Tamsyn hadn’t had the luxury of being sheltered. But that also meant that she never truly learned the art of simpering or coquetry.
Yet somehow, she was supposed to attract Lord Blakemere’s notice, enough to let him know that she was interested.
She exhaled ruefully. She’d spent many a moonless night standing in freezing seawater, hauling crates of fabric and half ankers of brandy, knowing that the custom officers might discover her at any moment—and yet the task of flirting with a handsome, eligible man made her palms damp.
“Are you going to enter?” a young woman asked, fanning herself as she stood beside Tamsyn. “I’m not certain I want to go in. It’s so dull everywhere I turn.”
“I don’t know what you plan on doing,” Tamsyn said to the woman beside her, straightening her shoulders, “but I feel the need to gamble.”
Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the card room.
The setting was far more elegant than any of the taverns where she’d seen card and dice games played. Instead of seamen and farmers crouching around games played upon a coarse stone floor, fashionable men and women sat encircling polished mahogany tables. Rather than rough hands clutching battered cards, the guests wore gloves and played using cards so clean they had to be new, or rolled dice made of shining ivory. Everything here spoke of privileged leisure, so different from what she’d known.
Tamsyn’s gaze skipped quickly from table to table. Her heart jumped when she finally spotted Lord Blakemere in a corner, playing cassino.
God help her, he seemed to have grown more handsome in the half an hour since she’d seen him last. No wonder women—both respectable and otherwise—were drawn to him. She felt pulled in his direction, lured by carnal potential.
Look at me.
But the earl was too absorbed in the game to notice any newcomers, and she tried not to feel disappointment that he didn’t look up when she entered the room.
Trying to appear as nonchalant as possible, Tamsyn slowly made her way around the room, pausing at different tables, pretending to watch the play. She applauded when one of the guests won their hand, but all the while, she was acutely aware of Lord Blakemere’s nearby presence.
What was she going to do once she reached his table? She couldn’t very well throw herself across his lap and cry, “Marry me, my lord!”
She needed to be crafty and calculating, perhaps even more so than she was when storing smuggled French spirits in the caverns beneath her family’s ancestral home.
Finally, she reached Lord Blakemere’s table and found herself struck by the clean angle of his jaw and the hedonistic curves of his mouth. She barely noticed that one gentleman acted as dealer while the other players—another man, the earl, and a dowager in ropes of pearls—studied their cards.
Tamsyn positioned herself behind an empty chair opposite Lord Blakemere, but her target didn’t look up from his hand. It wasn’t until the round was over that he glanced in her direction.
His gaze met hers, and she felt a hot jolt travel the length of her body. Her breath left her in a sudden rush.
Forcing herself to inhale and exhale slowly, she smiled at him. Gradually, he smiled back. It wasn’t a gentleman’s polite smile, but one that seemed to promise wicked things leisurely done under cover of darkness.
Another bolt of electricity moved through her. She’d had men look at her with sexual interest before, but none of those looks held the seductive power of Lord Blakemere’s sultry smile.
He asked, “Would you care to play, Miss . . . I’m sorry, please remind me of your name.”
“Pearce,” she said breathlessly. “Tamsyn Pearce.”
“Odd name,” muttered the dowager. “Tamsyn.”
Tamsyn’s cheeks heated with a flare of temper. Back home, hers was a commonplace name. But she wasn’t one of the thousands of Annes or Catherines or Marys that seemed all the rage in London.
“A charming name,” the earl corrected the dowager. “Cornish, yes?”
“That’s right.” A point for the earl for not dismissing her as a country mouse.
“Never been to Cornwall,” Lord Blakemere said, “though I hear it’s lovely.”
“And a smuggler’s paradise,” the other gentleman at the table added.
Tamsyn forced herself to laugh, and it came out a little shrilly. “The tales of Cornwall’s criminal side are exaggerated by ballads and print sellers.”
“I should hope so,” Lord Blakemere said darkly.
She didn’t like the grim tone of his voice, so she said in a cheerful voice, “Fishing and mining, that’s how we earn our bread.” She smiled brightly, hoping it might cover up the sheer drivel pouring from her mouth.
Lord Blakemere continued to smile, as well. Their gazes held—with that curious heat unfolding deep within her as she stared into his deep blue eyes—and who knows how long they would have simply stared at each other if the dowager didn’t snap, “Are we playing or napping?”
“Miss Pearce, will you join us?” Lord Blakemere asked. “We can be a partnership.”
Oh blast. She hadn’t thought about this possibility. “I would very much like to,” she said, then added ruefully, “only I haven’t any cash with me.”
“I’ll stake you,” he offered at once. “Say, three pounds? No, four.” He reached into his coat, pulled out a sizable wad of cash, and peeled off four one-pound notes, which he set on the table.
She felt her eyes widen. Goodness, he really was profligate with money if he offered her—a stranger—the loan of four pounds. That amount of money could feed a dozen families in Newcombe.
The other gentleman at the table and the dowager merely shook their heads, as if familiar with Lord Blakemere’s extravagance.
“That’s kind of you, my lord,” she murmured.
“Sit down, gel,” the dowager snarled, “or I may perish of acute boredom.”
With a Herculean effort not to snarl back, Tamsyn took her seat opposite Lord Blakemere. He winked at her and her stomach fluttered.
Concentrate, Tam. You’re here to snare his interest, not fall all over yourself like a newborn calf.
Everyone anted one pound note. Her pulse hammered at the thought of risking so much money on a game, but people played deeper in London than they did in Cornwall.
“You know how to play cassino?” the other gentleman asked as he dealt each of the players four cards.
“She had better,” the dowager said tartly. “I’m too old to explain the rules.”
Once the hands had been dealt, the dealer laid out four more cards in the center of the table—the queen of clubs, the four of diamonds, the seven of spades, and the ace of hearts. Tamsyn studied her cards.
She’d negotiated more than one shipment of smuggled goods over card games in smoky taprooms. Surely playing against these stiff necks was easier.
The gentleman opened by setting the three of diamonds atop the four. “Sevens,” he announced. Tamsyn remembered that this was known as building.
Next was Lord Blakemere. He laid the two of hearts on the seven. “Nines.”
Clearly, then, he held a nine, and hoped no one would capture it before he had a chance to.
The dowager grumbled as she set down the jack of clubs, unable to build or capture anything with the card.
Now it was Tamsyn’s turn. She set the nine of diamonds