Page 21 of The Duchess Games

She smiled sweetly. “Not a chance.”

“Why should we follow her?” Juro snapped. “She’s not special.”

“I don’t have to be special, I have to be smart,” she said.

“Just because your mother opened her legs for a—”

Cat pointed at Juro. King Arthur’s hackles immediately rose, and he bared his teeth in an impressive growl. He snapped his jaw once, and a string of saliva hit the floor. Juro swallowed the rest of his insult, stumbling back a step.

She’d taught him that trick in exchange for bits of fried sausage.

Worth every bite she’d gone without.

“Call off yer devil,” Juro barked.

“No,” she replied, pleasant as a lady refusing a second cup of tea.

But she knew she could lose them at the snap of a finger. Once the cargo dropped, there was nothing but their respect for her to keep them from taking all of the goods. She knew they needed her—but they needed to know it too. This wasn’t something she could do on credit. She didn’t have the time or the opportunity to prove herself. Juro would pour poison in their ears every chance he got.

“I’ve got the captain,” she said. “And I’ve got the duke’s signet ring,” she said.

And awed silence fell.

A letter bearing the Tremaine seal would open doors and close eyes that might see too much. That kind of influence to clear the way when cargo was finally ready to be moved was invaluable. And without such an obvious advantage, she might never truly convince the village men to join her operation. To follow her. She had two advantages now: connection to a captain who would only deal with her directly and who traveled to and from Guernsey Island where goods were not subject to British tax, and a duke’s signet ring.

Of course, she didn’t have the ring.

Not yet.

Chapter Eight

She did not get caught sneaking back into the house.

At least not the way in which she might have expected.

There was no footman lurking in the hallway, no scandalized matron with her candle.

Only Callum.

And he did not spring at her out of the shadows. He did not even know she was there.

But she was caught, nonetheless.

The door to his library was partially open, lit by a single candle. He sat in his shirtsleeves, cravat loose, head resting against the scrolled back of a padded chair. His profile could have been a painting, the angle of his jaw, his lips. He was unfairly handsome.

And sad.

And that she could not have.

Cursing herself for being ten times a fool, she knocked very softly. He straightened immediately, the invisible mantle of a duke falling around him, right down to his spine. But she’d caught another glimpse of what still lived underneath.

“Miss Sparrow,” he said gruffly.

The way he said her name. Still said her name. She had to order her knees very strictly not to soften, her thighs not to heat.

“Did you need something?”

“I couldn’t sleep, and I saw your candle. I did not mean to disturb you,” she added.