Читать книгу Regency Surrender: Ruthless Rakes - Bronwyn Scott - Страница 12

Chapter Three

Nolan knew the truth before the cards were laid down. The count’s hand was good, good enough to understand why he’d had hope of winning. But the count, like many amateur gamblers, lacked the ability to see beyond his own hand. Nolan knew not only what he, himself, held, but what others at the table held as well. The count had not yet learned that a hand was ‘good’ only by comparison.

Nolan lay down his hand. There were a few humorous moans from the other players who hadn’t bet more than they could afford to lose with some élan. But the count went pale. He’d lost everything, even his daughter. Ostensibly. Nolan still didn’t quite believe she was his daughter or even a virgin, although the paleness of the count’s face was starting to make it believable. Or perhaps it was only loser’s remorse, the crash that came after the high of an extraordinary wager before it had gone bust. The girl beside him showed no reaction beyond the movement of her eyes locking on his, a sharp, hazel-green gaze.

In that moment he knew he’d been wrong. She was not a girl. This was a woman. It was hard to be sure of her age, of her experience. Certainly, she was not a first-Season débutante, but neither could she be more than a year or two over twenty. There were flashes of youth in her at odds with the shrewdness he’d seen in her gaze, but she was a woman. Girlhood had been left behind years ago. The question surfaced again: had she done this before? He could usually read people well, but she was blank to him.

‘Perhaps another hand, Signor Gray?’ The count’s voice couldn’t disguise the tremor. Nolan had expected it, the gambler’s recourse; a second hand, a second try, anything to erase the sting of defeat.

‘Do you have another daughter to lose?’ Nolan queried in wry tones. He gave the man a rueful smile in the silence as he rose. The table had become deadly quiet. He needed to make a quick exit for everyone’s sake. ‘I didn’t think so. You have nothing left to wager.’ Nolan extended his hand to the daughter, her face still a blank canvas devoid of any emotion even as her fate clarified itself. There would be no quarter given to the count. He would be held to his brash wager. If she was frightened, angry, embarrassed or any of the thousand emotions one might feel after having been sold into a bargain not of their making, those emotions didn’t show. But Nolan was not dense enough to assume those emotions didn’t exist beneath her calm surface. Calm surfaces harboured all variety of dangers in his experience.

‘Signorina, it seems we are to leave together.’ Nolan took her arm. He would treat her respectfully until she gave him a reason not to. He did not envy her the situation. If she was innocent of all this, she must be in shock. If she was a knowing accomplice, she would be the one to directly endure the brunt of his anger when her duplicity was found out.

Nolan nodded once to the count. When he spoke, his words were for Minotti, but his manners were for her in the hopes of assuring her all would be well. ‘Buonanotte, your night ends here, I think, Minotti. Better luck another day. I shall return her to you.’ It was generous of him. Returning had not explicitly been part of the arrangement. Neither had not returning her. The parameters of this arrangement were somewhat nebulous in regards to their permanence. Nolan wondered which choice offered her the better chance. Would going back to the count only lead to more of this? The idea of her staying with him was impossible, not part of his plans. Nolan could only imagine what Brennan would say—when he stopped laughing.

* * *

This was no laughing matter. Panic receded in the wake of her anger. She had been sold to a foreigner and now she was being carted off like chattel. Not literally, of course. She’d not been slung across his rather broad shoulders, but even the touch of his hand at her back, guiding her through the crush of the ballroom, was too much for her roiling temper. She stepped beyond his reach, her words cold and demanding. ‘Take your hand off me. I am not your property.’

The Englishman chuckled, not the least put off by her cold tone, his voice was low and easy at her ear as he claimed her elbow, his arrogance unequalled. ‘My four aces beg to differ with your assessment.’

‘You don’t own me.’ Her words were vehement, but they were only words. There was no substance behind them and they both knew it. At the moment, she had nowhere to run, nowhere to go except with him. She needed a plan. She needed a way to see the silver lining. How could she turn this tragedy into an opportunity? If she could push past the panic that had consumed her at the table; the anger and disbelief that consumed her now, she could find a solution. But the Englishman’s arrogant words made it difficult.

‘Again, I must beg to differ. You’re as much my property as five thousand lire, Signor Bellosi’s gold watch and four diamond stickpins. The only difference is that you’re not as useful. I can’t convert you to cash.’

