An Outside Chance (Chances #3)

Chapter Four

September 20, 1812

“But that’s what I'm saying,” came the weary voice of Mr. Eaton. “If someone else bets against you—”

“I think it’s criminal,” said George haughtily. “Against nature. I can’t have lost—again!”

But lost he had. And the trouble was, Scandal of Lancelot had been absolutely outstanding. Until the very last corner, George had been convinced the horse he had bought and trained and for which he was paying a small fortune for its upkeep was going to finally return the investment he’d made.

Until…

Mr. Eaton, the bookkeeper with whom George was spending more time than anyone at the moment, sighed heavily, scratching silver-and-brown side whiskers on a pockmarked cheek. “Mayhap it’s time to give it up, m’lord. Mayhap—”

“I have a winning horse there,” George pointed out, picking up his ale and giving it a swig. Too violently, as it turned out. He was forced to wipe the froth from around his lips before he continued. “And you know it—that horse is perfect!”

They had agreed to meet at the King’s Head. It was where so many went after the races, and George had hoped to treat the place to a drink once he had cashed in his winnings.

The winnings that, as yet, had not appeared.

“If someone else bets against you, and are more right about how the race runs, y’lose y’money,” said Mr. Eaton patiently, as though they had not had this conversation several times over the last few weeks. “You know that, m’lord.”

“Yes, yes, but the question is, how are they doing it?” asked George, leaning back in his chair and frowning. “I always thought I had a pretty good eye for horseflesh. I thought I’d be onto the winners.”

“Someone’s there afore ye,” Mr. Eaton said mysteriously.

George shot him a look. “And you know who he is.”

“Now then, m’lord, you know I couldn’t—”

“No… No, I suppose not.” Infuriating as it was, George had to admit the man was right. He had to keep the details of his winners a secret. After all, he wouldn’t like Mr. Eaton telling everyone when he, George Chance, Earl of Lindow, started winning a fortune on the horses. Which was sure to come soon, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?

Mr. Eaton examined him with a wry expression. “Never thought I’d see an earl here.”

It was an old-fashioned place, but that was how George liked it. Dark timber beams, a hatch where drinks were served, and plenty of tables and chairs jammed it with little space between them. Raucous laughter from almost every side and—George’s eyes gleamed to see—cards in every hand.

Well. If he couldn’t make a killing on the races, perhaps it was time Lady Luck decided to reward him in the deck.

“Y’horse is good,” said Mr. Eaton, rising from his seat and bowing his head. “It’s your wagering that needs some work. M’lord.”

George’s mouth fell open at the effrontery—and likely as not, the truth—from the man, but he was prevented from saying anything by the bookkeeper’s rapid disappearance.

It wasn’t as though he had a particularly good retort. The man was right. George’s confidence at the races was not borne out by any winning streak and it was starting to become obvious, he had worse and worse luck.

Even more than that, his other project hadn’t been coming up trumps, either…

Taking another swig from the ale, George glanced about the King’s Head. He didn’t expect her here. Miss Loughty. This was a working man’s pub. The only ladies here, well… were not ladies. They were women . Women of a different class, all serving the cheerful men their pies and ale.

But he had tried two other gaming hells the last few nights. She wouldn’t return to McBarland’s, George was almost certain, though he had slipped a shilling to the doorman and asked for news if a beautiful woman turned up.

After three notes, all of which described women nothing like Miss Loughty, George had been forced to return to McBarland’s and attempt to explain what he meant by “beautiful.”

“You know, utterly divine,” George had said to the open-mouthed, slack-jawed doorman. “Hair like… like shimmering starlight. And eyes like—and a way of moving, you must have seen her. Miss Loughty. You don’t remember her?”

It appeared few did. Despite asking around the Crescent, dropping into his club, and speaking to a few acquaintances who were staying in Abbey Green, no one had heard of Miss Loughty. George had gone to the Pump Rooms and seen no signature of a Miss Loughty in the book. He’d even spoken to Mr. Parsons, the announcer at the Assembly Rooms. The man had never heard of any Loughty, let alone a miss who appeared to be wandering the streets of Bath alone. Where was her chaperone? Her lady’s maid? Not that he imagined either type of person permitting a trip to the likes of McBarland’s. But she’d been alone even on the street the next day. Most unusual.

George bit his lip. Other than the two encounters he’d had with her, and the assurances from Walden that he had also seen her, even if the viscount had never lain eyes on her before or since, it was almost possible to believe George had dreamt her up. She certainly had been beautiful. And she’d most definitely beaten him at his own game of cards, which was unfathomable, and—

Heads turned. There was a growing silence by the door as a figure appeared. George’s stomach jolted.

