“Widowed,” he snapped.
She inclined her head. “So tell me Captain. Is that padding to make your uniform fit properly? Or do you actually have a cock and balls like any other man, for I declare I am in doubt.”
She expected anger− even rage. Many men of her acquaintance would’ve struck her for such a shameless insult.
Captain Wargate smiled. His full lips widened and parted, revealing strong white teeth. She caught her breath. The man was astonishingly handsome when he smiled.
“You’re insulting my manhood, ma’am? I must’ve truly rattled you. Your repartee isn’t usually so crude.”
She glanced away uneasily, and again caught Big Billy’s eye. He nodded to one of the sitting rooms off the main hall. She should go find out what had Billy so worried. She should tend to her business.
Instead she turned back to the captain and purred, “you must forgive me, sir, but I’ve not seen any evidence of your, er, manhood as you so delicately put it. Quite the reverse in fact.”
Stupid. She needed to find the threat, not stand here and trade ineffectual gibes with a man from a world entirely different from her own.
He shifted and suddenly, the broad expanse of his white waistcoat was all that was in front of her face. She glanced up, startled.
To meet too-perceptive dark blue eyes. “Who’re you watching for?”
She opened her mouth, intending to deny or confess, she wasn’t sure, but a loud male voice spoke behind her before she could.
“Gentlemen!”
Coral turned, already knowing the source of that high, excited voice, already knowing what Billy had been trying to signal her.
A lithe Youngman in powdered wig and blazing orange coat leaped to the top of a table. He spread wide his arms. “Gentlemen!” Kindly lend me your ears, for I have an announcement you won’t want to miss!”
By this time the entire room had turned to look, the laughter and shouted talk gradually dying.
Captain Wargate was at Coral’s back and she felt the brush of his chest as he whispered in her ear. “That’s the one you were watching for, isn’t?”
She gave a single jerky nod.
“Who is he?”
“Jimmy Hyde,” she said grimly.
“And what is he?”
But there wasn’t time to answer and she wasn’t sure she could in any case.
Jimmy was talking again. “Tonight, gentlemen, you are very fortunate. Very fortunate indeed! For tonight you’ll witness a game of chance like no other.”
“What kind of game?” a tall elderly man in a full-bottom wig shouted.
“Loo, sir!’ Jimmy called back.
“Phht!” A thin-lipped dandy in black and scarlet shrugged a discontented shoulder. “I can get a game of loo in any gambling house in the city.”
“True, sir, very true!” Jimmy might be a spawn of Satan himself, but he knew how to work a crowd. He grinned and raised his right hand with a flourish. “But I’ll wager, sir, you’ll not find a pot like the one Aphrodite’s Grotto offers tonight.”
“And what pot’s that?” a royal duke drawled.
Jimmy turned and in the second before he spoke, Coral met his evil little eyes. “Why, gentlemen, we offer up Aphrodite herself!”
She staggered, though no one but Captain Wargate would’ve noticed since he caught her at once about the waist to steady her. What nasty plan had Jimmy come up with now? She hadn’t sold her own body in over two years. He knew that. He knew how much she hated it.
Which, obviously, was his point.
Jimmy grinned again like an impish monkey bent on destroying what soul she had left. “Seven full nights, gentlemen! Aphrodite will serve the winner for seven nights of bliss in any and every way he wishes!’
A buzz began in the crowd, like flies swarming to a wounded deer. Jimmy jumped from the table and held out his hand to her, graceful, indolent, the command almost entirely hidden. “Won’t you my dear?”
And there wasn’t anything she could do. He held the majority share in the Grotto. Four months ago a fire had raged through Aphrodite’s Grotto. She’d been very lucky. No one had died; all the girls, and boys, and the marks had gotten out; and only part of the building had been lost. But the back wing had needed to be rebuilt and furnished, and then when the Grotto opened again, she’d thrown a grand celebration to show she wasn’t down. Coral Smythe wasn’t out of the business.
But all of that had taken money. Too much money. She’d borrowed from Jimmy Hyde, only later finding out that several of her original backers had already sold their portions to him. By the time she’d realized what he was doing, he’d held the majority share in the Grotto. In effect, he owned Aphrodite’s Grotto. Which meant he owned her. If she refused, Jimmy was quite capable of tossing her out in the street. Without her, the Grotto girls and boys would be unprotected− and subject to Jimmy’s less then tender mercies.
Coral calculated and decided quickly. If she showed reluctance, he’d be twice as gleeful at her misery. That much she’d learned about Jimmy Hyde in the last four months.
So instead of trembling, instead of balking or running away, Coral threw back her shoulders and stepped away fro, Captain Wargate’s protective hands. She sauntered forward and placed her hand in Jimmy’s and then she looked about the room, her head held high.
“It will be my pleasure,” she murmured, and she put every ounce of allure and promise that she’d ever learned in her life as a courtesan into that one sentence.
Which, frankly, was quite a lot.
The crowd erupted into a roar.
“One hundred guineas!” Jimmy called, raising his voice above the eager shouts. “ One hundred guineas to join this game, gentlemen! Who’s in?”
That silenced them, and even Coral’s lips parted beneath her mask. One hundred guineas was a mad fortune. He r best working girl only made eight guineas a night− and that was when the mark was too drunk to realize his folly. Jimmy had lost his mind. No man would gamble a fortune for a chance− a mere chance– of winning her for a sennight.
But broad dark-blue shoulders were making their way through the crowd. Captain Wargate parted the men standing in front of Jimmy and without even looking at her slammed down a worn leather money bag on the table.
“I’m in.”
Chapter 2
Now the Ice Princess lived in a land far to the north where the snow and ice never melted and the winds were so cold a man's nose might very well freeze and fall off if exposed to the air for too long. Her castle was carved from drifts of snow, the huge empty halls hung with icicles and despair. The princess herself sat on a glittering throne of solid ice in the middle of a frozen lake. Her gown was of lacy frost, her crown of sharp icicles, and the icy pale oval of her face was perfect in its frozen beauty. . . .