Tierney’s nostrils flared. “I’ve been planning to destroy that bastard for years. This is a convenient opportunity to make use of the ammunition I’ve been collecting.”
Ah, so Portia had not been wrong, then, when she had shared more with him in the aftermath of their lovemaking. Tierney was planning some means of revenge upon Granville. But Wolf was still not certain whether Tierney was trustworthy, or whether his plans would truly free Portia of that tyrant’s rule.
“What ammunition do you have against him?” he asked. “Granville is her son’s guardian, and it’s left her in a terrible bind.”
Tierney calmly exhaled another small cloud of smoke. “I’ve the best kind of ammunition there is against a coward like the marquess. All his vowels. Seems my dear brother may have been born on the right side of the blanket, but he doesn’t know how to keep from bleeding his funds at every gaming table in London.”
“Not every hell,” Wolf remarked. “I don’t recall him darkening the door of The Sinner’s Palace, and I never forget a name or a face.”
“Only the best for the marquess.” Tierney raised a mocking brow. “No offense, Sutton, but your ramshackle affair ain’t precisely up to the standards of some of the more exacting members of the ton. Higher-risk games to lose all their blunt in, etcetera.”
So the Marquess of Granville, in addition to being a sister-beating sack of shite, was also an inveterate gambler. And a poor one, if the man before Wolf was to be believed.
“What do you intend to do with the debts?” he asked.
Tierney grinned around his cigar before removing it and delivering another puff of smoke. “I’m going to call them in. I fancy the notion of having him beneath my thumb for the rest of his misbegotten life, I’ll not lie.”
“There’s a possibility the debts won’t prove sufficient,” Wolf said, for now that he was privileged to the information that the marquess liked to lose his purse at the green baize, a plan was beginning to form. “I need to be certain he’ll not interfere in my plans to marry your sister, and that he will not carry out his threat of taking her son from her.”
And he’d thought long and hard about how he could obtain such reassurances of his own. He’d had a number of threats of his own that he could make, of course. But his, coupled with the debts Tierney held, and the new idea taking shape, ought to be enough.
“Why should I bring you into it?” Tierney demanded, scowling. “Don’t need your help, Sutton, and I never did.”
“Because I’m in love with Portia, and because I must be assured Granville can never hurt her again. I’ll not marry her if there remains a possibility that bastard could take her son or cause her any other manner of mischief.”
Tierney’s gaze, the same vivid green as Portia’s, narrowed. “You’ll need to prove yourself if you mean to marry my sister, you know. Portia deserves to have a say in her future as much as anyone, and she certainly deserves better than what she’s endured, married off to that old codger, Blakewell and then kept beneath Granville’s thumb all these years. I’d have slipped poison into his wine by now if I were her.”
“Poison in the wine ain’t a bad notion,” Wolf said. “None more deserving than him. But we’ll do it another way, one that leaves no doubt as to Portia’s freedom.”
“And how’s that?” Tierney demanded.
A slow sense of peace slid over Wolf. “By inviting him to a game with a reward he can’t resist. A game where he’ll have the chance of a cat in hell without claws of emerging the victor.”