Her father motioned to the man in a deferential manner-and in a direction away from her.

Roman's eyebrows lifted. "Don't you think the lady should be able to have a say in something that concerns her?" The words were delivered in a charming and innocent manner, but there was something entirely false about the simplicity of the statement.

Downing strode into her periphery and flipped open his pocket watch, obviously irritated. "Something that was stated last night, I believe." His eyes softened slightly when they focused upon her, her face hidden from view once more, but turned hard when he looked back to the men.

"Lovely Miss Chatsworth seems hardly knowledgeable about what occurred." Roman hummed. "But strangely resigned to what will happen." His eyes were hot on her, and she felt her body traitorously respond. What was wrong with her? Had her own eyes not told her enough about this man that she should respond only with coldness? Was this some sort of internal rebellion against the pressure she had been under? She gripped her skirt in both hands, trying to keep from trembling.

Something snapped shut, the sound like a shot in the suddenly silent hallway. "Merrick, a moment." Downing strode down the hall, obviously expecting the blond man to follow the strict command.

Roman shot her a slow grin before turning and following.

Charlotte swallowed, trying not to follow their progress with her eyes, trying to sort herself out and reinforce her battlements. To think about what might happen if Roman Merrick did claim her tonight. Would her face be scarred in the morning? Would other parts of her? A comforting lick of terror rushed through her. Fear she could deal with, for pride answered to fear.

She didn't know what answered to desire.

Something inside her kept trying to reason that Roman Merrick could have hurt her before but hadn't. Irrational feelings and rational thoughts collided, bleeding into one another. She tamped down all thoughts on the matter.

Her father took a few steps toward the two men, then stopped, seeming to waver on the choice. It was hard to say what Downing and Merrick were discussing. The walls seemed to constrict toward them, tightness in every line, sucking in the surroundings.

Trant looked at her, then at Roman Merrick, something steely in his eyes. "Have you met before?"

"No." It wasn't hard to inject a clip to her voice. She hadn't truly met him, after all. And she didn't wish to speak of the situation with Trant, whom she didn't trust.

"I will ruin him." He looked back at the man, his eyes dark. "For you."

"I hardly think that will fix the situation I currently find myself in, Mr. Trant." And she thought the part about the ruination being for her was more of an afterthought to the statement.

"It is an outrage. Let me fix it for you." He took her gloved hand in his, steering her a little ways away. His hands were warm, but not scorching like Roman Merrick's. And though the touch also made her uncomfortable, the feelings surrounding the discomfort were not the same. "No matter what happens tonight. I will still find you a desirable match."

She smiled, a hard, brittle smile he couldn't see, before smoothly removing her hand in a way to which he could not take offense. For even though she didn't know the details of the bet-yet-she had a feeling that Trant was not inculpable. "That is kind of you."

"Say that you will-"

She cut him off. "Mr. Trant, I hardly think this is the time to discuss such matters."

"There will be no time more opportune."

"Father says this exchange might not even take place."

"But if it does, you should have a plan in place. I would hate to have to harm Merrick."

Something alerted her that someone stood behind them. Outside in the alley, the knife would already be sticking from her ribs. This was not her world, and she couldn't pretend that she was in any way equal to fooling it.

The tingling of her skin told her who stood there. She could feel the heat of him before he spoke. "I wouldn't have such trouble in return."

The words were silky and dark. Promising. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She turned to see Roman Merrick standing there, eyes disturbingly lazy upon Trant. Downing was saying something to her father a few paces behind, arguing with him in low tones that she couldn't pay attention to, too caught by the man in front of her.

Trant shifted. "It was a foolish wager, Merrick."

"It was. And yet here we are." His eyes didn't warm one bit. Fathomless pools of blue ice. Though there was that idleness to them, as if he didn't find Trant much of a threat. And looking between them, at the lethality that surrounded the blond man, she'd have to agree. Trant was fit, and he liked to boast of his boxing prowess, but Merrick looked like he didn't follow the rules of any sort of gentlemanly match.

More likely he would incapacitate the person while they were bowing to start, then lazily stride away before the person hit the floor.

"You should concede it." Trant's words were fainter than usual. "Force Chatsworth to pay the amount equal to my wager."

"Should I?" Merrick asked, idly, a thin layer of smooth liquid flowing over jagged rocks. He moved smoothly around them, putting the empty corridor at his back, and everyone in his view, forcing Trant to twist awkwardly. "What say you, Miss Chatsworth?"

She swallowed, turning as if her chest were connected to his and, like a marionette on strings, she had to shift when he did. She looked up to see him extending a hand to her. The same strong hand that had beaten a man a few days before.

For some indefinable reason, her hand automatically twitched toward his.

