“How?” he asked her.

“How what, my lord?” He liked her voice, rich and smoky like a brazier, with an undercurrent of heat. She did not look up at him from studying her cards, arranging them in groups and assessing which needed to be discarded. Whit liked her hands, too, slim with tapered, clever fingers. Gamblers’ hands. His own hands were rather large, more fitting for a laborer than an earl, but, despite their size, he had crafted them through years of diligence into a gamester’s hands. He could roll dice or deal cards with the skill and precision of a clockmaker. Some might consider this a dubious honor, but not Whit. His abilities at the gaming table remained his sole source of pleasure.

And he was enjoying himself now, despite—or because of—the cheating Gypsy girl. They sat upon the grass, slightly removed from the others in the encampment. Whit hadn’t sat upon the ground in years, but he did so now, reclining with one leg stretched out, the other bent so he propped his forearm on his knee. Back when he’d been a lad, he used to sit this very way when lounging on the banks of the creek that ran through his family’s main country estate in Derbyshire. Years, and lifetimes, ago.

“How are you cheating me?”

She did look up at him then. She sat with her legs tucked demurely beneath her, a contrast from her worldly gaze. Light from the nearby campfire turned her large dark eyes to glittering jet, sparkling with intelligence. Extravagantly long black lashes framed those eyes, and he had the strangest sensation that they saw past his expensive hunting coat with its silver buttons, past the soft material of his doeskin waistcoat, the fine linen of his shirt, all the way to the man beneath. And what her eyes saw amused her.

Whit wasn’t certain he liked that. After all, she was a Gypsy and slept in a tent in the open fields, whilst he was the fifth in his line to bear the title, lands, and estates of the earldom that dated back to the time of Queen Elizabeth. That merited some respect. Didn’t it?

“I don’t know what you are talking about, my lord,” she answered. A faint smile curved her full mouth, vaguely mocking. The sudden desire to kiss that smile away seized Whit, baffling him. He enjoyed women—not to the same extent as his friend Bram, who put satyrs to shame and even now made the other Gypsy girls at the camp giggle and squeal—but when gambling was involved, Whit usually cared for nothing else and could not be distracted. Not even by lush, sardonic lips.

It seemed he had found the one mouth that distracted him.

“I know you aren’t dealing from the bottom of the deck,” he said. “I have had the elder hand twice, the hand with the advantage. We know what twelve cards we both have. Your sleeves are too short to hide cards for you to palm. Yet you consistently wind up with one hundred points before I do. You must be cheating. I want to know how.” There was no anger in his words, only a genuine curiosity to know her secrets. Any advantage at the card table was one he gladly seized.

“Perhaps I’m using Gypsy magic.”

At this, Whit raised one brow. “No such thing as magic. This is the modern eighteenth century.”

“There are more things in heaven and earth,” the girl answered, “than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Whit started at hearing Shakespeare from the mouth of a Gypsy. “You’ve read Hamlet?”

Her laugh held more smoky mystery. “I saw it performed once at a horse-trading fair.”

“But you do believe in magic?” he pressed. “Gypsy curses, and all that.”

Her slim shoulders rose and fell in a graceful shrug. “The world is a labyrinth I am still navigating. It is impossible for me to say I don’t believe in it.”

“You are hedging.”

“And you’re gorgio, and I always hedge my bets around gorgios.” She gazed at him across the little patch of grass that served as their card table, then shook her head and made a tsk of caution. “They can be so unpredictable.”

He found himself chuckling with her. Odd, that. Whit thought himself far too jaded, too attuned only to the thrill of the gamble, to enjoy something as simple and yet thrilling as sharing a low, private laugh with a beautiful woman.

She was beautiful. Perhaps under the direct, less flattering light of the sun, rather than firelight, she might not be as pleasing to the eye, though he rather doubted it. Her cheekbones were high, the line of her jaw clean, a proud, but proportioned nose. Black eyebrows formed neat arches above her equally black eyes. Her mouth, he already knew, was luscious, ripe. Raven dark and silken, her hair tumbled down her back in a thick, beribboned braid. She wore a bright blouse the color of summertime poppies, and a long, full golden skirt. No panniers, no stiff bodice or corset. A fringed shawl in a vivid green draped over her shoulders. One might assume such brilliant colors to jar the eye, but on the Gypsy girl, they seemed precisely right and harmonized with her honey-colored skin.

Rings glimmered on almost all her slim fingers, golden hoops hung from her ears, and many coin-laden necklaces draped her slim neck. Whit followed the necklaces with his eyes as they swooped down from her neck to lie in sparkling heaps atop her lush bosom. He envied those necklaces, settled smugly between her breasts.

Whit had a purse full of good English money. He wondered if this girl, this cheating, sardonic siren, might consider a generous handful of coins in exchange for a few hours of him learning the texture and taste of her skin. Judging by the way she eyed him, the flare of interest he saw shining in her gaze, she wouldn’t be averse to the idea.

“For God’s sake, Whit.” Abraham Stirling, Lord Rothwell’s voice boomed across the Gypsy encampment, tugging Whit from his carnal musings. Bram added, “Leave off those dull card games for once and join us.”

“Yes, join us,” seconded Leopold Bailey.

“We’ve wine and music in abundance,” said Sir Edmund Fawley-Smith, his words slurring a bit.

“And dancing,” added the Honorable John Godfrey. Someone struck a tambourine.

The men’s voices blended into a cacophony of gruff entreaty and temptation. Whit grinned at his friends carousing on the other side of the camp. True to form, Bram had his arms around not one but three girls. Leo and Edmund busily drained their cups, whilst John received instruction from a Gypsy man on how to properly throw a knife.

Hellraisers, the lot of them. Whit included. So the five friends called themselves and so they were known amongst the upper echelons of society, and with good cause. Their names littered the scandal sheets and provided fodder for the coffee house, tea salons, and gentlemen’s clubs, their exploits verging on legendary.

Bored with London’s familiar pleasures, the Hellraisers had all been staying at Bram’s nearby estate, spending their days hunting, their nights carousing. Yet they had soon tired of the local taverns, and the nearest good-sized town with a gaming hell was too far for a comfortable ride. It seemed more and more lately that the Hellraisers grew restive all too quickly, Whit amongst them, seeking novelty and greater heights of dissolution when their interest paled. He was only thirty-one, yet he could gain excitement only when gambling. Lounging in the gaming room of Bram’s sprawling estate, Whit and the others had considered returning to the brothels, theaters, and gaming hells of London, but then Bram had learned from his steward that a group of Gypsies had taken up temporary residence in the neighborhood, and so an expedition had been undertaken.

The Gypsies had been glad to see the group of gentlemen ride into their camp, even more so when liberal amounts of money were offered in exchange for a night’s amusement. Trick horse riding. Music. Dancing. Fortune-telling. Plenty of wine. And cards.

“How much wine have you drunk?” Whit called to Leo.