am having a bit of bad luck tonight, I’m afraid. But that’s about to change. I have a good hand. I am sure to win.’
Gianna knew where the conversation was going. It was a distasteful one, but one she could handle. She reached up to pull off the pearl earrings that had once belonged to her mother. The count had ordered her to wear them tonight. He’d probably planned on forcing her to surrender them. He knew how she treasured them. She had resisted giving them to him once. It had been a mistake. It had shown the count they had emotional value to her. She’d quickly learned not to make that mistake twice.
The count gave a slight shake of his dark head. Gianna’s jaw tightened and her hands went to the clasp of her pearl choker. They were just things, she told herself. Placate him, give him what he wants. These are nothing in the scope of the greater picture. After their quarrel this afternoon, his demand could have been worse. She would be thankful for this small mercy. She only wanted to be done with him. She would do whatever it took to make it through the next four weeks. She would be twenty-two, old enough to claim her inheritance without him. Whatever her mother had seen in the man during her lifetime, Gianna could only guess.
The count shook his head again and Gianna froze. ‘You are very generous, but I’m afraid your pearls won’t be enough.’ His mouth turned up in a cruel smile. ‘Not those pearls anyway. There is one pearl these gentlemen seem to value, however.’ He paused. ‘I have wagered you, Gianna. More specifically, the pearl between your legs.’
Panic swamped her. He repeated himself, no doubt enjoying the perverse pleasure of saying the crude words out loud. On the surface, it was an appalling wager. Beneath that surface it was truly horrific in a way only the count would recognise. ‘Does my mother mean so little to you that you would make her daughter a whore?’
‘Your mother is dead. She holds no sway here,’ he countered, his words bloodless. ‘I offered you better this afternoon and you refused. You did this to yourself.’
Stay calm. Under no circumstances show him any emotion. She understood the men’s stares now. They were undressing her, imagining what they would do with her, to her, all except one whose gaze was on the count. Her stomach turned. The grip on her ‘calm’ was slipping. It was a Herculean task to maintain her reserve. She wanted to grab up the carefully blown glass goblets on the table and smash them against the silk-clad walls, to rage out loud against the count’s latest barbarism. She would show these men nothing, certainly not the count who thought he could pass her about, wager her as if she was nothing more than a bauble of mediocre value; as if he could wreck her plans with the turn of a card, as if she had no say in the matter. That last was a sticking point. Legally, she had no say, not until she turned twenty-two.
‘This is revenge,’ she accused, anger coursing through her, volcanic and explosive. If she was a man, she’d kill him. But if she were a man this would not have happened. She would have left the count years ago. ‘You are blackmailing me.’
‘This, my dear, is what happens when you leave me no choice,’ the count hissed.
‘Your offer was to marry the morally corrupt Romano Lippi, or to marry you,’ Gianna spat. ‘It was hardly a choice since either option turns a substantial portion of my inheritance over to you.’ She knew a moment’s triumph at the dark look stealing over his face. ‘I’m not stupid. I know exactly what you and Lippi had arranged. The two of you decided to split the inheritance.’
‘I must have something, Gianna. I’ll have my five thousand pounds with or without you. I’m broke and you are all I have left. Don’t worry. I will win and you can rethink your position on today’s negotiations. This is nothing. You’re only being wagered in theory.’
The count took his seat with a wide smile and a relaxed bonhomie at odds with their terse conversation. She was trapped. She would run if she could, but aside from the fact she had nowhere to run, she simply couldn’t. The dratted dress was far too heavy for anything but a sedate walk. So Gianna stood, she waited, she watched and tried not to panic.
The count leaned forward, his face flushed with the fever of the wager and the surety that he couldn’t possibly lose. ‘All right, gentlemen, let’s see your cards.’ Gianna stilled. This was it, the moment of truth.
Nolan knew the truth before the cards were laid down. The count’s hand was good, good enough to understand why he’d had hope of winning. But the count, like many amateur gamblers, lacked the ability to see beyond his own hand. Nolan knew not only what he, himself, held, but what others at the table held as well. The count had not yet learned that a hand was ‘good’ only by comparison.
Nolan lay down his hand. There were a few humorous moans from the other players who hadn’t bet more than they could afford to lose with some élan. But the count went pale. He’d lost everything, even his daughter. Ostensibly. Nolan still didn’t quite believe she was his daughter or even a virgin, although the paleness of the count’s face was starting to make it believable. Or perhaps it was only loser’s remorse, the crash that came after the high of an extraordinary wager before it had gone bust. The girl beside him showed no reaction beyond the movement of her eyes locking on his, a sharp, hazel-green gaze.
In that moment he knew he’d been wrong. She was not a girl. This was a woman. It was hard to be sure of her age, of her experience. Certainly, she was not a first-Season débutante, but neither could she be more than a year or two over twenty. There were flashes of youth in her at odds with the shrewdness he’d seen in her gaze, but she was a woman. Girlhood had been left behind years ago. The question surfaced again: had she done this before? He could usually read people well, but she was blank to him.
‘Perhaps another hand, Signor Gray?’ The count’s voice couldn’t disguise the tremor. Nolan had expected it, the gambler’s recourse; a second hand, a second try, anything to erase the sting of defeat.
‘Do you have another daughter to lose?’ Nolan queried in wry tones. He gave the man a rueful smile in the silence as he rose. The table had become deadly quiet. He needed to make a quick exit for everyone’s sake. ‘I didn’t think so. You have nothing left to wager.’ Nolan extended his hand to the daughter, her face still a blank canvas devoid of any emotion even as her fate clarified itself. There would be no quarter given to the count. He would be held to his brash wager. If she was frightened, angry, embarrassed or any of the thousand emotions one might feel after having been sold into a bargain not of their making, those emotions didn’t show. But Nolan was not dense enough to assume those emotions didn’t exist beneath her calm surface. Calm surfaces harboured all variety of dangers in his experience.
‘Signorina, it seems we are to leave together.’ Nolan took her arm. He would treat her respectfully until she gave him a reason not to. He did not envy her the situation. If she was innocent of all this, she must be in shock. If she was a knowing accomplice, she would be the one to directly endure the brunt of his anger when her duplicity was found out.
Nolan nodded once to the count. When he spoke, his words were for Minotti, but his manners were for her in the hopes of assuring her all would be well. ‘Buonanotte, your night ends here, I think, Minotti. Better luck another day. I shall return her to you.’ It was generous of him. Returning had not explicitly been part of the arrangement. Neither had not returning her. The parameters of this arrangement were somewhat nebulous in regards to their permanence. Nolan wondered which choice offered her the better chance. Would going back to the count only lead to more of this? The idea of her staying with him was impossible, not part of his plans. Nolan could only imagine what Brennan would say—when he stopped laughing.
* * *
This was no laughing matter. Panic receded in the wake of her anger. She had been sold to a foreigner and now she was being carted off like chattel. Not literally, of course. She’d not been slung across his rather broad shoulders, but even the touch of his hand at her back, guiding her through the crush of the ballroom, was too much for her roiling temper. She stepped beyond