Never Gamble Your Heart

Book 2: The Secret Society of Governess Spies

by Lindsay Lovise

Genres: Historical Mysteries; Victorian Romance; Romantic Suspense

Synopsis

Chemistry sizzles when a math-obsessed governess and a rakish gambling den owner team up to expose a wicked conspiracy.

Brilliant mathematician Frankie Turner knows how to calculate the odds. So when her sister goes missing and all leads point to an exclusive gambling hell, her best bet is to play governess-under-cover for London’s most notorious gambler…who just happens to also be the town’s most ineligible bachelor. When her snooping uncovers a sinister plot to entangle women the ton deems troublemakers, Frankie can’t rely solely on her secret network of governess spies—she needs to win over devilishly handsome Jasper Jones to get his help. All without gambling away her heart.

Jasper is fiercely protective, good at keeping secrets, and resolute about his vow to never mix business with pleasure. That is, until Frankie walks into his life, whip-smart and tempting him to break his own rules. But when the stakes are highest, he’ll have to decide whether she’s the best bet he’ll ever make—or the one person who can unravel everything he’s worked so hard to build.

Release date: February 4, 2025

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 368

Sample

August 1838

London, England

Jasper Jones lowered the letter of recommendation from Perdita’s and studied the governess who was impertinently scanning the oil paintings in his sitting room. She was a slip of a thing, with wheat-colored hair that curled in wisps around her face and a complexion that spoke of hours indoors. A high-necked gown of serviceable dark green concealed her from wrist to boot. If her oversized spectacles and dull dress were any indication, she was a plain and severe woman.

The governess, Miss Francis Turner, finished her perusal and returned her attention to him. Jasper was struck by surprise when her gaze boldly met his. Having been distracted by the ridiculously large spectacles, he’d almost missed how sea-blue and thickly lashed her eyes were. He had several female acquaintances who would kill for eyes like those.

Miss Turner adjusted her spectacles and gave him a lopsided grin.

Jasper frowned. What was Perdita’s Governess Agency about? He’d requested a mature and experienced governess to help his niece deal with her circumstances, and instead they’d sent him a woman who appeared to be about five and twenty.

“How long have you been a governess, Miss Turner?”

“Two months and six days.”

“And do you consider your two months and six days enough experience to handle a fifteen-year-old girl who has recently lost her father?” he asked, lifting his brows.

“Yes.”

That was it. No explanation, no detailed list of her accomplishments, no attempt to convince him she was the right person for the position.

Jasper waited.

Miss Turner stared back with those guileless blue eyes. Finally she said, “When can I start?”

Jasper was not caught off guard often, but twice now the governess had surprised him. He stood, straightened his cravat, and glanced at his pocket watch. It was already half past eleven, and there were menus that needed his approval at Rockford’s.

“I fear your two months will not suffice for the difficult task at hand, Miss Turner.”

Miss Turner frowned. “Then why did you ask me if it would?”

“It was sarcasm.”

“I have a difficult time comprehending the use of sarcasm. It seems to me a very lazy form of expression.”

Jasper’s lips quirked involuntarily. He’d always had a perverse soft spot for candor. “Do not consider my concerns a comment on your abilities, Miss Turner. My niece is a handful, and because she lacks a female presence in her life, she requires a governess who can guide her with consistency and firmness. I will write to Perdita’s first thing in the morning. Until another governess arrives, you may do your best with Cecelia. However, you must know I require two things of all my servants. First—”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, interrupting him. “You are mistaken, Mr. Jones. I am not a servant. I am a gov-er-ness.” She said the word governess slowly, as if he were an imbecile.

Jasper’s eyes widened. As the son of a fishmonger, he’d been raised rough, and it had taken years of polishing to become the man he was today. He had more money than most of the men who visited his gaming hell, more power than half of Parliament, and a ruthless reputation for punishing cheats. He had climbed to the top with nothing but his rapier-sharp mind, and yet this innocent-eyed governess was acting as if he were as dumb as a bag of bricks.

“Are you well, Mr. Jones? You look”—Miss Turner waved her hand over her face—“frozen. Yes, that is the word. You froze up a bit. Do you need a drink? Perhaps a nice, fortifying brandy?”

