The Redemption of a Rogue, стр. 52
“You look angry, Mr. Fitzhugh. Do you not approve of my methods?” Roddenbury leaned forward. “Or is it more personal?”
Oscar thought of Louisa. He thought of Imogen. “I suppose everything is personal in the end, my lord.”
“Deal the next hand, Mr. Fitzhugh. And why don’t we raise the stakes?” He pushed his money to the center of the table. All of it. “All in.”
“No matter the hand?” Oscar said.
“Life isn’t worth anything without risk,” Roddenbury said with a thin smile.
Oscar shoved his own money in and dealt the cards. Roddenbury motioned to him and Oscar flipped his cards. Two kings. He arched a brow at Roddenbury and waited as the other man flipped his own cards one at a time. A queen. And as he picked up the other card and looked at it before he showed it to Oscar, the earl smiled.
Oscar’s heart sank. He turned the card and revealed an ace.
“I believe that’s the game.”
“That was good luck,” Oscar mused as he watched his money get pulled away by his companion.
“Or something like it,” Roddenbury said with a chuckle as he cleared the table and got up to walk away.
Oscar gripped his hands against the tabletop. So Roddenbury had cheated. And giving that fact away through inference was some odd way to show his dominance, that he was unbeatable. That he was unstoppable.
Oscar couldn’t let that stand.
He stood up and followed Roddenbury, turning him back toward him and yanking him closer. Roddenbury jerked back, cocked his fist and punched Oscar straight in the face.
He reeled at the unexpected attack, at the pain that shot through his cheekbone and around the eye that would surely be blackened in moments. From the corner of that throbbing eye, he saw others coming toward them. He wasn’t a member of this club, but Roddenbury was. Given that fact and their disparate places in Society, he was surely about to be kicked out.
He jerked Roddenbury closer. “I know what you are, Roddenbury. I know what you do. You will be stopped.”
Roddenbury staggered back and held up a hand to stay the men who were coming to intervene. He stared at Oscar for a moment, his gaze moving up and down his frame. Then he shook his head. “You don’t appear to be a foolish man, this little interaction aside. And I certainly hope you haven’t done something you might regret, sir. Because if I find out you have interfered with me…if I find out you are working in league with anyone else to harm me or my business, I will destroy you. I will destroy everything you have, everything you are, I will destroy everything you love. And she…if there is a she…will still suffer. So that loss will be for nothing.”
Oscar’s stomach turned. Roddenbury was talking about Imogen. He guessed, though he might not be certain, about Oscar’s involvement. And so he had come here to feel this man out, to try to uncover if he could be stopped…and instead he had done nothing but bring him ever closer to Imogen.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Roddenbury,” he grunted. “I just meant you were a card cheat.”
“I hope that’s true,” Roddenbury said. “Take this riffraff away.”
Oscar felt the men grabbing for him and yanked from their grip, smoothing his jacket as he pivoted on his heel and strode from the club on his own volition. But as he threw himself on his horse and rode toward home, his stomach churned.
He’d always controlled his emotions for this very reason. And now because he couldn’t stop thinking of Imogen, of helping her and taking the fear from her eyes, he’d probably only made things worse. He might even lose her because of what he’d done.
The thought of which turned his stomach and drove him even harder to get to her.
Imogen was curled up on the settee in Oscar’s library with a book she had been trying to read for over an hour. Only she couldn’t concentrate. Every time she started to lose herself in the tale, she would think of Oscar. She would think of Aurora. She would think of that poor dead woman whose murder had changed her life forever. She’d been searching the papers for days, trying to find some indication her body had been found. Mourning her even if no one else did.
She threw the book aside and got to her feet just as the door to the library opened and Oscar stepped in. She took a step toward him, about to welcome him home with a kiss, when she noticed the circle of a bruise around his left eye.
She rushed forward. “Your face!”
He flinched and lifted a hand to it. “I knew it looked bad when Donovan’s eyes went that wide.”
“What happened?” she asked as she caught his hand and drew him to the settee. He allowed her to force him into a seated position and didn’t argue when she tilted his head to the side to see the injury better in the lamplight.
“I could tell you I walked into a post,” he suggested.
She scowled at him. “For weeks you grumble around here like an ogre guarding his bridge and now you have jokes?”
He pursed his lips. “I’m not an ogre and I don’t even own a bridge.”
She pulled away and shot him what she hoped was a withering look. “Oscar!”
He bent his head and the way his gaze moved away from hers made her stomach plummet.
“Oscar?” she repeated, this time on nothing more than a breath.
“I went to see the Earl of Roddenbury,” he said, and got to his feet to pace away.
Her mouth dropped open, and for a moment she was struck mute with shock. He didn’t fill the silence, and so the only sound was the crackling of the wood on the fire until she managed to find some words. Any words.
“Please