One Good Earl Deserves a Lover (19 page)

Cross swore, harsh and soft.

“Shame on you. In front of a lady, no less.”

He closed the door on Chase’s smug face, turning to Pippa.

What a disaster.

She and his sister, under the same, scandalous roof, and it was his fault.

Goddammit.

He was losing control of the situation, and he did not care for it.

She had edged closer, her curiosity making her brave, and she was only a few feet from him. Two minutes earlier, and he would have closed the distance and kissed her senseless.

But Chase’s intrusion was best for both of them, clearly.

Perhaps he could will it to be true.

He had to deal with his sister.

Now.

“I shall be back.”

Her eyes went wide. “You’re leaving me?”

“Not for long.”

She took a step toward him. “But you didn’t answer my question.”

Thank God for that.

He took a step back, reaching for the handle of the door. “I will be back,” he repeated. “You’re safe here.” He opened the door a crack, knowing that there was little he could do. Lavinia could not be left alone in the casino.

Not that Pippa was entirely trustworthy. Indeed, this lady could wreak no small amount of havoc if she were left to her own devices here, on the Other Side.

For a moment, he hovered between staying and going, finally meeting her big blue eyes and saying in his most commanding tone, “Stay.”

Lord, deliver him from women.

D
id he think her a hound?

Pippa circled the hazard table, absently collecting the dice and rotating them over and over in the palm of her hand.

She hadn’t heard much, but she’d heard Cross say her name.

Felt the keen disappointment that came—altogether irrationally—with the syllables on his tongue.

He’d left her, for another woman. For Lavinia. The woman from the gardens.

With nothing more than a masterful, “Stay.”

And he hadn’t even answered her question.

She hesitated, turning to face one long edge of the table, placing her hands on the finely carved mahogany bumper that kept the dice from rolling right off the table and clattering to the floor. She tossed the dice that she had been clutching in frustration, not watching as they knocked against the wood and tumbled to a stop.

The man would learn quickly that she was in no way houndlike.

Leaning over the table, she stared long and hard at the hazard field, mind racing, the green baize, with its white and red markings, blurring as she considered her next course of action. For she certainly was not going to stand by and wait in this tiny, constricting chamber as all manner of excitements occurred in the club beyond.

Not while he scurried off to do whatever it was scoundrels did with women for whom they pined.

And he certainly pined for this Lavinia person.

He’d pined enough that he’d met her clandestinely, at Pippa’s betrothal ball. He’d pined enough that he chased after her today. And he clearly pined enough that honoring his commitment to Pippa was easily forgotten in Lavinia’s presence.

Suddenly, her chest felt quite tight.

Pippa coughed, standing straight, her gaze falling on the closed door to the little room where he’d left her. She lifted one hand to her chest, running her fingers along the bare skin above the edge of the wool bodice, attempting to ease the discomfort.

She took a deep breath, the thought of Cross’s rushing through the gaming hell and into the welcoming arms of his lady—who had clearly realized he was a man worthy of forgiving—overwhelming all others.

She was likely beautiful, petite, and perfectly curved. No doubt, she was one of those ladies who knew precisely what to say in any situation and never ever found herself saying the wrong thing or asking an inappropriate question.

Pippa would wager that his Lavinia could not name a single bone in the human body.

No wonder Cross adored her.

The tightness in her chest became an ache, and Pippa’s hand stilled.

Oh, dear. It was not physiological. It was
emotional.

Panic flared.
No.

She leaned back over the table, closing her eyes tightly and sucking in a long breath. No. She wouldn’t allow emotion into the scenario. She was here in the interest of discovery. In the name of research.

That was all.

She opened her eyes, searched for a point of focus, and found the dice she’d tossed earlier.

Six and three.

Her gaze narrowed on the winning toss.

Six and three.

Suspicion flared. She collected the dice. Rolled again.
Six and three.

Inspected them carefully. Rolled again.
Six and three.

Just one die.
Three.

Three.

Three.

Her eyes went wide as understanding came. The die was weighted. The
dice
were
weighted.

She hadn’t won.

He’d
let her
win.

He’d been directing the game all along.

There’s no such thing as luck.

He’d lied to her.

He’d been working the game, no doubt with losing dice, too . . . planning to fleece her of all her research plans, planning to take from her these last weeks of freedom before she was Countess Castleton. He’d stolen from her!

Worse, he’d stolen from her and left her to meet another woman.

