Page 1 of A Duke Changes Everything
Chapter One
London, August 1844
Lyon’s Gentlemen’s Club, downstairs
“You know why I’ve come, Lyon.”
“I know you’re wasting your time.” Nicholas Lyon waited, hoping the man would accept his fate and retreat. “My answer hasn’t changed.”
“Monster.”
The man spat the word under his breath, but Nick heard the whispered curse. He’d been called as much before, and far worse.
“There are advantages to being a monster,” he told his visitor.
Nick had come to think of his villainous reputation as a unique brand of freedom. He did as he pleased, and no matter how badly he behaved, no one could ever claim surprise or disappointment.
Of course, the gasps of horror and curious stares when strangers caught sight of his mismatched eyes—one green, one blue—and the jagged scar bisecting the left half of his face were vexing.
Strangers assumed his deeds would match his mien.
But down here in the darkness, in the bowels of the gambling emporium he’d built, his looks weren’t what men feared. They feared how much they needed him. They feared his refusal. Yet they still came. Impulse drove gamblers downstairs again and again, an endless march of loss-prone noblemen petitioning for cash.
In the belly of Lyon’s Gentlemen’s Club, Nick discovered the bliss of being master of his own domain. To exert control, he simply replied with an unbendingno.
Two letters. A single breath. So much power.
Let those he refused think him cruel. Once he made a decision, he never yielded, no matter how much they bellowed.
The aristocrat currently hovering at the front of Nick’s desk looked as if he might combust.
Cheeks flaming a splotchy red, Lord Calvert clenched pudgy bejeweled fingers into fists until his knuckles cracked. He didn’t argue or demand, as others did. Instead, he stood in grim silence. Until a noise burst free. A whine that built to a roar, like the unholy wail of a dying beast.
Nick recognized the sound. He’d felt the same bellow of agony claw its way up his own throat a time or two.
Loss. Disappointment. Devastation.
He understood misery, but his determination didn’t falter. When it came to business, Nick’s instincts rarely failed him.
“A hundred pounds,” the nobleman wheezed, barely able to speak past clenched teeth. “Seventy-five?”
“We aren’t negotiating.”
“You’ve ruined me, Lyon.” Balding head bowed, Calvert sucked in a ragged breath and exhaled as if the effort hurt. “Give me a chance to win back what I’ve lost.”
“You’ve ruined yourself.” Nick pulled out a drawer, gesturing at the row of neatly arranged documents inside. “I hold an alphabet of your vowels. What else could you possibly have to barter?”
He didn’t intend for Calvert to answer. Whatever the nobleman offered, he wouldn’t extend more credit.
Here, in an unadorned room next to his private quarters, Nick acquired true wealth. Players called it the Lyon’s Den.
When gamblers needed ready cash, he offered loans at moderate interest with a requirement for collateral. That was where real bounty was to be found—in artwork, antiquities, and the unentailed pieces of property that aristocrats wagered and lost. Like a pirate hoarding his loot, Nick had assembled a sizable portfolio of assets in five years.
He couldn’t say which he relished more. Owning rambling country estates he’d never visit or ruining arrogant noblemen.
“Take this.” Calvert wrenched a ruby ring from his index finger. “No loan. Just pay me what it’s worth.”
Nick never shifted his gaze from the man’s desperate eyes. “I don’t want your baubles.” Who did the nobleman think he was? Some pawnbroker from the East End stews?
