Regency Gamble: A Lady Risks All / A Lady Dares
She could feel Greer at her side, his hand warm at her back, his body emanating unsatisfied heat. ‘This is not over,’ he growled for her ears alone.
‘It certainly isn’t,’ Mercedes replied sotto voce. No one passed up a lover of this calibre no matter what the circumstances.
‘Am I interrupting anything?’ Her father grinned. ‘Celebrations, perhaps? I heard someone cleaned out a particular Mr Reed tonight and a Mr Bride. I am assuming it was you two?’ He elbowed Mercedes good-naturedly. ‘Everyone is talking about the woman in the blue dress. Good job, my dear.’
Normally, she would have basked in his praise, but tonight her mind was too full of Greer to spend more than a passing moment on the acknowledgement. At the carriage, Greer handed her up and followed her in, her father choosing to ride up on the box with the coachman and take in the mild evening. But the damage had been done. There would be no resuming of the alleyway. The recklessness of the moment had passed, but it would come again.
She and Greer were headed towards consummation. It was only a matter of time. Still, a foregone conclusion was not without its own delicious torture. A waiting game had been invoked tonight. When would it come? Where and how? Would it be fast and hard and decadent like the alleyway? Would it be a dilettante’s pleasure—a slow fire building towards a raging inferno by degrees? He would be capable of both.
Mercedes studied Greer in the lantern light, the blue eyes and the strong set of his jaw. He’d fought for her tonight, kissed the living daylights out of her in an alley. Of course they were headed to bed.
But what then? How long could she keep such a hero? Well, she wouldn’t think about that tonight. There were other more pleasant things to ponder, such as how Greer might take her. And less pleasant things, too, such as how she was going to convince her father to let her play. They were nearing Bath where her father wanted to make a considerable stand and she was no closer to earning his public approval than she had been before they left Brighton.
Greer reached below the seat and pulled out the blankets kept there. He handed her one with a smile. ‘Go to sleep, Lady in Blue.’
She took the blanket. ‘You were jealous tonight.’
Greer nodded, not shying away from the truth. ‘I was. I didn’t like seeing Reed’s hands all over you.’
Mercedes smiled softly as she spread out her blanket. ‘Well, try not to punch anyone else. I’d hate for you to ruin your hands before the tournament. It is just a game, Greer.’ She settled her head against the cushioned walls of the carriage.
‘My shoulder might be more comfortable,’ came Greer’s low tones. He didn’t wait for a response. Perhaps he sensed forcing a direct answer from her would be too much of a commitment.
Greer slid over to her seat and wrapped an arm about her, drawing her close. She could smell the sandalwood of his soap mingled with the sweat of the evening and clean linen, a comforting, masculine smell of a man who knew how to take care of himself and of others. She was used to hard kisses and fast-spent passions in her associations with men. She was not used to this: the sense of being protected and cherished. She’d not been prepared for the Captain to turn out to be a man who was strong and passionate with a capacity for tenderness. Before she drifted off to sleep she thought she heard the whispered words, ‘You’re not a game, Mercedes, not to me.’ Her heart cried out one last futile warning. Here was a man who could ruin her.
Here was a woman who could ruin him. Greer stayed awake long after Mercedes had fallen asleep against him. In the moonlight and lanterns she looked harmless enough, a peaceful sleeping beauty to the unsuspecting connoisseur. But he knew better, far better than she knew. He was living on borrowed time and every mile they drew closer to Bath, more sand drained from the hour glass.
Bath would be full of people, his kind of people—barons and viscounts who were there before moving on to London or back to their estates for summer. It was unlikely he’d escape detection. There’d be someone there who would know his brother or his father and word would get home. When that happened, there’d be hell to pay.
It wasn’t just his father’s disapproval he was risking—he’d risked that often enough in the past. His father’s disapproval was a private matter kept in the family. There would be no hiding this. Society would know what he’d done and that would bring shame to the entire family. He, a captain in the military, second son of a viscount, had taken up with a billiards hustler and his daughter. Never mind that Lockhart was a celebrity. Playing billiards for a living was patently unacceptable. Flaunting Mercedes in the face of decent society was a direct slap in the face to all the eligible young girls looking for husbands. Mercedes could be his mistress and be kept discreetly out of sight, but nothing more. To be seen with her publicly at the gatherings of ‘decent folk’ was inappropriate.
