Unmistakable Rogue
Page 29
She would have waited for Ash, however long it took him to return, Lark admitted to herself, no matter the issue of low funds, for Ashford Blackburn would know how to treat a lady. Then again, she did not need much—a cot, a warm blanket, a monthly bath.
“Well now, I don’t feature sellin’ ye me pub, me fine Lord, but I’d sure like a go at playin’ ye for it.”
At her father’s words, and no small shot of panic, the warm haze of Lark’s musings popped. What? What had her Da just said? Rat’s whiskers, she wished she’d been paying attention.
“Name your stakes,” Ash said.
Oh no. Lark sat straighter and peeked around the stair-wall as Ash rubbed his clean, strong hands in glee, the fool. He’d had a great deal too much to drink, if he was thinking of playing her Da for The Pickled Pigsty.
Lark sighed as her father called for Toby, his barman, to bring a “fresh” deck—properly marked, of course. She supposed she should be Da hadn’t tried to add her to the pot.
“If ye win, ye get me fine pub,” said her Da, spelling out the terms and entertaining Lark with his wit. No doubt he’d also add his secret recipe for mystery-critter stew, and call it ambrosia. “If ye lose,” he said, shuffling the cards fast enough to make the sots dizzy, “I get a thousand gold guineas. And just so ye don’t go home empty-handed,” he added, generous as a Lord, “I’ll throw in me beautiful daughter for wife, as a consolation.”
Ash gave an inebriated laugh and took another swallow of his whiskey, as Lark rose with a silent screech and made to leap to her own defense . . . until her father shot out with a right, and liked to blacken her eye.
She hit the floor behind Ash and scampered back to her walled stairwell as he looked up from his drink. “Did you hear that?” Ash asked no one in particular.
“Rats,” said her Da as he dealt the cards. “To keep the cats out.” He shuddered. “Hate the mewling things.”
Lark cupped her throbbing eye and refused to acknowledge the sting. She had once seen her sister on her knees, weeping and groveling at the feet of a bloody cur, and vowed there and then that no man would see tears in Larkin McAdams eyes . . . especially not, Ash, the man who’d once called her brave.
Testing her vision, Lark saw him pointedly regard her father with speculation in his red, drink-dazed eyes.
Myles cleared his throat with authority. “The daughter of an innkeeper is hardly a suitable wife for an Earl, old man.”
No bloody fooling, Lark thought, but her father rose, as if in indignation. “Her mother was the daughter of a duke, I’ll have ye know,” he said in all truth, though he failed to mention that Mum had been born on the wrong side of the blanket.
Ash’s laugh raised Larkin’s hackles in an odd, unsettling way, as if she must prove her worth, when she knew bloody well she had no worth to prove.
“How old is this unexpected blue-blood?”
“Twenty-two come May.”
Ash choked on his drink. “A bit long in the tooth.”
Larkin took offense, wishing she could fight for her aggrieved honor, for no one else would.
“Look at it this way,” Myles said. “Win or lose, your problem is solved.”
“I bleeding well wish he would lose for a change,” Hunter said, retaking his seat and tossing a handful of coins on the scarred oak table. “Might as well throw my blunt in a cesspit.”
Ash regarded his friend Myles with intoxicated bewilderment. “What problem will be solved if I win or lose?”
“If you win the game, you win the pub, so you won’t need a bride or your grandfather’s blunt when you’re turning a profit. If you lose the game, you get the bride you need to fulfill your grandfather’s requirements. Either way, you win.”
Ash seemed to ponder some thorny quandary, and after a stupefied minute, in which Larkin found herself holding her breath for some odd reason, Ash nodded, as if with respect for his friend’s wisdom. Then without thought to the consequences of the shoddy solution, he returned his attention to the cards in his hand—a measure of his whiskey-soaked brain.
Why did a man like Ashford Blackburne not have brides clawing at each other to get him to the altar? Lark wondered.
Though Ash took her father’s “gracious” suggestion to heart, that he “start the bloody betting,” Ash’s brow remained furrowed throughout the better part of the first hand.
