Page 33 of One Night with a Prince
“Why not?” she said belligerently.
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“Because anger impairs judgment, and impaired judgment makes one play badly. Whether ten pounds or ten thousand ride on your hand, you must leave emotion out of it. Take no greater risks if you’re losing than if you’re winning. Play to the cards you have. Always. The only thing that matters is the cards.”
How could he be so blasted sensible about all this? It was unnerving. “You should write a book,” she complained. “Rules of Card Play According to Mr. Byrne.No drinking, no emotion…no fun.”
“I didn’t get where I am by playing for fun.” He rearranged his cards. “Nor did any of Stokely’s set. They’re very serious about their whist. So you must be serious, too, especially if you mean to take on Lady Jenner.”
Suitably chastened, she mumbled, “All right.”
“I find that taking deep breaths helps to calm violent emotions. Try it.”
Feeling rather silly, she took one breath, then another and another, surprised to find that it did banish any lingering vestiges of bad temper.
“Good,” he said. “Now concentrate. Think about the cards that have been played and the ones you saw me take from the pile.”
“Very well.” She forced herself to work back through the hand.
“How many trumps do I have left?”
She hesitated, then said, “Five?”
“Six. But that’s good.” He held up his eight remaining cards, then took one and threw it on the table. It wasn’t a trump. “I gained three from the stock in the first half, one of which I played earlier, which leaves two that you know about—”
“Enough.” She reexamined her cards in light of his comments and the card he’d played. “How in blazes do you remember every card?”
“One must if one is to win at whist.”
“No doubt you also excelled at mathematics in school,” she muttered. He kept his gaze fixed on his cards. “I’ve never been to school.”
The edge of bitterness in his tone tugged at her heart. “Never? Not even before your mother—”
“Lost the annuity Prinny gave her? Not even then.”
“What annuity?”
He stiffened. “I thought Regina and Katherine had told—” He broke off. “Clearly not. Never mind.”
“Tell me. I want to know. I thought your mother was just the prince’s—”
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“Whore?” he snapped.
“No, of course not.” He wasn’t so calm now, was he? “But…well…from the gossip I heard, they had a brief affair, and that’s all. She wasn’t even really his mistress.”
“That’s whathe says. It makes it easier for him to justify his treatment of her. She’s just a whoring actress, right? A little tart he can take at his leisure, then discard without a thought. At least I don’t leave my mistresses destitute.”
She played a card. “Because you only choose married women as mistresses,” she said dryly.
“Exactly. Their husbands will support them and claim any children I inadvertently sire. But I’m not leaving some bastard of mine to struggle and starve and—” Breaking off with a curse, he tossed a card down. “Play.”
She didn’t. “Tell me about the annuity, Byrne.”
“Fine.” He lifted his glittering gaze to her. “You want to know the truth about your friend, the prince? Prinny promised my mother an annuity if she would publicly declare that I wasn’t his son. She agreed, poor naïve fool, thinking that the money would do me more good than any claim to royalty.”
He laughed bitterly. “The money didn’t last, of course. Once Prinny decided to ‘marry’ Mrs. Fitzherbert illegally, she demanded he put his mistresses aside.”
