am saying that I still have a daughter—’ a nasty look spread across his face ‘—to stake. Just give me one last chance to win something back,’ he begged.
‘Out of the question,’ he replied, despising the man who had just ruined himself.
‘She’s pretty. And still a virgin,’ Peters gabbled, sweat breaking out on his florid face.
Lord Sandiford, who had gone down to the tune of four hundred guineas without batting an eyelid, sniggered. ‘You are wasting your time there, old man. Better sell her outright to me. Lord Matthison has no use for women.’
‘Not living ones,’ he agreed, shooting a pointed look at the hell’s newest hostess, who had been hovering by his shoulder all night. At one point, he had found her perfume so cloying that he had told her quite brusquely to move further off. She had pouted, and looked up at him from under half-closed lids, purring that she would await his pleasure later.
‘What do you mean by that?’ demanded Peters.
Everyone at the table fell silent. Very few people had ever dared ask Lord Matthison whether there was any truth in the rumours circulating about him.
Mr Carpenter shot Lord Sandiford a look of disgust, which turned to loathing as his eyes swept past Lord Matthison, got up so quickly his chair overturned, and made hastily for the exit.
‘The only woman I am interested in, Mr Peters,’ Lord Matthison replied, choosing his words very carefully, ‘is Miss Cora Montague.’ He felt a ripple of shock go round the room as he finally spoke her name aloud in public. Several men at nearby tables twisted round in their seats, hoping to hear some new titbit about the scandal that had rocked society seven years earlier.
‘In her case, I was willing to stake my very soul on just one throw of the dice,’ he said enigmatically. ‘And I lost it.’He got to his feet, wondering whether proclaiming his allegiance to her ghost in a hell-hole like this would be enough to entice her back to his side.
What had he got to lose?
‘She has my soul, Mr Peters.’And then, considering the massive amount he had just won tonight, his breath quickened. Even though he had not felt her presence, his luck had definitely turned. ‘Or perhaps,’ he added, feeling as though a great weight had rolled from his shoulders, ‘I have hers.’
The girl who had been trying to get his attention all night was standing by the door. The owner of the hell was holding her by the arm, and talking to her in an urgent undertone.
Lord Matthison pulled out a banknote and waved it under her nose.
‘Still think you’d like to earn this?’ he taunted her.
She shrank back, her face turning pale as the owner of the hell moved away, leaving her alone with him. Lord Matthison put the money back in his pocket.
‘Clearly not,’ he drawled. ‘Very wise of you.’
It was a relief to get out into the street, and breathe air not tainted by cigar fumes and desperation. ‘Did you see that, Cora?’ he asked of the black-velvet shadows of the alleyway. ‘Did you hear me tell them?’
But there was no reply. She did not come skipping to his side, to keep him company on the long walk home. Instead, he had a fleeting image of what that nameless daughter would feel like when Peters went home and told her he was going to sell her to Sandiford. Swiftly followed by the horrified look on the face of that woman he had mistaken for Cora two days before.
‘It is not my fault Peters tried to sell his daughter to me,’ he growled as he set off through the dark, damp streets. ‘I only went to the tables to find you.’
But she had not been there. And so the money that was making his coat pockets bulge meant nothing to him. He had no use for it.
When he reached his rooms, he drew out all the banknotes that had formed part of the winning pot and thrust them into his manservant’s hands.
‘I ruined a man named Peters tonight,’ he bit out. ‘Take this money, and hand it over into the keeping of his daughter. Tell her she is not to let her father get hold of it. Or she will have me to answer to.’
‘Sir.’ Ephraims’s eyebrows rose a fraction, but he went straight out, without asking any questions.
Until tonight, Lord Matthison had felt not one ounce of pity towards any of the men from whom he’d won money. To his knowledge, he had ruined three.
But tonight, he could not bear to keep one penny of that money. He had only gone to the tables to find Cora. Not to bring more misery to the child of a compulsive gambler.
He went to his room, and shrugged off his jacket, the coins spilling from his pockets and rattling across the boards.
‘I did not want that money for myself, Cora,’ he explained, sitting on a chair by the bed to tug off his boots. ‘You know I don’t need it. I’ve invested wisely these last few years.’ Somehow that admission only made this evening’s work seem worse.
‘I have ensured the girl will be safe,’ he protested, untying his neckcloth and letting it slither to the floor.
‘Does that please you, Cora?’ he addressed the shadowed corners of his room. But there was no answer.
With a groan of despair, he lay down on top of the bed, still fully clothed, and flung his arm over his eyes. If she was not going to come back, he did not know how he could bear to go on.
There was no satisfaction to be had in ruining one man, or bestowing largesse on another.
Not when she wasn’t there to see it.
He needed her.
God, how he needed her!
He felt as though he had barely closed his eyes, when he was woken by the sound of somebody knocking on the door.
Persistently.
Ephraims must still be out, he thought, sitting up and running his fingers through his disordered hair. He would have to deal with whoever was visiting himself. Probably one of the men from whom he had taken promissory notes the night before, he decided as he padded barefoot to the outer door.
However, it was not a shamefaced gambler who stood on his doorstep, but the grubby street sweeper from the night of the vision on Curzon Street.
‘Grit,’ he observed, opening the door wider to admit the rather scared-looking boy. ‘You had better come into my sitting room.’
‘Her name is Mary,’ the boy announced without preamble, the moment Lord Matthison sank wearily on to the sofa. He did not really want to hear anything the lad had to say. But he might as well let him earn his tip, since he had plucked up the courage to walk into the devil’s lair.
‘The red-head you was after. She come to Lunnon about six or so years ago as an apprentice, and has been working her way up. Well, not that she’s indentured regular, like, on account of her being a charity case.’
Lord Matthison brushed aside the apparent coincidence of that female appearing on the scene about the time Cora had disappeared. Hundreds of working girls came up to London from
