A Regency Lady's Scandal: The Lady Gambles / The Lady Forfeits

‘I take it you are now, out of pure contrariness, about to show that you have the appetite and delicacy of an eagle.’ Dominic pulled her chair back, lingering behind her a few seconds longer than was strictly necessary as he enjoyed the floral perfume of her hair.

Caro, in the act of draping her napkin across her knee, paused to give the matter some thought before answering. As far as she was aware, she had eaten nothing so far today. ‘Perhaps a raven.’ Not a good comparison, she realised with an inner wince, when the colour of Dominic’s hair reminded her of a raven’s wing …

Dominic was chuckling softly as he took his seat opposite hers at the small round table. Not so intimate that their knees actually touched beneath it, but certainly enough to create an atmosphere Caro could have wished did not exist.

She ignored Dominic to smile at Simpson as he entered the room with a soup tureen and began to serve their first course. It was a delicious watercress soup that Caro enjoyed so much that the butler served her a second helping.

‘As I said, an eagle …’ Dominic muttered so that only she could hear, wincing slightly, but not uttering a sound, as she kicked him on the shin beneath the table with one slipper-covered foot; no doubt it had hurt her more than it had hurt him!

He inwardly approved of the fact that she made no effort to hide her appetite; he had spent far too many evenings with women who picked at their food, and in doing so totally ruined his own appetite. In contrast to those other women, Caro ate just as heartily of the fish course, and her roast beef and vegetables, all followed by some chocolate confection that she ate with even more relish than the previous courses.

So much so that Dominic found himself watching her rather than attempting to eat his own dessert. ‘Perhaps you would care to eat mine, too?’ He pushed the untouched glass bowl towards her.

Her eyes lit up, before she gave a reluctant shake of her head. ‘I really should not …’

‘I believe it is a little late for a show of maidenly delicacy,’ Dominic teased as he placed the bowl in front of her before standing up to pour himself a glass of the brandy Caro had so obviously disliked earlier. He sat down again to study her as he swirled the brandy round in the glass, easily noting the colour in her cheeks. ‘I was commenting on the subject of food, of course …’

That colour deepened. ‘If you are going to start being ungentlemanly again—’

‘I was not aware that in your eyes I had ever stopped?’ Dominic said, raising dark, mocking brows.

Perhaps not, Caro conceded, but there had been something of a ceasefire during and since their game of chess. In fact, she had believed she had even seen a grudging respect in those silver-coloured eyes when the game had ended in a draw. ‘What shall we do with the rest of the evening?’ She opted for a safer subject.

‘I, my dear Caro, am going out—’

‘Out?’ She frowned after a glance at the gold clock on the mantel. ‘But it is almost eleven o’clock.’

He gave an inclination of his head. ‘And if Nick’s were open, you would still have a second performance of the evening to get through.’

True. But having spent most of the day sleeping, Caro was not ready to retire to her bedchamber just yet. ‘Are you going to see Lord Thorne? If so, perhaps I might come with you?’

‘No, on both counts, Caro,’ Dominic said; engrossed as he had been in their game of chess, and much as he had enjoyed his dinner, he had nevertheless been continually aware of the fact that the news he had been waiting for concerning Nicholas Brown had not been delivered, leaving him no choice but to now instigate his own plans for the evening. ‘I have already visited Osbourne once today, and doubt that a second visit this late in the day would be welcome.’ Mrs Gertrude Wilson would most definitely frown upon it! ‘And where I am going tonight you definitely cannot follow.’

‘Oh.’

Dominic quirked one eyebrow as he saw how flushed Caro’s cheeks had become. ‘Oh?’

Caro frowned her irritation, with her own naïvety as much as with Dominic Vaughn. Just because he kissed her whenever the mood took him did not mean that he did not have a woman he occasionally spent the night with. That he was not going out in a few minutes to spend the rest of the night in bed with such a woman!

Strange how much even the idea of that should seem so distasteful to her …

She had, Caro realised in dismay, enjoyed Dominic’s company this evening. The verbal exchanges. The challenge of trying to best him at chess. Even the teasing in regard to her appetite. She now found it more than unpleasant to be made aware of the possibility he might be spending the rest of the night in bed with some faceless woman.

Which was utterly ridiculous!

She stood up abruptly. ‘In that case, with your permission, I believe I will go back into the library and choose a book to read.’