“A consolation prize for wife,” Myles repeated, his chuckle harsh in the deep silence. “Lose and you could have a woman with no choice but to marry you.”
Ash cursed and Larkin’s eyes widened, but even as she tried to work up the proper measure of indignation on his behalf, or imagine her hero losing at anything, a rather pleasant lethargy stole over her at the very notion.
Ashford Blackburne for husband ... she should be so fortunate.
“Is she a virgin, at least?” her erstwhile hero asked, sending a shaft of fury through Lark, and lowering him mightily in her esteem, partly for the intimate nature of the question, and partly because he attended more to arranging his bloody cards than either her Da’s answer or the cheatin’ glint in her sire’s eyes.
Before he deigned to answer, the guinea her Da tossed into the pot spun and rolled dutifully back into his lap with none the wiser. “Me daughter is as pure and virginal as me Inn’s snow-white bed linen,” said he.
The End of the Beginning
Bio: Annette Blair
A National Bestselling Author for Penguin Books, Annette left her job as a Development Director and Journalism Advisor at a private New England prep school to become a full time writer. Thirty-five books in, and she’s added Cozy Mysteries and Bewitching Romantic Comedies to her Regency, Victorian, and Amish Historical Romances. The Rogues Club, her readers say, is the series that put her on the map.
Happily married to her grammar school nemesis, Annette considers romance a celebration of life. Always happy crafting a new story, she loves hearing from her readers.
www.annetteblair.com
https://www.facebook.com/annette.blair.author
http://twitter.com/annetteblair
Awards and Accolades
Unmistakable Rogue
2005 Gallant Rogue of the Year Nominee, Reed Gilbride, HRC
2004 Booksellers’ Best Award Winner
2004 Readers’ Poll Favorite, Best Regency [Historical], Affaire de Coeur
2003 Most Exciting Start to a Story, Romance Reviews
1996 Hook, Line & Sinker Winner, Hudson Valley RWA
1996 RWA Golden Heart Finalist as Act of Charity
Annette Blair Books
Operation Petticoat, February 2013
Sisters of Sprit Anthology, Novella: Moving Pictures, TBA
Cloaked in Malice, July 2012
Mammoth Book Ghost Romance, Jonquils in the Snow, Novella, June 2012
Scoundrel in Disguise, March 2012 (Reprint)
Untamable Rogue, February 2012 (Reprint; Formerly A Christmas Baby)
Unmistakable Rogue, February 2012 (Reprint)
Unforgettable Rogue, January 2012 (Reprint)
Undeniable Rogue, January 2012 (Reprint)
Butterfly Garden, Oct 2011 (Reprint)
Skirting the Grave, July 2011
Kissingate Magic, Mammoth Book Scottish Romance, January 2011
Jacob’s Return, May 2011 (Reprint: Formerly Thee I Love)
Vampire Dragon, April 2011
Fall in Love Like a Romance Writer, February 2011
Naked Dragon, January 2010
Death by Diamonds, July 2010
Bedeviled Angel, August 2010
Hot Ticket Anthology, Annette’s You Can’t Steal First, Sept 2009
Larceny and Lace, Aug 2009
A Veiled Deception, January 2009
Never Been Witched, Feb 2009
Gone with the Witch, May 2008
Sex and the Psychic Witch, August 2007
The Scot, the Witch & the Wardrobe, Dec 2006
Hot Ticket Anthology, You Can’t Steal First,
May 2006
Scoundrel in Disguise, May 2006
My Favorite Witch, January 2006
The Butterfly Garden (in reprint), April 2005
The Kitchen Witch, Oct 2004
A Christmas Baby (in reprint as Untamable Rogue), Oct 2004
An Unmistakable Rogue (in reprint), Oct 2003
An Unforgettable Rogue (in reprint), Oct 2002
An Undeniable Rogue (in reprint), Mar 2002
Thee I love, (in reprint as Jacob’s Return) Oct 1999
Lady Patience, Sept 1999
Lady Faith, March 1999
www.annetteblair.com
https://www.facebook.com/annette.blair.author
http://twitter.com/annetteblair
THE END
Table of Contents
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER ONE