It would send his mother swooning and his father might actually disown him this time for good. Mercedes was wrong when she’d accused him of having nothing to risk in this venture. He had everything to risk. What would happen if he lost the security of knowing the home farm waited for him? It was not a destiny he wanted, but it was there like a safe harbour should all else fail.
He’d joined the military to make his own way in the world. But that choice hadn’t come at the cost of his family. Never before had ‘making his own way’ come with a price. His family had issues, but they were his family, the only one he’d ever get. If it came down to his own independence or them, would he give them up? He would need to decide soon. Even if he escaped Bath unscathed by recognition, it would be good to know where he stood. He couldn’t plan a future without knowing.
Sleep started to settle on him. Mercedes shifted against him and he tightened his grip about her. Maybe she wasn’t the only reason he’d got in the carriage in Brighton. Maybe he’d known this choice would push him to make the decision he’d put off for so long. It was time to face his future head on: home-farm manager, professional billiards player, half-pay officer waiting for a post, or something else altogether. Greer sighed. He wondered if there was a choice that could include Mercedes. That was the problem with options. They made one have to choose.
Chapter Ten
‘It’s time to work on your defence.’ Mercedes tossed Greer an ash cue. They’d picked up the London-Bath Road and were in Beckhampton at an inn on the turnpike where her father knew the owner. At this pace, they’d be in Bath the day after tomorrow at the latest and the true work would begin—real games, real promotion of the tournament in Brighton. These early stops had been meant to be the warm-up for the real campaign; time to turn Greer’s instinctive talent for the game into a more sharply honed skill, a calculated tool of intention without drawing attention to him until they were ready.
Mercedes arranged the balls in strategic clusters around the baize. ‘We’ll start with the group to the right.’
Greer grinned disarmingly. ‘That’s hardly fair. There’s no direct line between my ball and the shot.’
Mercedes smiled back with feigned sweetness. ‘That’s why we have to work on your defence. So far we’ve been playing opponents who play like you do. They make great offensive shots. But what happens when someone doesn’t play the table straight on you? Those men are waiting for you in Bath. You’ll need to do more than pot balls; you’ll have to know how to set up the table as well as setting up your shots if you want to impress them.’
Greer had a natural aptitude for the strategies. But she knew the real challenge would be whether or not he could pull each strategy out of his repertoire and use it at relevant points in a game.
They ran drills for an hour before her father came over to watch their progress, the perfect opportunity if she chose to seize it. If she didn’t do something today, it would be too late. She didn’t want to make Greer her whipping boy, but time was running out and so were her choices. She could only hope he’d understand.
Across the table, Greer raised an eyebrow, questioning her hesitation. ‘Are you going to rack them?’
She answered with a non-committal shrug. If she did this, Greer was going to hate her for it. A small part of her was going to hate herself too. She drew a deep breath. ‘All right, if you think you’re ready, Greer, let’s play.’ It was now or never.
That should have been his first clue something was amiss. Mercedes had opted out of lessons and drills far earlier than usual. His second should have been the way she’d chalked her cue. She held his gaze while she blew the excess chalk off the tip, a most seductive look that made a man think with a whole different set of balls than the ones of the table. ‘I’ll break.’
‘Fine.’ Greer was pretty sure most men would agree to anything with those eyes looking over a cue at them and those lips suggesting chalk wasn’t the only thing they’d be good for bl—that was not worthy of him. But he was also pretty sure Mercedes knew exactly what she was doing. She’d done it with Mr Reed. Now she was doing it with him. Why?
Something sensual and wicked flaring between them was not new. Innuendo always lay just slightly below the surface with them. Why would she push this now when he needed to concentrate on the game on the table instead of the one in his head? His brain knew better; he just had to send that same message to his body and quell the early stirrings of his arousal.
