After filling his own glass and setting the bottle aside, he pulled out a small drawer disguised beneath the surface of the table and withdrew a pack of playing cards.
“What shall we play? Lady’s choice,” he said as he began to shuffle the deck with expert skill.
Carefully considering her options, she did not answer right away. Then she met his eyes and smiled politely. “How about all fours?”
He gave no reaction to her suggestion of a game more often played in taverns than drawing rooms. With a nod, he continued to shuffle the cards.
Emma watched the cards slide effortlessly under his deft fingers and felt a slow warmth ease up her spine. The smooth texture of the felt beneath her palms, the sound of the cards waterfalling in his capable hands, the anticipation… It was all so familiar with a few glaring exceptions.
Instead of her father sitting across from her, his fierce expression hiding a rising anxiety he could never manage to conceal no matter how much they practiced, she looked at Mr. Bentley. His expression was relaxed, the blue of his eyes reflecting nothing but confidence, his lips curved gently into what was just shy of an actual smile.
Edgar Chadwick had never been able to cultivate such an appearance of ease at the tables. Emma often wondered if that had been his biggest obstacle to winning.
Unlike her father, she had been able to do it instinctively—appear as though none of it mattered, that she played simply as a means to pass the time. No one ever guessed that inside, the desire to win filled every corner of her awareness. Her single-minded focus had begun as an attempt to show her father he did not have the skill to continue risking so much at his favorite haunts about town. But he never seemed to see that. The more she won, the more determined he became to improve, and he would quiz her after every round, demanding to know the details of her chosen strategy.
Eventually, the desire to win became more personal as Emma discovered the thrill that came with managing to turn a terrible hand her way. She realized she was not capable of playing cards simply as a pleasant diversion. She played to challenge herself, to beat the odds set against her, and always to get the better of her opponent.
She took another drink of her claret, only barely acknowledging how the potent wine was going down easier with each sip. Then with unhurried movements and a relaxed gaze, she took up the hand she had been dealt.
And the game began.
Fifteen
“You like to win, don’t you?”
His question, uttered with smooth nonchalance, came about a half hour into the play.
Emma looked up to meet his gaze across the table. His eyes were bright and intense, one corner of his mouth quirked up in a challenging smirk.
“Is that not the exact purpose of playing? To win?”
He gave a little shrug, as if he could, in fact, think of a few other reasons. She would have asked him what, but he spoke first.
“What do you say we make this game more interesting?”
The idea of playing for money filled her with cold fear. She had never wanted to find out just how much like her father she might be. “I do not wager, Mr. Bentley.”
He sighed and leaned back in his chair, looking rakish and dangerous. “I wish you could get past such formality and call me Roderick.”
“I am sorry,” she replied with an apologetic smile. “I suppose I struggle with such familiarity, given that you are my employer.”
“Do not consider me your employer right now. Consider your work done for the day and we are just a couple of friends playing a relaxing game of cards.”
Emma held back a laugh. They both knew by now that despite their casual facades, they played in full earnest.
“If you were my friend, wouldn’t I know more about you than the fact that you keep odd hours and feel a strong animosity toward arithmetic?”
He lifted his brows. “Good point. What would you like to know?”
She considered all of the many things she wished to know about him and settled on what she believed to be the most innocuous.
“Perhaps you could tell me about your family.”
“My mother was the daughter of a marquess, whose family disowned her when she found herself impregnated and discarded by a married lord of the realm. She never managed to adjust to the difficult circumstances so different from what she had been raised to and died when I was sixteen. I have no other family.”
Emma’s stomach clenched with regret. How could she have forgotten? Though he spoke without any emotional intonation, it was clear the pain of his childhood was with him still. “I am sorry.”
“That I am a bastard? You certainly had nothing to do with it,” he teased. Then he lowered his chin for a moment before lifting it again and giving a wide, sweeping gesture. “The walls of this club contain a world I created, where I am lord rather than a cast-off spawn. Here, I am not a bastard. Out there…” He shrugged. “I am whatever they decide to see me as.”