“Miss Turner—”

She had already found the bell and rung it. Jasper watched in astonishment as she promptly ordered the maid to bring him a stiff drink.

“Miss Turner!”

“Mr. Jones!” she replied, raising her voice to match his. “There is certainly no need to shout. I assure you my hearing is quite adequate.”

Jasper was speechless.

“Oh, I understand your reservations now,” she said, her eyes landing on the clock on the mantel. “My apologies. I suppose eleven thirty in the morning is a tad early for liquor. I should have ordered tea. Can I meet Cecelia?”

“I am not sure that would be wise.”

“Well, I want to meet her!” a young voice cried from the door.

Jasper closed his eyes, counted to three, and turned to bare his teeth at his niece. “Cecelia. How long have you been standing there?”

Cecelia was a tall girl with big brown eyes and thin, chestnut hair that looked pasted to her scalp. When Jasper had clawed his way out of poverty, he’d brought his only brother and niece with him. His brother had worked in the kitchen at Rockford’s, and Jasper had bought him a quaint house in a quiet district of the city where he could live with Cecelia and Cecelia’s great-aunt.

Jasper had seen his niece on special occasions, but he had never spent much time with her, or even noticed her beyond bestowing a generous dowry upon her. Then his brother had died in a carriage accident, and Jasper, Cecelia’s only living relative under the age of eighty, had had the sullen, angry girl thrust upon him. And because he could not simply leave the great-aunt to her own devices, he’d taken her in, too.

The great-aunt, Madam Margaret, was fine—she spent most of her day sleeping or gazing out the window, and Jasper quite enjoyed the silence of her company. Cecelia, on the other hand, had only been with him a fortnight, and he already had the distinct feeling that she hated him. If she sensed Miss Turner made him unhappy, she would insist on keeping the odd governess.

“Long enough to hear Miss Turner order you a drink.” Cecelia flounced into the room, her gown a bright yellow confection of far too many ribbons and bows, designed for a much younger girl. She took Miss Turner’s hand in hers and gave her a dazzling smile. “Are you to be my new governess?”

“No,” Jasper said quickly. “She is standing in as your governess until the real one arrives.”

Cecelia stuck out her lower lip like a child and crossed her arms over her chest. “Phooey!”

Jasper pinched the bridge of his nose. When had his life come to this? He was a gambler. A rake. The devil of sin. His goals in life were to make money and enjoy himself, and everyone else be damned. But here he was, standing in a far-too-sunny receiving room with a fifteen-year-old who despised him and an awkward governess, both of them staring at him as if he’d sprouted a tail and horns—and not the devil-of-sin type.

“’Tis all right,” Miss Turner said, smiling gently at Cecelia. “I am sure we will get along splendidly in the meantime. Mr. Jones has to leave and we are delaying him. I will have the head housekeeper show me my quarters, and then I will meet you in the schoolroom so we can become acquainted. What do you say, Cecelia?”

Jasper’s eyes sharpened on Miss Turner. When had he told her he needed to leave?

Cecelia gave Jasper a defiant look and assured Miss Turner it was a wonderful idea before skipping from the room.

“Now if you will ring for the head housekeeper, I shall see my way out,” Miss Turner said, bending to pick up her valise.

At that moment the maid returned with a crystal glass of brandy, and damn it all if Jasper didn’t drink it. He usually made it a point not to drink until the early hours of the morning; he needed his wits about him on the hell floor. Today, being an exercise in irritation, was the exception.

“Send Mrs. Hollendale to me,” he ordered the maid, who giggled and blushed before exiting the room. He frowned into the half-empty crystal glass in his hand. “Why do you assume I am in a hurry to leave, Miss Turner?” Something about her put his senses on alert, and Jasper had learned never to ignore his instincts. They had served him well over the years.

Miss Turner was fingering a doily on a table and jumped when he spoke to her. “Please, call me Frankie. I cannot stand to be called Miss Turner.”

“Unfortunately, you will have to grin and bear it, Miss Turner, as I am not in the habit of calling the women in my employ by their given names. And you may continue addressing me as Mr. Jones.”

