“How will you know if I am dishonest, Your Grace?”
He removed his hand. He could not do so without touching her more. She was surprisingly warm.
What had he expected? Icicle by name, icicle by nature?
“I will have to trust to your honour.” He took the seat opposite her and picked up the pack of cards, discarding those they did not need and shuffling them with well-practised ease. “Do you accept my terms?”
She paused a moment, her eyes following the fluid motion of the cards in his hands, and she gave a single nod. “And the winner? What prize is at stake?”
“I don’t suppose you’d agree to withdraw your interference in the Twynham election if you lose.”
“Would you?”
“No.” He began dealing the cards. “A token, then. Nothing valuable. Something of the loser’s own choosing.” A slow grin spread over his face. “A symbol of my victory over you. Or yours over me.”
He had intrigued her. She was trying not to show it, but he was learning to read the minute expressions that betrayed her inner thoughts. The slight pursing of those delicate lips, the subtle tilting of her head.
“Very well.” She took up her piles of cards. “Let’s play.”
By the time Selina realised she had been tricked, it was too late.
It was her own folly that led her astray. She’d always thought of Malcolm as less clever than he liked to appear, so when he began losing, it was only what she had expected.
The questions she asked him as she took each point were banal, unimportant. Did he prefer the theatre or the opera? The theatre, as it happened. Was he more likely to be found at Vauxhall Gardens of an evening, or his club? The club, naturally.
But Malcolm answered every question with an easy honesty, his blue eyes never wavering, and by the time Selina was fifty points up, she felt secure.
Then Malcolm won his first point.
“What quality do you admire most in a man?”
Selina’s fingers fumbled as she spread her cards. The intimacy of the question, after so much triviality, caught her off guard.
“What?”
Malcolm set his cards aside and rested his chin on a hand, watching her keenly. “What quality do you admire most in a man?” he repeated. His eyes flared wider, just for an instant. I’ve caught you now, they seemed to say.
Selina pressed her lips together. “Kindness,” she said, eventually, the word forcing itself out reluctantly between her unwilling lips.
“Kindness?”
“The quality of my father which I remember best is that he was always kind.”
“And is your father the only man you have ever admired?”
“You only won one question, Your Grace.”
“True.” He smiled, taking up his cards again. “I shall pray that my luck continues.”
And continue it did. Malcolm won the next point, and the next, and the next. He did not repeat the question she hadn’t answered. It seemed there was no end to the private details he wanted to uncover.
Did she ever feel lonely? Yes, at times. Who in the world did she most wish to emulate? The Duchess of Devonshire, of course, as she’d said before. Her political impact was still felt now, years after her death.
“And you will manage it without the need to become a duchess,” he said, a teasing gleam in his eyes. Selina opened her mouth to protest, but he forestalled her with a shake of his head. “That wasn’t a question. Play on.”
Selina was exasperated, but not surprised, when he won the next point.
“Of which of your siblings are you the most jealous?” he asked, tossing the question out carelessly, as though it did not constitute a betrayal of Selina’s very way of life.
“I am not jealous of any of them.”
“Is that the truth?”
Selina hesitated. “Anthea,” she said, soft and low.
“Because she’s a countess?”
“Because she has earned respect that has nothing to do with her marriage.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Of course.”
He let her win the next one. If he was still trying to conceal his strategy, he was doing a poor job of it. She knew he had let her win.
“Does it please you to provoke me?” she asked, too frustrated to think of anything else.
Malcolm took the question more seriously than she had expected. He rubbed at his chin, and his eyes made their familiar slow progress over her face, down the length of her arms, around the part of her body visible above the card table. “It does.”
She felt that she had taken more of him than she expected, even though she had already known what he would say.
Malcolm swallowed, studying his cards with more care than he had before. The game was nearly at an end. He was several points up, and his next play would win it, if he got it right. Selina was not at all surprised when he did.
What did surprise her was the way he covered her hand with his as she cast her remaining cards aside.
She looked up to find him watching her hungrily, his eyes serious and his rugged jaw tight.
“Have you ever been in love?” he asked.
Selina did not look away. “Yes.”
“When?”
“As a young girl. The year of my first Season.”
“That explains why you never made eyes at me with the rest of them.”
“That is not the only reason.”
His hand still covered hers, large enough to envelop it completely. She felt a latent strength in its gentle pressure that was both a warning and a promise.
“You used to dance in those days, didn’t you?” he asked.
“I did.”
“Never with me.”
“Once or twice with you, though I am not surprised that you have forgotten.”
“This man you loved. What was so special about him that he won you where no other man could?”
“It was not the man himself, in truth, though he was wonderful. I had been a mother to my siblings for so many years after my parents died. At seventeen, it felt like a burden. He was my escape. Love was my escape.”
“Not forever.”
“Nothing is.” She shrugged and tried to look away,
