Octavia rolled her eyes. “You talked about it. I listened. Nobody is here yet, sister. And besides, it is far more fun to be in your den of dubious activities than upstairs working on my embroidery or planning my next good deed.”

Ivy laughed at her sister’s scornful tone. “You do not embroider, and I believe your last good deed was rescuing those kittens from the cellar. I highly doubt you planned that.” She paused. “And you have gotten as much goodness out of the kitten rescue as the animals themselves.”

“True,” Octavia agreed. “Oh, Carter says she has homes for them, she’ll take them there tomorrow.”

A relief, since kittens were a cute distraction they did not need.

“I could embroider, at some point in the future,” Octavia added.

“Or teach the kittens how to embroider before they leave. They might be in need of some useful skills,” Ivy replied with a smirk.

“Or . . .” Octavia said, wrapping her arm around Ivy, “I could come down here and work as a dealer.”

“Absolutely not!” Ivy said, shaking Octavia’s arm off her shoulder and trying to look like a disapproving older sister. “You are a lady, you have a chance for a respectable future. As long as we keep our relationship a secret. And, though this should go without saying, that you not work in a gambling house. Or, as you put it, my ‘den of dubious activities.’”

Octavia was not to be dissuaded from her thoughts, however. “And you? You are a lady also, and you own a gambling house.”

“I’m not a lady any longer,” Ivy retorted. She’d mourn that loss of status if it didn’t also give her the freedom to choose what to do next.

Their father had seen to that—a gamester himself, he had ruined the family by gambling away everything he owned, and several things he did not. Such as his daughter Ivy, who discovered she had been won as a bride by an older man, a gentleman farmer, who wanted a wife to take charge of his adult children and work on his farm from dawn until dusk. Ivy was even more appalled at discovering the man’s oldest son was her age.

Ivy had challenged the man to a game herself after discovering her father’s loss, and had won, but the damage had been done—her father’s wager, her own daring to take back her freedom had ruined her in the eyes of Society.

But, Ivy had reasoned, she would have been miserable if she had followed what her class dictated, marrying some squire’s son and trying to pretend she wasn’t as intelligent as she was. The wager and her winning of it merely meant she could chart the course of her own future.

Far better to be a ruined gamester in charge of one’s fate than a woeful wife at the mercy of a husband.