“Sit down, Lord Foxton.” Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s command hit him like a brick to the head.
“I no longer wish to participate,” Felix said, keeping his voice a cold, black void.
Something flickered across Caroline’s face.Relief?
“You are participating,” the Black Widow said, her voice as sharp as a guillotine.
“I fold.”
“Too late. And this is not cards, Foxton.” The veil likely hid a stout eye roll. “Mr. Maxwell, read the answers.”
Caroline’s brown eyes, so damn familiar now, were wide, a bit wavery, emotion flicking through them as quickly as a deck of shuffled cards. Felix lowered to his chair, the slow, controlled speed of his descent hiding the rage rushing through his body, making every muscle rigid.
She cleared her voice again, a tick she’d exhibited multiple times over the last half hour and clearly a means of shaking her “masculine” voice into place. No wonder it had sounded so wrong, so grating. It was. A farce, a trap. He’d fallen right into it.
She read the first riddle aloud and then the answer. “Three of the four gentlemen got it right. Condolences, Lord Partridge.”
Mrs. Dove-Lyon stood behind Caroline, her hands clasped behind her back. “It’s not all over for you yet, though. Continue, Mr. Maxwell.”
Mr. Maxwell.Indeed.
He’d answered questions two, three, and four correctly as well. And the final riddle was notprickafter all butpen. He’d chosen well. Victory was his.
Damn it.
The surge of triumph fell straight off a cliff. He’d chosenpoorly. Every correct answer led straight to Caroline Maxwell’sbed. Dread rose steadily, clogging his throat, cinching his lungs when he got the third riddle correct and rushing his heart into a race to extinction when she declared he’d answered every single riddle correctly.
And so had Beckwith. He must have been bluffing about the riddle forpen, making everyone think it wascock, giving them a false hint.
Across the table, Beckwith grinned. “You and me, old man.”
Dread flickered black dots across his vision. The smooth control he wore always like a perfectly tailored suit flickered, too, his hands fisting on the tabletop.
Beckwith was a good man, but he’d bed Caro then leave her to rot in the country. Nothing less than Felix himself had planned to do to her. Still planned.
She deserved it after this farce.
But perhaps Caro was not the bride. No way of knowing her intentions. Until someone won and Mrs. Dove-Lyon revealed the bride’s identity. Felix still needed a wife. As long as it was not Caro, whose young face he remembered still. So very well.
So confident and sunny, chasing round his invalid’s chair in the garden… He was no longer that sick boy. He needed no one. Wanted no one. Desired only the siren call of the next challenge. Last month it had been spending a week in Seven Dials withno money. Yesterday it had been a ten-hour marathon of duels at Angelo’s without rest. Tonight a game of riddles to win a wife or lose a house. Tomorrow, who knew. Perhaps he’d die in a curricle race to Bath. Not out of the realm of possibility. He welcomed the risk. The best way to really feel alive.
Marrying the sunny Caroline the best way to lose himself to unwanted memory. And more.
Was she the bride or wasn’t she? To win or to lose? A child’s game suddenly became dangerous. Just as he liked it.
The rustle of paper, and Caroline cleared her voice. Again. “The tie breaking riddle is…” She seemed unsure, lips parting in clear hesitation, eyes flickering across the paper. She closed her eyes, cringed, then said, “Fatherless and motherless, and wanting the skin, it spoke when it came to the world, and it never spoke again. What is it?”
He couldn’t look away from her.
She wouldn’t look at him.
He’d bet a thousand pounds the riddle she’d just spoken was not on that paper. He’d also bet the riddles mattered to her. There, in her voice—the outcome of this game mattered. He’d bet…
Shewasthe bride.
“I know it.” Beckwith spoke with soft assurance, his body relaxing into the sort of confident, slouched posture Felix had been playing with all evening.
Only now Felix grew taut as a bow, every muscle harder than marble. Because if Beckwith knew the answer, Felix sure as hell did not.
