She nodded. “Excellent. Then you won’t mind telling His Grace that I am here.” There was a pause, confusion flaring on several faces before she clarified. “I believe you call him Temple.”
The boy who’d answered the door was the first to speak. “But yer Cross’s lady,” he said, as if that was all there was to say.
Cross’s lady. The words warmed her.
Even if they weren’t true.
“Today, I’ve need of Temple.”
And Temple would help her get the rest.
When they arrived home that night, Pippa and Trotula had covered a wide swath of London, and both mistress and hound were exhausted.
Ignoring her mother’s admonitions that countesses did not leave the house with only their hounds to keep them company, and that Pippa would be devastated if she awoke on her wedding day with a cold, and that she simply must eat something, she forwent the family meal and made her way to her bed, crawling between crisp linen sheets she fancied smelled of the man she’d thought of all day. All week. For what seemed like forever. She should have slept, but instead she played her plan over and over in her mind. The moving pieces, the variables—both fixed and unfixed—the process, the participants.
Stroking Trotula’s head, Pippa lay in her bed, thinking of Jasper Arlesey, Earl Harlow. Of all the things she’d ever heard about this strange, elusive peer. She knew that he did not take his seat in Parliament. She knew that he did not frequent balls or dinners or even the theater. In fact, it seemed he did nothing that brought him into contact with society . . . nothing except running London’s most exclusive gaming hell.
And she knew that he was being an utter cabbagehead, about to toss his life away in a mad belief that he was saving her.
But most importantly, she knew that he was wrong. It was not she who required saving.
It was he.
And she was just the woman to do it.
Chapter Eighteen
The time for observation is through.
It is now time for action.
The Scientific Journal of Lady Philippa Marbury
April 3, 1831; one day prior to her wedding
She was to be married tomorrow.
To another man.
And instead of being at Dolby House, in her bedchamber, in her arms—giving them both a final taste of mutual pleasure—he was here, in one of London’s darkest corners, now lit in brilliant celebration of his own impending marriage.
Knight had not been able to resist glorying in paternal triumph. Cross was to marry Meghan Margaret Knight and gaming hell royalty would soon be born; if that did not call for a night of sin and debauchery, nothing would.
A group of men at a nearby hazard table cried out their excitement, as the roll turned in their favor, and Cross turned to watch as the little ivory dice were raked up and returned to the head of the field, where Viscount Densmore kissed the cubes and threw them down the table again. Three. Four.
The entire table groaned their disappointment at the loss, and Cross took perverse pleasure in the sound. No one should be happy tonight if he could not be. No one should have pleasure if he could not take it.
It had been four days since he’d touched happiness—fleetingly. Four days since he’d brushed against pleasure, all soft skin and breathless words. Four days since he’d had Pippa in one perfect, devastating night. Four days that had stretched like an eternity, every moment taunting him, tempting him to go to her. To steal her away and keep her from scathing words and judging eyes.
He had twenty-five thousand acres in Devonshire where no one ever needed to see them, where she and Trotula could roam. He would build her a house for her scientific research. He’d give her everything she needed. Everything she desired. And he’d roam with them, he and their passel of children as, in his experience, rustication tended to facilitate breeding.
He’d do everything he could to keep her happy.
It wouldn’t be enough.
It would never be enough. He would never be enough for her, just as he hadn’t been enough for Baine or Lavinia. She deserved better.
A wicked ache settled in his chest at the thought.
Castleton wasn’t better. He wouldn’t challenge her. He wouldn’t tempt her.
He wouldn’t love her.
Nearby, Christopher Lowe leaned over at the roulette wheel and barked his triumph as the little white ball seated itself into a red square on the spinning surface.
Cross hissed his displeasure. Roulette was the worst kind of game—entirely chance, never worth the wager, even when resulting in a win. It was a game for idiots. He turned to watch the score of men patting Lowe on the back and placing their blunt on the table. “The wheel’s hot now!” one called.
Cross turned away in irritation.
The whole world—every game designed to tempt and take—was designed for idiots.
“Cross.”