There she was.

Miss Loughty. There was no mistaking that figure, even from a distance. Third time’s the charm, then? This was the third place he’d tried. Though admittedly, George had only come to the King’s Head to commiserate about his terrible losses at the races.

Damnation . If this went on much longer, he was going to have to do the unthinkable and write to his oldest brother, the Duke of Cothrom, and… ask for money.

George shivered. God forbid.

“Lindow!”

He blinked. It appeared Miss Loughty was not the only person who had entered the King’s Head.

“Aylesbury,” George said with a grin. “Come to cure me of my wicked ways?”

His elder brother, the second Chance in the family and by far the tallest, clapped him on the shoulder before dropping into a seat beside him. “You think there’s any hope of that?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“I won’t waste my time, then,” John Chance, the Marquess of Aylesbury, said cheerfully. “What rot are you drinking?”

“Something far above your palate, you philistine,” George shot back, easing into the rapid banter that epitomized their relationship.

Well, you could always rely on old Aylesbury to speak nonsense. But what was he doing here? The brute was married. George had come to Bath to get away from all his wedding talk. And Aylesbury had had the audacity to follow him.

“Shouldn’t you be with your wife?”

His brother’s eyes gleamed. “Very soon I will be with my wife.”

George made a face. “Have a heart. I will need to eat something soon and the last thing I need is the thought of you…”

He had been about to say something cutting, he really had been. The thing was, his attention meandered across the room and caught sight of Miss Loughty again.

She was lovely. And wearing the same necklace she’d been wearing at McBarland’s. And she was here—which was odd.

“You’re staring at a woman, aren’t you?”

George swallowed. “No.”

His eyes watched Miss Loughty as she carefully picked her way through the mess of tables, chairs, and legs that stood in her path between the door and the hatch. Even in the dark gloom of the evening, he could not help but mistake her.

The elegance, the balance, the refinement. This was a woman, despite her brazen visits to seedy places and walks unaccompanied and her seeming inaction in the politest quarters of Bath, who had been raised well.

So what was she doing in a place like this?

“… join… willing to…”

Her words drifted across the raucous noise of the pub. George could not quite make them out—she was just far enough away from him to make it impossible to know precisely what she was saying.

What she was doing was obvious. Tucking a wayward strand of black hair behind her ear, it appeared that Miss Loughty was trying to…

Join tables.

“—heard about the latest gambling debts—you really ought to be careful, old man. Cothrom stopped the financial floodgates for me. It’s only a matter of time before he does so for you—”

Aylesbury was talking about something or other. George could not tell. There was something far more interesting happening than a little money worries from his spendthrift brother.

He shifted in his seat, fascinated. It appeared she was not welcome at any table she attempted to join, which was strange in and of itself. He would have presumed that a woman like that—who appeared to be an easy mark—would have been welcomed.

Hell, it had been what he’d done, at McBarland’s. Taken her for a mark and attempted to take all she had.

But it appeared Miss Loughty had been here before—or the inhabitants of the King’s Head had been warned. No matter which table she approached, there were shaking heads to welcome her.

George watched, rivetted. The expression on Miss Loughty’s face was spectacular.

Not just because she was beautiful. That she was beautiful was impossible to deny—that doorman didn’t know what he was about!—but it wasn’t that. It was the way her expression shifted slowly over time with each table from which she was dismissed.

At first it was confusion. A genteel furrow of her brows brought together in perplexity as she attempted to understand why she was being rejected.

Then it was frustration. At one table, George watched as Miss Loughty attempted to talk down the most vocal of the people there but found herself outgunned.

“—can’t allow—”

“Not again… ”

“Four shillings last time…”

She was closer now and George could hear some more of the conversation. When she reached the next table, there was no conversation. Just shaking of heads and waving of hands for her to depart.

The expression on Miss Loughty’s face was different now. Flaring nostrils, her lip curling. She was angry. She was—

A sudden sharp, agonizing pain poured through George’s shin.

“God in his Heaven!” he blurted out, drawing his leg closer as he grabbed at his shin, rubbing it furiously. “What was that for?”

Aylesbury was smiling in an irritating, self-satisfied manner. “Getting your attention.”

“You couldn’t have said my name?”

“You think I haven’t already been trying that?” Unfortunately, Aylesbury had plainly noticed his interest in a certain young woman, for he glanced at Miss Loughty, his head turning quickly twice in succession. He clamped his lips together before speaking again. “You’ve bedded her, I presume.”

Much against his will, and most unlike him, heat suffused across George’s face. “N-No. No.”

Why was it so odd to admit to such a thing?