Lockhart was watching intently and Greer knew Mercedes wasn’t going to go easy on him. There was no need to. He was up to any challenge Mercedes might present. Greer bent to survey the table at cue level. No straight shot presented itself, Mercedes would be happy about that. He would be forced to select a skill from their lesson right from the start. Greer aimed his cue to hit the ball slightly off centre, using a slicing shot to send it to the pocket while sending the cue ball on ahead to safety, away from the hazard.
‘No, wait.’ Mercedes interrupted his concentration. ‘You’re still aiming too low. A slice shot is to be off-centre, not high or low. The shot you want to take will put your cue ball in the pocket too.’
‘It’s fine,’ Greer said with a tight smile, not wanting to be taken to task in front of Lockhart. He was a man, for heaven’s sake, not a sixteen-year-old schoolboy. He knew what he was doing.
Mercedes shrugged and let him take the shot, raising her eyebrows in an ‘I told you so’ gesture when his ball followed the other into the pocket. He blew out his breath. She briskly gathered up the two balls and set them back on the table. ‘Try again. This time, let me show you.’
She stood close, wrapping her hands over his, positioning the cue. He was not unaware of her body pressed to his, the light floral scent of her soap or the womanly curve of her where her hips cradled his buttocks. The arousal that had sparked earlier was in danger of being fully achieved. This time the shot went in. She put the balls back into place one more time. ‘Now, try it again on your own.’ Greer lined the shot up carefully, thinking there might be something else he’d be trying alone if she kept this up. This time he sank the shot and the game was fully engaged.
By the second round, Greer was certain there was more than one game being played out. Mercedes was shooting out of her head. He’d never seen anyone make the shots she made, and he’d most definitely not seen her display this level of skill, which was saying something.
He’d thought her formidable before. Now, there wasn’t even a word in his vocabulary to adequately describe her talent. Phenomenal, stupendous—easy word choices, but inadequate. What did she think she was doing? But there was no time to contemplate hidden agendas. Greer played harder, his shirt sleeves rolled up, his jacket off. The intensity increased. He plied his skill tirelessly with slices, stop shots that careened on the lip of the pocket, bank shots that circumvented barriers to direct shots, but nothing would stop Mercedes.
Greer lost all three games, honourably and by mere inches to be sure, but in the end he’d simply been outplayed. When the last ball fell, Mercedes threw a triumphant smile in her father’s direction. Greer expected to see Lockhart grinning at his daughter’s success—perhaps he even expected a little scolding directed his way over having lost. But the scold that came was for Mercedes and it was not what Greer had expected at all.
Lockhart rose, fury on his face. He strode towards Mercedes and yanked the cue stick from her hand. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? Parading yourself like that? No man wants a woman who plays better than himself or even a woman who plays, for that matter, let alone one who has any skill at it. Act like a lady.’
Mercedes had a fury of her own. ‘Act like a lady? What happened to “you’ve always understood the game”? You were happy enough to have me act any way I pleased as long as you could use it.’
Greer felt like an interloper. This was private, family business being aired in the midst of an inn. His family would not have dared to display their conflicts so openly. Then again, his family preferred to keep those sorts of things tucked away and ignored, pretending they didn’t exist, like their financial deficiencies.
‘You are not playing in Bath. That’s final.’ Lockhart’s voice was terse, a tic jumping in his cheek.
‘I’m better than any man,’ Mercedes replied. ‘Why are you so afraid?’
‘It’s not seemly. You’ve been raised to be a lady in bearing, if not in name. Is this how you repay me? Is this what your fancy dresses and fine education are to come to?’
Mercedes would not back down. ‘You did that for yourself. You wanted that for me. You never once asked what I wanted. Why show me billiards at all if you never expected me to excel?’ Mercedes’s eyes glittered with wet, as of yet unspilled, emotion. Greer’s heart went out to her in that moment. How brave she was. He’d been taught a man bore the decisions of the world stoically and without complaint. Never mind that he’d thought many of the same things Mercedes gave voice to now.
‘That is enough, Mercedes.’ Lockhart had gone rigid. ‘If you don’t like my decision, you are welcome to go home and await our return there.’
