Page 11 of Seduced

You’re nothing more than a docile pet to him.

This is who you are.

“Shut up!” she yelled at the voice inside her head.

“I beg your pardon,” the viscount said, offended, and then belched loudly.

“I am sorry, I wasn’t talking to Your Lordship,” Poppy said quickly. “Let us move ahead with the game. Whose turn is it?”

They did go on, and presently the viscount started sneezing so violently that he had to cut his losses—and they were many—and get up and leave.

Poppy was at once alert; she intended to follow him as quickly as possible. She had come back for him, after all. But she didn’t want to go now, she was intrigued. For one thing, Hades had not stopped staring at her—he was so absolutely still, it appeared as if he was hardly breathing.

And for another, she had seen it at a first glance last night, on her first visit here. The one thing that had made the hair stand up on her arms and her heart thud. Something was definitely, deeply wrong here at the Hell Club:

The place was crawling with cats.

….

Poppy left shortly after the young viscount.

She had won close to a thousand pounds and then promptly lost it. She never went on to gamble larger sums unless she had won them first. It had seemed like a good idea last night, but now that she thought about it, it might have been a dead giveaway, had anyone been watching her.

And, for some reason, someone had.

Damn that fallen angel and his wide shoulders.

It was rumored that Hades, the owner of Hell Club, was a prince in his country—which, to her sheltered, English ears, sounded like such an exotic and European thing to be. He certainly seemed to fancy himself some sort of dark and dangerous overlord of London’s dark nightly scene. But what he really was, was a nuisance.

Poppy took off after the young viscount.

She had seen something in his eyes, as he left the table in a drunken stupor, having lost the greatest part of his father’sfortune to a scoundrel masquerading as a gentleman—as most men were. And that something had disturbed her greatly. That, after all, was the reason she was risking damnation, not to mention her brother’s wrath, by sneaking out like this.

The cold air hit her in the face as she surfaced from the Hell Club, and it was only then that she realized that it had been hot as a furnace in there. She hadn’t taken two steps into the black night, when she discovered that her unwelcome companion was following her blithely, threading between her boots as it pranced loftily along, and nearly getting trampled over.

“Go back, cat,” Poppy said to the animal. “Hades will have my head if he thinks I’ve stolen you.”

The cat proceeded to lick its paw.

Poppy groaned and walked on as briskly as her limp would allow her, and the cat immediately abandoned all pretense at licking anything and followed, its paws scratching Poppy’s shoes.

“Oi there! Look, it’s a cat!”

“And a scrawny youth with it! I smell great game.”

A whistle. Boyish laughter.

Dammit.

Don’t swear.

“What luck! Quick, let’s go after them both, move your legs now. To the river!”

Poppy recognized the voices at once; not the specific voices, of course, but after living in London for the better part of the past five years, it wasn’t hard to guess. These boys belonged to one of the gangs of hungry boys that were roaming the streets, and contrary to the opinion those who were bent on romanticizing poverty and crime, they were deadly.

And now they were after her.

She took great care never to attract their attention, and she usually succeeded. And even on the occasions when she hadn’t, they quickly realized that there was nothing on her to steal, and had abandoned her after torturing her for a few minutes. To them, she usually looked like a thin and lame young man: in short, nothing special. It would be a completely different story if she had looked like a woman, which was why she took care to never look the part.

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