His lips twitched when she barely refrained from rolling her eyes. “Mr. Jones, I assume you are eager to leave because you have glanced twice at your pocket watch and you have been edging toward the door since I arrived. I must be keeping you from something terribly important. I shall find the head housekeeper myself.”

Miss Turner—or Frankie, as she’d called herself—curtsied, rather mockingly he thought, and went to slide past him. Jasper reached out without thought, grasping her slender arm in his hand. The moment his palm made contact with her skin, the impropriety of the act struck him, but it was too late. She was as soft as satin, and for an insane moment Jasper fought not to rub his thumb over her bare arm.

“You are not going anywhere.”



Frankie stood as still as a child caught with an illicit sweet, stunned by the improper touch. Jasper wasn’t wearing gloves, and his hand felt rough and warm on the skin above her own matching green gloves.

He towered over her, so dark and sinfully handsome that she instantly understood how he’d come by his reputation as a collector of lovers. His hair was inky black and cropped short. Heavy brows drew over a pair of insightful eyes that looked as if they could see into a person’s soul. His skin had been kissed by the sun, which was surely something a gentleman would not have allowed, but Frankie understood Jasper Jones was no gentleman. It was rumored he carried a blade on his person at all times, and that he had engaged in more than his share of lethal fights on his rise to the top.

“Do not underestimate him,” the Dove had cautioned her in the carriage the night before. “I have seen him charm men from their purses and women from their corsets, and he does an excellent job at passing among the gentry. But let me warn you: He is a wolf disguised as a sheep. No man is born a fishmonger’s son and becomes the person Jasper Jones is today without extraordinary cunning and ruthlessness.”

Frankie did not know the Dove’s true name, only that she owned Perdita’s Governess Agency, which hosted the most prestigious governess school in all of London, and that she used her governesses to spy on the ton to hold them accountable for their crimes. With the information her governesses collected, the Dove tipped off the police, who did not have the contacts or social standing to gather information on the ton’s transgressions.

Although Frankie knew very little about the mysterious vigilante who’d sent her to be a governess in Mr. Jasper Jones’s house, she suspected plenty. She suspected the spymaster was as cunning and ruthless as Jasper Jones, but rather than using her skills to build an empire, she used them to deliver justice for the lower classes. Frankie was almost certain it was the Dove who was responsible for the sharp increase of reporting on upper-class crimes in the papers and the scandal sheets—Frankie had plotted them on a graph. Frankie also suspected her governess friend, Emily, was one of the Dove’s spies. It would explain why Emily had been placed in Lord Eastmoreland’s house earlier that summer, when the entire city was anxious to unveil the identity of a murderer targeting prostitutes in Bethnal Green.

A murderer who ended up having intimate ties with the Eastmorelands.

Still, even knowing how well-informed the Dove was, Frankie had been stunned when the night before, while she’d been crouching behind a rubbish bin outside Rockford’s, spying on every person who entered, the Dove had appeared at her side in the flesh—no longer a rumor or a ghost.

Frankie would not typically risk her reputation, even as a spinster, by spying on a gentleman’s club in the middle of the night, but she had been out of options. Rockford’s was the most prestigious gambling hell in all of London, and it was the last clue Frankie had that might lead to her missing sister.

Fidelia was eight years Frankie’s junior and her only sibling. Fidelia was expected to “come out” next Season and make a suitable match that would save the family from destitution now that their father was deceased, but three weeks ago she’d run away, leaving behind nothing but a one-sentence explanation: Lady Elizabeth Scarson has been caught up in something dastardly, and I must help.

Their mother had panicked and sent for Frankie, who had been working her first governess position to help support their family since she had failed to make a marriage match. Their mother had insisted that Frankie find her sister immediately, before her reputation was ruined. Their mother was telling everyone that Fidelia was visiting her aunt and “taking the sea air before the Season,” but the lie wouldn’t last forever. And if it were discovered that Fidelia had run off, unchaperoned, to God knew where…

Well, Frankie couldn’t let that happen.