Aylesbury raised an eyebrow. “Then I don’t see the point in you pining after her from a distance. What, she rejected you, Lindow?”

“She stole from me!” snapped George, righteous fury pouring through his veins.

It was mostly true. Miss Loughty had certainly had a system far more impressive than anything he had managed, and what was that, if not theft?

His brother, it appeared, did not agree. He was rolling his eyes. “She beat you in cards. That’s not the same thing.”

George frowned. “You heard?”

“Who do you think paid your tab at the end of that night?” Aylesbury sighed heavily. “God, I complained that Cothrom was always whining about our bad habits and now I’ve become like him.”

“You got married.”

“It’s not the same thing,” his brother shot back, though there was still a grin on his face. “Well. Not quite. Florence keeps me… honest.”

George snorted without looking away from Miss Loughty.

Honest . One of the things he’d always liked about Aylesbury was that they could drink, and gamble, and laugh together. Two rascals, two rakes of the ton , together. Dishonest, together.

All that had changed. And now the only brother he had left was—

He wasn’t even a brother. Pernrith. He didn’t count.

Forcing down the anger that always rose whenever he thought of the Viscount Pernrith, George picked up his tankard and was most disappointed to discover someone had drunk it.

Aylesbury smacked his lips. “Rather good ale, I’d say, Lindow.”

George lunged forward with a friendly cuff about the face, but his brother leaned back just in time. “That was my drink, you—”

“But as, I suspect, I will be paying off this tab in a few days, I think you will find that it is my drink,” said Aylesbury with a knowing grin.

A heaving in his chest made George grimace, even though his brother’s words were not completely untrue. I can’t exactly argue with that . “Go back to your wife.”

“That I shall, for I think I’ll get a far warmer welcome,” said Aylesbury, rising and stretching out his arms before fixing his brother with a serious look. “Leave Miss Loughty alone, Lindow. It’s not worth the risk.”

He was gone before George could ask precisely what he meant by that, but he hardly noticed. His gaze was fixed on Miss Loughty.

She was standing by the hatch now, having a debate with the barkeep. That was never going to go down well. George had not been in Bath long before discovered that the King’s Head owner had a short fuse and little interest in being debated.

Well, he hadn’t found her at McBarland’s. He hadn’t spotted her at Sydney Gardens, or the Pump Room, or the Assembly Rooms. She hadn’t attended any of the card parties or dinners at which he’d forced himself to put in an appearance.

Yet here she was.

A slow smile crept across George’s face. Finally, Miss Loughty would get her comeuppance.

Even better, he was seated just out of her line of sight. Thanks to the dim corner, George was almost certain that he would be able to sit here all evening and watch her, if Miss Loughty decided to stay in the King’s Head. At no point would he have to—

Miss Loughty turned and looked right at him.

All breath left his body. George wasn’t sure how he was still conscious, for his lungs were empty and his mind was screaming—

But it wasn’t screaming for air. It was crying out at the sudden rush of something he could not understand, pouring through his body now that Miss Loughty was looking at him.

And what a look.

George shifted uncomfortably in his seat, unable to prevent his body from responding. From giving a very physical response.

Surely, she could feel this too. Surely, the connection they shared, even though he did not entirely understand it, would bring them to an understanding. He would ensure there would be no child, and he could relish touching that skin, feeling under those skirts—

Miss Loughty stomped over to him, slammed her hands on the table, and glared. “This is all your fault!”

George blinked. Well, I wouldn’t have put it quite like that.

Then his mind caught up with him. She wasn’t talking about the fact that they seemed drawn to each other, no matter what they attempted to do. He had a horrible feeling that he was perhaps alone in that quarter.

No, she meant—

His slow smile became a wicked one. So, the hints he had laid were starting to pay off, were they? “What, no one will play with you? I can’t see how that’s any of my concern—”

“‘I will dog you everywhere you go,’ you said. ‘Wherever you go, whomever you attempt to scam next, I will be there. I will prevent you from winning. I will be your worst nightmare,’” Miss Loughty recited bitterly, pulling out a chair and dropping into it without requesting to join him. “This is all your fault!”

“Well,” George said humbly, shrugging his shoulders. “I didn’t do all the work. I had help.”

It had not been difficult. It was amazing what people would do for money—or at least, the promise of money. He really would have to write to Cothrom, worse luck. He couldn’t keep Scandal of Lancelot going for much longer without a win, and the coin he’d promised to people to refuse to play with a woman matching the description of Miss Loughty, should they encounter her—

“Look, I just wanted you to stop cheating,” said George quietly, dropping his voice so no one could hear them. It would never do for the word “cheating” to be heard in the King’s Head. “Like you cheated me.”

