Bronwyn Scott (12 page)

‘How about a game, one final opportunity for you to beat me?’ Greer gestured towards the table where the cues laid crossed like swords and waiting. Ogilvy was always up for a game.

Ogilvy shook his head. ‘No, I’m afraid not. I’m cleaned out.’

Greer raised an eyebrow in disbelief. Ogilvy was a fair player, the kind Lockhart hoped to see in Brighton. ‘Really? You were up a few games when you left here last night.’

Ogilvy shook his head again. ‘I went on to Mrs Booth’s, you know, the ole balls and stick.’

Greer laughed and clapped Ogilvy on the back good-naturedly. ‘You’re a fine billiards player, Mr O., but cards are not your thing. When are you going to learn?’ Not much of a card player himself, Greer had watched Ogilvy lose large sums on more than a few evenings.

‘Wasn’t at cards,’ Ogilvy mumbled, hastily taking a drink.

Greer elbowed him. ‘Do tell, Ogilvy. It sounds like there’s a great story there.’ They edged away from the crowd towards a potted palm decorating the room’s perimeter.

‘Well, it’s that billiards girl Mrs Booth’s got. Susannah Mason? Haven’t you heard of her yet? She’s only been there about three weeks.’ Ogilvy tossed a look towards the group beyond them. ‘Lots of the men have lost to her. Most are too embarrassed to mention it.’

‘That explains why I haven’t heard about her.’ Greer grinned. It was a good thing Mercedes didn’t know about her. Mercedes would be over at Mrs Booth’s with a challenge within minutes—another good reason he and the Lockharts were leaving. If Mercedes knew there was a woman playing somewhere,
anywhere
, she’d be impossible for Lockhart to manage. Greer could imagine the scene that would ensue.

‘I can’t figure out if it’s her skill or her gowns that make her so difficult to beat.’ Ogilvy was going on about Susannah Mason. ‘There’s something familiar about her, but I can’t place it. She’s a card player’s widow from Shropshire, said her husband was killed in a duel. It’s all very dramatic.’ Ogilvy gave a wave of his hand in dismissal, but Greer could see the man was quite taken with Susannah Mason.

Ogilvy put a hand on his sleeve. ‘Say, why you don’t come with me tonight? You can win my money back. I dare say you won’t be as distracted by her charms. Not when you’ve got Miss Lockhart’s attentions.’

It was on his lips to deny that he had Miss Lockhart’s attentions, but Ogilvy was already back to his favourite subject of Susannah Mason. ‘Then again, the way she blows chalk off her cue tip does all kinds of things to a man’s insides, if you know what I mean.’

‘Yes, I do believe I know.’ Greer said slowly. His earlier thought returned.
If Mercedes knew a woman was playing.
There was no other woman, Greer would bet on it. It was her.

All the little oddities of the last weeks came together: Mercedes’s apparent acceptance that she should turn her efforts to more feminine pursuits, her absence last night which might have been one of many. Who really knew what she got up to after he and Lockhart left her in the care of the lovely but sharp-minded Elise Sutton? Elise and Mercedes were thick as thieves these days.

‘Shall we?’ Ogilvy said.

‘Yes,’ Greer said grimly. ‘Let’s go and win your money back.’

Chapter Fourteen

‘D
ouble or nothing, then?’ Mercedes laughed up at the young heir to an earldom. He was so
very
rich, but he was going to be a few pounds lighter when he left. She ran a light hand down his chest. The poor boy blushed, obviously revelling in being treated like the man he thought he was by a very beautiful woman who’d seemed to have stepped straight from his fantasies. Mercedes moved closer to him and flashed him a come-hither smile. ‘Be warned, good sir, I can make that shot all night long.’

‘It’s true, she can. Your money is safer in your pocket.’