That did it. If there had been any lingering vestiges of shock, he’d effectively exorcised them. She would not be the pawn of any man again, not the count and certainly not this Englishman who acted as if this were a grand lark. At the bottom of the palazzo’s steep steps, gondolas bobbed on the waters of the canal. The Englishman handed her in and waited patiently for her to sit and arrange her art piece of a dress before joining her on the plush velvet seat. He had manners aplenty, even if he was arrogant, and that was something at least. She would take what she could get. It was starting to sink in just how much danger she was really in. If the money hadn’t protected her, nothing would.

He called out directions to the gondolier. ‘Hotel Danieli, per favore.’ Gianna smiled to herself. He had good manners and good taste, part of his arrogance, she supposed. He was a man who liked the best and perhaps therein lay his flaw. A proud man was blind to his weaknesses. She would exploit them if she had to, as long as he let her stay.

It was the hotel that clinched her decision, that showed her the silver lining. Staying was the key. The count had attempted to frighten her into compliance tonight, but he’d made a grave mistake. When he’d lost his hand, he’d inadvertently set her free. For a few days or for as long as the Englishman was willing to keep her, she was beyond the count’s control. Gianna didn’t fool herself into believing it would be easy. If, after a few days, she didn’t return, the count would come looking for her. She would have to act fast.

She couldn’t go back, not after tonight. Gianna shuddered to think of what going back would entail. The count would be cruel, crueller than he’d ever been. If he was willing to sell her virginity in a card game, there was no telling what he’d do next in order to get what he wanted. His home was no longer safe for her, if it had ever been.

Safe was a relative term in this case. If it was only herself to consider, she’d leave the city, but she couldn’t leave the city, not yet. There were things she needed to retrieve from the count’s home, she needed Giovanni and she needed her money. Otherwise there would be no way to support the two of them. Until those items were assured, she needed somewhere to live. She also needed a protector or at least the illusion of one.

Her mind began to work, a plan started to form, beginning with the premise that she’d catch more flies with sugar than vinegar. Perhaps the Englishman would play the role of protector for her if given the correct incentive. To do that, though, she’d have to change her current tack immediately. Everything hinged on the Englishman letting her stay beyond the night.

That conjured a host of other thoughts regarding what she might be required to do in order for her persuasion to be successful. Certainly, the Englishman was expecting to claim that which he’d won. A shiver took her. In her anger, her disbelief and panic over her plans being shredded, it had been easy to shove aside the more practical implication of what the wager involved: sex. With a stranger. With this man who sat beside her, a man about whom she knew nothing except his accommodations and that his manners, while nicely turned, bordered on arrogant. But perhaps she’d find a way to avoid that, too.

‘The Hotel Danieli is the finest in the city...’ she began, trying to make the stranger less strange. Perhaps if they talked, she could build some rapport. ‘It used to be a private palazzo.’ Gianna shivered again, this time from the breeze off the canal. She regretted not having had the Englishman stop for her cloak. Then again, if she had her cloak, she wouldn’t have an excuse for what she did next.

‘Are you cold?’ He shifted in his seat, but before he could shrug out of his coat and play the gentleman, she inched close until there was no space between them on the seat and pressed against him.

‘Just a little, I left my cloak behind. Would you mind if I...?’ She put her hand in the pocket of his evening coat, letting her words trail off in a delicate fade. She tossed him a smile. ‘Thank you, that’s better, much better.’

It was also much more ‘friendly’. The outside pocket of his evening coat proved to be a very intimate location indeed when one was seated. Her hand rested mere inches from a very private part of him that seemed compelled to stir at the proximity of her fingers. In a sense that was good. She wanted him attracted to her. But it was also a reminder of what might be surrendered in order to secure the larger goal.

They rode in silence after that, the Englishman not inclined towards conversation. The night spoke around them in the passing songs of the gondoliers and the laughter of revellers on the canals until the gondola bumped against the pier. The gondolier called out, ‘Hotel Danieli, signor.’

The Englishman extracted her hand from his pocket rather reluctantly, and stepped out of the barque. He passed some coins to the boatman, his words catching her entirely by surprise. ‘Take the lady wherever she’d like.’

Here! She wanted to be taken here, Gianna fought the urge to cry out. Surely he didn’t mean to leave her? Is this what he’d been thinking in the gondola? How to get rid of her? In all of her imaginings it had never occurred to her that he might find the arrangement as distasteful as she did. He was a man, after all, and men were all alike, her mama had taught her. Men were governed by sex.

