The Ice Princess by Elizabeth Hoyt Page B

that was in front of her face. She glanced up, startled.
    To meet too-perceptive dark blue eyes. “Who’re you watching for?”
    She opened her mouth, intending to deny or confess, she wasn’t sure, but a loud male voice spoke behind her before she could.
    “Gentlemen!”
    Coral turned, already knowing the source of that high, excited voice, already knowing what Bil y had been trying to signal her.
    A lithe Youngman in powdered wig and blazing orange coat leaped to the top of a table. He spread wide his arms. “Gentlemen!” Kindly lend me your ears,
    for I have an announcement you won’t want to miss!”
    By this time the entire room had turned to look, the laughter and shouted talk gradual y dying.
    Captain Wargate was at Coral’s back and she felt the brush of his chest as he whispered in her ear. “That’s the one you were watching for, isn’t?”
    She gave a single jerky nod.
    “Who is he?”
    “Jimmy Hyde,” she said grimly.
    “And what is he?”
    But there wasn’t time to answer and she wasn’t sure she could in any case.
    Jimmy was talking again. “Tonight, gentlemen, you are very fortunate. Very fortunate indeed! For tonight you’l witness a game of chance like no other.”
    “What kind of game?” a tal elderly man in a ful -bottom wig shouted.
    “Loo, sir!’ Jimmy cal ed back.
    “Phht!” A thin-lipped dandy in black and scarlet shrugged a discontented shoulder. “I can get a game of loo in any gambling house in the city.”
    “True, sir, very true!” Jimmy might be a spawn of Satan himself, but he knew how to work a crowd. He grinned and raised his right hand with a flourish. “But
    I’l wager, sir, you’l not find a pot like the one Aphrodite’s Grotto offers tonight.”
    “And what pot’s that?” a royal duke drawled.
    Jimmy turned and in the second before he spoke, Coral met his evil little eyes. “Why, gentlemen, we offer up Aphrodite herself!”
    She staggered, though no one but Captain Wargate would’ve noticed since he caught her at once about the waist to steady her. What nasty plan had
    Jimmy come up with now? She hadn’t sold her own body in over two years. He knew that. He knew how much she hated it. Which, obviously, was his
    point.
    Jimmy grinned again like an impish monkey bent on destroying what soul she had left. “Seven full nights, gentlemen! Aphrodite will serve the winner for
    seven nights of bliss in any and every way he wishes!’
    A buzz began i n the crowd, like flies swarming t o a wounded deer. Jimmy jumped from the table and held out his hand t o her, graceful, indolent, the
    command almost entirely hidden. “Won’t you my dear?”
    And there wasn’t anything she could do. He held the majority share in the Grotto. Four months ago a fire had raged through Aphrodite’s Grotto. She’d
    been very lucky. No one had died; al the girls, and boys, and the marks had gotten out; and only part of the building had been lost. But the back wing had
    needed to be rebuilt and furnished, and then when the Grotto opened again, she’d thrown a grand celebration to show she wasn’t down. Coral Smythe
    wasn’t out of the business.
    But al of that had taken money. Too much money. She’d borrowed from Jimmy Hyde, only later finding out that several of her original backers had already
    sold their portions to him. By the time she’d realized what he was doing, he’d held the majority share in the Grotto. In effect, he owned Aphrodite’s Grotto.
    Which meant he owned her . If she refused, Jimmy was quite capable o f tossing her out in the street. Without her, the Grotto girls and boys would be
    unprotected− and subject to Jimmy’s less then tender mercies.
    Coral calculated and decided quickly. If she showed reluctance, he’d be twice as gleeful at her misery. That much she’d learned about Jimmy Hyde in the
    last four months.

    So instead of trembling, instead of balking or running away, Coral threw back her shoulders and stepped away from, Captain Wargate’s