The gossip pages of The News of London, April 24, 1833
“Chase is halfway to sleeping with Duncan West,” Bourne said, taking his seat at the owners’ table, tumbler of scotch dangling from his fingers.
She’d done her best to avoid her partners since the embarrassing incident involving West and Temple two days earlier. In fact, she’d almost skipped the faro game that stood for the owners of the Angel every Saturday evening. She’d almost taken to her rooms in frustration and embarrassment.
But she was not a coward, and her partners would have happily called her one if she’d missed the card game.
Nevertheless, it did not mean that she was required to tolerate their questioning.
She pretended Bourne had not spoken, and leaned forward to collect her cards from the table, used only for this game. She, Temple, and Cross played while Bourne occupied the fourth chair with his scotch. The Marquess of Bourne had lost everything in a game of cards on the day he’d turned eighteen, and had not played since.
Unfortunately, he attended the games nonetheless, complete with his foolish grin. He did not seem to care that she had not replied to his initial overture. Instead, he continued, “Though it sounds to me that there would not have been much sleeping involved.”
“I should never have saved your asses all those years ago,” she said.
Six years earlier, Temple and Bourne had been running dice games on the edge of Seven Dials, and they’d made more than a few enemies. On the night Georgiana had decided to offer them the chance to enter into partnership with her, she’d saved them, quite luckily, from a group of ruffians who would have taken their money and left them for dead.
“Probably,” he said happily as he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “But lucky for all of us, you didn’t.”
She scowled at him. “It is not too late to have you handled.”
“As you are occupied with handling West, I cannot imagine you would have the time for Bourne,” Cross said as he took the round.
She tossed her cards to the table, turning wide eyes on him. “You, as well?”
He smiled, there, then gone. “I’m afraid so.”
“Traitor.” She looked to Temple. “And you? Do you have insults to add to the pile?”
Temple shook his head as he shuffled the cards, the waxed paper flying through his fingers before he dealt the cards expertly around the table. “I want nothing to do with this. In fact, if my memory of the event were wiped clean, I would not be unhappy about it.” He closed his eyes. “Like seeing one’s sister in the nude.”
“I was not nude!” she protested.
“It was close enough.”
“Was it?” Bourne asked, his curiosity piqued.
“It was nowhere near close enough,” she insisted.
“But you would have liked for it to have been?”
Yes. No. Perhaps. Georgiana pushed the unwelcome response aside. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Bourne turned to Temple. “Do you think we should tell her that she didn’t answer the question?”
She looked down at her cards, cheeks hot. “I hate you.”
“Which one of us?” Temple asked, playing a card.
“All of you.”
“It’s a pity, as we are your only friends,” Bourne said.
It was true. “And asses every one of you.”
“They say you can tell a man by his friends,” he replied.
“It is a good thing I am a woman,” she said, discarding.
“Which Temple can now confirm.” Bourne paused. “Why do you think none of us have ever had cause to see for ourselves before now?”
Death was too kind for Bourne. He deserved some kind of torture. She glared at him, considering any number of medieval devices. Temple laughed. “We’ve already established that she’s more sister than seductress. None of us would consider it.”
“I considered it,” Bourne said, refilling his drink. “Once or twice.”
The entire table looked to him.
“You did?” Cross asked, voicing all their shock.
“We can’t all be as saintly as you are, Cross,” Bourne replied. “I thought better of it.”
She raised a blond brow. “By ‘thought better of it,’ I assume you mean that you realized I wouldn’t have had you if you were the last man in London?”
“You wound me.” He placed a hand over his heart. “Truly.”
In the six years since the owners of The Fallen Angel had come together with the singular purpose of proving themselves more powerful than the aristocracy, there had been little time and even less interest for anything that detracted from such a goal. Truly, it had only been in the last year, once the club was everything they had planned it to be, that Bourne, Cross, and Temple had made time for love.
Or, rather, that love had ensnared them.
She played another card. “God protect Lady Bourne, as she surely has her work cut out for her. I feel I should apologize to her for my hand in your match.”
Georgiana had been instrumental in matching each of her partners with their wives – none more so than Bourne’s. Lady Penelope Marbury had once been betrothed to Georgiana’s brother, but the match was imperfect, and Georgiana had used her own scandal to extract the Duke of Leighton from his impending marriage, leaving Lady Penelope a spinster for nearly a decade… until Bourne desired her for himself.