Her Notorious Viscount by Jenna Petersen Page B

kiss to first his cheek, then Rage’s. “I am so sorry.”
    Nicholas accepted her sympathy with a tight smile, knowing she meant only the best, despite her crude, blunt terms. “Thank you, Ruby.”
    She squeezed his arm gently, then released it, and her pity was gone. “So, how is life in the grand halls? Are those goosecaps giving you hell?”
    “As much as they can manage without lowering their noses,” Nicholas admitted.
    For a few moments, they talked, reminiscing and catching up on the goings-on in the gaming hell that they had missed. Then Rage shot him a look from the corner of his eye, and Nicholas nodded.
    “Ruby, I wondered if you can put out a word for me amongst the rabble and the opium men. I’m looking for someone who they might know.”
    She tilted her head to the side and examined Nicholas carefully. “You never ran with their lot, Stone. Never touched the stuff, if I recall, and better for ya.”
    He nodded slowly. A few glimpses of the men who had become obsessed with the drug, and Nicholas had never felt any desire to test his luck. Even when he was injured, he refused the medicine for fear of developing a craving for it.
    “True, but a…friend is missing her brother and I promised to investigate.” He withdrew the little silver frame from his pocket and showed Ruby the miniature of Jane’s brother. “The man’s name would have been Marcus Fenton, though he might have gone by something else amongst this society.”
    Ruby took the little frame carefully and looked at both Marcus’s portrait and the one of Jane’s mother. “Don’t seem familiar, though if he took to the opiate, he might not have looked much like that by the time he was through. Pretty lady, though. She don’t look like no whore to me. You’ve made friends with a rich lot already, then.”
    Nicholas took the frame back and carefully closed it as he shrugged. “You know me, Ruby. I’m the kind of man that women befriend.”
    She laughed, her voice husky from years of smoke and drink. “That you are, boy. Well, might as well tup the rich ones as well as the poor, eh? I’ll put out a word about your foppish opium hound. Come back in a few days and we’ll see if I’ve come up with any answers. Now I best be back to my business.”
    She waved to them both before she returned to the back room where the deepest cards were played. Rage looked at Nicholas when she was gone.
    “She might have something for us in time, but I think we both know she won’t. What will you tell Jane next time you see her, to keep her from realizing there is no hope?”
    Nicholas took the last sip of his drink, unable to think of a good answer. Again, his rarely demonstrated conscience tweaked him. Jane had such high hopes in his miraculous ability to find her lost brother.
    “Stone!”
    He looked to the left at the voice that had mercifully kept him from answering his friend. Through the crowd, two young men, probably too young to be in such a place, were approaching, their eyes bright with excitement.
    “You’re Stone, the boxer, ain’t you?” one boy asked, while the other boy kept nudging him for encouragement.
    Nicholas sighed. “That I am, boys. And this here is Rage Riley.”
    The two exchanged awed glances before the braver boy said, “Will ya be fightin’ tonight, Stone?”
    Nicholas looked at the door behind the bar wistfully. Behind this room was another larger room where bare-fisted brawling went on late into the night. How satisfying it would be to go a few rounds with one of these drunks. To pound out his frustration and dissatisfaction with something physical, rather than thinking incessantly.
    “I don’t think so, boys,” he finally said, turning away from the room. “Not tonight at any rate.”
    They both made a sound of distress as they faded back into the crowd. Nicholas stared at his empty glass, feeling Rage’s stare on him, but unwilling to answer his friend’s unspoken questions and comments.
    The fact was that