“I don’t know how one goes about these things.” She cleared her throat and paced a bit, unable to be still under that direct, topaz stare. “I’m in desperate need of funds…”

“I’m not a money lender,” he cut in. “I’ll direct you―”

“No.” She stopped and turned, looking at him. “No. I…I have heard about you and about this place. I know that I could go to other…businessmen.” She shuddered and told him, “I’ve been in London a week and discreetly checked them out. But I couldn’t…”

Gabriel had by now taken in her face as any shrewd businessman would. She was in her early twenties he’d guess, and around five feet four. She had hazel-green eyes, autumn shades, and a face that was healthy in color from being outdoors. She had even features, apricot lips, a slim nose, slightly arched brows, an angled chin and jaw. No beauty, but possessing an entirely artless look. Not the kind of woman who usually came through his doors.

“I’m known for my discretion too. So why don’t you tell me your name, state your business, and I will direct you to whomever may be able to assist you.”

She wet her lips. “I…I’m Blair Mitchell. I am twenty-five. I own a farm…well, not exactly.” She looked down, tossed the hat onto the settee and turned around again folding her arms and causing the baggy jacket to look worse. “There’s a man, a Sir Thomas Krandel…”

“I know him. Wealthy, tall, thirty-six, black hair, made his fortune in sheep and factories.”

She blinked. “Yes. That’s him. I owe debts…they became mine when my parents died. My brother already works in Krandel’s button factory. We sold off what we could, and though the factory is killing Victor, Krandel holds many of the notes and has always desired the farm. There are only a few acres left and the house, but Krandel has begun threatening me… He has given me two weeks to pay the rest of the debt, or he’s taking the farm.” She unfolded her arms. “It’s my home. I’ll end up in the factory too….”

Gabriel slid an ornate box over on the desk and withdrew another cheroot from it. “Have you any idea how many people come through that door with stories like yours?” He lit it and drew, blew the smoke and added, “If you wish to make your money the way other women do here, I’ve no objection. Just don’t take the patrons from the tables or out the door until they’ve finished their play.”

She frowned.

He uttered succulently, “Sex.”

Blair didn’t blush, because she said next, “I thought of that. I met Madam LaBelle…” She fidgeted with the jacket cuff. “It has occurred to me many times that I may as well go to work there, and make a bigger sum, than to work for Krandel.“ She met his gaze. “Madam would only let me work there for a week, if I allowed her to auction my virginity.”

Gabriel’s brow rose by degrees. “You’re a virgin?”

The way he said it almost made her laugh. However, she was in too much of a hurry, and too much of a bind to do anything but think of a way to repay Krandel.

“Yes. But, the percentage she is taking, and…the fact that Sir Thomas Krandel frequents her house, so she tells me, and has rather violent taste…well, she would not exclude him from the bidding, and she says most of the men who want virgins are eccentric in their…tastes.

She assures me there are narcotics that would make the whole business tolerable. But violence or worse, I don’t want to risk the trauma of that.” She scraped her teeth over her bottom lip and murmured, “I live on a farm. I know the basics, but I don’t think I can stomach someone…th…

He apparently got her meaning. “As I said, you can make an arrangement here. If you wish I shall ask Madam about the more…shall we say, normal patrons.”

Madam LeBelle, a few discreet doors down, had the equivalent to his club in her bordello of beauties. Thus, he supplied the roof, the rooms, the ready customer for females who did domestic work or such and wanted to make extra coin on occasion. So long as the girls did not take customers from the tables or entice them to leave, it was between them which favors they sold.

He was aware that LeBelle dealt in opium and other hallucinogens to enhance her customer’s pleasures and to make them lose their inhibitions. He wanted no part of that trade, though many of his patrons had visited LaBelle’s beforehand and were more than intoxicated upon arrival. This he ignored also. But he would allow no drug peddlers in the club. It might enhance sexual adventures, but it inhibited the gambler. He ran a fair house, because to do otherwise would have lost him business, and he, as much as any man, enjoyed the challenge when a patron was winning.

“Oh, but…I thought…that I would arrange something discreet with you? That if you loan me the money, I will owe you, and not Krandel, and Madam said that you pleasure…she said that you were…skilled…knowledgeable, and… and that… You had not had virgins. That maybe, since you had stopped accepting female clients, you would take me in exchange.”

