Page 45 of The Fortune Hunter’s Gamble

He hissed a breath through his teeth and turned aside. The candlelight shadowed his face, teasing the jut of his nose and the slope of his cheek into high relief. A muscle worked in his jaw.

“You could have told me you simply wanted money. We could have found another way.”

“How? Your uncle would never have approved of your marrying me. You would have had to come live with me and Papa, and then the Felthams would have been a plague on you, too.”

“I could have called Humphrey out and run him through.”

“For what cause? Because he wanted to marry me for my father’s property? That is not a solution and you know it. You would have had to run away to the Continent to avoid a charge of murder, and I would never have seen you again. Which is more or less what happened anyway, since you ran away before my marriage and never wrote to me, not once.”

These damnable tears. She was never a watering pot, never. She had steel in her backbone, Papa always said. She had only cried twice in her life: once the night after her mother died, when she realized she had stepped from the world of light into one of shadow, and then on the night of her wedding, when she found herself entering a world of shadows deeper still.

Rowden spun on his heel to face her. “You thought I would write after you spurned me? Do you think me a fool? You could have written me, if you missed me.”

“Not without Henry’s permission, and he would not grant it.”

This gave him pause. “You asked?”

“Of course I did! It may have escaped your notice, you sodding, self-absorbed oaf, but I had very few friends growing up. You were the closest person in the world to me.” She lifted a hand to pound at his chest, as if she could drive in the words.

He caught her fist, his voice a low rasp. “You were the closest person in the world to me.”

“And you left!”

“Because you married someone else!” he roared.

She stared into his face, hearing her breath in the narrow space between them. A pounding in her ears might have been her own heartbeat, fast and dangerous. The curtain between them, that fragile shield, was at last torn down, and she saw the hurt she had inflicted all those years ago.

The same hurt she had carried that same span of years, the ache that had never been eased, because no one could replace Rowden in her life.

And now here he was, matured into a man, and her stomach twisted and swung like a blossom in a breeze because she could see the impish smirk of the boy she’d loved in the severe, beautiful mouth of the man before her, and yet she didn’t know this man, not a bit. He was a man who had traveled abroad and had intrigues, who ran a club and knew how to gamble, who took beautiful, sensual women for his mistresses and then discarded them when he was no longer amused.

She tugged her fist free from his grasp, like a boat casting away ballast, leaving her unmoored and rocking in a tempest.

She turned toward the desk. “It is foolish to talk of times past,” she said, her voice as unsteady as her legs. “We can gain nothing by it. Are you happy running the Albion?” Without thinking she ran a finger over the parchment open on his desk, a seal she didn’t recognize with the letters K&A embossed upon it.

Rowden slid the letter away from her grasp and folded it, then shoved the parchment into a pigeonhole. “It is an enterprise that commands my attention, and there is a satisfaction in seeing the place run well, with my patrons entertained.”

“I expect to take the same satisfaction in running my girls’ school.” She wondered at the contents of the letter he was hiding from her. “And are you enjoying your intrigues abroad? Considering going to Russia, as Mr. Foster has proposed?”

“What would you think if I did?”

She cast a glance over her shoulder, and his intent, hungry expression made her stomach jump. “I am sure it is no concern of mine.”

He placed his hands on her shoulders and she went still, feeling heat course through her like a strike of lightning. “You claim no interest in my affairs, yet you came to inspect my club.”

He turned her toward him, gently, giving her opportunity to resist. She didn’t.

“Curiosity only.” Her breath came short.

“And the night you arrived in Clarges Street, I found you in my rooms.”

“A blunder. I was lost.”

“And now,” he said, his voice dangerously low, his breath fanning over her cheek. “You have allowed me to lure you into a dark room, far away from the crowd and any champion who could protect you.”

“Do I need protecting?” She shivered. His hands were warm and heavy and the heat traveled through her like honey dripping from the comb, golden, thick, a slow delicious thrill.

“You tore my heart into pieces when you married Hinton.” His fingers pressed into her shoulder blades, probing, as if he could not quite believe she were real. “Perhaps I need protecting from you.”