Twice Tempted by a Rogue (Stud Club #2)(14)

“Before last night, I hadn’t laid eyes on you in fourteen years.”

“Mm.” A little smile crooked his lips. “That’s what makes it destiny. We’re fated to wed.”

Meredith felt as though she’d been wedged into an old wine cask and set rolling down the rocky slope of Bell Tor. Rattled, disoriented. Just a bit drunk.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, I don’t want to marry you.” And she didn’t, not anymore. They needn’t discuss the scraps of foolscap she’d covered with “Meredith St. Maur, Lady Ashworth” when she was twelve. “I don’t want to marry at all.” As a widow, she owned this inn outright. That wouldn’t be the case if she took a husband.

He said calmly, “If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that fate doesn’t care what we want.”

“Well, I don’t believe in fate.” She hugged herself tighter still.

“Fate doesn’t care whether we believe in it, either. That’s the devil of it.” He chuckled. “Meredith. Lay down that shield you’re making with your arms and come sit with me.” When she hesitated, he lifted a brow. “It’s only breakfast.”

Was it?

As she sat down, he picked up a knife and buttered a roll. “You’d understand what I mean about fate if you’d lived through a war in my boots.”

The words settled like stones in her chest. “Was it true? Everything you said out there in the courtyard?”

“That and more.” He bit into the roll, taking two-thirds of it into his mouth in one bite.

“That’s …” Heartbreaking. “Remarkable, that you’ve survived.” She felt in that moment how close she’d come, so many times, to never seeing him again. And it made her want to take him upstairs and pin him to the bed that moment. Make love to him just once, before he went away again.

“Ah, well.” He swallowed. “Not so remarkable, really. Tried my best to leave this earth at every turn, but God and the Devil kept sending me back. Neither wanted me, I suppose.”

Maybe I just wanted you more.

To avoid speaking the words aloud, she tore off an unladylike hunk of bread and chewed it noisily.

Pushing his coffee aside, Rhys reached into his coat pocket and withdrew two coins. He let them clatter to the table, where they lay like brass checkers on the blue-and-white gingham weave. On closer inspection, they weren’t like any coins she’d ever seen. She picked one up and held it to the light, twisting it back and forth between her thumb and forefinger. The disc was irregular and crudely stamped. On one side a horse’s head stood out in relief; on the reverse, she found a horse’s tail.

She laughed at it. “Are these foreign money from your travels?”

“No. They’re tokens that indicate membership in an elite gentlemen’s society known as the Stud Club. Possession of one of those coins gives a man breeding rights to Osiris, England’s most valuable stallion. The club rules state the tokens can’t be bought or sold or given away. They can only be won or lost in a game of chance. There are only ten of them in the world, and at the moment I own two. Do you know how I came by them?”

She shook her head.

“Fate, pure and simple. Through no merit of my own, I was spared while other men—better men—fell.” He propped an elbow on the table and cast a glance through the window. The bright morning sun made him squint, wrinkling the scar tissue on his temple.

Taking one of the coins in his hand, he said, “This one belonged to an officer in my battalion. Major Frank Brentley, from York. He was a good man. His wife traveled with the company, and she mended my shirts for me. He never drank, but he was a gambler through and through, always dicing or playing cards. Story was, he’d won this token drawing blind at vingt-et-un. Said he was blessed with good luck all his life.”

He tapped the coin on the table. “Well, his good luck ended at Waterloo. We had the left flank of the line, and a voltigeur came out of nowhere. One moment Brentley was next to me, the next he was flattened by a rifle shot at close range, his gut ripped open at the seams.”

Swallowing with great care, Meredith put down the bit of bread she’d been holding.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s not proper breakfast conversation, I know. Anyhow, after I killed the French guardsman, I carried Brentley out of the action. Tried to make him comfortable. He pulled this token from his pocket. ‘Have to play me for it,’ he said. ‘That’s the rule. Heads or tails?’ Then he died, and the coin rolled out of his hand, and it was too smeared with blood to make out the stamp on either side. But I’d won the coin toss, hadn’t I? It’s the way my life goes. It’s like I’ve got a coin with ‘Life’ stamped on one side and ‘Death’ on the reverse, and no matter how many times I flip it into the air, it always comes up heads.”

He reached for the other token. “This one belonged to Leo Chatwick, the Marquess of Harcliffe, the Stud Club’s founder. Another good man. Had it all—youth, wealth, good looks. Universally admired. Murdered in cold blood almost two months ago now, while walking the wrong part of Whitechapel. Beaten and robbed by footpads. Or so most believe. His killers were never caught.”

Meredith winced. “How dreadful. Was he a very close friend of yours?”