One Good Earl Deserves a Lover (13 page)

He’d been inside his office with this woman, this woman who smiled as though he were the only man in the world. As though she were the only woman.

As though they were tasked with repopulation.

Pippa swallowed. “I see.”

He smirked. “I’m sure you do.”

She took another step back as he closed the door.

I
’ve never seen you treat a woman so,” Sally Tasser said, pulling her legs up beneath her in the large wing chair to allow Cross room to pace.

Cross ignored the words and the pang of guilt that came with them. “Where were we?”

Why was she here?
How had she twisted their wager—one afternoon together—into a welcome for her to invade his space anytime she liked?

The prostitute raised raven brows in silent disbelief and consulted her notes. “I’ve thirteen girls, all working on the list.” She paused. “Who is she?”

She is temptation incarnate.
Sent to destroy him.

“Can they be trusted?”

And what the hell was she doing with Temple?

“They know you deliver on promises.” Another pause. “At least, promises made to whores.”

He spun to face her. “What does that mean?”

“Only that you’ve never been anything but a gentleman to my women. And yet this afternoon you appear to have gravely mistreated a lady.”

He resisted the truth in the words. “And since when have you had sympathy for aristocrats?”

“Since that one looked as though you’d kicked her dog.”

The reference to Pippa’s dog reminded Cross of their conversation the night prior—of Castleton’s request—of her hesitation to name his hound. Of the way her lips curved around the words as she attempted to explain her reticence.

Of the way the entire conversation made him want to steal her away and convince her that marriage to Castleton was absolutely wrong for her.

He did not tell Sally any of that, of course. Instead he said, “I want the fifty biggest gamers in the hell. No one can be missed.”

The woman leveled him with a frank look. “You’ll get them. When have I ever failed you?”

“Never. But there is always time to begin.”

“What’s he got on you?”

Cross shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

She smiled, small and nearly humorless. “I assume you’ve something to do with the way he’s crowing with pride about marrying his girl off to an earl.”

Cross gave her his darkest look. “I’m not marrying the daughter.”

“So you think. She’ll be here in five days, and when she gets here, he’ll stop at nothing to get you married.” When he did not reply, she added, “You don’t believe it? This is
Knight.
”

“I am not marrying the girl,” he repeated.

Sally watched him for a long moment before saying, “I shall work the floor that night. If a single deep pocket comes through the door, I’ll slip him an invitation to Pandemonium myself.” She inclined her head toward the door. “Now tell me about the girl.”

He forced himself to sit, and to deliberately misunderstand the question. “I’ve never met Meghan. Ask Knight about her.”

She smiled wryly. “Really, Cross? This silly game?”

He resisted the urge to shove his hands through his hair, instead leaning back in his chair, all control. Pippa Marbury was more than any decent man could handle.
And he was far from decent.
“She’s someone who should not have come here.”

He should have barred her from entry.

She laughed. “You did not have to tell me that. Yet come here she did.”

“She has a taste for adventure.”

“Well, she’s sniffing round the wrong tree if she wants that.”

He didn’t reply, knowing better.

“You’re trying to keep her away from you?”

God, yes. He didn’t want her here. He didn’t want her touching his things, leaving her mark, tempting him. Didn’t want her threatening his sanctuary. Didn’t want her tainting this dark place with her light. “I’m trying to keep her away in general.”

She leaned forward. “She’s not your lover.”

“Of course not.”

One of her black brows rose. “There’s no of course about it. Perhaps there would have been if I hadn’t seen her face.”

“I may well owe the girl an apology, but that doesn’t make her anything close to my lover.”

Sally smiled at that. “Don’t you see, Cross? It’s because you feel you owe her an apology that makes her closer to your lover than any of the rest of us.” She paused for a long moment before adding, “And even if you didn’t feel that way, the girl’s face would have been enough.”

“She came to request my assistance in a matter.” A ridiculous matter, but Sally need not know that.

“She may
request
your assistance in one matter,” the prostitute said with a soft, knowing laugh, “but she
wants
your assistance with something else entirely.”