A shiver tripped across Frankie’s skin, and she pulled her arm out of Jasper’s grasp. He easily released her, but he did not back away. He was so close that Frankie could feel the heat emanating from his body and smell the lingering traces of the shaving cream his valet had used on his face that morning. Frankie suddenly realized he was trying to intimidate her with his proximity. Well, that simply would not do!

Frankie lifted her chin and met his eyes. “If we are to establish an appropriate and successful employer and employee relationship, no matter how temporary, I must ask that you refrain from using your size as a form of intimidation.”

Jasper’s lips curled into a slow smile, but he took a step back. “I will admit that I have not had occasion to employ a governess before, and yet I am entirely certain you are different from most.”

Frankie flushed as she realized that once again, she was missing normal social cues. Her mother had spent a lifetime despairing of Frankie’s social blundering and ineptitude, never forgoing a chance to loudly bemoan how Frankie’s oddities had made finding a husband impossible. Frankie had accepted who and what she was a long time ago, but now she wished she’d tried a little harder to fit in. She needed to blend into her role so that she might accomplish her mission of spying on Jasper Jones.

Because Jasper Jones was the link to everything. Frankie was sure of it.

Frankie adored mathematics and puzzles, and she made a game out of routinely scanning the papers for patterns that others couldn’t see. In fact, a month ago she’d spent time cross-referencing attendance at balls and other events with the Evangelist murders, and had come very close to uncovering the killer’s identity.

During her avid consumption of newspapers and gossip rags, Frankie had recently noticed a new pattern emerging: a spate of hasty, high-profile weddings, but she simply had not thought much of it, not until their outspoken family friend, Lady Elizabeth Scarson, had become one of the brides—married off to an ill-suited man thrice her age—and Fidelia had run away.

Then, Frankie had begun looking at the pattern in earnest. While poring over gossip rag reports, she’d discovered that every single one of the grooms involved in the suspicious weddings, including Lady Elizabeth’s husband, was a member of the ton’s most beloved gaming hell: Rockford’s.

Frankie had left the information with her governess friend, Emily, hoping she would share it with the Dove. If anyone had the power and influence to understand the pattern Frankie had found, it was the mysterious vigilante. But Frankie had never heard back from the Dove, so she’d had to take matters into her own hands.

After leaving her first governess position, Frankie had spent several weeks visiting her sister’s friends and subtly inquiring if Fidelia had written from the “seaside,” but none of them had heard from her. Lady Elizabeth Scarson was apparently holed up in the countryside with her new husband, not taking visitors, so her sister couldn’t be there.

Left with no other leads, Frankie had taken to spying outside Rockford’s. If Mr. Jasper Jones had anything to do with the strange weddings, Frankie would discover what it was, and then maybe she’d find her sister.

That was where the Dove had found her last night, materializing at her side like a shadow. A half-mourning veil had hidden the woman’s eyes, and she’d been concealed from throat to toe by a dark cloak.

What the Dove had proceeded to share with Frankie over the next half hour had changed everything.

“My deepest apologies, Mr. Jones.” Frankie pushed her spectacles up her nose and blinked with what she thought was a dramatic show of timidity. If she wanted to fulfill her end of the bargain she’d made with the Dove, she needed to appease his suspicions. Her mind raced as she imagined how a properly socialized lady would respond to him in such a situation, what her mother would say. “I desire only to see to my new duties.”

Jasper’s eyes flashed with amusement. “That looked as if it nearly choked you.”

She’d rather choke him.

“I accept your apology. I have two rules in my home, Miss Turner, whether you are a servant or not,” he added, cutting her off before she could protest. “First, entrance to my study is not allowed. No one may go in there; not even the butler.”

Frankie’s heart sped up and the next words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. “Why not?”

Jasper stared at her. “Are you certain you were sent by Perdita’s?”

Too late Frankie realized it was wholly inappropriate to question her employer’s decisions. “Oh, pardon me.” Frankie pushed at her hair. Holy Queen V! She couldn’t seem to stop bungling her role. Her father had always encouraged her natural tendency toward bluntness because he had found it amusing, while her mother had warned her time and again that it would land her in trouble one day. When Frankie had needed to find employ as a governess to support her family, she had not thought it would be so difficult to assimilate. As the genteel granddaughter of a baron, she was not so lowly ranked as a servant, but that did not mean she could speak her mind to her employers. “My apologies. I am indeed from Perdita’s, and I assure you that as a Perdita girl I am more than capable of guiding Cecelia’s education. I am excellent at mathematics.”

