Page 11 of From Duke Till Dawn
“I’m grateful for it,” she answered sincerely. Even lawful gaming hells made profit hand over fist. “But it’s not like you to run a legitimate business.”
“This will be my last scheme,” Martin insisted for the hundredth time. “I wanted to end my career on the level. That way, there’s no chance of being hauled in before the law. You’ll see,” he vowed. “Won’t take but a blink and we’ll be swimming in cash.” He eyed the safe meaningfully.
Cassandra couldn’t contain her restlessness anymore. She paced the room. “Just a month. You promised. We’ll run the hell for a month, and then decamp.”
“A month is the perfect amount of time,” Martin said smugly. “Keeping something around for a short while ensures the toffs will come running. They’ll throw blunt at us, knowing we won’t be here forever.”
“All our debts paid,” Cassandra added. “Including George Lacey’s investments.” Lacey was the sort of man wise people avoided, particularly when it came to money. She’d been set against making Lacey an investor, but Martin had said it would be fine.
“Paid in full,” Martin said with a munificent expression. “Even to Lacey. And there will be enough left over to set us up for the rest of our lives. Think of it, my lass.” He beamed. “No more schemes. No more swindles. Just high living for the rest of our days.”
How wonderful would that be? Ever since Cheltenham, she’d become so bloody tired. Of running from one place to another. Of using men’s better feelings against them. Of always being someone other than herself. She hadn’t wanted to keep scamming them, but she’d had no choice, no way of earning her coin. When Martin had written her, it had been like a sign from the heavens. She could earn money through legitimate means, and use that to set herself up for the rest of her life.
Cassandra had no idea what she would do if she didn’t need to deceive anyone anymore. But that open future didn’t frighten her. She’d find something, somewhere, to do. Maybe she’d open a hat shop in a coastal town. Or she’d go to Italy and try to learn how to paint. It didn’t matter. All that was important was that she’d be done with fleecing and scheming and pretending.
She stopped pacing and examined a framed print of a country estate. Oh, maybe, maybe, if she allowed herself to dream... Alex could be beside her as she ran that hat shop. Or he’d gaze over her shoulder as she painted a Roman ruin and kiss her neck, praising her work.
Such lovely dreams.
But that’s all they were. He was a duke. She was a swindler. What would come of their association? Nothing good, to be sure. She could lose everything she’d worked so hard for. If he ever found out the truth... She would be brought to trial. Transportation was the usual fate for those guilty of fraud. Months at sea with hard labor to follow.
She looked down at her hands. They were smooth and youthful. But they’d grow hard and cracked and old—just like the rest of her—if she was sent to Australia.Ifshe survived the journey.Ifshe could endure the punishing labor. Many didn’t.
Thank God Martin had trained her well. She’d stayed ahead of the law for a long time.
“Don’t think I’m not grateful,” she said. “I am. But I don’t see or hear from you in seven years. Seven years on my own. Out of the depths of the void, your letter arrives, telling me to come to London. Youleft me.”
Martin rolled his eyes. “Don’t say you’re still wounded over that. You survived. You even took a duke for five hundred pounds.” He grinned.
She bit back a sigh. Martin would never admit that he was in the wrong, even as the noose slipped over his neck. And she couldn’t stay angry with him. Not when he was the one who got her out of that wen of a Southwark flash house when she was a grimy girl picking pockets.
Heshowed her how good she could have it—mingling with toffs, drinking wine instead of gin, sleeping on feather mattresses instead of filthy hay. Showing her how to play the pretty widow instead of becoming just another tart walking the street.
Her loyalty would always be to Martin.
She did truly owe everything she had to him. She wouldn’t be an ingrate and turn her back on him. Besides, if Martin’s predictions for the gaming hell came true, she could leave behind her shadow life and finally step into the sun.
She wouldn’t have to cheat good men like Alex anymore.
And she’d never see Alex again. A rift of pain opened up within her at the thought, but she ignored it, as she always did.
“Time to get back to the floor.” She moved toward the door, then exited the office. Shouts and laughter and the smell of spilled wine greeted her in the corridor.
The evening had only just begun, and there was money to be gotten from the countless aristos cramming themselves into the gaming hell.
At least Alex wouldn’t be one of them. Her heart clutched at the thought of seeing him once more. She couldn’t be disinterested whenever she beheld his sternly handsome face, or when she looked into his dark eyes and saw concern and caring,realemotions. He was as honest as she was deceitful. Like all untrustworthy creatures, she longed for what she wasn’t.
And her body warmed, grew soft and supple from just the feel of his hand in hers. Two years ago, he’d been a creative and talented lover, leaving his brand upon her. Had anything changed? Would they be as good together as they had been so long ago?
Did he still care for her, the way she ached for him?
She could never find out.
Chapter 3
Alex stared out his bedroom window, his hands braced on either side of the glass. The chamber overlooked the garden in the back, but at this late hour, there wasn’t anything to see. Night’s shadows thickly covered the hedges and trees. He strained to observe something, anything, to distract him—yet nothing emerged from the darkness.
Unlike his antecedents, Alex often suffered from insomnia. It was family lore that the first five Dukes of Greyland could sleep the undisturbed slumber of the just, even if someone decided to use cannons and trebuchets to rip down the walls of Greyland House—the dukedom’s seat in Suffolk. Alex’s own father slept through his predawn birth, despite the efforts of several large footmen trying to shout the old duke awake.
