Page 6 of Ravishing His Wicked Lady (The Shadows 4)

“Let us play, shall we? I do not have all night to…” Sebastian paused and chewed on his cigar while searching for the right word, “banter. I only came here for your money.”

All the men around the table laughed.

“Touche,” Lord Ian McAllistair, a profligate drunkard and a notorious rake, cried, then hiccuped and asked for another glass of whisky.

Sebastian, the new Marquess of Roth, was neither joking nor exaggerating when he had claimed that he was there only for the money of the men sitting at the table. He was a very talented gentleman, if he claimed so himself, and was good at everything he decided to apply himself to. And that was his curse.

He was a good student at school, which helped him get into the Academy of Science in Paris; he was an expert swordsman and he was lucky at gambling, if you considered calculating odds either gambling or being lucky.

Sebastian pushed the fish into the middle of the table and sat back. He’d win this hand as well, he knew.

Lord McAllistair and the other gentlemen, Lord Cunningham and Mr. Townsend, were simply too drunk to care. Well, Lord Cunningham and McAllistair had an added distraction keeping their attentions occupied: the rounded bosoms of the ladies of the night. That’s what gaming hells counted on. Get a curvy wench and a couple of bottles of drink in front of a gentleman and he’d forget his own name, let alone the game he was playing. Any gentleman, that was, except for Sebastian.

The only other person at the table who was lucid and alert enough to pay attention was William. But he always let his opponents win. On purpose. And that was part of his charm.

William was a duke’s bastard, and as such, he was scorned by high society. Nevertheless, he always found a seat at their table and an invitation to their soirees, mostly due to his charming disposition. Either that or by blackmail.

Sebastian had known William for many years. He wasn’t a friend exactly. But in England, he was the closest thing Sebastian had to one.

Sebastian steepled his fingers as he waited for the dealer to turn over the last card.The valet.

“The valet of spades,” the dealer announced and everyone groaned, while Sebastian swallowed a smirk. He collected his winnings and let the dealer deal another round of cards, now including the newcomer to the table.

Yes, Sebastian was good at everything, but only one thing ever brought him joy, and it wasn’t gambling.

Despite his winning streak, sitting in the smoke-filled gaming hell was not where he’d rather be at the moment. Of course, he enjoyed winning money, but he was here tonight more out of boredom than anything else.

Since Sebastian was young, the thing he enjoyed doing most was painting. Everything else was just a distraction. And he’d rather be in his studio painting at the moment, except that ever since he had returned to England, he had never once picked up a brush.

It could have been that the heavy weight of the responsibility to his newly inherited marquessate was crushing him. Or it could have been the burden of trying to marry off his niece while protecting her from the damaging influence of her other relatives. Perhaps moving to England from his beloved France was misery enough. Either way, his muse was gone, and there seemed to be no way of getting her back.

So, here he was, counting cards, and winning money from the drunken fools.

“Say, Sebastian, how is it that you win every hand?” William asked, chewing on his cigar. “Or am I supposed to call you Roth now that you are an earl?”

“A marquess,” Sebastian said in an offhand manner.

“Right, right, I always forget.”

One side of Sebastian’s mouth kicked up in a smirk. “No, you don’t. You never forget. You know everything about everyone.”

“Wrong,” William said as he sipped on a glass of whisky. “I know everything about the people whom I might profit off.Youare useless to me.”

“And isn’t that splendid news?”

“Which means,” William turned toward Atwood, “that I know you have not a penny in your coffers.”

“Then you do not know everything, after all,” Atwood bragged. “But if you are curious, I am about to come into a hefty inheritance.”

Sebastian wasn’t curious, nor was he the least bit interested, but he noticed McAllistair’s eyes glint with intelligence and comprehension for one brief moment before he asked, “What is that?”

He immediately downed another drink and turned toward the wench on his lap, so perhaps that glint Sebastian thought he saw was a figment of his imagination.

“Have you not heard?” Atwood sniffed. “Lord Birch is gravely ill, and I am next in line to inherit. That’s why I am back in London.”

William scoffed. “Birch? He doesn’t have two pennies to rub together. He might be the only person who owes more people than you do. And I should know; he owes me too.”

Atwood chuckled. “That’s not what his solicitor told me tonight.”

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