The all-too-familiar voice made her freeze. Good Lord, Greer was here! Mercedes turned from the young earl and faced him, her stomach plunging to her toes when she saw Ogilvy too. Had Ogilvy just happened to bring a friend? Or was something more malicious afoot? Had Ogilvy sold her out after all? He’d be very sorry when Helen heard about it. There was nothing for it but to brazen it out and hope for the latter while believing the former. Greer’s comment left her very little room to pretend he didn’t know it was her.

Mercedes smiled sweetly and sailed around the table. ‘Mr Ogilvy, have you brought a friend?’ She linked her arm through Ogilvy’s and stared up at Greer, giving him an assessing once-over.

‘This is Lord Captain Barrington of the Eleventh Devonshire.’

‘Enchantée.’
Mercedes unlinked her arm from Ogilvy’s and performed a delicate curtsy, the gesture and the French compliments of Mrs Bouchard’s Academy for Girls.

Greer took her hand and raised it, pressing his lips to her knuckles, conjuring up memories of the last time he’d done that. ‘
Mon plaisir
, Madam Mason.’ He made her name sound deliciously sophisticated, drawing out the Mason to Ma-sown.
‘Est-ce que vous jouez?’
She retrieved her hand and shot him a narrowed-eye look. He knew very well her French was limited to about ten useful phrases and
that
—whatever it was he’d said—wasn’t one of them. She hadn’t exactly excelled at French. She regretted telling him that during one of their long mornings in the carriage.

‘I believe Bonaparte lost the war, Captain. We speak English at Mrs Booth’s.’ That brought a round of laughter from her court.

Greer wasn’t daunted. He selected a cue and began to chalk up. ‘Mr Ogilvy tells me you play a good game.’ He glanced around the room, smiling broadly. ‘Good enough to beat most of the gentlemen present on more than one occasion. He has compelled me to come and defend men everywhere.’ He gave the chalk on his cue tip an efficient blow, looking entirely likeable.

‘Hear, hear,’ came a few cries from the back of the room.

The dratted man was going to steal her crowd if she wasn’t careful. Usually she admired Greer’s ease, how people
wanted
to cheer for him. She wasn’t admiring that trait at the moment. Beneath his aura of bonhomie, he was primed, a veritable powder keg and the fuse was lit. He was going to ignite this room and she’d get caught in the explosion.

He didn’t wait for an answer. Greer gathered up the balls and stepped back. ‘Your table, Mrs Mason. You may break.’

‘Your heart or your balls, Captain?’ came a voice from the crowd. Mercedes smiled at the crass comment, privately reassured. She hadn’t lost the room yet. And she wouldn’t. She’d beat Greer and give these boys a show they wouldn’t soon forget. After tonight there would be no coming back. Susannah Mason would go out in glory.

Mercedes met Greer’s gaze down the length of the table, eyes wide with secret laughter, her mouth a perfect, discreetly rouged ‘O.’ A gentleman or two sighed when she chalked up and raised the cue to her lips in her trademark gesture and blew, knowing Greer would get the unspoken message:
game on
.

She bent low over the table, wriggling her shoulders to advantage; she sashayed up and down the table with a sway of her hips; she flashed coy smiles and sipped provocatively from champagne flutes until most men in the room were worked to a frenzy. All but one. Greer remained most disappointingly unaffected. Unaffected or not, it didn’t mean he won. He lost the first game and the third, and was on the verge of losing the fifth if she potted her next shot. He seemed unbothered by the circumstance. He matched her mad flirtation with his dry humour. The room was enchanted by the pair of them goading each other to greater heights.

Every eye in the establishment was fixed on them. Money changed hands. Mrs Booth came to stand beside her, watching her sink a shot with the cue behind her back to general applause.

The proprietress applauded, too, but when Mercedes stepped from the table, she pressed a wad of pound notes into Mercedes’s hand and whispered fiercely, ‘End it with your next shot. I don’t care if you win or lose, just do it quickly. Your little duel with the Captain isn’t doing business any good. The girls haven’t been upstairs with a customer for an hour.’