She stood straight, scowled at the door where she’d seen him last.

“Well,” she said aloud to the empty room, “that won’t do.”

And she headed for the door, putting all her strength into the movement when she reached for the door handle, and found the door locked.

A little sound escaped her, a cross between shock and indignation, as Pippa tried the door again, certain that she was mistaken. Sure that there was no possible way that he had locked her in a room in a gaming hell.

After cheating her.

No possible way.

After several attempts, Pippa was confident of two things: First, he had indeed locked her in a room in a gaming hell after cheating her. And second, he was clearly mad.

Crouching low, she peered through the keyhole into the hallway beyond. She waited a few moments, uncertain of what precisely she was waiting for, but waiting nonetheless. When no one appeared or passed through the corridor on the other side of the door, she stood, pacing away from the door and back again, confronting the wide oak.

She had only one course of action. She had to pick the lock. Not that she’d ever done such a thing before, but she’d read about the practice in articles and novels and, honestly, if small children could accomplish the task, how difficult could it be?

Reaching up, she removed a hairpin and crouched low once more, jamming the little strip of metal into the lock and wiggling it about. Nothing happened. After what seemed like an eternity of attempting the impossible, growing more and more infuriated at her situation and the man who had caused it, Pippa sat down with a huff of frustration and returned the hairpin to its rightful place.

Apparently, there were a number of small children in London who were significantly more accomplished than she. She cast an eye at the enormous painting she’d noticed before. No doubt the young men in the oil would have no trouble at all with the lock. No doubt, they would have a half dozen ways of escaping this small room.

Like a secret passageway.

The thought had her on her feet in seconds, one hand against the silk wall coverings, tracing the edge of the small room in search of a secret door. It took her several minutes to check every inch of wall, from one side of the painting to the other, finding nothing out of the ordinary. There was no secret passage. Not unless it was into the painting itself.

She eyed the painting.

Unless.

Grabbing one side of the massive frame, she pulled, and the painting swung out into the room, revealing a wide, dark corridor.

“Triumph!” she crowed to the room at large before lifting a candelabrum from the nearby table and stepping into the corridor, pulling the wide door closed behind her with a thud.

She couldn’t help her self-satisfied smile. Cross would be shocked indeed when he unlocked her cage and discovered her gone.

And he would deserve it, the rogue.

As for Pippa, she would be wherever this passageway led.

Chapter Ten

I have studied a great many species of flora and fauna over the years, and if there is one truth to be found, it is this: Whether hounds or humans, siblings almost always display more heterogeneity than they do homogeneity. One need only look at Olivia and me to see the proof.

Parents are the red rosebush . . . offspring the white branch.

The Scientific Journal of Lady Philippa Marbury

March 28, 1831; eight days prior to her wedding

I
came to tell you to leave us alone.”

Cross stood just inside the closed, locked door to his office, beyond which two hundred of Britain’s most powerful men wagered. On the way there, he’d considered a half dozen things he might say to his sister, all variations on the theme of “What in hell would possess you to come here?”

But he did not have the opportunity to say any of them. His sister spoke the instant the lock clicked, as though she had nothing in the world about which to worry but that single calm, clear sentence.

“Lavinia—” he began, but she cut him off, her serious brown gaze unwavering.

“I am not here to discuss it,” she said, the words like steel. “I came from Knight’s, and he refused to see me. Because of you.”

Ire flared. “As well it should be. You should never have gone to him. And if he knows what’s best for him, he’ll never see you again.”

She looked tired—pale and thin and uncomfortable, with dark circles beneath her eyes and hollow cheeks, as though she had not slept or eaten in days. But it had been more than days that had made her this way—that had stolen the bright-eyed, happy seventeen-year-old girl and left behind this stoic twenty-four-year-old woman who seemed years older and decades wiser.

Too wise. She did not back down. “This is none of your concern.”

“Of course it is my concern. You’re my sister.”

“You think that the pronouncement of the words makes them true?”

He moved toward her, hesitating when she pressed back, clasping the edge of his desk as though she could gain strength from the great slab of ebony. “There is no making about it. They are true.”

Her lips twisted in a bitter, humorless smile. “How simple you make it seem. As though you have done nothing wrong. As though we are all expected to forget that you deserted us. As though we are expected to pretend that all is well, and nothing has changed. As though we are to slaughter the fatted calf and welcome you back into our lives—our prodigal son.”