Jasper shifted a step back, allowing her more breathing space. “That is well and good, although I do not know what Cecelia will ever need mathematics for.”

Frankie was going to faint dead away.

“My second rule is that you must not fall in love with me.”

Frankie’s mouth popped open. “Pardon me?”

Jasper grinned in such a wicked way that despite Frankie’s dislike of the man, a tingly sensation worked its way down her nerves. “Both sexes tend to desire me. It is a curse I have learned to live with. However, romantic entanglements create tension I neither care for nor have the time to deal with. It is best if you know straight away that I do not liaise with my staff. No exceptions.”

Frankie did not know if she was astonished by his declaration or uproariously amused. “I can assure you, Mr. Jones, that I would never fall in love with you. Ever.” She should have stopped there, but her tongue was faster than her brain. “You are the last person I would give my heart to, just behind the cat food cart man who has invented a language comprised entirely of belches. Indeed, the chances I would desire your company beyond mundane employer interactions are”—she paused as she rapidly calculated the numbers in her head—“one in six million.”

That devilish grin returned to his face and an odd dipping thing happened to Frankie’s stomach. “You remember that, Miss Turner. I assure you that whatever you have heard of my reputation has been watered down. I am all the things they say I am, and more. There will never be one woman for me, or marriage, or any of the other fanciful things people tell themselves when they fall in love with me. Consider yourself warned.”

The conceit of the man was without compare! Frankie had once imagined herself in love with a boy who’d acted as if he knew the answers to why the stars fell and how heaven looked, but even his arrogance paled in comparison to Jasper Jones’s.

“Mr. Jones, I do hope it will not wound your ego when I prove to be entirely unaffected by your—” As words failed her, she waved her palm in a circle in front of her to encompass all of him.

Jasper tugged his coat into place and went to step around her. Before he left the room, he bent his mouth to her ear and said in a low, shivery voice, “You already are.”



Frankie marched down the corridor of the Jones house toward the schoolroom, thinking of all the things she wished she could say to that sodding Jasper Jones. Her encounter with the gambling hell owner had been trying to say the least, but she had to remember why she was there.

“You have read about the recent tribulations of Lady Diane Cuthburt?” the Dove asked, rapping the top of the carriage with her cane to signal the driver to move. After catching Frankie spying on Rockford’s, she had invited Frankie into her carriage for a more private conversation.

Everything inside the carriage screamed wealth, from the stitching of the black velvet cushions to the thick, luxurious fabric in the windows. Frankie sniffed and caught subtle notes of peony and vanilla, and wondered just how fat the Dove’s coffers were.

“I suppose even the French have heard about Lady Diane Cuthburt,” Frankie replied, discreetly wiping her forehead with her handkerchief and reminding herself it was scientifically impossible for a person to melt into a puddle. The blasted London heat had been unbearable that summer. “She has been in the newspapers for weeks. She was caught unchaperoned in an alcove at a musical soirée with Lord Grant Parsons, fourth son of the Marquess of Dembeyshire. She refused to marry him, and now her reputation is destroyed. She has three sisters, and they shall never marry because of the stain on her family. In society’s eyes she is ruined.”

In the illumination of the swinging carriage lamps, the Dove’s lips had pressed together. “Lady Diane’s scandal was a harsh reminder of what happens when a woman is compromised and then does not marry. In London, social standing is everything.” The Dove interlaced her fingers in her lap. “I am aware of the unusual ton weddings that have taken place over the past six months—and based on the note you had Emily deliver, so are you. Desperate men with debts have recently had unconscionable luck marrying women with sizable dowries. And they are not just any women: Lady Anne Bolsey, Lady Clara Florten, Lady Mable Ezra, and Lady Elizabeth Scarson are but a few.”