Greer made his next shot, which would prolong the game. If he’d missed, she’d have had a clear path to victory in one shot. But now they were even and a ball of his blocked her play. Mercedes had no choice but to scratch. She recited the old gambler’s mantra in her head: sometimes we win by losing. The wad of notes in her hand proved it. But pride made it deuced hard to swallow that reality. She didn’t
want
to lose here or now or to Greer, who had somehow ferreted out her little gambit and had come to ruin her fun.

But she did it, hitting her cue ball too hard and letting it follow its target into the pocket. The crowd groaned. She groaned, too, but pasted on a smile as if it were a trifling thing and called for champagne all around. This got the girls circulating again, moving in and out of the press with trays of bubbling champagne, turning the gentlemen’s attentions elsewhere.

Mrs Booth appeared at her side once more, ushering her and Greer into the hall. She was eager to be rid of them. ‘Why don’t the two of you settle up privately? Susannah, you can use Lisette’s room at the top of the stairs.’ Lisette had left yesterday for a more private arrangement with a well-to-do gentleman.

Mercedes understood it wasn’t a request: it was a command. But she didn’t relish facing Greer behind a closed door, especially if he had the upper hand. She made her choice in an instant. She was
not
going to let him take the offensive and berate her. No doubt he would view this latest behaviour as being entirely beyond the pale. A lady playing billiards in a brothel was almost inconceivable to one of his lofty birth. What he needed to understand was that she was as angry with him as he was with her. He could have jeopardised everything. The moment the door shut behind them, she faced him, hands on hips, and fired her salvo. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

* * *

‘Isn’t that supposed to be my line?’ Greer crossed his arms. Her verbal offensive had caught him by surprise. He’d anticipated having the first words in this conversation. And the last. But he should have known she wouldn’t play by the rules.

‘Let’s be clear, Mercedes,
you
are the one in trouble here, not me.’

‘Me? I’m not the one poking his nose into someone else’s business. You could have ruined everything tonight!’ She flung an arm in a careless gesture that nearly knocked a pitcher off a delicate table. Greer reached out and righted the teetering vessel, taking a moment to get a grip on his vacillating emotions. He should be furious over
her
taking him to task in the middle of a French whore’s boudoir, yet all he wanted to do was kiss her or spank her. At the moment, it was hard to decide which. Both held some appeal.

‘Me?
I’m
not the one playing billiards in a brothel, dressed in disguise—’ Greer ticked off her sins on his fingers ‘—and using a false name while emptying the pockets of your friends’ husbands.’ Lockhart would be furious if he knew she’d been stealing money he saw as rightfully his to win or if being beaten by a woman had scared the men away from the Brighton tournament altogether.

‘It serves them right. They shouldn’t be here to start with. They should be home with their wives. If they were, none of this would have happened.’ Mercedes reached up her arms in a motion that brought her breasts into tight relief against the bodice of her gown and began to remove the wig. Definitely spanking, Greer thought.

Greer laughed. ‘Only you would be able to turn
your
transgression into a moral judgement on your fellow mankind. You make it sound like you’ve been serving up matrimonial justice instead of simply fleecing them.’

She shook out her hair, a sensual gesture that put kissing back in the lead, but her lips tightened. Her eyes narrowed to blue slits. ‘My transgression? I made money the only way I knew how.’

‘By flirting with them? I saw what you were doing to that poor lad in there. He didn’t know up from down with your hand on his chest. You knew very well you’d have him at a disadvantage,’ Greer accused. He knew he played the hypocrite here. He’d been as riveted as the next red-blooded male. She’d been intoxicating to watch. She’d commanded every man’s full attention, giving them their fantasies in the flesh. There wasn’t an Englishman in the room who wouldn’t go home and dream about her tonight.

Greer’s groin tightened at the memory of her leaning over the table, the naughty fire in her eyes indicating she knew precisely what he was thinking as she let the cue slide through the bridge of her fingers in erotic reference to other sticks that slid and sheathed themselves in other warmer, wetter portals.

