A Lady Risks All

She chalked her cue and watched Barrington break one of his shattering breaks in the new style becoming popular in the higher-class subscription rooms. She studied the lay of the table and took her shot. On her next shot, Mercedes carefully leaned over the table, displaying her cleavage to advantage where it spilled from the square neckline of her gown. If he could take off his coat, she could make use of her assets, too. She looked up in time to catch Barrington hastily avert his gaze, but not until he’d got an eyeful. She smiled and went back to her shot. ‘Like butter on bread,’ she said after it fell into a pocket with a quiet plop.

Barrington shot again. ‘Like jam on toast.’ He raised a challenging eyebrow in her direction. His shot had been an easy one and he had the better lay of the table. None of his remaining shots would require any particular skill or luck. If she didn’t do something now, he’d outpace her and win. The shot she was looking for was risky. If she missed, it would assure Barrington’s victory and she’d have some explaining to do to her father. But if she didn’t try she would likely end up losing anyway.

She bent, eyeing the table. Unhappy with the angle, she moved, bent, sighted the ball and moved again. Finally pleased, she aimed her cue. ‘I find jam a bit sticky.’ She shot, the cue ball splitting the pair she’d sighted perfectly, each one rolling smoothly to their respective pockets.

The Captain favoured her with a sharp look. ‘Impressive. I think you may have been holding out on me.’

Mercedes lifted a shoulder in a shrug. ‘A lady must have her secrets, after all.’

Two shots later she claimed victory. Her risky shot had paid off.

Barrington settled his cue on the table, a not entirely happy look on his face. ‘You win. The road it is.’

Mercedes came around the table and stood beside him, guilt threatening to swamp her. She’d goaded him into this. She’d directed the evening towards this very outcome. Perhaps it hadn’t been fair. ‘You’ll like it. You can play billiards all day, all night, and my father will introduce you to a lot of people. You’ll have opportunities.’ She pressed the envelope into his hands. ‘And you’ll have your money. You won’t have to take up the home farm for a while.’ She tried for a laugh, but it fell flat.

‘I lost.’

‘I don’t recall asking for the envelope if I won.’ Mercedes smiled up into his face. She hoped he saw that smile as one of friendship. She’d been hard on him tonight, whether he knew it or not. But they were in this together now. He was her chance. His successes would be her successes, at least for a while, at least until she decided he’d served his purpose as he had tonight.

She boldly took the envelope from his hands and put it inside his waistcoat. His body was warm through his shirt where her hand made contact with his chest. She tucked the envelope securely into an inside pocket.

‘You don’t mind the road all that much, do you? I was fairly sure last night you didn’t have any plans.’ Mercedes was gripped by another bout of conscience. She hoped she hadn’t ruined anything for him.

‘No. I’m looking forward to it, actually.’ Barrington gave a fleeting smile, perhaps designed to appease her guilt. ‘I was merely wondering what my father would make of all this.’ Ah, the sainted Viscount with his empty coffers.

‘Sometimes fathers don’t always know best,’ Mercedes answered softly. ‘Especially if what they want for us is holding us back. Our paths can’t always be theirs.’

He gave her a look that held her eyes and searched her soul. Before he could ask some difficult, probing and personal question, she stretched up on her tiptoes, put her arms about his neck and kissed him hard on the mouth.

He answered it; the evening had been too intense not to use the outlet the kiss offered, a place to spend the energy. His tongue found hers, duelled with it as their eyes had duelled over dinner, sending a trail of goosebumps down her arms. He unnerved her, excited her. It wasn’t that she’d never been kissed, never been physically courted by a man before. She was not one of the ton’s innocent débutantes. It was the sheer strength of him.

He pulled her close, that strength apparent where his hand rested at her waist, a reminder that this man exuded strength everywhere—physical strength, mental strength. He was a veritable font of it: strength, honour, and selfcontrol. A lesser man would have devoured her mouth by now, swept away with his own base lust. Not Captain Barrington.

He released her, unwilling to make her a party to his baser urges right there on John Thurston’s billiards table. Not because he didn’t have them, but because it was what a gentleman did. That was a bit disappointing. Captain Barrington unleashed would be a sight to behold. ‘What was that for?’ It was not said unkindly.

Mercedes stepped back, smoothing her skirts, in charge of her emotions once more. ‘It’s your consolation prize. Go home and pack your things, Captain. We leave Thursday.’

Chapter Five

Thursday morning found Greer sitting opposite Mercedes in an elegant black travelling coach complete with all the modern conveniences: squabs of Italian leather, under-the-seat storage for hampers and valises, a pistol compartment, large glass-paned windows with curtains for privacy when passengers tired of the scenery outside. Even his proud father would feel some envy at the sparkling new coach.

That didn’t mean his father would approve. Coveting did not equate with approval where his father was concerned. A gentleman might quietly desire his neighbour’s fine coach, but a gentleman would never lower himself to acquire it by working for it. A gentleman had standards, after all. Standards, Greer was acutely aware, he had violated to the extreme on several occasions in the last week.

‘Your father certainly knows how to travel in style,’ Greer commented appreciatively, trying to make conversation, anything to push speculations of his father’s reaction to his latest undertaking out of mind.

