“What if I brought you three thousand tomorrow morning? Would you run away with me then? It would be enough, yes? We’d figure out the rest. Would you do it?”
She swallowed, obviously torn.
“It won’t be easy,” he pressed, “but we could do it together. We’re in love, Diana. Anything is possible with love.”
He believed that. Indeed, the feeling burned hot inside him, but her eyes widened in shocked surprise. “What?” she whispered. At least that was the word he read off her lips.
“We’re in love,” he stressed. “Aren’t we? Don’t you love me?”
“You love me?” she echoed without answering his question. “I…”
She was in doubt, but he knew exactly how to change that. He surged upward and captured her mouth with his. He teased her cold lips and slipped between them with his tongue. And while she gasped in maidenly surprise, he plundered her mouth. He thrust inside and tasted every part of her.
“Diana,” he whispered.
She clutched his shoulders in response, then drew him closer.
It was the most natural thing to press her backward, to move over her so that he could lay her down on her bed.
He hadn’t meant to be so ardent. He’d merely intended to kiss her doubts away. But lust surged inside him, and love and desire were a potent combination. Especially since she whispered his name with every kiss, and her hands roamed across his shoulders and back.
But while he began to nuzzle down her throat to her breasts, she gripped him hard and held him away.
“Lucas. Lucas!”
“Yes?” He lifted his head, feeling her quick breaths as they merged with his own. He saw the pulse in her throat and meant to nibble it while need throbbed in his loins.
“Yes.”
Excellent! He pressed a quick kiss to her throat, and his fingers began to tug at the fabric of her nightrail.
“Lucas, stop!”
He lifted his head. “What?”
“Do you have three thousand pounds? Right now? Do you have it?”
She was talking about money? Right now, when her scent muddied his thoughts, and she was already on fire in her bed?
“Do you?”
“Not just now. I have a little more than a thousand.” He’d been saving up to buy a horse. “But I can turn that into three thousand easily. I’m a good gambler, and so many people are bad at it.”
She stiffened beneath him. “Gambling? You want me to risk my family on gambling?”
“It’s true! How do you think I got a thousand?” He could see that she didn’t believe him, and no wonder. What did she know of the kind of money men threw around simply because they could? “I can,” he insisted. He straightened up off her, though it physically hurt to do so. “Let me prove it.”
“How?”
“I’ll come back in the morning with three thousand pounds. I swear it.” He could do it. It might be tight, but he knew of a few hells where the play was steep. “Wait for me,” he pressed. Then he paused. “And if I show you the money, will you run away with me? Will you refuse to marry him?” He touched her cheek. “Will you be mine?”
“Yes,” she said, the word barely audible. Then she straightened up and slammed her mouth to his. It was all he needed.
He plundered her mouth. And when she gripped his shoulders, he tore himself away. There was too much to do. There would be plenty of time for love after the night’s gambling was done.
So, he went to the window, frowning as he tried to figure out how to wriggle himself back outside without tumbling to his death.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she huffed. “I’ll take you down the back stairs.”
They tiptoed like giggly children down the back stairs. And when they finally reached the doorway, he hauled her close for one last kiss. Her mouth was hot, her body pliant, and he held her so tight, he lifted her off the ground.
“You have bewitched me,” he whispered as he let her go.
“Don’t fail,” she responded. “Please, God, don’t fail.”
“I won’t.”
He didn’t. He spent the night in four different gaming hells. He played upon his wet-behind-the-ears looks. He pretended to be drunk when he wasn’t. And when the players got wise, he slipped out and ran to the next one. And once, he even stole money from a drunkard who had passed out near him.
It was for a good cause, he rationalized, as he became a thief. It was for love and for Diana’s family. And when he got the last pound note clutched into his hands, he ran from the hell while his victim screamed, “You better run, boy, but it won’t help. I’ll find you tomorrow, and then we’ll see.”
He felt the threat settle low in his spine as his feet pounded away. It held real danger, and he knew he could never return to the hells he’d been in tonight. A man could make a lot of money in one night. He had proven that. But it had required him to be ruthless in a way that he despised. He’d taken money from friends, acquaintances, and idiots. It left him feeling filthy and ashamed, but he’d gotten what he wanted.
Three thousand pounds.
Wonderful, except he would never be able to do that again. The gamblers were on to him. The monied people and the thieves. He needed to get out of London immediately, which would be fine, except how would he support Diana and her family in the future? How would he cover the other two thousand pounds they needed to survive? This year and then the next and the next?
He didn’t know. And he sure as hell couldn’t marry her until he had an answer. Cold logic in the morning had replaced last night’s romantic passion.
He didn’t go to her bedroom that morning. He didn’t drop on his knees and shower her with pound notes as he’d envisioned throughout the night. And he certainly didn’t stop her from dully speaking her vows to her new husband, though he stood at the back of the church and tried not to weep in despair.
Instead, he used the money to buy a commission and entered the military that very day.
That should have been the end of it. That should have put paid to any relationship between him and Diana. Until the morning, twelve years later, when her brother Elliott walked into his bedroom and said, “I need your help. Diana’s in trouble.”
Chapter Two
Diana, Lady Dunnamore, smiled as she heard a bird call outside her husband’s bedroom window. The sound was piercing enough to make it through the glass and drawn curtains, and she identified the creature as a house sparrow. To her shame, she had not listened to her husband’s lectures enough to know whether the bird was male or female, calling for a mate, or just singing about a new nest. But she nevertheless held on to the sound as she held on to the memory of strolling through the gardens with the man who had been at her side for twelve years.
Blessing number seven, Oscar had taught her to appreciate bird calls. It was the one that came right after six—he shaved off his mustache because she did not like kissing it. And before number eight—he did not slurp his soup.
In truth, those should have been numbers one through three of the things she most loved about her husband. But since the priest had asked her to write it, and her mother would undoubtedly ask to see it, Diana had written what was expected of her. Number one was, of course, that he married her to save her family from poverty. It wasn’t at all true, and she knew it. But her mother had always needed a man to guide her hand, and so Diana had married Oscar and was expected to be grateful.