Page 46 of Hazard a Guest
Every night she wore something more beautiful, more devastating. She dressed in rich fabrics in deep, jewel-colored tones, gems sparkling at her throat and in her hair. She flashed smiles as easily as she flicked cards onto the tables. She was as sharp as the tips of her gems, he thought. She was the trump card and the money rake and the pot, all at once.
By the third day of the return to gambling, it had become his nightly ritual, trying to sleep and returning mentally to that moment against the door, that delicious, heated moment and all the ways it could have burned hotter. He almost resisted sleep just to stay crisply in the memory, to retain how her skin felt under his fingertips, how her mouth had tasted, how she’d moved.
Yes, it hurt. It ached. And it was divine.
The days had run later because the nights had taken so long to expire since they’d entered the playing rooms. He’d kept an eye on Thaddeus Beck, noting that the man refused to play at a table after Ember sat down. He’d finish his hand, he’d excuse himself quietly, but regardless of the game or the stake or the round, he would always leave after she arrived.
He knew she had noticed it too, and he knew it irked her.
Joe wasn’t quite sure what to make of Beck. He wasn’t what he’d imagined from Silas Cain’s description. The man was massive. Built like a stagecoach. But he moved with the quiet agility of a stray cat, somehow elegant despite its inelegant presentation.
Joe still couldn’t quite shake the image of him sitting on that conservatory bench across from Ember Donnelly, the two of them clearly sharing a moment that anyone with working eyes would have described as tender.
He didn’t like it. He didn’t like remembering it.
“People have hurt you,” Joe had said to her.
And since the moment the words had left his mouth, he’d felt a rigidness in his flesh, sharp edges pointed, perhaps unfairly, at Freddy Hightower.
“She doesn’t forget when things go badly,” Freddy had said to him, mere days ago.
What had hedoneto her? Had Freddy broken her heart? Had she trusted Freddy with that beautiful, fearful heart and he’d gone and harmed it?
He couldn’t shake the suspicion. He couldn’t quell the rage.
Joe didn’t live in pockets of limbo. His upbringing had always emphasized the benefit of plain speech, of confronting a thing before it could fester, and so he’d followed Freddy back to the rooms on that third night because he couldn’t stand it anymore, the not knowing.
Freddy had observed it and accepted that something was different without comment. Perhaps he had expected it, somehow. Maybe he’d been preparing for it since that morning after Ember’s dice lessons, when Freddy had opened the door to the washroom and immediately noticed the two glasses, stained red with the ghost of wine, on Joe’s windowside table.
He just looked sidelong at Joe falling in step beside him as they walked the halls, and nodded quietly.
He didn’t speak until they crossed the threshold into Joe’s room. Freddy followed as though he knew he was wanted for this. He crossed the room and sat on the foot of Joe’s bed and heaved a sigh.
“So,” he said, raising his pale brows. “You have questions.”
Joe closed the door and leaned back against it, crossing his arms over his chest. He nodded.
“It wasn’t what you think,” Freddy said with a sigh, dropping his palms to the mattress.
“I don’t think anything,” Joe replied softly.
“Of course you do,” Freddy returned with irritation. “Even you aren’t above presumption. It wasn’t a love affair. It was business.”
“Your contract, you mean?” Joe pressed. “Or your friendship? Or …?”
Freddy sighed loudly. “The contract, maybe all of it? I was in debt. I’m always in debt, Joe, and she was a woman in a very dangerous business. She could give me absolution and I could give her protection. It worked. We worked.”
“You worked,” Joe repeated, without inflection.
“We werefriends,” Freddy burst out, fraying in his emphasis. “Good friends. She was the best friend I’ve ever had, Cresson. She’s like me, you know? Enough like me that we spoke the same language. She was my mistress, yes, but it wasn’t … it wasn’t what it usually is. I”m not saying we didn’t … that we never …”
“I don’t care about that,” Joe said quickly. “That doesn’t matter.”
That, unlike everything else, seemed to stun Freddy. He stopped speaking entirely, staring in bafflement for a dozen ticks of the clock before he could snap himself out of it. “That’s not what this is about?”
“No.”
Freddy grimaced, his eyes falling to his hands on the coverlet. He started to pick at it, the color of his face turning blotchy. “You want to know why she hated me,” he said quietly, “not why she loved me.”
