Knight clapped him on the back, and Cross spoke, sotto voce, “Tomorrow, she marries. And you lose that bit of control.”
Knight spoke through wide, smiling teeth. “Nonsense. I can ruin her marriage and her children’s reputation, with one well-placed word.” He turned back to the room, a king speaking to his subjects. “And now, the beautiful lady who has captured his heart! The banns will be read tomorrow, and in three weeks’ time, my girl will be his!”
Maggie was lifted up onto the table, and Cross had to give the young woman credit—no decent father would allow his daughter anywhere near this place. No man would allow a woman for whom he cared here. But this woman, clad in mauve and resignation, stood straight and still, without fidgeting, without blushing.
She looked to him, honesty in her gaze. “My lord.” She curtsied, looking as graceful and proper as one could standing atop a hazard field.
He inclined his head, reminding himself that she was a pawn in this game. That it was Maggie who would lose the most. She would gain a title and wealth beyond imagining, but she would never have a husband who loved her.
Her husband would always love another.
“She’s a helluva treat, Cross!” someone called from the crowd.
“I’d like to get my hands on those legs!” A man reached for her slipper, grazing the toe before she gasped and pulled away, pressing back against Cross.
He might not wish to marry her, but she didn’t deserve this.
He pressed a boot down on the man’s wrist, just hard enough to trap the hand to the table. “Touch her and lose it.”
Knight laughed. “You see how he’s already protectin’ her? Can’t keep his hands off her, that Cross! They’ll make me handsome grandsons! I wager the Viscount Baine arrives before the year is out!”
The sound of Baine’s name on Knight’s lips sent a wave of heat through Cross. “I’ve twenty quid says he’s already on the way!” came a booming retort from the crowd.
Laughter and excited cheers rose up from the floor of the hell, punctuated by a loud, “Kiss ’er!”
“Aye, give the girl a good one, Cross!”
Knight laughed. “I haven’t any problem with it!”
“Of course you don’t, you bastard,” Cross hissed beneath the drunken cheers of agreement. “She’s a future countess, and your daughter, and you want her ruined in a gaming hell?”
“She’s my daughter and your future countess,” Knight replied over the cries of agreement. “I think a kiss in a gaming hell is to be expected. And I’m nothing if not a fine host; she’s not getting off this table until they get what they want.”
Maggie’s cheeks had turned red, and she peered up at Cross through sooty black lashes. “My lord,” she whispered, “please. Let us have done with it, shall we?”
He took pity on the girl. “I’m sorry this must be here.”
But Maggie pitied him as well. “I am sorry it is with me,” she said, all sympathy.
She did not deserve him, either.
He huffed a little, humorless laugh. “It seems I am destined to disappoint women.”
She did not reply, and he leaned down to kiss her, briefly, but the caress was enough to impress the crowd, who did not notice that it was devoid of emotion.
Lie. There was emotion. Guilt. Self-loathing. Betrayal. A dark, devastating sense of wrong. She was not Pippa. She was not his. She never would be.
Maggie would live in the shadow of his brilliant, bespectacled love, a prisoner of his desire to do what was right for one woman even as he destroyed the prospects of another.
Goddammit.
“And now”—Knight rapped his walking stick on the table once more, the blows returning Cross back to the present—“get back to losing money!”
Even that received a cheer on this night of nights, when whiskey flowed freely and the tables called, and the whole of Knight’s membership celebrated their leader’s great triumph.
Cross stood for a long moment on that table, waiting for Maggie and Knight to descend, looking over the casino floor as Knight’s pockmarked second hand drew him away to the back office for some matter of business.
Cross was happy to be rid of his father-in-law, and took calm pleasure in the way the roulette wheel was already spinning, the cards already flying across the baize, dice already rolling down tables; Knight commanded a casino the way Wellington had commanded a battalion—there was money to be made, and it would be done with speed and efficiency.
It was the vingt-et-un table that caught his eye first, five seated across from the dealer, each with an ace or a face card up, the dealer staring at a two. The game went fast; not one man hit. On the flop, every player had twenty or higher.
A near mathematical impossibility.
The thought was chased away by a cheer to his left, where a hazard table celebrated a successful roll, the dice in midpass down the table toward the roller. Cross watched the next toss. Six. Three. “Nine again!” the croupier called.