Page 69 of Fortune Favors the Viscount
“Oh, Nick...” She sank back down to lie beside him, her expression troubled. “How dreadful.”
“Don’t,” he said. “I suspect the challenge of trying to right my sinful nature gave her life for many years. She outlived everyone else in her family, and so left me her fortune. And that”—he waved one hand in the air as if revealing the solution to the mystery—“is how I funded the Vega Club.”
“Oh,” said Emilia. “Oh, my.” Her voice quavered—with laughter, he thought.
Nick settled more comfortably against the pillows. “I sometimes wonder if she knows, from the heavenly hereafter, that I spent her money on a gaming hell, which was quite possibly the most concentrated expression of vice she could think of.”
Emilia was silent, then— “Worse than a brothel?”
Nick paused, then chuckled. “Hard to say! Most gaming hells are both, to be fair. Heloise may not have seen much difference between the two.”
“Do you...?” She began hesitantly, but Nick interrupted.
“No,” he said shortly. “There are no women for hire at the Vega Club, and never will be.”
She must have sensed from his tone that it was not a topic for discussion. When she spoke again, she changed the subject. “Was it really so dangerous on board a ship?”
“Oh, yes. I’ll never forget the time I fell overboard and had to climb the ropes back up.”
“Overboard! A child of ten!”
“Eight,” he said absently.
Emilia gasped. “I think I’m very glad your aunt took you, if that’s what your father allowed to happen!”
He turned his head and looked at her. Her own father hadn’t cared for her; he’d abandoned her to be raised by a relation, and he’d coldheartedly tried to barter her future for his benefit. Just as Nick’s father had done. Her mother, who had presumably loved her, had died when she was very young. Just as Nick’s mother had done. Perhaps they were more alike than he’d thought...
But her grandfather had loved her. She’d been raised as a lady, the granddaughter of an earl. Her low social position was by her own choice.
His was in his blood. Distantly related viscounts aside, Nick had never had any claim to being a gentleman. His aunt had tried to make him a virtuous man, but she’d been far too late.
He’d been told that he spent his first years being doted on by his mother, but he had no real memories of that time. After she died, his father had taken him to sea. In hindsight, Nick supposed that had been to avoid having to pay someone to raise him. He’d grown up scrubbing decks and hauling sails, living at sea except for visits to trading ports around the Atlantic.
With no one but other sailors for company for months on end, he’d learned virtually every vice known to man. By the time he was seven, he knew how to play cards and dice. By eight, he’d learned how to calculate odds and wager on anything. By nine, he’d learned how to cheat at all of it.
At ten, he started running the card games.
That, he knew, was what horrified his aunt most. The first time she’d set eyes on Nick, she’d harangued his father into marching him down to a church to have him baptized, though he’d been almost seven years old. Nick remembered cursing at the minister dripping cold water on him, and how horrified Heloise had been. The second time she saw him, she had scolded his father for letting him run wild, climbing the rigging dressed in nothing but worn-out breeches, as brown as a hazelnut from the sun.
But the third time they met, Heloise had caught him on the Liverpool docks dicing with—and mercilessly cheating—a group of young gents from Manchester. She’d raised a storm about wickedness and depravity, and it ended with Nick standing on the dock, raging impotently, while his father’s ship sailed away without him.
His father hadn’t hugged him good-bye. He’d cuffed Nick on the shoulder and told him to watch his mouth. His aunt had said much the same thing as she led him into her home: “You will learn to behave properly now, Nicholas.”
He doubted he and Emilia were much the same.
“She wanted me to become a minister in her church,” he replied lightly. “Can you imagine?” He rolled over, cupping her breast in one hand and taking the nipple into his mouth for a languid suckle.
“A minister!” She laughed breathlessly. Her fingers plowed into his hair. “I can’t imagine anyone less likely...”
Nick made a noise of agreement, moving fully atop her and giving his attention to her other breast. Her knees rose alongside his hips and his stomach tensed in anticipation. He’d much rather do this than talk about his past.
So he pressed her into the mattress and had his wicked way with her again, relishing every excited gasp and ecstatic moan and pleading whisper she made, making love to her until she cried out in climax, then fell into exhausted slumber beside him in the rumpled linens.
Nick stretched in pure sated bliss, and got out of bed. He was still a creature of the night, and felt vividly awake. Emilia, on the other hand, was not; she slept soundly, one hand under her cheek and the other flung out toward him, as if inviting him to lie down next to her.
As if he should be next to her.
He stared at her for several minutes. What was he doing? This bold, clever, beautiful woman had upended his life and twisted him into knots. He’d burned to have her; now he had, and yet he still burned, even hotter than before. That would be bad enough, if she were simply a gentlewoman fallen on hard times and reduced to working for her keep. But Nick was finally putting some pieces together, after she told him her story, and it seemed the ground beneath his feet was crumbling.