“I was not cheating,” Miss Loughty hissed back, evidently aware of the danger of their conversation.

And it was dangerous. In fact, it gave George a thrill just to partake in it.

Who was this woman? No one had heard of her. She was never seen with a chaperone but was not a widow. He had never encountered her in London, not as far as he could recall—and wouldn’t a woman of her breeding and elegance have been presented in town?

There was a possibility, he supposed, they had met in the past. Though not that he recalled. Surely, he would have remembered. A woman like this …

“I have never cheated in my life—I have never needed to,” Miss Loughty was murmuring, her dark-brown eyes holding him fast against his seat. “You just cannot accept that you were beaten by a woman.”

“I don’t have to, as I was not beaten by you,” George pointed out, leaning back.

He had done so in an attempt to demonstrate just how unaffected he was by this debate, but the trouble was, it gave him a better view of the woman who was fast becoming…

George swallowed.

There wasn’t a word for it. Miss Loughty was hardly his enemy. He was an earl, for Christ’s sake. He was hardly going to lose his reputation, or his fortune—what fortune there was left—on a mere miss.

But Miss Loughty was the woman least like a “mere miss” he had ever encountered.

Fierce, and yet soft. Gentle, and yet powerful.

There was a mastery in her he just could not understand. And she had cheated, he was sure. George may not have won every time, but he had won enough times to know when he was being cheated.

Ladies did not march into McBarland’s and win four hands of poker off him.

They just didn’t.

“You have to stop this,” she said.

He blinked. “Stop what?”

“This!” Miss Loughty gestured about the place.

Lifting an eyebrow, George said, “I have never presumed to prevent people from entering the King’s Head, Miss Loughty, if that’s what you—”

“You know precisely that it’s not what I meant.” She snorted.

A flicker of excitement dashed through George. When she made that motion, her whole body quivered.

By God, arguing with her was far more stimulating than flattering anyone else.

“I need to play cards in Bath,” Miss Loughty said slowly, her cheeks pinking as though she were admitting something dire. “And you need to stop… stop whatever it is you’ve done.”

“Fine,” said George, leaning forward. The idea was a rash one, and perhaps one he would regret—but it had struck him so perfectly, at just the right time, it felt impossible to ignore. “Teach me.”

Miss Loughty blinked, leaning away as though his enthusiasm were contagious. “Teach you?”

Forcing down all hedonistic thoughts about what he would like to teach this woman, George nodded. “Teach me—how you beat me. How you played cards and won again, and again, and again. If you truly did not cheat.”

There, he had her now. He could see the indecision on her face, the uncertainty of his offer. And then a slow dawning melted over him—why she was so uncertain.

Miss Loughty… had not cheated.

George stared, but there could be no mistaking it. She was truly considering his offer—something she would not do if she had actually cheated.

By God. So she won by skill?

Now he truly had to know.

Though it was in his nature to press his point, George somehow knew that the best thing to do in this moment was to stay quiet. Shifting in her chair, her mouth in a frown, it was evident Miss Loughty was thinking, seemingly weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of acquiescing to his request.

It appeared to be a close call.

How he knew that, George could not have articulated. There were not words for this sort of interaction. Here they were, an earl and a refined miss, seated in one of Bath’s less reputable pubs, concocting a plan to…

To what?

His mouth was dry. His heart was hammering. And still he said nothing.

“Not… Not all my knowledge,” Miss Loughty said finally, her voice hesitant. “I would hate to give you the tools to beat me.”

He didn’t want to beat her. He wanted to soundly destroy her. Place her on the card table, lift up her skirts, and—

“Fine,” he said hastily aloud, attempting to clear the vision of perfection from his mind. Concentrate on the cards, man! “We have a deal.”

He offered out his hand.

For a moment, George did not think she would take it. It was a lady’s prerogative to offer her hand first, but this was business. Miss Loughty stared at his hand, plainly unsure whether she would. Slowly, inch by inch, she leaned over and took it.

It was all he could do not to groan aloud. Neither of them was wearing gloves, something outrageous by the ton ’s standard but not entirely unexpected here in a place like the King’s Head.

And that meant it was skin on skin, his fingers slipping past her own, her palm soft against his, her pulse throbbing against his thumb—or was that his own? His pulse was certainly racing, making it impossible to do anything but feel the heady sensations between them.

Then Miss Loughty pulled away. The moment faded.

“But not here,” she said sternly, returning her hand to her lap as though she’d been burned. “Anyone could see us here, and… Well. I’m already regretting agreeing to teach you. I’d hate for the whole of Bath to learn.”

Well, that played right into his hand.

George grinned. “I know just the place.”