Free The Dollar Prince's Wife by Paula Marshall

Van Deusen bowed to Dinah, registering that she was totally unlike most of the other society women whom he had met in England. He wondered why Apollo was interested in her, something which Cobie explained when all introductions were over.
    â€˜Lady Dinah,’ Cobie told him, ‘is by way of being an amateur historian who hopes to be a professional one. She has been showing me the old letters and papers collected by her ancestors, many of whom, if she will forgive me for saying so, resemble our own wilder politicians more than they might like to think. I should perhaps inform you, Lady Dinah, that Mr Van Deusen is hoping to run for the Senate as a Republican candidate.’
    As usual when she was with him Dinah forgot her usual shyness and found herself discussing politics with Mr Van Deusen as though she had been doing such an unlikely thing all her life. Cobie also noticed that when she was away from Violet and her friends she came to glowing life: not only did her face and manner change, but she displayeda light and elegant wit—with which she was now charming Van Deusen.
    â€˜But I must not keep you,’ she said at last. ‘Violet has been looking for you, Mr Grant. She has been trying to make up a whist table for Rainey now that the reception is over, and she gathers that you like to play an occasional hand at cards. She also mentioned the possibility of poker—do you play poker, Mr Grant?’
    â€˜A little,’ he told her gravely, which had Mr Van Deusen giving him an odd look when Mr Grant said that, but she did not allow it to worry her, particularly since Mr Grant immediately added, ‘If Lady Kenilworth summons me, then I must instantly obey. You will forgive me if I leave you.’
    They both did, and Dinah spent a further happy ten minutes with Mr Grant’s unlikely friend—who proved to be as learned as he had told her.
    It was all much more fun than being a wallflower in the drawing room.
    Â 
    A week later Cobie was trying not to win at poker. He was part of a group of men playing in one corner of the green drawing room at Moorings. A few women, Violet among them, occasionally wandered over to watch them. It was already half-past three in the morning, and most of the house party had gone to bed hours ago.
    â€˜Thought you Yankees were masters of this game,’ grunted Sir Ratcliffe at him, as he raked in his winnings. Cobie had not lost very heavily, but he hadn’t won either, not on that night nor any preceding.
    The sixth sense which often told him things that he sometimes didn’t want to know—but more often did—informed him that to appear a bit of an ass at the game might be no bad thing.
    Some of those who knew that he had accumulated a fortune in dealings on Wall Street had already begun to believe that his fortune had been made for him by other men, and that what he was most possessed of was idle, easy charm rather than the usual Yankee know-how. He had no objection at all to appearing far less shrewd and dangerous than he actually was.
    On the contrary he had frequently found that it was an advantage to be underrated. People became unwary, and now everyone in society was unwary about Jacobus Grant who had made such a hit with the ladies, was a pleasant fellow to spend an hour with, a bit of a fool, quite unlike most of the hard-headed Yankees who invaded London society and whose one idea was to chase after the almighty dollar.
    Not winning, Cobie had often found, was harder work than winning. He had to restrain himself, and when the ass opposite to him, for that was where Sir Ratcliffe sat, made a particularly bad play, it took Cobie all his considerable strength of will not to fleece a black sheep who was so determined to be shorn. Worse than that, though, was his suspicion that every now and then Sir Ratcliffe indulged in some clumsy and obvious cheating—which no one but Cobie appeared to notice.
    â€˜Thought Tum Tum was coming to