She’d tried to make herself agreeable. She’d made conversation, to which he hadn’t responded. She’d put her hand in his pocket, to which he had responded. Sweet heaven, she’d almost touched his cock! He was not getting away this easy, not when she’d decided she had plans for him. Gianna bolted into action with a sharp cry. ‘Aspetta! Stop!’ She climbed clumsily to her feet, her hasty efforts hampered by her heavy skirts. She stumbled and got back up, the gondola rocking. She should have stilled and waited for the boat to settle but her mind was fixated on the Englishman. Her plans were not going to be wrecked by two men in one night. He couldn’t set her free. She had plans—admittedly, they were hastily concocted ones built in the silence of the boat ride, but plans none the less, to replace the ones the count had destroyed.

The Englishman stepped forward, holding up his hands in a placating gesture. ‘Signorina, I think you misunderstand. I am giving you your freedom. This is where you and I part ways.’ He said it as if ending their association was a good thing. They were not parting ways, not until she decided it.

Gianna faced him, hands on hips, trying to look dignified in a dangerously rocking boat. She pushed back a strand of hair and tilted her chin in defiance, struggling to maintain her balance. ‘No, signor, you misunderstand. This is the part where I—’

Stay.

The word never left her mouth. The gondolier gave a warning yelp and leapt for the pier. Gianna surged forward to the dock, hoping to escape the inevitable, but she was too slow. The boat tipped. She hit the water.

‘Gianna!’ The Englishman’s voice was the last sound she heard before she went under.

Two sensations hit her simultaneously: the water was dark. No lantern light reached the depths—

someone could fall in and simply disappear without being seen even if their fall had been noted. Second was that it was cold, so very cold. Gianna tried to push to the surface, arms and legs working to propel her upwards, but she had little momentum with nothing for her legs to push off from and an enormous amount of drag from her skirts. She needed more strength than she possessed.

She had no intentions of simply giving up. It would suit the count too well if she died. Everything she had would be his. He wouldn’t have to wait out the next four weeks. It would certainly suit the Englishman who had been so eager to send her away. No one would care except Giovanni. Giovanni was counting on her. But her air was failing, her strength was failing. What would happen to Giovanni?

There was a splash in the water beside her, a hand about her waist, another arm pushing upwards with her now. She lent her own meagre efforts, hurrying them upwards out of the murk. Haste was important now. Spots danced behind the lids of her eyes. If she lost consciousness, her dead weight would drag them both down. The surface at last! Her head broke the water and she dragged in a great breath, the Englishman beside her, his voice filling the night with directions.

‘We’re over here! I’ve got her. Get her up! Someone bring a blanket.’ It took two of them; the Englishman inelegantly pushing her up from behind, his hands on her bum, and the gondolier tugging her by the armpits to the pier. Task accomplished, the Englishman braced his hands on the dock and levered himself up with enviable, easy strength. He took the offered blanket and threw it about her shoulders. ‘Let’s get you inside.’

Gianna was shivering, unable to do anything but let him guide her into the opulent lobby of Hotel Danieli, his arm around her, holding her close to his side. She caught sight of herself in one of the long Venetian mirrors and groaned. She looked exactly like what she was—a soaking wet woman who’d just fallen into the canal. The Englishman, however, managed to look like a prince, all dripping six feet of him. Even wet and dressed in ruined clothing and barefoot. ‘You took time to remove your boots,’ she accused testily. She’d been panicking underwater, facing certain death, and he’d taken time to pull off his boots.

The Englishman laughed, a warm, light chuckle. She had the sensation again that everything was a lark, even death. ‘I assumed you didn’t want us to both drown? Your dress weighed enough without contending with my boots.’ He put his mouth close to her ear the way he had in the ballroom. ‘There’s a reason, Gianna, people swim naked.’

Her cold body went hot at the words, the sound of her name on his lips, the tickle of his breath at her ear. It was a most inappropriate comment made at a most inappropriate time in a most inappropriate place. Not surprising considering how the evening had gone. It fit perfectly with everything else that had occurred: she’d been wagered and lost in a card game by the one man her mother had trusted to look out for her, her plans for freedom from the count were now entirely undermined and her fate was in the hands of a stranger. What else could go wrong? What else was there to go wrong?