Gazing into the mirror, he dabbed at his chin with the towel. He’d cut himself shaving. He’d put off his London manservant and was now reduced to living like a serf. He had lost almost everything in that last card game. Now he didn’t have a high enough stake to enter another. Not until he’d returned to the castle to search for anything left worth selling. He’d be staking the castle next. That would end up a sore joke to the person who won it. His laugh cracked into silence. Where had Giovanna Russo disappeared to? She had slipped away when his back was turned. He had been working hard to bring her down, and planned to have her on her knees, pleading to do anything he asked for. She would be a sorry thing then, wouldn’t she? And Blair Dunleavy, the cause of all his angst, would find the woman he so highly sought to be the worst kind of prostitute. He tied his cravat deep in thought. Giovanna would make the perfect bait to draw Dunleavy away.