Mercedes circled him, her coy half-smile flitting on her lips, one hand trailing idly over the shepherds and Staffordshire dogs littering the surfaces of the room. Apparently Lisette had packed in a hurry. Must have been a good offer, Greer thought wryly. Mercedes drew a long finger down the back of a pointer, causing him to repress a most male shudder. He could feel that finger on him, caressing, teasing, drawing its manicured nail ever so lightly down something much more worthy than a china dog. At least he thought he had suppressed it. Her next words confirmed he might not have been so successful.

‘Jealous, were you?’

It was an obvious gambit and she knew very well what she was doing with her dog-tracing act just as she’d known the effect she’d had all night. He really should spank her. She was in desperate need of a lesson. She was trying to provoke him.

‘Jealous? Of middle-aged men and boys without beards? Hardly.’ For a moment he entertained the notion that he should resist. Then he thought better of it. No. She would expect resistance. She was planning to lay siege to
him
. Not tonight. If there was any mastering to be done, it would be by him.

Greer picked up her trail, tracking her around the room. He wanted her to know he was coming, wanted her to anticipate the moment he would catch her. He reached for her arm and spun her around to face him, drawing her to him. ‘You should play with a real man, Mercedes.’

Her breath hitched, her pupils dilated with excitement. ‘I suppose you think that’s you?’

‘Damn straight it’s me,’ Greer growled right before he bore her back to the wall.

* * *

Mercedes stifled a gasp. She barely had time to wrap her arms about his neck before she found herself pressed deliciously against the pink-and-cream-striped wall, Greer’s lips hard at her mouth, his hips grinding against hers in provocative invitation, his desire in rampant evidence where their bodies met. Her breath came uneven and excited as she let the thrill of excitement course through her. He wasn’t the only one burning with need. He’d stoked fires of his own tonight.

Her hands made short work of his waistcoat and turned their attentions to the tails of his shirt, pulling them loose from his trousers in frantic jerks valued more for speed than efficiency. She wanted him naked—fast. He seemed to share her thoughts. In all her concentration on his clothes, her own gown had found its way to the floor in an ignoble heap. She hitched a leg about his hip, her petticoat falling back to reveal a long expanse of leg. Greer’s hand took the invitation, sliding up its length to cup her bottom beneath the fabric.

The act put her in intense proximity with the most male parts of him. She could feel the intimate swell of him at the juncture of her thighs. She nipped at his ear none too gently to convey her growing urgency. ‘Magnificent’ might not do it justice. ‘Greer, these trousers have to go. Now.’ She didn’t wait for an answer. She pulled them down herself, swallowing hard when her hand met with the coveted length of his flesh, hot and rigid in her palm.

Greer wouldn’t tolerate any play when she made to explore. ‘Later,’ came the gruff response. But he was right. They were both too far gone to enjoy any foreplay. What they wanted would be explosive and fast and it would happen against this wall.

He lifted her other leg and she wrapped them both about him, finding purchase between his strength and the unyielding wall. He took her then, in a fierce thrust that went straight to her core and wrenched a wicked scream from her throat. This was decadence and pleasure at its finest. She dug her hands into the thick depths of his hair and tightened her grip, holding him deep inside her as she moved her hips to his rhythm. She gloried in the intimate friction of his body inside hers. He shifted slightly, adjusting his position and thrust.

A gasp slipped her lips. She’d not been ready for the unexpected sensation it invoked. Her mind registered only one thought: more. And yet more of such an exquisite glimpse of pleasure would surely drive her mad. But Mercedes was no coward; she’d risk it. ‘Again!’ she managed, her voice nothing more than a wispy tremble before that singular glimpse transformed into a wave of sensations that threatened to overwhelm her.

She rode that wave, bucking hard against Greer, vaguely aware that he was there with her too in this frenzied roil of rough desires. His hands were hard where they dug into her buttocks, his body heated with exertion as its very life pulsed against her, his voice hoarse with inarticulate need as they crested one final time and the wave broke, spilling them into a sweat-slicked oblivion of sated need.