Rules of Engagement Read online

  The pictures at the back of the gallery were all portraits, most of them full length. Some poses of the subjects were…odd. A woman sprawled on her stomach, her hems splayed and her lower legs revealed. A man in shirt sleeves, his shirt unbuttoned.

  Lisa Grace glanced at Cian as they progressed through the portraits. She was no longer smiling.

  Cian cleared his throat when his glance fell upon a portrait of a woman with her hair down. The portrait captured only her head and her shoulders, yet her shoulders were bare. With her hair hanging free in that way, it implied she was nude.

  He could feel his cheeks heating. He was very aware of Lisa Grace beside him.

  “A few more steps, brother,” she murmured.

  They took the few steps then Lisa Grace turned him to face a full-length portrait in a five-foot-high gilt frame. A pair of plinths stood on either side of the frame, holding vases of yellow roses, making the portrait a feature of this section of the gallery.

  Cian studied the portrait, his heart plummeting.

  The woman in the portrait was nude. There was no denying it, for the artists had captured every sensual curve of her body. He had posed her so she stood in shadow, while her head was turned to look up at what must have been a high window, for sunlight fell on her face and shoulders. She seemed to strain to see through the window, as if she longed to be out there in the sunshine.

  The sheet or cloth she held against her hid the essential details of her body, but only just. It looked as though she was about to drop the sheet—as if even that much cloth was an unnecessary hindrance to her leap toward the light.

  The woman’s face was clear and detailed. Rich brown hair, strong brows arched over brown eyes, a determined chin, a slender throat.

  Eleanore.

  Cian’s heart didn’t just squeeze. It seemed to stop for a long, painful moment or two.

  Lisa Grace said, “I am right, am I not? That is Lady Eleanore Neville? The Duke of Gainford’s sister?”

  Cian swallowed. The movement hurt. “How did you know?” he whispered.

  “I’ve seen her before,” Lisa Grace said. “At the opera house, mostly. It is the ton, Cian. Everyone knows everyone.”

  He shook his head and made himself tear his gaze away from the figure in the portrait. “I mean, how did you know to show me?”

  Lisa Grace hesitated. Then she stepped forward and touched the canvas lightly. Her fingertip pressed against the image of a big vase of yellow roses which exactly matched in color the real ones on either side of the frame. Among the painted roses was a single black one.

  “An ebony rose,” Lisa Grace said. She raised a brow. “There is only one place in England where they grow.”

  “Innesford,” Cian said, his breath evaporating.

  Had Eleanore arranged for the black rose to be included in the painting? Had she directed the artists to add it in, knowing Cian would see it? Or had the vase of yellow roses the artist had captured included a black one—was it one of the many bouquets he had sent her over the years?

  Cian’s gaze returned to Eleanore’s face, turned up toward the light.

  God above, how he ached to touch her! That beautiful face…

  It had been her face which had first captured his attention, at the opera. He had fallen in love with her for other reasons, though.

  Looking at this picture was like seeing those reasons written for the world to read. The way she was leaning toward the light, as if she would fly toward it if she longed hard enough…

  They were the same, he and Eleanore. They had discovered the similarities through three years of letter writing, when they bared their souls, while the rest of the world had no idea they even knew each other.

  She had been lost within her huge family, with no control over her fate. Her helplessness was made worse because no one recognized it. No one in her family knew her—not truly. Even Eleanore did not really know herself. She had never been given the chance to learn.

  All of it was a familiar cry to Cian.

  “I wasn’t sure whether I should send for you,” Lisa Grace added. “Not until I saw your face just now.” She moved back to his side and took his arm once more. “Now I know.” She glanced at the picture once more. “It’s actually very good,” she added, her tone conversational. “I’ve heard some passing comments about the artist, although I’ve never met him and this is the first work of his I’ve seen.” She studied the painting. “He makes me feel as if I know Lady Eleanore a little.”

  “A little too much,” Cian growled. “So will the rest of London, when they see it.” He looked around for the attendant.

