Free All I Want by Erica Ridley

Chapter One

    Another elegant soirée, another flesh-crawling proposal from a money-hungry suitor old enough to be Matilda’s father.
    Despite her heeled slippers, Lady Matilda Kingsley fairly sprinted to the gaming parlor. She wanted nothing more than to run home and forget her troubles in the comfort of a good book. But to get there, she needed Cousin Egbert. She’d been his ward for most of her life.
    He’d been a wastrel for all of his. He was a fixture at every gaming table and gambling hell across the city. Worst of all, he had the devil’s own luck. He wouldn’t leave a table until everyone else’s coin clinked inside his pockets, which sometimes took well past dawn.  
    Matilda’s footsteps slowed. Was that Cousin Egbert, swathed in cigar smoke and wrinkled linen, standing with one foot inside the gaming parlor and one foot out? Was he motioning her forward ?
    She stopped walking. Usually she was the one found hovering at a doorway, vainly trying to signal him she was ready to leave, without letting her toes cross the thin threshold from proper ballroom to scandalous gaming parlor. To do so would be to court scandal. And yet, here he was—beckoning her to join him. Something was very peculiar. Her neck tingled. All her senses were on high alert.
    She ventured only as far as the doorjamb, and laid her hand on her cousin’s arm.
    “I want to go home,” she murmured. “Please, cousin. It’s been a long night.”
    Their unspoken arrangement was that if she managed to catch his attention, he was obliged to take her back to the townhouse. But this time, he shook his head. His eyes were cold and hard, his easy smile distorted and mean. Her stomach twisted. She hadn’t seen that expression on his face in years, but she well knew what it meant: there’d be no talking him out of whatever trouble he was brewing. And he meant to involve her in the thick of it.
    “ Please ,” she repeated, though she knew it was useless. His eyes were too glassy. But she had to try. “The music is over. Can we not go home?”
    “Of course,” he said, but his harsh smile only widened. “I’m just finishing a game of chance. If you’ll play my last hand, we can be on our way.”
    Her heartbeat stuttered, then sped to new heights. What could he mean? If crossing the threshold was scandalous, gambling would be ruinous. It could only be a trick. But why? And on whom?
    “You…wish for me to wager?” Her throat was too dry to swallow properly.
    He smiled. “Just play one hand. Then I’ll take you home. I promise.” He gripped her by the wrist and pulled her into the candlelit parlor.  
    Her muscles locked up. She shouldn’t be anywhere near this room. Or these men.  
    Smoke rose from the fingers and mouths of every gentleman present, making the air thick and sickly sweet from the fumes of their cigars. A gaggle of dandies encircled what she assumed to be a gaming table. Two dozen sotted spectators in linen superfine and buckskin breeches surrounded the whole.  
    They parted to let her through.
    The table was small, round, and empty, save for a folded slip of paper and a set of playing cards stacked to one side. A soldier sat at one of the two wooden chairs, his back to Matilda. His broad shoulders and defined muscles filled out his pristine red coat. Golden epaulets and matching stars marked him as an officer. She jerked her gaze toward her cousin. His vicious smile etched deeper into his face as he hauled her in plain sight of the soldier’s face.  
    Owen Turner .
    The roiling in her stomach bubbled over into nausea. She reached out to steady herself. Someone shoved her into the empty chair. She tried not to look, not to stare, but her eyes had hungered for the merest glimpse of him for so, so long…
    He was beautiful. The first friend she’d ever made. The only boy she’d ever loved. A good four years older since last she saw him, his heartrendingly familiar face now belonged to a man she no longer knew.  
    The