Page 2 of The Devil Himself
“I’m sorry, sir,” Jack was saying as Rys moved close enough to hear the exchange. “This is a members-only club. I’ll have to ask ye to leave.”
“I need to speak to Emrys Grey immediately.”
“Mr. Grey is a very busy man.” Jack no doubt thought this was just another brother or friend of some dissolute wastrel coming to plead for someone’s vowels, or IOUs, or for Rys to stop allowing their supplicant to gamble in his club any longer.
He knew better.
“I insist.”
“You can’t?—”
“Here I am, Jack,” he said, keeping his voice low and well-modulated. He would not let his surprise, or the anger that raged in his gut, show. “I shall take over here.”
“Sir?” Jack’s eyebrows rose sharply.
“Go on, then.”
Jack nodded, leaving him and the man to stare at one another.
“Grey.” Those blue eyes blazed at him, full of a fire he had no name for yet. He was certain he would hear all about it, whatever it was. Whatever his damn family had sent this man here for.
His upper lip curled, and he kept his tone low, if curt as hell. “Lucian Fitzwilliam. What the hell are you doing in my club?”
Two
Luc studied Emrys Grey, noting how different he was now from when Luc had known him as a lad in Gloucestershire.
He still had glossy raven’s wing hair and eyes as gray as smoke. But he was honed now, all youthful softness gone, lines carved around his eyes and mouth. There was a dangerous air to him that befitted a gaming hell owner rather than the fourth son of a marquess…
He pursed his lips, evincing disapproval. “You haven’t been answering your correspondence.”
“Certainly I have. Just not any that originates from my family. Those I don’t even open.”
“You’re going to want to hear this.” Luc glanced about. “Is there somewhere we can speak privately?”
Rys’s fists clenched at his sides, and a muscle ticked in his jaw.
Luc knew this was going to be difficult, but he hoped Rys would at least listen.
“Come along, Fitzwilliam.”
He followed when Rys turned on his heel and strode away, wondering if Rys called him by his surname because he wasunaware that Luc’s father had passed, or if he just didn’t care to call him Angelsey, which was his designation as the current earl.
They walked to a hall just off the gaming floor, lined with opulently carved doors. He wondered if these were where the ladies of the club plied their trade, but when Rys opened the door, he saw it was a private gaming room, and that it lay empty.
Rys closed the door behind them. “I’m a busy man, as Jack said. You have five minutes.”
“I’ll get right to the point then.” He moved farther into the room, putting a bit of distance between himself and Rys, because he’d been able to feel the intense heat of Rys’s body standing so close, which disturbed him. “Your brother Owen, the marquess, has passed.”
Rys’s expression remained mostly impassive. It was the slight widening of his eyes, the way his well-shaped mouth went the tiniest bit slack… those things told Luc how shocked he was. “I see. Well, you have delivered the news. I am not expected to attend the wake, I am sure.”
He blew out a frustrated breath. “Rys.”
“No.” Rys slashed a hand through the air. “My father made it very clear when he tossed me out on my eighteenth birthday that I was dead to him if I didn’t do what he commanded. Owen never countermanded that when he took the title.”
That much Luc couldn’t argue with. Rys was the fourth son of a marquess, and he’d been more than just a spare. He’d been downright superfluous. So even though Rys had wanted to buy a commission and become a military officer, his father had decided Rys would be a vicar.
Clearly, he was unsuited to that. The man ran a gaming hell, for God’s sake.
