When Lucius was fifteen, he learned how to cheat at cards. His cousin Janice was learning sleight of hand from a book she bought out of the back of a magazine, and she made him practise with her. To her disgust, Lucius proved better at it then she was and she soon abandoned it.

It's not something that Lucius thinks of often. His reputation for honesty isn't unearned: he's accumulated less than a dollar in library fines in his entire life and is proud of that. But when he was fifteen, his cousin made him learn to cheat at cards, and he's always been secretly proud of that ability, unused though it was.

Of course, he's not a business genius for nothing. He can count cards without moving his feet, and generally finds card games boring. He only let himself be dragged into this one because he assumed Bruce had some reason; he doesn't particularly like Cromwell, and Wolf is crass.

"Not wearing anything under her dress," says Wolf, around his cigarette, and it wobbles in the direction of a young woman who clearly hopes that getting her picture in the paper will start her career.

"Now don't be vulgar. Fox doesn't approve."

"The morals of today's youth," Lucius murmurs, since they're looking for shock.

Bruce chats in that vague and irritating way of his, circling in on some as of yet undetectable point midway between whether Brazilians in fact are devotees of that grooming practise, and things eaten in France. He has lost four hundred thousand pounds, as Cromwell refuses to have anything to do with dollars.

He watches as Bruce deals himself yet another losing hand from the bottom of the deck, and Lucius resigns himself to seeing this game to the end. Bruce may intend to lose the money, but Lucius is damned if he'll let Cromwell and Wolf have all of it.