Read Online Luck Be a Lady by Meredith Duran - Free Book Online

private salons,” O’Shea said. “Six hundred can be accommodated, easily.”
    Six hundred! “Has it ever reached such a number?”
    â€œCome back after supper and see for yourself.”
    She recognized that easy confidence in his voice. Once she had felt the same way about Everleigh’s capacities. How long ago that seemed! Now, as an honorable businesswoman, she would do better to turn away new clients. She could not promise them a fair auction when Peter was looting the accounts—much less planning to sell the place.
    O’Shea was her last hope for fixing things. He was the devil’s minion, but surely their meeting had been arranged by Providence.
    â€œYou have no partners?” she asked him.
    O’Shea propped his elbows on the rail beside her,watching the floor with the calm, narrow-eyed attention of a conscientious proprietor. “Never saw the use.”
    â€œBut surely you required investors to fund this place.” It would have taken a great deal of money to construct and furbish such a palace. She could clear his debts for him.
    He slid her an unreadable look. “I had the capital.”
    She glanced away to hide her surprise. Lilah had told her that O’Shea was well situated, but Catherine had not imagined the degree of it. “How long until you’re in the black?” she asked cautiously.
    His smile was slow and satisfied. “Broke even in the first year.”
    â€œThe first year!” How disheartening—and also, she begrudgingly allowed, how impressive. This was clearly a successful enterprise. She recognized some of the players below from their dealings at Everleigh’s—men with the deepest pockets in Britain. Why, one of them was a Cabinet member, who had made his reputation in crusades against corruption and crime.
    â€œI’m surprised,” she said, “that some of these men would risk being caught here.”
    â€œHence my eyes on the streets,” O’Shea said. “My patrons know they can trust me for discretion.”
    How odd, that a criminal should have what her brother most wanted: the confidence of important people. “Crime pays, it seems.”
    His mouth briefly quirked. “So it does. Perhaps, instead of billing Taylor, you should hire him to cook up a masterpiece for your auction.”
    He was shameless, but she’d expected no different. “Perhaps I would do, if money were all I cared about. But there is also the small matter of honor.”
    â€œMm,” he said. “Honor, quite right. Not as useful as a ha’penny match, when it comes to keeping the fire lit.”
    â€œThere are more important things than keeping warm.”
    â€œSo there are,” he said. “Power, for one. Those men below? They know I have them . . . here.” He held out his hand, miming, with his long figures, the act of catching and cupping something. His rings glittered in the glare of the chandeliers.
    â€œI suppose that’s how you keep this place open,” she said slowly. “For it certainly doesn’t look like a social club, from this vantage.”
    He offered her a wink. “Plenty of friendships made over dice. But, aye . . . it helps to hold the markers of men who make the laws.” He straightened off the rail and offered his arm. When she pointedly rebuffed it, he shrugged and set a springing pace down the curving balcony.
    â€œIt still seems unwise to me,” she said as she followed, “to invest so much in a place that could be shut down at any moment.”
    â€œLike I said, I make sure to oil the gears.”
    But superintendents of police retired, and elections changed the composition of Parliament. “If the gears were to change, the new machinery might not prove so amenable to your oil.”
    He grinned as he opened an unmarked door. “Kind of you to worry for me.”
    She stepped past him into a spacious office,