He shook his head, refusing the game. “You should not have been alone on the floor.”
Her brow furrowed. “I am alone on the floor every night.”
“You should not be,” he repeated. “And that Chase allows it does not speak well of him.”
She did not care for the anger in the tone. The censure. The emotion. Something had changed, and she could not divine precisely what. She met his gaze. “Had I not been summoned, sir, I would have had no reason to be accosted on the casino floor.”
Now the anger in his words was in his eyes. “It is my fault?”
She did not answer, instead saying, “Why call for me?”
He paused, and for a long moment, she thought he might not reply. Finally, he said, “I’ve a request for Chase.”
She hated the disappointment that flooded through her at the words. It wasn’t as though she should have expected him to ask for Anna for any other reason—but after their interaction the day before, she rather wished he had.
She wished he’d come with a request for her.
Which was ridiculous . . . in large part, because she was Chase, and therefore he had, technically, come with a request for her. But in slightly smaller part, because she had no skill whatsoever in answering men’s requests.
Unfortunately.
She did not like Chase’s name on his lips. He was a man who saw too much already. “Of course,” she said, feigning affability. “What would you like?”
“Tremley,” he said.
“What about him?”
“I want his secrets.”
Georgiana’s brow furrowed at the strange request. “Tremley is not a member. You know that.”
The Earl of Tremley was not a fool. He would never get into bed with The Fallen Angel—no matter how tempting the tables might be. He knew the price was too high.
The founders of the Angel had worked for years to establish the invitation to join the club as the most coveted offer in Britain—perhaps in Europe. Unlike other men’s clubs, there were no membership dues, and there was no allowance for vouching for friends or cohorts—members rarely knew why they were invited to the club, and they were encouraged not to discuss their membership. Few did, in part because of the high price of entry to the casino floor.
They were not willing to risk their secrets becoming public.
For years, Bourne, Cross, Temple, and Georgiana—masked as Anna and Chase—had been amassing secrets on London’s most powerful men and women, each piece of privileged, clandestine information given freely in exchange for membership in London’s darkest, most promising, most sinful gaming hell. There was nothing that the Angel could not give her members, and few requests that the owners of the casino would not accommodate.
That kind of luxury was worth unfathomable information, and information was the currency of power.
But the Earl of Tremley was too well connected to the crown to risk a connection to The Fallen Angel. “Try the clubs across the street,” she said, injecting her words with teasing. “White’s is more to the earl’s liking.”
He inclined his head. “That may be true, but I need Chase for what I’m asking.”
She was immediately intrigued. “What do you have on him?”
He raised a brow. “Does Chase have anything?”
The Angel had tried to hook the earl any number of times since King William ascended to the throne with Tremley at his right hand, but few were willing to talk about a man with so much political power. Was there something they’d missed?
If West was asking, there was. Without doubt. “There is no file on Tremley,” she said. It was the truth.
He did not believe her. She could see it in his eyes even here, in the dim light. “There will be when Chase invites the earl’s wife to the ladies’ side.”
She stilled at the words. “I don’t know what you are referring to.”
For as many years as there had been a Fallen Angel, the coveted public men’s club and casino run by four fallen aristocrats, each richer than the next, there had been a secret, unspoken second club that operated beneath the gentlemen’s noses and utterly beyond their notice. A ladies’ club, with no name and no public face.
It was never discussed.
And she wasn’t about to acknowledge its existence.
West did not seem to care; he took a step closer and the small, dark space became smaller. Darker. More dangerous. “Chase is not the only one who knows things, love.”
The words were low and graveled, and she hesitated, the pleasure of their sound unfamiliar and unsettling. Finally, she remembered herself. “We do not take ladies.”
His lips curved and she was reminded of the lion they’d discussed the previous evening. “Come now, you can lie to the rest of London, but don’t think to lie to me. You will offer the lady membership. She will trade proof of her husband’s deeds for it. And you’ll get me my information.”