Wicked All Day
Chapter OneIN WHICH LA VICOMTESSE OVER PLAYS HER HAND.The utter silence that hung expectantly over the card table was broken only by the distant clack!-clackity!-clack! of a roulette wheel somewhere in the depths of what had once been an elegant ballroom. But the merchant who had built the brick mansion two decades past had long since bankrupted himself on -- ironically -- a turn of the cards. And now, in the smokehazed gaming hell, over the merchant's former dinner table, a collective gasp held sway.
The swell of her ivory breasts shifting beneath her plunging bodice, Lufton's dealer leaned over the polished mahogany. The last card fell as if through water, sent floating from Mrs. Wingate's slender fingers like an autumn leaf seeking the rot and ruin of an earthly end.
The ace of hearts.
The collective gasp burst into exhalation, then into reluctant applause.
"Well played, my lord!" For the fifth time in as many hands, Mrs. Wingate pushed a pile of ill-got gains toward the Marquess of Mercer. "Will you try your luck again?"
With a stiff nod, the marquess relaxed into his ... read full excerpt from: Wicked All Day ebook
