Page 5 of From Duke Till Dawn
He stalked to avingt-et-untable. People’s gazes and whispers followed him. The Duke of Greylandnevergambled. Tonight, he would.
He wagered wildly, heedless of his cards. Wins and losses piled up, until he no longer cared how much money he’d lost or gained. It could have been a pittance, or a fortune. What did it matter?
A small crowd gathered, watching with barely concealed amazement.
“He’s gone mad,” someone whispered.
“The chit broke his sense,” another answered.
He moved to place another substantial, careless bet. A voice behind him made him freeze, however. It planted him like roots from an oak, and he couldn’t move under its memorable feminine, familiar spell.
“Won’t you play another hand, my lord? I’m certain the house will give you credit. Come, I shall fetch you a glass of wine.”
He knew that voice.Hervoice. The Lost Queen.
Yet it couldn’t be. Had to be another illusion, like that woman’s laugh at the chophouse.
“Are you hungry, my lord? Cook has just prepared a superbsteak avec poireaux vinaigrette.”
No—this was no illusion. Two years melted away like ice in a fire as Alex slowly turned around, uncaring that he was in the middle of a game. His body roared with pain and pleasure.
There she was. Achingly unforgettable. Devastatingly beautiful. As slim as a birch tree, with pale golden hair framing a face of shattering loveliness. Dressed in a bronze satin evening gown, her hair held up with amber clips, she stood next to Lord Coleman, smiling at the old earl in her winning way. Her hand rested lightly on his sleeve.
She wasn’t one of the patrons. She... worked here. But how? Why? What did any of this mean?
“Cassandra.” The word came from his lips like a rasp, as though his body was a cavern that had been closed for a millennium.
He didn’t speak very loudly—at that moment, he couldn’t. Yet she looked up at once. Her hazel gaze met his.
For half a heartbeat, her expression registered joy, longing. Then horror.
He blinked, and both expressions were gone from her face. She looked smooth and unreadable. It was as if he’d imagined her emotions.
He felt both numb and acutely aware of every nerve. His heart pounded and his mouth went dry.
“Alex?” she whispered.
It truly was her. Cassandra Blair. The Lost Queen. The woman who’d shattered his heart two years ago.
Chapter 2
For several moments, Alex and Cassandra stared at each other, as if frozen. The only thing that moved was Alex’s heart, pounding like a steam engine in the center of his chest.
He barely noticed Lord Coleman looking back and forth between them. “I’ll, ah, investigate thevingt-et-untables,” the older man muttered before ambling away, leaving Alex alone with her.
He’d had lovers and mistresses before—women who enjoyed pleasure and were eager to share it with him—and while he acknowledged he’d been attracted to sundry women, his hunger for Cassandra had been sudden and obsessive. He’d seen a flame smoldering beneath the coolness of her exterior and it called to him, like a fire seen through a long, dark night.
He’d been drawn in by her quiet dignity, so different from the forced frivolity of debutantes in search of husbands. When other women looked at him as a collection of wealthy estates, awed by the age of his title and his prestigious lineage, she had spoken to him and looked at him as though he was a man, not just a duke. There had been tragedy in her eyes and understanding in her smile born from years of lived experience. And—he couldn’t deny it—the carnal awareness she displayed in her movements stoked a fire in him he’d never before known. He’d burned to touch her, to taste her kisses, to know the feel of her body against his.
Now the woman who’d carved a hollow inside his body and brain stood before him, two years older but as powerfully stunning as she’d been back in Cheltenham. Seeing her again seared a hole right through him. He’d be reduced to ashes in a moment.
All the details of her returned to him in an instant, from the arch of her eyebrows to the birthmark on the inside of her thigh. A birthmark he’d kissed.
Someone at one of the faro tables shouted, snapping Alex back to the present moment, to this place. Cassandra, too, seemed to wake, blinking and furrowing her forehead.
He could not speak to her as he longed to do in the middle of a gaming hell.
“Your Grace?” the card dealer behind him tentatively asked. “Do you wish to continue playing?”