The words stung, even as Cross reminded himself that Lavinia had been so young when Baine had died. Seventeen and barely out, she’d been too focused on her own pain and her own tragedy to see the truth of what had happened. To see that Cross had had no choice but to leave the family.

To see that he’d been pushed out.

To see that they would have never forgiven him. That, in their eyes, he would never have been good enough, strong enough,
Baine
enough.

Not only in their eyes. His as well.

He did not correct her—did not tell her. Instead, he let the words sting. Because he deserved them. Still.

He always would.

When he did not reply, his sister added, “I have come to tell you that whatever arrangement you have made, whatever deals you have struck with Mr. Knight—I don’t want them. I want you to rescind them. I shall take responsibility for my family.”

The words made him angry. “
You
should not have to take responsibility. You have a husband. This is his purpose. His role. It is he who should be protecting his children’s futures. His wife’s reputation.”

Her brown eyes flashed. “That is none of your concern.”

“It is if you require protecting, and he cannot provide it.”

“Now you play the expert in familial protection? The perfect older brother? Now, after seven years of desertion? After seven years of invisibility? Where were you when they married me to Dunblade to begin with?”

He’d been counting cards in some casino, trying to pretend he did not know where his sister was. What she was doing. Who she was marrying.
Why.
Ironically, that casino had likely been Knight’s. “Lavinia,” he tried to explain, “so much happened when Baine died. So much you don’t know.”

She narrowed her gaze on him. “You still think me a little girl. You think I don’t know? You think I don’t remember that night? Need I remind you that I was there? Not you. Me. I am the one who carries the scars. The memory of it. I carry it with me
every day.
And somehow, it is you who has taken ownership of the evening.”

She shifted, and he noticed the flash of discomfort on her face as she leaned into her finely wrought cane. He moved to a nearby chair, lifting a stack of books from its seat. “Please. Sit.”

She stiffened, and when she spoke, the words were like ice. “I am quite able to stand. I may be lame, but I am not crippled.”

Goddammit. Could he do nothing right? “I never meant—Of course you are able to stand. I simply thought you would be more comfortable—”

“I don’t require you to make me comfortable or to make my life easier. I require you to stay out of my life. I came to tell you that. And to tell you that I will not allow you to involve yourself with Knight on my behalf.”

Anger flared, and frustration. “I am afraid the decision is out of your hands. I will not allow you to sacrifice yourself to Knight. Not when I can help it.”

“It’s not your place to step in.”

“It is precisely my place. Like it or not, this is my world, and you are my sister.” He paused, hesitating on the next words, not wanting to say them, but knowing he owed them to her. “Knight came after you to get to me.”

Her brows snapped together. “I beg your pardon?”

He hated himself in that moment, almost as much as he hated the look in her eyes, suspicion and disbelief. “He wants me, Lavinia. Not you. Not Dunblade. He knew that threatening you would be the fastest way to get what he wants from me.”

“Why would he think that?” she scoffed. “You’ve never given a moment’s thought to us.”

The words stung. “That’s not true.”

She shifted again, and he couldn’t stop himself from looking to her cane again, from wishing he could see her leg. He knew how it pained her; he paid her doctors handsomely to keep him apprised of the seven-year-old injury.

He looked up at her. “Lavinia,” he began. “Please. Sit. We will discuss this.”

She did not sit. “We suffer because of you?”

It did not matter that they suffered because her husband was weak-willed. If Cross were not Cross . . . if he did not have a past with Knight . . . they would be safe. “He threatens you to access me. To take from me what he wants. Stay away from him. I will make this go away. I need four days.”

“What does he want?”

My title. My name. Your children’s inheritance.
“It does not matter.”

“Of course it does.”

“No. It does not matter because he will not get it. And he will not get you, either.”

Something flared in her brown eyes, something close to loathing, and she laughed without humor. “I suppose I should not be surprised. After all, my pain has always been the result of your actions, hasn’t it? Why should now be any different?”

Silence stretched between them, the words hovering in the room, their weight familiar and unbearable, echoing the cold accusations of his father that night, seven years ago.
It should have been you.

And the keening wails of his mother.
If only it had been you.

And of Lavinia’s cries of pain as the surgeons did what they could to set bone and clean wounds, and rid her young, frail body of the fever that had raged, threatening her young life.

Threatening Cross’s sanity.