Mercedes shot him a look full of blazing discontent and stormed out of the inn, the door slamming behind her. She was nothing if not magnificent in her anger. Lockhart turned to Greer, his hands held out in a gesture of reconciliation. ‘I am sorry, Barrington.’ He sighed. ‘She’s emotional in spite of her pretensions to the opposite.’ Lockhart gave a quiet chuckle. ‘She’s a woman, no? What can we expect? You have sisters. You know how it is.’
‘Yes, two of them,’ Greer said tightly. He didn’t want to be corralled into taking sides against Mercedes, but neither did he want to offend Lockhart. Lockhart could send him packing as easily as he could Mercedes, and the ride had really just begun with the first big test looming in Bath if he embraced it.
‘Two sisters—then you’re used to their high-strung tendencies.’ Lockhart made a shooing gesture with his hand. ‘Go and talk to her. I don’t like her on the streets alone, but I’m the last person she’ll want to see. Maybe she’ll listen to you.’ He gave a fatherly sigh of defeat. ‘The world is what it is; she can’t change that, no matter how much she rails against it.’
Greer was more than glad to go after Mercedes. He didn’t doubt she was safe, armed as she was with the knife in her bodice and her temper. No man with any intelligence would fail to read the signs of an angry woman. He could do with some air himself, some time to sort through what had just happened.
The more he thought about it, the more he couldn’t help feeling that Lockhart, the consummate showman, had turned even a personal quarrel with his daughter to his advantage. If he was willing to do that with an issue of a private nature, what else would he stoop to use or who? Was there any sacred line in the sand?
That didn’t make Mercedes the innocent party here by any stretch. It did occur to him as he walked down the street, replaying the quarrel in his mind, that she might have been using him to make her father angry, that he was a tool for flaunting her own independence in all ways. The realisation took the bubble off the wine. He didn’t want their kisses, their passion, to be part of some other game she played. He didn’t want to be another ‘Mr Reed’ to her, someone she used for other ends. It was time to confront her on that issue.
Mercedes saw Greer approaching out of the corner of her eye. She flipped open the little watch she carried. ‘Ten minutes. Very good. I win,’ she said without turning from the window.
‘I’m sorry, did we wager on something?’ Greer said coolly. He had his own issues to settle with her. She’d used him in there.
‘I wagered with myself that my father would send you after me within ten minutes. He wouldn’t dare come himself. He did send you, didn’t he?’
‘I was concerned for you.’ Greer’s answer was evasive. But it confirmed her suspicions.
‘If you’ve come to espouse his cause, forget it. Do yourself a favour and don’t play his messenger. I’d like to think you were a better man than that.’ She was being cruel on purpose, hoping to drive Greer away. She didn’t trust herself at present. If he touched her, if he said anything kind, she might just go to pieces and she didn’t want to. She wanted to be strong. Anger kept her strong.
‘All right,’ Greer said calmly, unbothered. ‘I’ll just stand here and admire the window with you.’ Greer joined her in staring at the goods on display. There wasn’t much to look at: a gaudy hat complete with bright purple ribbon and green feather and a few bolts of printed muslin. Beckhampton might be on a major road, but the town was still small.
‘Maybe I’ll just ask the questions. What was going on there? I don’t mean the fight, I mean all of it; the blowing on the chalk, the bedroom eyes over the cue, the “let me show you how to line the shot up”? It was quite a show. Was it for my benefit or his?’
‘Maybe it was for neither of you,’ Mercedes replied succinctly. ‘Maybe it was for me. Did you think of that? Or perhaps you’ve put too much construction on what it meant at all.’ She tossed him a sharp, short glance.
‘I could say the same about you. Did you roll up your sleeves and take off your coat as part of some grand flirtation?’
‘Of course not,’ Greer answered hastily. ‘That’s ridiculous. It’s easier to play without my coat.’
‘My point exactly.’
‘Be fair, Mercedes, it’s not the same thing. It’s not like you were taking your lips off because they confined your play.’
Mercedes had to work hard to stifle a laugh. But it wasn’t time to laugh yet. ‘I’m sorry you were distracted—perhaps you should work on that. It seemed to be a problem the other night as well.’ She turned to go, but Greer grabbed her arm, a frisson of warning and heat running through her body as she realised what she’d done. She could push the well-trained aristocrat in him only so far before she encountered the man in him too.
