spattering of applause came from the audience, but the contest was done and their interest with it. Few even bothered to turn as Richard made his way to the front to pay for the painting and make arrangements for its delivery to Greenwood. With the picture now leaning against the back wall, the old fortune teller seemed to be laughing at his expense now, too—as well she should, considering how much more than her worth she’d finally cost him.
“So this is how you seize opportunities to make your own luck, sir?” The redhead was standing beside him, her cheek flushed and her eyes flashing with anger. “I told you I wanted that painting, sir, and you stole it away from me from sheer spite. You swoop down and plunder like a—like a pirate, sir!”
“I didn’t plunder anything,” he protested. “I bid for the painting honestly, and now I must pay through the nose for the privilege, too. Show me a pirate who’ll do that.”
Her eyes narrowed, shaking the scrolled program in her hand as if it were a dagger. “You are no better than a pirate, sir. A thieving, incorrigible, rascally pirate, with no sense of propriety or decency!”
“And if you had outbid me, would that have made you the pirate?” he asked. “I come from a place where piracy’s taken seriously. Would the painting have become your righteous plunder instead of mine, hung alongside your skull and crossbones?”
She gasped, sputtering so incoherently as she struggled for words that he almost—almost—laughed. Instead, against his better judgment, he took pity on her.
“If you promise to surrender your sword, lass,” he said, “then I’m willing to make peace over a dish of tea or chocolate.”
“Go with you, sir?” Tiny wisps of red-gold hair had come free from her bonnet and now quivered around her face, echoing her outrage. “Sit with you, drink tea with you? After what you have done to me?”
“That was my intention, yes,” he said, his patience shredding fast, “though you are making it damned difficult to be agreeable.”
“That is because I do not intend to be agreeable to you, sir.” She took one last look at the painting. “Drink tea with you, hah. Even if you were to suddenly play the gallant and give the picture to me, I would not accept it.”
“But I’m not some blasted foppish gallant any more than you’re agreeable,” he said irritably. “The painting’s mine, fair and square, and it’s going to stay that way.”
“I didn’t need a fortune teller to know you’d say that.” She retied the bonnet’s ribbons beneath her chin with short, quick jerks, the black silk cutting against her white throat. “You can try to bend your luck all you want, but someday, Captain Pirate, you’ll find that luck will bend you back.”
He frowned as she turned away toward the door. “Is that meant to be a curse,” he called after her, “or are you telling my fortune?”
She paused just long enough to look back over her shoulder, her blue-eyed gaze so startlingly intense that he almost recoiled. “You’ll have to decide that for yourself, won’t you?”
She disappeared through the door, and slowly Richard turned back to the painting. Likely he’d never see the redhead again, not in a city this large. But he’d been in London less than a week, and already it had come to this.
A fortune, or a curse.
“Good afternoon, Pratt.” Cassia smiled at the old man as he held the door to Penny House open for her. “I hope my sisters haven’t been making your life too miserable today?”
“Like hell itself it’s been, Miss Cassia,” he grumbled, looking down sorrowfully at his leather apron, covered with silver polish, sawdust and general household grime. “Fussing about like an Irish parlor maid, ordered up an’ down those infernal stairs like it was nothing—that’s not why I agreed to stay on, Miss Cassia, not at all.”
“I know, Pratt, I know,” she said, “but after tonight everything will be ready, and we’ll be busy running Penny House instead of just cleaning it.”
She smiled and patted his sleeve. They needed Pratt to be happy. Pratt was the club’s manager, one of the few members of the staff they’d kept on from Whitaker’s. Once valet to the Duke of Conover, his limitless knowledge of who was who in the aristocracy had already proved invaluable to the sisters. He had suggested which noblemen they should invite to form their new membership committee and who should receive their engraved invitations to join, and he’d even known that twenty guineas should be the precise—if shocking—entrance fee to keep the club exclusive.
“I trust you’re right, Miss Cassia.” His sigh was more of a groan as he dabbed his forehead at the edge of his wig with a linen handkerchief. “Your sister may have been born a preacher’s daughter, but she gives orders like she’s lived all her life in a palace.”
“Pratt, there you are!” called Amariah from the staircase, and he groaned again. “You’re needed in the pantry to help move a table, and— Ah, Cassia, at last you’re home!”
“Good day, Amariah,” she said, wishing she could be heading off with Pratt. “You make it sound as if I’ve been away to China and back.”
“Well, you have been gone for hours and hours, and so much has happened since you’ve been gone.” She leaned over the railing, searching the entryway. “Where is the painting you went to fetch? Is it coming later in a cart?”
“It’s not coming at all.” Cassia untied her bonnet as she glanced into the refurbished dining room. “I didn’t buy it. I see the painters have finally taken down their scaffolding, so I suppose the ceilings are done at last.”
“But you told us the fortune telling painting was perfect!” Amariah hurried down the steps to join her, her white linen apron billowing around her. “You left the space on the wall bare specifically for it—a great, gaping, empty hole, with our first night all but upon us!”
“Then I’ll find something else to put in its place.” Cassia pushed open the tall double doors, eager to avoid answering any more of Amariah’s questions about the auction. This was her own fault, really, for gushing on so much about the painting after she’d seen it in the preview, about how cheaply it would be had. It would have been, too, if not for that dreadful man stealing it away from her. “And I know we open tonight. However could I forget?”
“If you decided against that painting, then you should have been here, working with us.” Amariah followed her through the doors. “How things look at Penny House, Cassia—that’s your responsibility, just as Bethany’s is in the kitchen and mine is—”
“To greet our guests, to oversee the gaming staff and to keep the books.” Cassia sighed, exhausted. All three of them were, from working so hard and with so little sleep to be ready for the first night. That was probably the reason that man had irritated her so over the auction; if she hadn’t been so tired, she wouldn’t have paid him any heed at all. “I’m sorry I took so long, Amariah, but it couldn’t be— Oh, don’t the chairs look fine!”
With the protective cloths finally removed and the painters gone, she wandered through the room, running her hands lightly over the tops of the tables and chairs. The old tables had been sturdy enough to keep, but the few original chairs that remained from Whitaker’s had been so rickety they’d needed replacing before some corpulent gentleman plunged through to the carpet.
Cassia
