Free One Good Earl Deserves a Lover by Sarah MacLean Page A

place, no time for Philippa Marbury with her enormous blue eyes and her too-logical mind and her strange, tempting quirks. He pushed back the thoughts.
    He would not have her here.
    “I came to discuss my sister.”
    Knight allowed the change in topic. Too easily, perhaps. “Your sister has character, I will say that.”
    The room was warm and far too small, and Cross resisted the urge to shift in his seat. “What do you want?”
    “It isn’t about what I want. It’s about what your sister has offered. She’s been very gracious. It appears the young lady will do anything to ensure that her children are safe from scandal.”
    “Lavinia’s children will remain untouched by scandal.” The words were firm and unwavering. Cross would move the Earth to ensure their truth.
    “Are you sure?” Knight asked, leaning back in his chair. “It seems they are rather close to quite devastating scandals. Poverty. A father with a penchant for gambling away their inheritance. A broken mother. Add all that to their uncle—who turned from family and society and never looked back, and . . .” The sentence lingered, completion unnecessary.
    It wasn’t true.
    Not all of it.
    He’d never turned from them.
    Cross narrowed his gaze. “You’ve lost your accent, Digger.”
    One side of Knight’s mouth kicked up. “No need to use it with old friends.” Knight took a long pull on the cheroot. “But back to those lucky young boys. Their mother is a strong one. She’s offered to repay me. Pity she doesn’t have any money.”
    It did not take a brilliant mind to hear the insinuation. To understand the foulness in the words. A lesser man would have allowed rage to come without seeing all the pieces in play, but Cross was not a lesser man.
    He did not simply hear the threat. He heard the offer.
    “You will not speak to my sister again.”
    Knight dipped his head. “Do you really believe you are in a position to make such a pronouncement?”
    Cross stood, transferring his coat to the crook of one arm. “I will pay the debts. Double them. I’ll send the draft around tomorrow. And you will steer clear of my family.”
    He turned to leave.
    Knight spoke from his place. “No.”
    Cross stopped, looking over his shoulder, allowing emotion into his tone for the first time. “That is the second time you have refused me in as many days, Digger. I do not like it.”
    “I’m afraid the debt cannot be repaid so easily.”
    Digger Knight had not made his name as one of the most hardened gamers in London by playing by the rules. Indeed, it was Knight’s penchant for rule-breaking that had saved Cross’s hide all those years ago. He’d enjoyed the way Cross’s mind had worked. He’d forced him to reveal how he counted the deck, how he calculated the next card, how he knew when and how much to bet.
    How Cross always won.
    At the tables, at least.
    He turned back to his nemesis. “What, then?”
    Digger laughed, a full-throated, heaving-bellied guffaw that had Cross gritting his teeth. “What a remarkable moment . . . the great Cross, willing to give me whatever I want. How very . . . responsible of you.” There was no surprise in the tone, only smug satisfaction.
    And that’s when Cross realized that it had never been about Dunblade. Knight wanted something more, and he’d used the only thing Cross held dear to get it.
    “You waste my time. What do you want?”
    “It’s simple, really,” Knight said. “I want you to make my daughter a countess.”
    If he’d been asked to guess the price Knight would place on his sister’s reputation and the safety of her children, Cross would have said there was nothing that could surprise him. He’d have been prepared for an offer to become part-owner in the Angel, for a request for the Angel’s floor boss or bouncers to come work for Knight’s, or for Cross himself to take up post at Digger’s hell.
    Cross would have expected extortion—a doubling of the debt, a tripling of it,