Frankie nodded. Lady Anne Bolsey had been lobbying for her father to introduce a bill that would end the entail, which allowed only men to inherit property. Lady Clara Florten had been causing ripples over the imminent extinction of birds used for hats, and Lady Mable Ezra was an advocate for public schooling. Lady Elizabeth Scarson had been outspoken about cleanliness and disease. “They’re troublemakers,” Frankie said.

“Troublemakers,” the Dove repeated, rolling the word on her tongue and then nodding with satisfaction. “Brilliant women, all of them caught in risqué situations that forced them into marriages with destitute men. Miss Turner, I believe there is a set of men acting as Dowry Thieves, and they’re targeting women they wish to silence.”

Frankie blinked with horror. “You think someone is engineering compromising situations in order to secure the women’s dowries?”

“Yes. Women of the ton are almost always closely guarded and chaperoned, meaning it would be no easy feat. That is why I believe there is one mastermind behind the scheme. One man moving the chess pieces in order to orchestrate the fateful meetings.”

Frankie’s stomach roiled. Women were already treated like cattle, but to be tricked into matrimony so that the lords of London could steal their money and breathe a sigh of relief when the women were silenced—why, it made her blood boil.

“Mr. Jasper Jones has to be the man responsible. All the grooms hold a membership to his club,” Frankie accused. Could her sister know about the Dowry Thieves? Was that the “dastardly” thing she had spoken of in her letter? If so, how did she plan to help her childhood friend, Lady Elizabeth Scarson, now that the lady was already married? “Do you know where Fidelia is?”

“No, but I may have a lead. I have been aware of your sister’s disappearance these past weeks, and I have recently hired a private detective to look for her. Leave finding Fidelia to me.”

Frankie pushed at her spectacles, excitement, relief, and confusion warring for space in her brain. “Why would you do that? Why are you helping me?” She could not afford to pay the Dove whatever fee the detective was charging to find Fidelia. That was part of the reason why her mother had enlisted her to find her sister: Their purse strings were so tight they could barely be prized open, and on top of that, it was imperative that they keep Fidelia’s escape quiet.

The Dove’s eyes took on a cunning gleam. “Because I need your expertise with numbers. I will help you find your sister, if you help me discover who’s behind the Dowry Thieves. I will not stand by while revolutionary women are silenced.”

The Dove rapped the top of the carriage again and it came to a standstill. Through the drawn curtains came the sounds of two younger gentlemen clearly in their cups, along with the strike of horseshoes on cobblestones. “I am not convinced Jasper Jones is behind the Dowry Thieves, even though all the grooms hold a membership to his hell. In truth, most of the ton have a membership to Rockford’s. Jones would not benefit from silencing the ‘troublemakers’ as you put it, and Jasper Jones never does anything that does not benefit him.

“That being said, I still need someone with a keen eye to look through Jones’s business ledgers. Mr. Jones is suspicious and private by nature, and he keeps his ledgers at his personal residence. I have governesses gathering financials on several of the grooms in question, including the husband of your friend, Lady Elizabeth Scarson, but Jones’s household has been difficult to infiltrate because he is a confirmed bachelor without children, and he is very… security conscious.”

“Then how do we figure out if he is responsible?” Frankie asked, sweat sliding down her spine.

The Dove withdrew a creased letter from her reticule and handed it to Frankie. It was addressed to Perdita’s. The author required an experienced and patient governess for his niece, who had recently come to live with him after the death of her father. The signature at the bottom was from Mr. Jasper Jones.

The Dove’s lips curved. “I have a plan.”

That plan was for Frankie to become Cecelia’s governess and use her position to investigate Jasper Jones’s private papers and ledgers in exchange for the Dove finding her sister. The Dove had warned Frankie that Jasper was a notorious rake, but she had not warned her that he was also insufferable.

“Arrogant toad!” Frankie hissed under her breath. She was on her way to the schoolroom and there was no one about, giving her license to mutter freely.

After Jasper had left, the head housekeeper had taken Frankie to the guest wing, where she’d been given a medium-sized room next to Madam Margaret, an elderly maiden aunt inherited with Cecelia. Although Frankie’s chamber lacked a receiving room, she did not mind. At her last situation she had been put in with the se. . .