“Madam has a warped sense of humor,” Gabriel muttered dryly. The old bird was likely laughing her arse off about this. As they’d shared a drink when she came by to gamble, he knew that she gained great amusement at what he did with society wives, and, that he had now stopped. She’d offered him any of her girls free of charge if he would send his patrons there. He wouldn’t. This was her bit of light revenge.

“Oh… Then you won’t take the offer?”

He was not interested in saving the world. London’s streets were thick with prostitutes, beggars, and homeless orphans. Country girls, immigrants off ships, they all showed up eventually, and he sent them to some contact who would give them work in houses or a temporary bed. He lived in a world separated from all others by more than a door, and he had gotten where he was by his own wits and sacrifices, his own planning.

“I’m not a money lender,” he repeated again. “Nor does the fact I avoid virgins have anything to do with my desire to have one. I don’t. In my business dealings, whatever service or arrangement I provided was directly connected to making a profit for the club.“

She processed that. “If you loan me the money. I know I am not beautiful like women who come here, but I’d be your mistress…for free. You could come to the farm, or I’ll come here. You won’t have to pay me anymore, or provide me with anything.”

He considered her shrewdly. “When did you decide that?”

She replied with blunt honestly, “When you came through the door.” Her hazel eyes moved over him and then rose to meet his gaze once more. “I expected someone far different. Negatively so. But you…well, take my breath away.”

Cynic, jade that he was, Gabriel saw a candor, an unmasked sort of reaction in her expression that stilled his whole body. Women complemented him, they talked, they praised, and they lusted. It was business, and when he was in the business mode, his objective was to attain the goal, the coin. Thus his head was entirely involved, his body merely a tool, and his heart? That remained as distant as always. He felt that organ was not only fickle, but the source of many foolish mistakes his patrons made in their lives. It was sexual, often coarse, and all selfishly attached to his giving them their money’s worth. He wasn’t sure if it was discomfort or surprise that he was feeling at this country woman’s bluntness.

“I’m flattered.” He smiled slightly. “However, I’m not in need of a mistress.”

Blair felt a tense panic hit her stomach and tighten her skin. She had five days in essence, because of the time it took for traveling, and none of the seedy places she’d investigated were places she wanted to sell her body. They were like prisons, and the girls made nothing. Most never left the walls. That wouldn’t help her. If she had to do it, and it looked as if she did if she wanted to keep her home and get her brother free of the factory, she would just as soon do it with a man LeBelle described as a lover whom women paid to sleep with. One who’d made half his fortune because he was skilled in pleasing them.

Her fingers trembled as she took off the jacket and tossed it with the hat. She had on a thin white cotton shirt, lose but tucked in her black trousers. Blair noted that the Fox was merely watching, nothing showing on his face. But she undid the neck cloth and removed the collar and then three buttons until her cleavage showed.

Holding the collar and neck cloth she rasped, “I have bought and traded animals on their assets or flaws. Since I've never lain with a man, I cannot judge myself on either. I know my face is not as fair as you’ve seen… But I am willing to strip down so that perhaps you can judge me, and reconsider?”

Gabriel’s loins stirred. He was vaguely surprised to feel it after years of separating it in his mind, and years of acting out, and playing an assigned role.

He would have vowed moments ago that there was nothing stirring about basic sex. Men could do the thing with little foreplay or even desire. Male and female bodies, once nude, once touching, could go through the mechanics. He’d pleased women because they’d paid him to. And not all of them paid for penetration. He frankly, other than filing away what they expected, never thought of it.

So it was with some surprise that he was looking at an ordinary woman in baggy clothing, showing only a hint of skin, and not overly large breasts, and feeling something he assumed was for untried youths and weak poets who made sex more emotional than it was.

Yes, the skin, what he could see of it, looked to be flawless and sun-kissed, and her small breasts were clearly outlined against the soft cotton of her shirt, but still…

“I could simply purchase your farm from you, for a fair price.”

She shook her head. “It’s for Victor. I have to keep it. It has been in my family for a hundred years. My ancestors made it through droughts, floods, and losses; yes they borrowed and begged… But my brother is only nineteen… He is…a simple country lad, who left everything he was familiar with, everything he loved, to try and pacify Krandel to keep it… Please.”

Christ. He really must be having an off day.