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She smiled shyly. “I could not leave. I would not be your fallen angel. I would follow you into hell . . . but only to bring you back. ”
The words humbled him. “I don’t deserve you,” he said, “But I am afraid I cannot let you go. ”
Her serious blue gaze did not waver as she asked, “Do you promise?”
With everything he was. “I do. ” He wrapped her in his arms, resting his chin upon her head, before he remembered the other item he’d brought for her. “I brought your winnings, love. ” He extracted the papers from the card game the previous evening and set them next to the pudding.
“Your property. ”
He pressed a kiss to her neck, and smiled against the skin when she sighed at the caress. “Not mine. Yours. Won handily. ”
She shook her head. “There is only one thing from last night’s winnings that I want. ”
“What is that?”
She leaned up to kiss him thoroughly, robbing him of breath. “You. ”
“I think you might regret that win, Sixpence. ”
She shook her head, all seriousness. “Never. ”
They kissed again, lost in each other for long minutes before curiosity flared and he lifted his head. “What did you have on Langford?”
She gave a little laugh and curled around him to reach for the wager, sifting through the pile of papers to retrieve the small square of paper. “You forgot to teach me the most important rule of scoundrels. ”
“Which one is that?”
She unfolded the paper carefully and handed it to him. “When in doubt, bluff. ”
It was her invitation to The Angel.
Surprise gave way to laughter, then to pride. “My wicked, gambling wife. I believed you had something truly damning. ”
She smiled, bold and brilliant, and he found he’d had enough of talking.
Instead, he lowered his wife to the floor of his dining room and stripped her bare, worshipping every glorious inch of skin he revealed. And as her laughter gave way to sighs, he reminded her again and again of how very much he loved her.
For years, when children and grandchildren inquired about the round black mark on the Hell House dining-room table, the Marchioness of Bourne would tell tale of a figgy pudding gone wrong . . . before the marquess would interject that in his opinion, it had gone rather perfectly.
Epilogue
Dear Sixpence,
I saved them all, you know. Every letter you ever sent, even those to which I never replied. I’m sorry for so many things, my love: that I left you; that I never came home; that it took me so long to realize that you were my home and that, with you by my side, none of the rest mattered.
But in the darkest hours, on the coldest nights, when I felt I’d lost everything, I still had your letters. And through them, in some small way, I still had you.
I loved you then, my darling Penelope, more than I could imagine—just as I love you now, more than you can know.
Michael
Hell House, February 1831
One week later
Cross woke as usual, on a makeshift pallet inside his office at The Fallen Angel, wedged between an overflowing bookcase and a massive globe, surrounded by papers.
Not as usual, however, there was a woman sitting at his desk.
Strike that. Not a woman. A lady. A young, blond-haired, bespectacled lady.
She was reading the ledger.
He sat up, ignoring the fact that he was not wearing a shirt and that, conventionally, gentlemen did not greet ladies half-naked. Hang convention. If the woman hadn’t wanted to see him half-naked, then she should not have invaded his offices in the night.
That most men did not make a practice of sleeping in their offices was of little import.
“May I help you?”
She did not look up. “You’ve miscalculated column F. ”
What in hell?
“I have not. ”
She pushed her glasses up her nose and tucked a stray strand of blond hair behind her ear, entirely focused on the ledger. “You have. The proper calculation should be one hundred and twelve thousand, three hundred forty-six and seventeen pence. ”
Impossible.
He stood, moving to look over her shoulder. “That’s what it says. ”
She shook her head, placing one long finger on the tabulation line. He noticed the tip of the finger was slightly crooked, leaning a touch to the right. “You’ve written one hundred twelve thousand, three hundred, forty-five and seventeen pence. You—” She looked up at him, eyes owl-like behind her spectacles as she took in his height and his bare chest. “You—You’ve lost a quid. ”
He bent over her, deliberately crowding her and enjoying the way her breath caught at his nearness. “That is a six. ”
She cleared her throat and looked again. “Oh. ” She leaned in and checked the number again. “I suppose you’ve lost your handwriting skills, instead,” she said dryly, and he chuckled as she reached for a pencil and repaired the number.
He watched, riveted to the callus at the tip of her second finger, before he whispered low in her ear, “Are you an accounting fairy sent in the dead of night to check my figures?”
She leaned away from the whisper and turned to look at him. “It’s one o’clock in the afternoon,” she said, matter-of-factly, and he had an intense desire to take her spectacles from her face and kiss her senseless, just to see what this odd young woman would say.
He quashed the desire.
Instead, he smiled. “Sent in the dead of day, then?”
She blinked. “I am Philippa Marbury. ”
His eyes went wide, and he took an enormous step backward, knocking into a hat stand and turning to rescue it before realizing that he absolutely could not be standing in his office, in a gaming hell, shirtless, with Bourne’s sister-in-law. Bourne’s betrothed sister-in-law.
He reached for a shirt. It was wrinkled and worn, but it would do. As he searched fruitlessly for the opening in the linen, he backed away again. Farther.
She stood and came around the desk toward him. “Have I upset you?”
Why didn’t the shirt have an opening? As a last resort, he held the clothing in front of him, a shield from her enormous, all-seeing eyes. “Not at all, but I do not make a practice of having clandestine meetings with my partners’ sisters, half-nude. ”
She considered the words before tilting her head to one side, and saying, “Well, you were asleep, so you really couldn’t have prevented it. ”
“Somehow, I doubt that Bourne would see it that way. ”
“At least give me an audience. I came all the way here. ”
Cross knew he should refuse. Knew, with the keen sense of a lifelong gambler, that he should not continue this game. That it was unwinnable. But there was something about this young woman that made it impossible to stop himself. “Well, since you came all the way here . . . how may I be of service, Lady Philippa?”
She took a deep breath. Released it. “I require ruination. And I hear you are an expert in the subject. ”
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