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Candles burned in the crystal chandeliers above, and the oil lamps on the tables had all been replaced with red glass globes. Red roses, red tulips, red peonies, all burst from stone urns. Long tables were draped with red velvet and set with glass dishes and trays and china plates, exquisitely displaying strawberry cakes, currant wines, meringues dotted with rose petals. Red as far as the eye could see, until it tricked the viewer into considering they might truly have descended into some nether place.

The footmen were dressed in black, right down to their curled wigs accented with tiny horns, and they circled like silent shadows. The guests were in silks, velvets, rubies, garnets, cravats in every shade of crimson. Just like the food. And no mistake, they were here to be devoured as much as to devour.

The marquis had not forgone his customary blue coat, but it was embroidered in so much red it way as well have been the right color. He lounged with his entourage of fawning sycophants, laughing into his wine. No champagne tonight unless adorned with strawberries, making it looked stained with blood. He looked handsome, and well satisfied with himself.

Not like a man who had more than one woman hidden somewhere inside his fine house.

Clara wanted to punch him right in the eye.

“Steady,” Bram said as if she had spoken out loud.

Devil stayed on the balcony, overseeing the proceedings, eyes sharp and deadly. He did not wear red, or a curled wig, only unrelieved black. His men circled below, armed, focused, and apparently untemptable.

The atmosphere hummed with expectation, fear, greed. Desperation, glamour, beauty. Clara had never seen anything like it. The very air tasted different in the back of her throat. Bram was at her side, wearing a dark burgundy coat and the same kind of watchful, vigilant expression Devil’s men wore.

A hush immediately fell over the nearly two hundred guests when Devil moved to the railing. He did not even have to clear his throat or demand silence. It was given. An offering. Everything here had the feel of an offering.

“Welcome,” he said. “You know the rules, but I will repeat them once and once only so that we are very, very clear. You can wager whatever you like, so long as you can follow through. Money, land deeds, inheritances, jewels. They all come due by sunrise. Vowels come to me and stay with me. Gaming is technically illegal, and debts cannot be enforced. Mine can and will. Ask the Duke of Wilmington what happens when you cross me.”

Everyone knew about the duke. He, and the rest of the ton, had presumed he was untouchable. Dukes generally were. There was no rank above them that was not royal in nature, and indeed, many dukes also had royal blood. They had power, privilege. They could barely be accused, rarely punished, and never executed. aside from treason.

Devil had found a way to destroy him nonetheless.

The duke had tried to renege on a wager lost during a Devil’s Night and paid the price. With interest. He lost his fortune, most of his houses, his mistresses, and his left foot. His was a tale whispered with fear in lavish drawing rooms and ballrooms dripping with gold.

Priya might be every bit as ruthless and clever, but she avoided notoriety. Devil did not. He used it like another weapon, just as sharp and wicked as any sword. Clara envied him that, just a little.

Time was running out, and she could not be subtle or covert any longer.

She would have to take a page from his book.

Chapter Twenty-Six

By one o’clock in the morning, the marquis had lost a horse, three gold watches, and a house in Leeds. He had won Lady Susannah’s coveted chef, and a mummy in a painted gold case arrived just recently from Cairo.

Two men had been thrown out for trying to strangle each other, and four duels were set for the next day. Four inheritances were lost on a single roll of a die. The laughter grew frenzied, interspersed with curses, sometimes weeping. Opera singers came and went, voices soaring to entertain and lend to the fantasy. The guests gambled and drank and ate, as if they had never been entertained a day in their lives. Billiard balls clacked loudly in the converted drawing room. Laughter reached a pitch that made Clara wince. This was not her milieu.

And yet…

She waited several hours, until her feet ached and she was thoroughly bored of the excess, before risking a card game. The round mahogany table, inset with red baize, seated several players: Lady Cabot, Lord Howell, two men she did not recognize, and the Marquis of Eastbourne.

Clara sat down. Lord Howell raised both eyebrows in her direction. “Are you sure?” he asked, not unkindly. When she nodded, he shrugged and went back to his port. The marquis barely acknowledged her. Bram closed his hand around the back of her chair as he had before, brushing her nape with his thumb. She took courage from that. More than was likely wise.

“The game is Brag,” the dealer announced. “First ante.”

Bets were placed: a gold watch, two diamond rings, a black pearl necklace. Clara bet the only thing of demonstrable value she had to her name: her father’s sapphire cravat pin. It was ostentatious, flamboyant. Impossible to ignore. She felt a pang, but dismissed it. It did her more good here and now than in a jewelry box in her London townhouse, waiting to be sold for rent or food if her writing career was over.

One of the ladies complimented the diamond eye of the sapphire peacock. Lord Howell smiled at her. “I recognize that pin. It belonged to the Earl of Surrey.”

Clara nodded. “My father.”

“He did have singular taste.”

She had to smile back. “Yes, he did.”

The marquis won the first round, lounging back in his chair as though it were expected. Clara lost. Also expected. But at least she stayed in the game, whereas the two men she did not know folded entirely. She ignored the murmurs and the whispers. Two more rounds to go.

The marquis was smug and complacent and not entirely sober. No one was entirely sober, so that hardly signified. Save for Bram, of course, at attention and on duty. She couldn’t tell him what she had planned. He would interfere with extreme prejudice.