  “What are you going to do?” Lisa Grace asked.

  “What else?” Cian said. “I will buy the damn thing and lock it in a cellar where no one will ever see it.”

  He left Lisa Grace at the painting and went in search of the attendant, his temper brewing. He could feel the anger building.

  When would Eleanore stop vexing his life? He would flay her for this…this wildness.

  Then a wry voice in his mind corrected him. Of course he would not flay her. When it came to Eleanore, he was singularly incapable of doing anything at all.

  Chapter Two

  Eleanore relaxed when Cokes played his pair of jacks. The game was won now, no matter what cards the last two players turned up. All the cards which might have defeated her were already upon the table.

  Stephen Spearing, the next player, shook his red head as he put his nines down. “I would accuse you of mind reading if I believed in such things, Lady Eleanore.”

  “You’re too much a gentleman, Spearing,” she told him. “Why do you not accuse me of cheating?”

  “Because you are not,” he said calmly. “I know what cheating looks like. You are lucky and you can read a man’s face.” He shrugged.

  “And his cards,” she added, resting her hands on the table.

  “If Spearing says you are on the up-and-up, I’ll abide by his judgment,” McCreary said, dropping his final hand to the tabletop. “It’s humiliating being bested by a damn woman, though. Five hands and she hasn’t lost once.” He shook his head.

  Spearing laughed. “Then why did you agree to play?”

  “Heard she was good,” McCreary muttered.

  Spearing collected the big notes and coins in the middle of the table and held them out toward Eleanore. “It has been educational, my Lady. I would have no objections to a repeat engagement…once my wallet has recovered.”

  “Now wait just a moment,” said Vincent Cokes.

  Eleanore sighed as Spearing put the money back on the table. Cokes was a commoner with pretensions. He shouldn’t have sat at the table in the first place and he broke into a sweat during the second hand. He was a skillful player, but desperation had made him careless.

  One shouldn’t gamble with stakes one cannot afford to lose. Who had said that? She thought it might have been Cian, perhaps in one of his letters.

  Cokes shook his head. “It’s not good enough, being gentlemanly and letting the lady win, if she is cheating. Luck and skill go so far, but she didn’t lose a single coin all evening. Not once. ‘taint natural.”

  Spearing considered him for a moment. Then he got to his feet and leaned over the round table to put the money squarely in front of Eleanore, with a nod. He looked at Cokes again. “Call foul, or shut up, Cokes. Implication is for sore losers.”

  Cokes’ face turned a deep red. “Perhaps I should speak to the club manager. Only we haven’t seen a single waiter since the brandy was first poured.” He looked around the room, wrinkling his nose.

  Eleanore hid her smile. The Garrick Club allowed her to play cards within their establishment even though she could not be admitted as a member, because their male-only members liked the novelty of playing with a lady…until they lost. Only, to keep her status firmly and clearly one of a guest, the club put a card table in the drafty ladies’ parlor just off the front foyer and forced the male members to enter the overly feminine
room to play with her.

  The footmen were slow to arrive, too. They were just as intimidated by the excess of floral touches.

  Spearing was the only man not to adjust his tie or ease his collar as he took in the gauze curtains and vases of poppies. He had glanced around once and said, “Home territory advantage, my Lady?” before sitting and playing a ruthless first hand.

  Now Cokes eyed the money on the table in front of her where Spearing had placed it. “You don’t deserve such winnings,” Cokes said. “It’s…unladylike.”

  Eleanore laughed. So did Spearing. Even McCreary smiled weakly.

  Cokes scowled and lunged for the money.

  Eleanore leapt to her feet. She grabbed Cokes’ thick wrist and pinned his hand down where it laid over the flat stack of notes, his thick fingers spread.

  “Oh, I say!” McCreary exclaimed, his eyes growing even wider.

  Spearing added his weight to Eleanore’s, bearing down on Cokes’ hand and keeping it still. “Let it go, Cokes. You’ve been beaten. Take it like a man. The club does not tolerate less.”