"Outrageous." Trant was a good-looking man though she could imagine the mottled red a.s.suredly spilling over his flesh would not aid his coloring. But she couldn't look away from the hand extended to her in order to see. She curled her own fingers together to keep them at her side. "Offensive." She could almost imagine Trant's words contained a sudden hint of panic underlying the anger, but with her own hands trembling and her eyes locked, she wasn't sure she was a good judge of emotion at the moment.

"Is that so, Mr. Trant?" There was just the slightest twist on Mr. Belied by a charming laugh. The menace was suddenly gone again, mercurially replaced with the rogue instead. "You don't believe the lady should be able to voice her own complaint?"

"Of course she should. Miss Chatsworth, tell him you will not follow through with this outrage."

Roman Merrick laughed. "Is that what you would have said should you have won the hand and your own bet, Mr. Trant? I had the distinct impression that you would have claimed the winnings yourself should you have won. Held Chatsworth to his honor, and thus his family's in turn."

Trant didn't respond. Charlotte thought that wise, as nothing he could say would do him much good. She felt the curl of embittered anger but tried to tamp it down under her swirling emotions. What good did it do to be angered over another man's lying to her? Or perhaps not lying to her in the pure sense but simply leaving out details while trying to dictate her fate.

And it wasn't surprising. Trant wanted to further his own plans. What difference did her opinion matter? Not a whit. She was the commodity. If he had won, any rumors of a night between them would be squelched by their certain marriage.

She squeezed her fingers together to stop the digits from shaking as they tried to lift toward, and twitch away from, the extended hand-the hand that came from a totally different sort of danger.

His motive, his partic.i.p.ation, was not quite as easy to discern. She broke her gaze from the offered hand and looked up.

"I know you would have," Roman Merrick said silkily to Trant, still smiling, still dripping charm. His eyes caressed her veil as they slid to look at her father. But as they slipped over her, something in his posture changed. Something almost infinitesimal. "I applaud your initiative though, Trant, in forcing Chatsworth's hand when he was-and is-so weak."

"Now see here-" her father said, pride overcoming fear.

"You dare?" Trant's voice was deadly.

"I do dare," Merrick answered Trant, smiling, charismatic amongst enemy combatants. "Getting twisted around in your recollections, aren't you? And Chatsworth too? Selling his daughter for a few pounds?"

"I can do as I please," her father said, bristling. "I take no judgment from you ."

Merrick's eyes traveled over her again, stroking. "You should look to whom you take judgment from. You do not show enough care of your possessions. Perhaps they should be removed."

His hand was still extended to her, the gesture somehow not awkward. "I promise to take good care of you, Miss Chatsworth," he said to her, silk and gravel in the words.

His eyes met hers somehow, piercing her veil, glittering in antic.i.p.ation over the carnage the words would provoke. But there was a depth, a certainty underlying his words, that tightened something in her belly.

"I will destroy you. Take everything you have," Trant hissed at him, fury and some strange panic overriding his initial caution toward the man.

Cacophony. Voices rose, collided, melded, and battled.

She looked away from the man in front of her, whose motives she couldn't begin to discern, and at the men surrounding her. Trant and her father were yelling at the man in front of her and each other, Downing was speaking coldly about deals and choices, and Roman Merrick was fending every parry as if it were all a game he had orchestrated.

All speaking over her, dogs circling a bone they didn't really care about-other than that it was a bone the others might want. The tickling ivories of a glossy fillet. She had been little else in her adult life.

Sc.r.a.pe the l.u.s.ter . . . destroy the patina . . . remove the bone . . .

Her mouth pulled into a shape that she would have said was grim but probably looked much more horrifying and ugly beneath the dark cloth. It felt ugly on her face, in her heart. Brittle.

"And your wager? Your honor ?"

Her father's honor. Perpetually left to her to satisfy. And he, speaking over her head as if she had no choice in the matter. No choice, though she would be the one to gratify, fulfill, and meet his obligations and the results of his greed. She always would.

Sc.r.a.pe the l.u.s.ter . . . destroy the patina . . . own your actions . . .

"My honor?" Her father's voice shook. "You dare? You inferior rif-" His voice stopped, choked, as terror caught up, though the statement still hung.

"I prefer modest. Modest riffraff. As long as you don't lump me in with Trant as upstart riffraff." Roman shuddered theatrically. Mocking, mocking, mocking. Taunting. Fingers reaching toward the glossy fillet. His words to her still hanging in the air with his fingers.

"I will turn every seat in Parliament against you." Trant could barely get the words out. "I will destroy you."

"Gads." The word was all kinds of mocking awkwardness. "I do believe my boot is shaking a little there at the heel." He looked down to examine it, twisting his ankle around, hand still pressed toward her.