‘You used me back there. I won’t stand for that. Don’t play with me, Mercedes. I think we’ve done that enough on this trip. We’ve been playing games since that night in the garden and most of those games you’ve started.’
‘You haven’t minded,’ she shot back. ‘It was your tongue in my throat in Bosham as I recall, your hips against mine in the alley.’
‘You’re right, I haven’t minded.’ Greer held her gaze, letting his own drop briefly to her lips. She licked them. ‘I just want to know why. Are these kisses for business or pleasure?’
Mercedes gave a hard laugh. ‘If I was using you for sex, Captain, you’d have known it by now.’ But she thought her words might be a lie. There was no arguing he was in her blood.
Greer smiled dangerously. ‘Likewise. And if you’re going to stand there contemplating how best to seduce me, call me Greer.’
‘How do you know I’m thinking that?’
‘Because we have unfinished business. Seduction between us is inevitable—I think the alley affirmed that. Don’t you? It’s just a matter of who will seduce whom.’ He leaned close and whispered at her ear. ‘If you’re the betting sort, I’d put your money on me.’
Mercedes whispered back, ‘If men’s cocks were as big as their egos, I might take that bet, Greer.’ The look on his face was priceless, part shock and part admiration. Now it was time to laugh.
Chapter Eleven
It was a subdued group that pulled into Bath. He had no one to blame for that but himself, Lockhart mused. He shot a look at Barrington, who rode beside him. It was quite telling that the Captain had chosen to ride instead of his usual routine of sitting with Mercedes inside the carriage.
Clearly, words had been said between them when Barrington had gone after her. From the tension at dinner last night, Lockhart didn’t think the words had solely been about the billiards game. There’d been a certain spark between Mercedes and the Captain from the start. Travel and close proximity had encouraged it just as he’d hoped. For that matter, Mercedes had encouraged it to their benefit. The Captain’s ‘affections’ for Mercedes, whatever their basis, had indeed kept him loyal. If this was a mere flirtation for her, a means to an end, fine. But if she actually developed true feelings for Barrington, there would be trouble ahead should either of them choose to rebel.
Mercedes’s rebellion was of immediate concern. She’d been upset by his decision to not let her play in Bath. An upset Mercedes would need to be appeased before she did something reckless which could be disastrous for them all. Bath should go a great way in appeasing her once they got settled. He had a lovely house rented and he’d turn over the social calendar to her. She’d cultivate relationships for him that would be good for the tournament and she’d feel useful. She’d have gowns to wear and the handsome Captain at her side to act as an escort to balls and other entertainments. She’d forget she was angry.
As for Barrington, the Captain would be in his element, among people like him. And he was looking forward to making the most of Barrington’s entrée. Bath would be most lucrative for him riding in on the Captain’s coat-tails. He and the Captain would make a splendid duo in the clubs. He could feel the cue in his hand already. Between the two of them, they’d be unbeatable. Everything was working out splendidly and Mercedes would come around. He’d see to it with plenty of money and entertainments to keep her busy, and a few well-placed compliments.
Lockhart gave the coachman directions to the terraced house. This would not be an overnight stop. He planned for them to spend two, maybe three weeks in Bath, where the season was already under way.
The coach stopped in front of the Bath-stone town house with its neat wrought iron railings and large windows. Lockhart was pleased to note even the Captain was impressed with the lodgings and location—right on the Crescent and within walking distance of all the important places: subscription rooms, the assembly hall, the theatre and the almighty Pump Room, where the heart of Bath beat on a daily basis.
He dismounted and helped Mercedes down himself. She looked up at the house, a small smile on her face. Lockhart would take it as a good sign. ‘Can you get us settled? I shall see you at dinner.’ He drew her aside to let Barrington and the trunks head into the house.
‘You’ve done splendidly with him.’ Lockhart nodded to indicate the Captain as he passed. ‘He’s come a long way. His play has been refined. He has a sense of strategy now. Well done, Daughter.’ He beamed at her. ‘You should get some new dresses made up while we’re here.’