  “It’s my money,” Cokes growled, the tips of his fingers scratching at the notes.

  “Not anymore,” Spearing said.

  That seemed to inflame the man. He roared and heaved. The whole table shook. The coins rattled and bounced toward the edges.

  The door to the room opened, fanning cold air from the foyer. Cian Williams lunged across the room to haul Cokes from the table, his arm around the man’s throat. Cian wore his overcoat, still.

  As Cokes struggled and cursed, Cian held him easily and examined him. He was far taller and Cokes could barely find his footing, which did much to subdue him.

  “Innesford! Remarkable timing,” Spearing told Cian, brushing himself down.

  Eleanore pushed her skirt back into place and rearranged a fold over her bustle, which hid her face and gave her a moment to recover from the shock of seeing Cian. What on earth was he doing here? This was his club, yes, but he never came here. She had made sure of it by checking the register, going back years.

  “I followed the shouting,” Cian said in his deep voice. “Trouble tends to circle around Lady Eleanore.” He didn’t look at her.

  Spearing smiled, his eyes dancing. “I imagine trouble would be drawn to any lady who dares to play cards well.” He nodded to Eleanore.

  She nodded back, her heart still strumming.

  Cian’s gaze found Eleanore. His eyes were a dark blue, but looked gray in the right light, like storm clouds. They were bereft of any emotion now. “Does this man have any reason to take his money back?”

  “No,” Spearing said.

  “He thinks I was cheating,” Eleanore said.

  “I’m with Spearing on this,” McCreary added, wiping his face with a handkerchief, mopping up sweat.

  “Were you cheating?” Cian asked her.

  “That’s a hell of a question to ask a lady, Innesford,” McCreary said, half laughing with surprise.

  Eleanore pushed a stray hair into the knot at the back of her head. “There was no need to cheat with these three.”

  Spearing laughed loudly.

  Cokes cursed and struggled. Cian shook him, to make him behave. “Do you want to make a formal complaint to the club?” he asked him. His voice was low. Dangerously low. “Think about your answer before I release you. If you press your complaint and it is found you are wrong, as these two gentlemen insist you are, then it will be your reputation which is tarnished. The club frowns upon cheating but it dislikes bad manners even more.”

  Eleanore held still as Cian let Cokes go.

  “What will it be, Cokes?” Spearing demanded.

  Cokes rubbed his throat. His gaze shifted from Eleanore to the other three. He scowled. “You upper class snobs are all the same…ganging together.” He spat and stalked to the door.

  Spearing shook his head as the door closed. “The fool. The only peer in the room was the lady herself.” He nodded toward her. “An entertaining evening, Lady Eleanore.” He nodded toward Cian. “Innesford.”

  Eleanore picked up the money and put it in her purse.

  “Take care, Stephen. Cokes strikes me as a man to hold a grudge,” Cian called after Spearing.

  “He’ll regret it if he does,” Spearing replied, as he left.

  McCreary bowed his head toward Eleanore. “My Lady.”

  “Thank you, Mr. McCreary,” she called after him.

  Cian waited for the door to close once more then gripped Eleanore’s bare arm. “I’m taking you home,” he told her, “to make sure Cokes isn’t lingering about the entrance for you to emerge.”

  “I’m not ready to leave, yet,” Eleanore replied, as Cian drew her toward the door.

  “It is past midnight and you’ve won enough. I have something to discuss with you.”

  Eleanore gave up. He was right. It was late. “What are you doing here, Cian?” she demanded.

  “I came looking for you. James told me you were not at home.”

  “I didn’t tell him where I was going. How did you guess?”

  “It was my fourth guess,” Cian said grimly. “I would have been here sooner, otherwise.” He moved across the foyer and gestured with his hand to the footman there. The man hurried away.

  Cian let her arm go and studied her. “You owe me one hundred pounds.”

  Eleanore smiled and held out her purse. “Here you are, then.”

  He didn’t smile. There was little warmth in his eyes, either.