Mercedes shrugged, unconcerned with the wealth and luxury surrounding her, or perhaps just less impressed. ‘He likes the best.’ That was all she said for a long while. Mercedes proceeded to pull out a book and bury herself in it, leaving him to the very thoughts he was trying to avoid.

It was just the two of them at the moment. Lockhart had chosen to ride outside along with the groom overseeing Greer’s own mount, another circumstance with which his father would take umbrage—an unmarried woman alone in a carriage with a man. Or, in this case, an eligible bachelor alone in a carriage with entirely the wrong sort of woman, the sort who might take advantage of said bachelor in the hopes of marrying up.

Very dangerous indeed! Greer fought back a wry smile. It was laughable, really. He was an officer in his Majesty’s army. He could handle one enticing female. If Lockhart had intended anything to happen, such a ploy was obvious in the extreme.

Greer gave in to the smile, imagining all nature of wild scenarios. If Mercedes was to compromise him, how would she do it? Would she leap across the seat, provoked by the slightest rut in the road, and tear his shirt off? Would she be more subtle? Maybe she’d stretch, raise those arms over her head in a way that thrust those breasts forwards and exclaim over how hot she was.

His thoughts went on this way for a good two miles. It was a stimulating exercise to say the least. He had her halfway undressed and fanning herself before he had to stop. A gentleman had to draw the line somewhere. If Mercedes knew what he was envisioning, she might have chosen to engage him in conversation instead.

But since she didn’t and since he’d taken his thoughts as far as he ought in one direction, Greer spent the better part of the morning taking them in the other, most of which involved contemplating how it was that he’d packed up his trunk and his horse, the only two items of any worldly worth in his possession, and left town all for the sake of a beautiful woman.

It was definitely one of the more rash things he’d done in a long while. The military was not a place where unwarranted gambles were rewarded. An officer must always balance risk against caution and he was no stranger to the charms of beautiful women: the lovely señora in Spain, the mysterious widow in Crete. But looking at Mercedes Lockhart engrossed in her book, their loveliness paled for the simple reason that Mercedes’s beauty was not found in the sum of her features: her exotic eyes with their slight uptilt, the high cheekbones and the full sensuous lips that seduced every time she smiled. Nor was it that she knew how to enhance those physical qualities with the styling of her hair and expensive gowns.

No, the core of Mercedes’s beauty lay in something more—in her very being, the way she carried herself, all confidence and seduction. She wasn’t afraid of her power or her ability to wield it. Mercedes Lockhart was no blushing, tonnish virgin or even a woman who affected false modesty in the hopes of appearing virtuous. His father would not approve of Mercedes Lockhart any more than he’d approve of the reasons Greer was in the coach. Both were scandalous adventures for a man of Greer’s birth and station.

However, his father would be wrong, Greer thought, if all he saw in Mercedes was a woman of loose scruples. Woe to the man who mistook her for no more than that. What she was was potent and alluring and quite possibly deadly to the man who fell for her. The French had a term for women like Mercedes. Femme fatale.

Well, he’d faced worse in battle than one beautiful woman. Greer settled deep into his seat and smiled, deciding to play another secret little game with himself, one that left her better clothed than the previous. How long could he stare at her before she looked up at him? Thirty seconds? One minute? Longer?

At thirty seconds she started to fidget ever so slightly, trying desperately to ignore him.

At forty-five seconds, she was taking an inordinately long time to finish reading the page.

At one minute she gave up and fixed him with a stare. Greer grinned. His femme fatale was human, after all.

‘What are you looking at?’ Mercedes set aside her book.

‘You,’ Greer replied. ‘We’re to be together for an indefinite period of time and it has occurred to me as I sit here in silence, watching the morning speed by …’

‘Watching me,’ Mercedes corrected.

‘All right, watching you,’ Greer conceded. ‘As I was saying, it has occurred to me that I’ve set out on a journey with two strangers I hardly know even though my immediate future is now tied to theirs.’

Mercedes favoured him with one of her knowing smiles. ‘Perhaps you’re more of a gambler than you thought, Captain.’

Greer considered this for a moment. ‘I suppose I am. Although we don’t have to remain strangers.’

‘What do you propose?’

‘A little Q and A, as we call it in the military.’ Greer stretched his legs, settling in to enjoy himself. ‘Question and answer.’

‘Or a consequence,’ Mercedes supplied with a smug little smile. ‘I know this game, Captain. You’re not so terribly original.’

‘No. No consequence,’ he explained, watching Mercedes’s smug smile fade. ‘There is no choice to not answer. Question asked, answer given. There is no option to refuse.’ Greer folded his hands behind his head. ‘Ladies first. Ask me anything you’d like.’

‘All right then.’ Mercedes thought for a moment. ‘Have you always wanted to be a soldier?’

‘I was raised to it, ever since I can remember,’ Greer replied honestly, although he was cognisant of the omissions that answer contained. ‘How about you? Were you always good at billiards? Born with a cue in your hand?’

The beauty of the game was that it allowed the participants to ask directly what they’d never dare give voice to in polite conversation over dinners and tea trays. They traded questions and answers over the dwindling hours of the morning, his knowledge growing with each answer.

Greer learned she’d travelled with her father until she was eleven and he’d sent her off to boarding school. After that she’d come home on holidays and wandered the subscription room, watching and studying the game around which their lives were centred.