He wanted to tell her the truth, that he’d been consumed with guilt that night, and fear the nights after, that he’d wished over and over, again and again, for years, that it had been him in that carriage. That it had been Baine at home—strong, steady, competent Baine, who never would have left them. Who never would have let her marry Dunblade.

That it had been Cross who had died—so he never would have failed them.

But the words wouldn’t come.

Instead he said, “I will repair the damage. He will never bother you again.”

That laugh again, hurt and hateful, with more experience than it should hold. “Please, don’t. You are too good at causing damage to have any skill at repairing it.” She added, “I don’t want you in my life. I will deal with him.”

“He won’t see you,” he said. “That is part of our bargain.”

“How dare you negotiate with him on my behalf?”

He shook his head and spoke the truth, tired of holding it back. “He came to me, Lavinia. And as much as you would like to believe otherwise, I couldn’t let him hurt you. I will never let him hurt you.”

The words might have had an impact, but he would never know, because at that precise moment, as they faded into the air around him, there was a loud
thump
from the opposite side of the large painting that hung on one wall of his office, and a dreadful knowledge settled deep and unpleasant in his gut. He knew what was on the other side of that painting, knew where it led.

Knew, too, with utter certainty, who was standing mere inches away from his office.

Lifting a hand to keep his sister from saying any more, he rounded his desk and grasped one edge of the massive gilt frame, giving the enormous oil painting a heavy yank, opening the secret entrance and revealing a wide-eyed Philippa Marbury, who tumbled out of the passageway beyond, barely catching herself on a nearby table before straightening and facing the occupants of the room.

She did not miss a beat, righting her spectacles and moving past him, into the office, to say, “Hello, Lady Dunblade,” before turning a cool blue gaze on him, triumphantly setting a pair of ivory dice on the edge of his great black desk, and adding, “You, sir, are a liar and a cheat. And I will not be ordered about like a prize hound.”

There was a moment of collective stunned silence, during which Lavinia’s jaw dropped and Cross wondered how precisely his calm, collected life had gone spiraling so completely out of control.

H
is Lavinia was Lavinia, Baroness Dunblade. A
lady.

It was fascinating how simply society rendered invisible those who had suffered unfortunate circumstances. Lady Dunblade might require a cane to aid in her unavoidable limp, but now, as she stood on one side of Mr. Cross’s cluttered office, Pippa wondered how the lady could escape notice. Injury aside, she was tall and beautiful, with lovely red hair and brown eyes that Pippa could not help but admire.

Apparently, she was not the only one to admire those eyes. Apparently, Mr. Cross thought they were worthy of admiration as well. Pippa shouldn’t be surprised. After all, Mr. Cross was a notorious rogue—even if he’d never even hinted at any kind of roguish behavior with Pippa—and Lady Dunblade so often went beyond notice, that she could easily come and go from The Fallen Angel without causing scandal.

But scandal she was, apparently, as she was here, standing in Cross’s office, straight and proud, like a Grecian queen.

And why shouldn’t she stand proud? She’d apparently caught the attention of one of the most powerful men in London.

Pippa would be quite proud herself if she had done the same.

She resisted the thought and the thread of newly, unpleasantly, defined emotion that coursed through her with it, and turned to close the door to the secret passageway. She should have guessed that he had chosen a room with a passage leading to his office—he was not the kind of man who relied on coincidence.

And he was likely not the kind of man to be happy that she’d just tumbled through the wall and into his office . . . and if what she had overheard was to be believed . . . into a very private conversation.

I will never let him hurt you.

Even through the wall, she’d heard the fierceness in his tone. The commitment. Even through the wall, she’d felt the words like a blow. He clearly cared for the lady. Cared for her enough to leave Pippa in a locked room and go to her.

She shouldn’t be upset. After all, theirs was a partnership, not a relationship.

This was no time for jealousy. No place for it. There was no jealousy in science.

Except, apparently, there was.

She shouldn’t be jealous. She should be angry. He’d defiled their agreement by cheating her with weighted dice and wicked lies. Yes. In fact, that was why she had come here furious, was it not? If she was upset, it should be for that reason, and nothing else.

Certainly not because he’d left her to come for this lady.

She should not be upset about that at all.

And yet, that seemed to be precisely the reason for her upset.

Curious, that.

Once the passageway was closed, she spun back to face Mr. Cross and Lady Dunblade. Taking in the fury on his face and the shock on hers, Pippa said the first thing that came to mind. “I am sorry to interrupt.”