Cross’s gaze narrowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sex,” she said, plainly, as though she were talking to a child. A child wise beyond his years. “The woman saw what I am. She knows what I do. And she was jealous.”

Cross met her dark eyes, seeing only Pippa’s large, shocked blue ones, made massive by the lenses of her spectacles. “There’s no reason for her to be jealous.”

“Sadly, that is true.” Sally’s mouth pursed in a perfect moue, and she leaned back in the chair. “But she doesn’t know that.”

Frustration coursed through him. “I mean, she wasn’t jealous.”

Sally smiled. “Of course she was. She wants you.”

“No. She wants my assistance with some”—he hesitated on the word—“research.”

Sally laughed, long and loud. “I’ve no doubt she does.”

Cross turned away, reaching blindly for a file he did not need. “We are finished.”

Sally sighed and stood, approaching the desk. “Just tell me, does she know?”

He closed his eyes, frustrated. “Does she know what?”

“Does she know that she’ll never have you?”

“She’s marrying a lord in just over a week.”
And even if she weren’t, she’s legions too good for me.

“Engagements are made to be broken.”

“I forget how cynical you can be.”

“It’s a hazard of the occupation.” She moved to the door, turning back before she opened it. “You should tell her. Before the poor thing becomes sick with unrequited love.”

He did not reply.

After a long moment, she said, “I’ll see you tomorrow with your list.”

“Thank you.”

She nodded once and opened the door, turning to leave before she looked back, a smile playing over her too-red lips. “Shall I allow your next appointment in?”

He knew before he looked what he would find when Sally stepped out of the doorway.

Philippa Marbury was seated on a high croupier’s stool, not five feet away, nibbling at the edge of a sandwich.

He did not mean to stand, but he stood anyway, coming around his desk as though he were chased. “Did someone
feed
you?”

Of course someone had fed her. Didier, no doubt, who had a soft spot for any soiled dove who found her way to the kitchens of the Angel.

But Philippa Marbury was no soiled dove.

Yet.

And she wouldn’t be if he had anything to say about it.

“Your chef was kind enough to make me a plate while I waited.” Pippa stood, extending the plate in question to him. “It’s quite delicious. Would you like some?”

Yes. God, yes, he wanted some.

“No. Why would she
feed
you?”

“I’m pupating.”

He looked to the ceiling, desperate for patience. “How many different ways do I have to tell you that I’m not interested in helping you emerge from this particular cocoon?”

Her jaw went slack. “You referenced metamorphosis.”

The woman was driving him mad. “You referenced it first. Now, did I or did I not tell you to go home?”

She smiled, a lovely, wide grin that he should not have liked so very much. “In point of fact, you did not tell me to go home. Indeed, you quite washed your hands of me.”

He considered shaking the maddening woman. “Then tell me why it is that you remain here, waiting for me?”

She tilted her head as though he were a strange specimen under glass at the Royal Entomological Society. “Oh, you misunderstand. I am not waiting for you.”

What in hell?
Of course she was waiting for him.

Except she wasn’t. She stood, thrust her plate—along with her half-eaten sandwich—into his hands and directed her full attention to Sally. “I’m waiting for
you.
”

Sally cut him a quick look, clearly unsure of how to proceed.

Pippa did not seem to notice that she’d thrown them all off, instead stepping forward and extending her hand in greeting. “I am Lady Philippa Marbury.”

Goddammit.

He would have given half his fortune to take back the instant when Pippa told Sally her name. One never knew when the madam might rethink her allegiance, and knowledge made for heady power.

For now, however, Sally pushed her surprise away and took Pippa’s hand, dipping into a quick curtsy. “Sally Tasser.”

“It’s lovely to meet you, Miss Tasser,” Pippa said, as though she were meeting a new debutante at tea rather than one of London’s most accomplished whores in a gaming hell. “I wonder if you have a few moments to answer some questions?”

Sally looked supremely entertained. “I believe I do have some time, my lady.”

Pippa shook her head. “Oh, no. There’s no need to stand on ceremony. You must call me Pippa.”

Over his decaying corpse.

