Sinning with My Fiancé's Twin Brother novel · Chapter 23 of 32

Chapter 23: Armand's Price

"No," I said.

I didn't even have to think about it.

Armand smiled as if I'd said something charming at a supper party.

"You haven't heard the rest."

"I don't need the rest."

"Without your mare, Brimstone wins. Eight thousand dollars on New Year's afternoon, and my friend from Canal Street goes home happy." He spread his hands. "Then on the second of January I walk into the judge's chambers and give my brother everything. Quietly. Nobody laughs at anybody."

"And nine women lose four hundred dollars each."

He blinked.

"What women?"

"The ones who paid Papa's note after you read it out at your ball." I gathered up Sable's reins. "A widow put her husband's burial money on my mare. I'm not scratching her to spare you a bad afternoon."

"It's more than a bad afternoon, Varina."

"Then you shouldn't have paid a boy five dollars to drive a nail into her foot."

His face went flat.

He looked at his brother.

"Talk to her."

Laurent didn't answer right away.

That was the part that went into me.

He stood on the bridge with his arm in the sling, and I watched him weigh it.

"We'll talk at home," he said.

Armand swung up onto Brimstone and turned him in the road.

"The offer stands until the flag drops." He gave me the dinner-party smile. "After that, read your page to the parish. I'll tell them a girl who'd go from one brother to the other would forge a paper for him too."

He rode off toward Belle Rive with the last red light on his back.

We didn't speak the whole mile home.

We didn't speak through supper.

Aurore looked from one of us to the other over the red beans.

Then she picked up her plate and went out to eat on the cold gallery.

The door shut behind her.

"You were going to say yes," I said.

"I was going to think about it."

"In front of him."

"He's offering to hand it all back without a fight." Laurent put his good hand flat on the table. "No lawyers. No Odile in a courtroom for a year, swearing your papa was a drunk. I could pay your nine women out of the first year's cotton."

"There it is."

"There what is?"

"A Devereux paying for me." I stood up. "Your brother bet I'd fall. Your aunt bet I'd lose. Now you'll pay the women back if I'll get off the horse politely."

"That's not fair."

"Then what is it?"

His chair went back so hard it hit the wall.

"It's the river turn!" he said.

I had never heard him shout indoors.

"He said it in front of forty men. Brimstone puts you in the bayou at the river turn. They broke my arm a mile from this table to stop one race, Varina. What do you think he'll do in it?"

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