Those blue eyes rose lazily from his examination of the firm leather, pa.s.sing over her again, caressing, provoking that strange discomfort, adding to the tightness in her belly, her soul. "I must find a way to recollect myself."

"They will have your head," her father said, though in a far-less-confident tone than the one he used to berate her-the one he used when telling one of his hunting dogs to heel.

"For what? Collecting on your wager? Should I put the matter to White's?"

Sc.r.a.pe . . . destroy . . . be free . . .

But she'd never be free. Not while her father had control over her sister's fate.

"Merrick." There was a decided threat in Downing's words.

"Downing." Roman's voice lost its amus.e.m.e.nt. "Perhaps I recall what we discussed better than you do."

Something pa.s.sed between the two men along with the coded words. Downing's chin squared, and his eyes narrowed.

Roman Merrick smiled. A simple smile really. "We are getting far afield, are we not? What do you choose to do, Miss Chatsworth?"

"Why do you ask her anything?" her father demanded. "She does as she's told. Take what you want of your amus.e.m.e.nt, Merrick. It is obvious you seek only to play and mortify."

"Do I?" He tilted his head toward Charlotte, a slow smile curving. "But that would be foolish of me indeed, to release such a prize. You wouldn't release such a prize, unless it was in return for a very large pot, would you Chatsworth? It would be foolish of me to trade your honor for mere amus.e.m.e.nt."

Something about that particular smile and those particular words, along with her father's reaction to them, shattered the swelling tide inside of her, popping the balloon. She pictured her father's fear when speaking about the man in front of her. The fear on his face now, even with his pride badly damaged. And still, he had bet his honor, and her, in a game with a man who terrified him.

"Let this thing be done . " Charlotte's voice was hard. The taunting words curled, like a demon whispering in her ear. Remove the bone. Be free. "This childish bickering ended."

Charlotte straightened and folded her arms stiffly over her chest, unwilling to grab the extended hand, even in grim capitulation to it. Let none of them win here in this hall. "The matter settled. The marker completed. "

"Charlotte-"

"Charlotte-"

"No," she said coldly, interrupting, finished with it all. "The bet will be fulfilled and completed. And then I expect none of you will speak of it again. Ever. Good evening." She brushed by Roman Merrick, no destination in mind other than to get far away from the farce.

She could hear the men arguing behind her, but she blindly turned the curve of the hall, then traced the steps that the scarred woman had followed. Hoping that her pride would save her. As one thing after another fell from her, it was her cold comfort to claim.

Her father had almost sealed her fate. Trant had tried to seal her fate. Roman Merrick might attempt to do so.

Just this once, Charlotte would d.a.m.n well seal her own.

Chapter 5.

S he felt him pull even with her, but he wisely said nothing. One hand touched the small of her back to lead her, bringing forward every unnameable emotion and fear she had. They bypa.s.sed the room she had seen the previous woman emerge from-she couldn't contain a hitched breath at the thought of the woman's face-and instead climbed another set of stairs. The hall stretched and there only appeared to be two doors on the top floor.

Using a strange key, he unlocked the one on the left and pushed the door open, gesturing for her to enter. She walked stiffly inside.

The large s.p.a.ce, one entire half of the building floor it seemed, was decorated in shades of deep blue, gold, and mahogany. A deep, inviting room with rich trim and a warm, thoroughly masculine, interior. Not exactly the cheap and tawdry place she had been expecting in this part of town.

The room echoed the man, in a way. Solid, strong, and dark, shimmering with bursts of gold.

"You continually surprise me, Miss Chatsworth. Or not so much surprise as please. "

She didn't answer as the door closed behind her, the lock engaging, sealing her inside. The heavy edged shadows at the periphery of the gold were full of secrets.

"You fit right in." He moved around her, a whisper of wind catching and fluttering her veil.

"Pardon me?"

He motioned lazily to her dark navy coat as he sprawled in a plush chair that looked lumpy and worn, unlike the rest of the fine furniture. With the wall firmly behind it, it was obviously a well-used chair, placed in a circle with three others of various shapes and comfort levels, surrounding a table inlaid with oak and walnut squares.

She could see another room, farther back, a hint of a navy-and-scarlet-patterned coverlet in view.

She swallowed and walked to the high-backed chair across from him, a chair that looked much more ornamental and much less comfortable. She removed her cloak and carefully draped it over the back. She paused, swallowing again, and removed her veil.

Not to do so would convey fear.

"That is far better," he said, eyeing her as he rolled a bauble under his fingers, across the hard surface. "It is a shame to cover such beauty."

"Mr. Merrick-"

"Roman."

"-I realize you have far more experience in this sort of thing than I do-"