It took a moment for Leo to calculate, swaying on his feet. “’Bout four or five mugs.”

“Ten guineas says you don’t make it to six before falling arse over teakettle.”

“Done,” Leo said immediately. The nearby Gypsies exclaimed over the absurdly high amount of the wager, but to Leo, and especially to Whit, the amount was trivial.

Whit smiled to himself. Leo was the only son of a family who made their fortune on the ’Change, and he was the only one of the Hellraisers who wasn’t a gentleman by birth. He felt this distinction keenly and, as such, met any challenge with a particular aggression. Which meant that Leo took any bet Whit threw his way.

“Your friends seem eager for your company,” the Gypsy girl said wryly.

Whit brought his gaze back around to her. “We do everything together.”

“Everything?” She raised a brow.

“Nearly everything,” he amended. Bram might have no shame, but Whit preferred his amorous exploits to be conducted in private. He wondered how much privacy he could secure for himself and the girl.

A striking older Gypsy woman walked up to where he and the girl sat and began scolding her. Whit could not understand the language, but it was clear that the older woman wasn’t very pleased by the girl’s behavior. The girl replied sharply and seemed disinclined to obey. The older woman grew exasperated. Interesting. It seemed as though Whit’s saucy temptress proved as much as a termagant to her own people as to him. Though Whit wasn’t exasperated by the girl. Far from it. He felt the stirrings of interest he had believed far too exhausted to rouse.

“My granddaughter, Zora,” huffed the older woman. Her accent was far stronger than her granddaughter’s. “Impossible. ’Ere the fine gentlemen come for dukkering, and she does not dukker.”

“What’s dukkering?” asked Whit.

“Fortune-telling,” the girl, Zora, answered. A fitting name for her, perfumed with secrets and distant lands. “Is that what you want, gorgio?” She set down her cards, then held out her hand. “Cross my palm with silver, and I shall read the lines upon your hand. Or I can use the tarot to tell your future.” She nodded toward a different deck of cards sitting nearby, upon a scarf draped over the grass.

“I don’t want to know the future,” he said.

“Afraid?” That mocking, tempting little smile played about her lips.

“If I know the future,” he replied, “it takes away all of the risk.”

This made her pause. “You like risk.” She sounded a bit breathless, more than the heat of the nearby fire reddening her cheeks.

He gave her a smile of his own, not mocking, but full of carnal promise. “Very much.”

Zora turned to her grandmother and spoke more in their native tongue. With a loud sigh and grumble, the older woman trundled away.

Whit seized his opportunity. “I can give you five times what you’d win from me if you tell me how you keep winning at cards.”

“I thought you enjoyed risk,” came her quick reply.

“There’s a risk in cheating, as well. Someone might catch you. And if they do catch you, who knows what they might do. Anything at all.”

She gazed intently at him, then shook her head, firelight lost in the darkness of her hair. “No. It would be too dangerous to give those skills to a man such as you.”

“A man such as me?” he repeated, amused. He set his cards down upon the ground. “Pray, madam, what sort of man am I?”

Her fathomless eyes seemed to reach deep inside him. He felt her gaze upon—within—him, a foreign presence in the contained kingdom of his self. After a moment, she said, “Handsome of face and form. Wealthy. Privileged. Bored. Throwing years of your life upon a rubbish heap because you seek something, anything to engage your restless, weary heart and prove you are still alive.”

Whit laughed, but the sound was hollow in his chest. He didn’t know this girl. Didn’t know her at all, having met her for the first time earlier that very evening. She certainly did not know him. He was an earl, for God’s sake, with a crest emblazoned upon his carriages. No fewer than three substantial estates belonged to him, all of them staffed with small armies of liveried servants.

She lived out of a tent. Whit wasn’t sure she even wore shoes.

Yet a few words from her cut him deeply, far sharper than any surgeon’s blade, and much more accurate. Why, he wasn’t even aware he bled, but he was certain he’d find droplets of blood staining his shirt and stock later as he undressed for bed.

His solitary bed.

“If you won’t divulge your secrets with the cards,” he said with an insouciance he did not quite feel, “perhaps I can tempt you to reveal other, more personal secrets.” There could be no mistaking his intent, the suggestive heat of his words.

She drew in a sharp breath, but whether she was offended or interested, Whit couldn’t tell. Despite her insight into him, he possessed none of the same insight into her, making her as opaque as a silk-covered mirror. When his physical needs required satiation, Whit knew women of pleasure in London, Bath, Tunbridge-Wells. Actresses, courtesans. He knew their wants, their demands, the systems—both crude and elegant—through which they negotiated their price. A mutually beneficial relationship, and one he could navigate easily.

When it came to offering a night of pleasure to a fiery Gypsy girl, here, Whit found himself happily at a loss. Happily, because he had no idea how she might respond, and the inherent risk made his pulse beat a little faster.

“Would you see me financially compensated for revealing those personal secrets?” she asked, her own voice sultry.

“Absolutely,” he said at once. “If that is what you wish.” He moved his hand toward the purse he kept tucked into his belt, but then he stopped in surprise when she reached over and clasped his wrist. Her grip was surprisingly strong, surprisingly arousing. He felt her touch spread like a lit fuse through his body, beginning the reaction eventually leading toward explosion. Whit stared down at her hand, her dusky skin tantalizing against his own lighter-colored flesh, then up at her face as she leaned close.

“Romani chis are not your gorgie whores, my lord. Especially me.” Her voice was steady, yet her eyes were hot. “I may lie to you, but not with you. Not for coin.” She released her grip and sat back, and Whit felt the echo of her touch. “If I were to take any man to my bedroll, it would not be for money.”

Which seemed to imply that she might share her bed with a man, only without any sort of monetary inducement. That sounded promising.

Before Whit could speculate on this further, Bram staggered over with his arm hooked around the neck of a Gypsy man. The Gypsy looked a little alarmed to be so close to the tall, somewhat inebriated stranger, but could not easily break free.

“Taiso here just told me something very interesting,” Bram said. “He said that a few miles from here is a Roman ruin. Isn’t that right, Taiso?”

The Gypsy man nodded, though from eagerness to rid himself of Bram or ready agreement, Whit couldn’t tell. “Aye,” Taiso answered. “To the west. On a hill. Many old columns, and such.”

“Bram, if your estate is nearby, wouldn’t you already know about a Roman ruin?” Whit asked.

Apparently, this had not occurred to Bram. He frowned. “Must be a new ruin.”

The Gypsy girl, Zora, snorted. Whit found himself smiling.

“We should go investigate,” Leo said, ambling forward with John and Edmund trailing.

“No!” yelped Taiso. “Ye oughtn’t go there. ’Tis a place of darkest magic. The haunt of Wafodu guero—the Devil!”

“So much the better,” said Leo. “We’re Hellraisers, after all.”

Edmund and John chortled their agreement. “This place is getting deuced dull,” Edmund added.

Whit didn’t think so. Though he was uncertain whether the tantalizing Zora might share a bed with him, he wanted to stay with her longer, even if it meant simply talking. He couldn’t remember being so engaged in a conversation for a long, long time.