One Night Is Never Enough Read Online Free PDF

even though he had jumped the starting gun in his excitement, in all correct likelihood, expected him to throw in. Roman had given no sign that he had anything other than rat shit.
    “That doesn’t preclude me from telling you that you are a bastard to even pose such a bet.” Downing was beyond furious. “And Chatsworth is more ass than fool for not telling you immediately to go to Hell.”
    “What do you care, Downing?” Red spots of pride and embarrassment dotted Chatsworth’s cheeks. Embarrassment giving way easily to anger. “Turned my girl down, didn’t you?” He looked back at his cards abruptly. “I’ll take the bet.”
    Roman could see the rusty, gin-soaked cogs in Chatsworth’s brain turning. If he lost, he wouldn’t lose everything. Granted, Trant was nowhere near the top of Chatsworth’s high list, but then again, Chatsworth had great cards.
    And he needed to win a large hand.
    Ten thousand pounds more, on top of the already generous pot on the table. Roman could almost hear the devil whispering in Chatsworth’s ear.
    “And you seek to ruin her instead?” Downing asked in his deep, clipped tones.
    But Chatsworth was ahead of himself in dreaming up new ways to gamble away his prospective winnings—unable to mask the emotions flitting across his face.
    Roman should have cut the man off three hands and two whiskeys ago and sent him packing, but he’d been thinking about other things, distracted.
    Thinking about the man’s daughter, ironic as that was now.
    The lady who was about to find herself gracing the bed of the man to his right. For Trant held the best hand. It didn’t take Roman’s well-honed instincts to sense it. Trant had waited for just the right hand to make the bet. Had waited for Chatsworth to get into his cups and to have some decent cards.
    Had waited to place the bet when only two men would witness the wager. One, a man who was utterly devoted to his wife, and whose wife was a close friend of the lady of the bet. Who would hold the scandal secret. The other, a man who held the debts and markers of over half of London’s citizens. Who would make sure the wager took place. Who wouldn’t interfere—for it was his business not to interfere.
    It was his business to be impartial and ruthlessly fair. Their gaming halls and the collateral exchange thrived on their lack of meddling. It was part of what made their reputations so fierce and successful. As long as you kept within a Merrick law, you were fine, but step one foot outside . . .
    Trant was going to win this hand, no matter what Chatsworth could scrounge from the deck. He would take Chatsworth’s daughter. Ruin her. Use it to gain her in marriage, as he no doubt sought. And for quite a cheap price.
    Roman should be pleased with this turn of events. He knew how Trant worked, knew how to manipulate him, if he chose. And given a year or two, Charlotte Chatsworth would undoubtedly need a lover. He could lie in wait, possibly strike up a rummy friendship with her. Be there just when she needed a shoulder to cry on. One-eyed Bill swore by the tactic.
    Roman had never been patient, however. That was Andreas’s cold trait. Roman would much rather seduce her into descending the latticework next to her window. To throw her over his shoulder and carry her into the night.
    And the vision of the girl he had met earlier that day lying beneath another man, his for the night, to do with whatever he wished, made Roman’s hand twist around his cards, nearly crushing them. His dead cards.
    “Ten thousand, Chatsworth.” Trant shrugged idly. “To my dismay, it does look as if your luck is turning.”
    His nearly dead cards.
    Luck and fate that Roman needed one particular card. The card near the bottom of the deck, a deck that couldn’t be moved from its position without causing comment. A very particular card indeed.
    Roman felt the hard smile slip over his lips as Chatsworth nodded tightly, accepting and confirming the wager again. A