“There is absolutely every reason to stand on ceremony,” he stepped in, turning to Sally. “You will under no circumstances call the lady anything but just that.
Lady.
”

Pippa’s brows snapped together. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Cross, but in this conversation, you are superfluous.”

He gave her his most frightening stare. “I assure you, I am anything but that.”

“Am I right in understanding that you have neither the time nor the inclination to speak to me at this particular moment?”

She had backed him into a corner. “Yes.”

She smiled. “There it is, then. As I find myself with both, I believe I shall begin my research now. Without you.” She turned her back on him. “Now, Miss Tasser. Am I right in my estimation that you are, indeed, a prostitute?”

The word slipped from her lips as though she said it a dozen times a day. “Dear God.” He shot Sally a look. “Do not answer.”

“Whyever not?” Pippa smiled at Sally. “There’s no shame in it.”

Even Sally’s brows rose at that.

Surely this was not happening.

Pippa pressed on. “There isn’t. In fact, I’ve done the research, and the word is in the Bible. Leviticus. And, honestly, if something is in a holy text, I think it’s more than reasonable for one to repeat it in polite company.”

“I’m not exactly polite company,” Sally pointed out, brilliantly, Cross thought.

Pippa smiled. “Never mind that . . . you’re the perfect company for my purposes. Now, I can only assume that your career is just what I imagine, as you are very beautiful and seem to know precisely how to look at a man and make it seem as though you are very much in love with him. You fairly smolder.”

Cross had to stop this. Now. “And how do you know that she is not simply in love with me?”

That was not the way he’d intended to stop it. At all. Dammit.

She looked over her shoulder at him, then back at Sally. “
Are
you in love with him?”

Sally turned her very best smolder on Pippa, who chuckled, and said, “I didn’t think so. That’s the one. It’s very good.”

Sally met his gaze over Pippa’s shoulder, laughter in her eyes. “Thank you, my lady.”

Well. At least she’d used the honorific.

“May I speak plainly?” Pippa asked, as though she had not been speaking plainly for the last four days. For her entire life.

“Please,” Sally said.

The moment was getting away from him. Something had to be done.

“No,” he interrupted, inserting himself between the two women. “No one is speaking plainly. Certainly not to Sally.”

“I’m happy to speak to the lady, Cross,” Sally said, and he did not miss the dry humor in her tone.

“I’ve no doubt of that,” he said. “And yet, you won’t. As you have somewhere to be. Right now.”

“Nonsense,” Pippa protested, edging him out of the way with a firm elbow at his side. Actually, physically moving him. “Miss Tasser has already said she has time for me.” She blinked up at him from behind thick lenses. “You are dismissed, Mr. Cross.”

Sally barked her laughter.

Pippa returned her attention to the prostitute, taking the woman’s arm and walking her away from Cross, toward the main entrance of the club. She was going to exit the casino, onto St. James’s in the middle of the day, on the arm of a prostitute. “I wonder if you might be willing to teach me how you do it.”

“It?” He hadn’t meant to say it aloud.

Pippa ignored him, but answered the question. “To smolder. You see, I am to be married in eleven days. Slightly less than that now, and I need to—”

“Catch your husband?” Sally asked.

Pippa nodded. “In a sense. I also require your obvious knowledge in other matters of . . . marriage.”

“What kind of matters?”

“Those relating to procreation. I find that what I thought I knew about the mechanics of the act are—well, unlikely.”

“Unlikely, how?”

“To be honest, I thought it was similar to animal husbandry.”

Sally’s tone turned dry. “Sometimes, my lady, I’m afraid it isn’t that different.”

Pippa paused, considering the words. “Is that so?”

“Men are uncomplicated, generally,” Sally said, all too sage. “They’re beasts when they want to be.”

“Brute ones!”

“Ah, so you understand.”

Pippa tilted her head to one side. “I’ve read about them.”

Sally nodded. “Erotic texts?”

“The Book of Common Prayer. But perhaps you have an erotic text you could recommend?”

And there it was—the end of his tether.

“Did you not lose a wager with me that prohibited precisely this kind of interaction?” The words were harsh and unkind. Not that he cared. He turned to Sally. “Leave now, Sally.”