her happy.

It wouldn’t be enough.

It would never be enough. He would never be enough for her, just as he hadn’t been enough for Baine or Lavinia. She deserved better.

A wicked ache settled in his chest at the thought.

Castleton wasn’t better. He wouldn’t challenge her. He wouldn’t tempt her.

He wouldn’t love her.

Nearby, Christopher Lowe leaned over at the roulette wheel and barked his triumph as the little white ball seated itself into a red square on the spinning surface.

Cross hissed his displeasure. Roulette was the worst kind of game—entirely chance, never worth the wager, even when resulting in a win. It was a game for idiots. He turned to watch the score of men patting Lowe on the back and placing their blunt on the table. “The wheel’s hot now!” one called.

Cross turned away in irritation.

The whole world—every game designed to tempt and take—was designed for idiots.

“Cross.”

He spun on Sally Tasser, standing several feet away. “I should kill you for what you did,” he growled. “If you were a man, I would.”

She’d sold him out to Knight, forced him into a marriage he didn’t want. Into a life he would never have taken. In this world where they lived and breathed power and sin, pleasure and punishment, betrayal was always a possibility. Losses happened.

But Sally’s actions had not simply punished him; they’d threatened Pippa.

And that, he would never forgive.

Fury raged as he advanced on the prostitute, unsettling her, pushing her back through the throngs of revelers, between card tables and dice fields until they were at the side of the room, dingier and less welcoming than the main floor of the Angel. “Tell me, what was my future worth to you? A few quid? A new gown? A string of paste? After all I’ve done for you? For your girls? And you repay me with this. By threatening the one thing I hold dear?”

She shook her head, brown eyes flashing. “It’s so easy for you to judge me, isn’t it?” she spat.

“You threatened mine,” he thundered, wanting to put his fist through a wall. In six years, he had never felt so out of control. So unhinged. The idea of Pippa in danger made him shake with fear and anger and a half dozen terrifyingly powerful emotions.

What would he do when she was married?

Sally saved him from having to answer the question. “You with your perfect life and your piles of money and never having to get on your knees to earn your next meal and stay on them to thank some stranger for the coin . . . If you’d failed—”

“If I’d failed, I’d have kept you safe.”

“Safe,” she scoffed. “You’d have sent me off to the country to live out my days—an old mare put to pasture? That may be safe, but it’s not satisfaction.”

“Many think otherwise.”

“Well, not me,” she said. “If you’d failed, and Knight had discovered my role in your plans, he’d have pushed me out, and I’d be working the streets.” She paused. “I’ve a good life, Cross, and I protected it. You would have done the same.”

Except he hadn’t. Protecting his life would have meant throwing Pippa to Knight and refusing his request. Refusing to take on Maggie.

But Pippa had come first.

She always would.

“If you think on it, I’ve done you a favor. You get yourself a wife. And an heir. You shan’t regret it.”

The wrong wife. The wrong heir.

“I shall regret every minute of it,” he said.

“Cross—” Sally began. “I am sorry, you know. For the lady.”