It wasn’t too difficult for Dominic to guess what Caro’s thoughts had been during these last few minutes of silence: that she imagined it was his intention to spend the night in some willing woman’s bed. Much as the idea appealed—it had been some time since Dominic had bedded a woman; those few unsatisfactory forays with Caro did not count when they had left him feeling more physically frustrated than ever—it did not actually enter into his plans for the rest of the night.

No, Dominic’s immediate destination had absolutely nothing to do with bedding a woman and more to do with personally paying a visit to Nicholas Brown … ‘Do not bother to wait up for me, Caro. I expect to be very late,’ he said after he emptied the last of the brandy before placing the glass down upon the table.

Her cheeks were flushed with temper. ‘As if I have any interest in what time it will be when—or even if—you should return!’

Dominic chuckled softly as he strolled over to the door. ‘Sweet dreams, Caro.’

‘As long as they are not of you then I am sure they will be!’ she snapped.

He paused in the doorway to glance back at her. ‘I very much doubt that I shall ever have the dubious pleasure of featuring in any young girl’s dreams,’ he said drily before closing the door softly behind him.

Dominic could not be sure, but he thought he might have heard the tinkling sound of glass shattering on the other side of that closed door …

Chapter Eight (#ulink_18d0930d-6fc0-558a-8124-ccb9648fdf45)

It was some hours later when Dominic finally returned to Blackstone House, and he could not help smiling slightly as the attentive Simpson opened the door for him as if it were three o’clock in the afternoon rather than the morning.

‘Mrs Morton is in the library, my lord,’ the butler advised softly.

Dominic came to an abrupt halt halfway across the marble entrance hall and turned back sharply. ‘What the devil is she still doing in there?’

The butler turned from locking and bolting the front door. ‘I believe she fell asleep whilst reading, my lord. She looked so peaceful, I did not like to wake her.’

Dominic felt no such qualms as he glanced in the direction of the library, his expression grim. ‘Get yourself to bed, man. I will deal with Mrs Morton.’

‘Very good, my lord.’ The elderly man gave a stiff bow. ‘I—I believe that Mrs Morton may have been upset earlier, my lord.’ he added as Dominic walked in the direction of the library.

Dominic was slower to turn this time. ‘Upset?’

‘I believe she was crying, my lord.’ Simpson looked pained.

What the hell! The last thing he felt like dealing with tonight was a woman’s tears. Or, as was usually the case, having to guess the reason for those tears. Whatever could have happened to reduce the indomitable Caro to tears? Perhaps the danger he had warned her of had become all too real to her once she was left alone for the evening?

Whatever the reason it gave him a distinctly unpleasant sensation in the pit of his stomach to think of Caro alone and upset …

He could see the evidence of her tears on the pallor of her cheeks once he had entered the library and stood looking down at her as she lay curled up asleep in the wing-backed armchair beside the fire, the book she had been reading still lying open upon her knees.

He was also struck by how incredibly young and vulnerable she looked without the light of battle in her eyes and the flush of temper upon her cheeks. So young and vulnerable, in fact, that Dominic questioned how she could ever have survived her first week in London without falling victim to some disaster.

Not that he imagined for one moment that Caro would have succumbed quietly—she did not seem to do anything quietly!—but she wasn’t physically strong enough to fight off a male predator, and her youth and lack of a protector would have made her easy prey for the seedy underworld of a city such as this one. As it was, he had no doubt that Caro had Drew Butler’s visible protection to thank for her physical well being this past week, at least.

If Dominic had needed any reassurance that he had done the right thing in now placing Caro in his protection, then he had received it this evening when he’d visited Nicholas Brown at his home in Cheapside.

The bastard son of a titled gentleman and some long-forgotten prostitute, Brown, whilst now giving the appearance of wealth, had in fact grown up on the streets of London, and was as hardened and tough as any of the cut-throats that walked those darkened streets. A toughness he had taken advantage of by building himself a lucrative business empire that often catered to the less acceptable excesses of the ton; Nick’s had been the more respectable of the three gambling clubs the man owned.

Within minutes of Dominic being admitted to Brown’s house earlier, the other man had had the unmitigated gall to offer to allow the masked lady to sing at one of his other clubs, until such time as Nick’s reopened. An offer Dominic had felt no hesitation in refusing on Caro’s behalf!

Looking down at her now as she slept the sleep of the innocent, he could only shudder at the thought of her ever being exposed to the vicious and seedy underbelly of Nicholas Brown’s world. At the same time Dominic feared that Brown, with his many spies in the London underworld, might already know that the young woman now staying with him and masquerading as his widowed cousin was that same masked lady …