Page 45 of A Rogue's Rules for Seduction
Tabitha looked momentarily relieved, but then frowned. “If I understand the rules of cassino, you need four players.”
“I’ll take the fourth seat,” Willa volunteered.
Finn’s wife smiled her gratitude as she yielded her chair to Willa. Tabitha perched at the edge of a sofa and became immediately absorbed in her book.
With expert hands, Finn dealt.
“It’s nearly impossible to beat you at any sort of game such as this one,” Willa said, studying her cards, “but I’m determined to at least give it a try.”
“You’ve only to ask and I’ll teach you the best strategies,” her brother answered.
“You’d give up your advantage?” she asked, surprised.
“I’ll instruct you in strategy,” Finn said with a smile, “but I’ll still win.”
Kieran and Willa shared a pleased look. For as long as she could remember, Finn had never held himself in high regard—which was entirely the fault of her parents and Finn’s teachers, who mistook his struggles with reading as both laziness and stupidity. But ever since Tabitha had come into Finn’s life, with her unshakable belief in her husband’s brilliance, he’d been far more confident, and that delighted the younger Ransome siblings.
“You should be grateful,” Kieran said with asnort as he laid down a card. “Finn’s been a parsimonious bastard when it comes to showingmehow to win at cards.”
“So, you’ve never divulged any secrets to Key?” Willa pressed.
“It’s the prerogative of older brothers to lord their advantages over their younger brothers,” Finn replied, which made Kieran lob a coin at him.
“Dom isn’t your brother,” Willa pointed out. “Perhaps you’ve given him some advice with cards.”
“Advice and Dom are two concepts that have never enjoyed much interaction,” Finn answered, taking the coin and flicking it back at his brother. “Hardheaded, he can be. About nearly everything.”
“I’m finding,” she said slowly, “that even though I was engaged to Dom, there are parts of him he never told me about. Hidden sides and secrets he keeps alluding to. I own,” she went on, capturing a card from the middle of the table, “that I didn’t press him for his history. That fault’s mine.”
“And he keeps himself locked tight as a strongbox,” Finn noted.
“Not one for divulging much, is Dom,” Kieran said, then scowled when he couldn’t capture a card. “Even when he’s in his cups, he holds fast to what’s in his heart.”
Willa looked back and forth between her brothers. “You’ve known him for over a decade. Surelythere are aspects of himself that he’s told you about.” When Kieran remained silent, she turned to Celeste. “As his sister, surely you can give mesomeinsight into him.”
Celeste tapped her cards to her mouth. “I can’t speak for him—he’s master of his own truth. What Icansay is that whatever you thought of his life in Ratcliff, as difficult and dangerous as you may have believed it to be... it was a hundred times worse. He did his best to keep me protected from it, but the brunt of its brutality fell on him.”
“How?” Willa whispered.
Celeste shook her head. “Many of the details aren’t known to me. As I said, he sheltered me—the same, I suspect, as he’s sheltered you.”
Desperate for more understanding, Willa placed a hand on Celeste’s wrist. “Is thereanythingyou can divulge?”
“He used to come home late at night,” Celeste said after a pause. “And I could tell by the haunted look in his eyes that he’d seen and done things... things of which he was ashamed. They pained him.”
Willa’s mind spun as she tried to picture what exactly had befallen Dom, yet all she could summon were vague images, blurry depictions of things she had no experience with.
“I’d prayed,” Celeste continued, sorrowful, “that once Da made his fortune and we left Ratcliff behind, there’d be some happiness for Dom. If anything, it got worse.Ihad to be perfect, but there was nothing Dom could do to make anyone accept him. He’s proud, and puts on a brave and brazen mask, yet when he’d come home on holiday from Oxford... there were more shadows in his eyes. I think he’d hoped to find some respite there from the battleground that was his life. But I don’t believe that was the case.”
Willa rubbed at the center of her aching chest. Turning to Kieran, she noted softly, “That’s where you met him. You saw what happened at university.”
“It was... disgraceful,” Kieran said darkly. “The hazing. The bullying. He was five times bigger and ten times more intelligent than any of them, and yet the so-called gentlemen students of Oxford mocked and harassed him. Tearing up his books. Shredding his robes. Letting pigs into his rooms so they could foul up the floors.”
“Oh, God.” Willa swallowed around the hot coal in her throat.
“He wanted to brawl,” Kieran continued, his jaw tight, “but knew he was on precarious grounds as it was, being a commoner against the gentry, and would be expelled if he fought back. So, he bore it all, but spent his nights at a boxing academy.”
“It was a place where he could unleash himself,” she murmured, her throat continuing to burn from the thought of the impossible, horrendous situation Dom had faced, and how he withstood it.