  “What have I done now?” she asked, stringing the chain of the purse back over her satin-encased wrist.

  “You don’t know?”

  Eleanore’s smile formed by itself. “There’s a rather lengthy list of possibilities, especially if I include everything which vexes you and no one else.”

  The footman appeared with her fur cloak and held it out so she could step into it. Cian hooked all four buttons closed. “It is cold out there,” he added, when she lifted a brow. He stepped back and waved toward the door.

  Eleanore lifted her chin and moved past him to the door.

  “The cab on the left,” Cian said behind her, as she stepped down to the footpath. The paving was silver with frost.

  He moved passed her, opened the cab door and waited for her, then handed her into the carriage. She heard him speaking to the driver, then he stepped in and settled on the seat opposite. He never sat beside her. She had stopped suggesting he do so.

  As the cab moved away from the club, Eleanore shivered. It really was cold.

  “Your brother came down from Durham for parliament next week,” Cian said. “Why did you come? You should be sitting by the fire at Gainford House.”

  “I was bored,” Eleanore told him. “When James said he was coming down early, I wanted to go with him. So everyone decided they would, too.” She wrinkled her nose. “Which didn’t help me get away from them at all.”

  Cian didn’t smile. Of course he didn’t, for this was not the Cian she knew. The Cian she had come to know from the thick pages he had sent her every week for three years wasn’t dour and proper and sensible. The Cian she knew loved the sea and yearned to be out upon it, or in it.

  Before the thought of heaving waves reduced her to panic, Eleanore grasped for the next difference between the Cian before her and the one she knew. Cian liked his brandy. He liked parties. He liked arguing—lord, the scraps and fights he had got into at Cambridge! They were legendary. Even James had heard of them, and James had studied at Oxford.

  Everything about that other Cian spoke of temperament, emotions, a love of life.

  Where had he gone?

  The woman she had once been had loved him for that outrageous embrace of life and everything in it. Eleanore could not deny it, because she had read the words formed in her own handwriting—confessions of love and fealty, of desperate longing. She even remembered writing the words, in a hazy and distant sort of way.

  Only, none of those feelings surfaced, now. They w
ould be in the way if they did.

  Cian rested his hand against the frame of the window he peered through. He watched the well-known streets of Mayfair slide by to avoid looking at her. “Did you find what you sought tonight, Eleanore?”

  Eleanore thought of the way her pulse had jumped when Cokes lunged for the money. Until that moment, her heart had beat as steadily and drearily as it always did. Winning card games had stopped being fun. The rush of energy she felt when she won no longer came to her. “I might have, if you hadn’t interrupted.”

  Cian’s gaze slid toward her. “You have grown cynical and weary, haven’t you? It takes a man’s assault to let you feel anything at all?” He shook his head.

  “If you had taken me to Algeria, then I wouldn’t be looking for fun in all the wrong places,” she pointed out, for it was still a sore point.

  “It was family business,” Cian said.

  “It was something new and different,” she replied. “I could have helped your sister, too.”

  Cian’s gaze settled back on her face. “A three-day journey across winter seas, Eleanore? You won’t step foot on the Natasha Marie even when she’s tied up dockside.”

  Eleanore shuddered. “I had forgotten you went by sea,” she admitted. Then, because talk of winter seas made her gut churn and her heart to beat hard enough to make her throat ache, she jumped to something else to shift the conversation. “Why do you want to speak to me, Cian?”

  “Sidney Gordie Strange,” he said. His gaze pinned her to the seat.

  Delight filled her. “You saw the picture! Oh, that’s wonderful, Cian. What did you think of it? He’s talented, isn’t he?”

  Cian pushed his hand through his hair. “For God’s sake, Ellie, you were naked! What on earth were you thinking?”

  Eleanore blinked. “What has that got to do with it?”

  “Everything!” he cried. His hand curled into a fist. “If anyone beside my sister has seen the picture and talks about it, your reputation will be utterly ruined—”

  “Oh, my reputation,” she breathed, irritation flaring.