Then he looked at his portfolio and pulled a one hundred pound note from the payment he’d just received from his publisher. If he needed to, he could always join the Church and learn to go on his knees for a living. He’d rather go on his knees before Griselda, he thought.

There was something about her that turned him into a raging bundle of lust. She was all cheerful, delicate femininity. She smelled like clean living and faint perfume, like women who spent their mornings relaxing and their nights dancing. Who never screamed at their children, nor their spouses.

Thank God, Willoughby, whoever he had been, was long gone. She would never sleep with him if her husband had been alive; he knew that with a bone-deep knowledge. She wasn’t a woman to play false.

But she might…she just might be a woman who would have an affaire. Who would be enticed by a mixture of bribery and desire—for she liked him too; he had seen it in her eyes—and might be enticed into something rash.

He sealed the pounds in an envelope and sent over a servant to Grillon’s with a request for their very best bedchamber for the following night. To the best of his knowledge, there was nothing happening except a soirée given by the Smalepeeces, which couldn’t be anything other than tedious, and Mrs. Bedingfield’s musical evening. Griselda would never go to that, if only because she was chaperoning Miss Essex. No one would go to a musical evening unless they attended in the mad hope that a single gentleman would accidentally find his way there. Lady Griselda was far too experienced in the ways of the ton to consider the possibility.

Darlington was not the only man riding in Hyde Park that day who wished for acquaintances who didn’t appear. Harry Grone had grown old, somehow. These days he liked nothing better than to warm his toes at his fireplace and think about the glory days. But here he was, trundling around the park, gaping at the sparks and dandies.

Because out of the clear blue sky, the glory days were back. They needed him. The Tatler, them as had pensioned him off and said they weren’t doing his sort of journalism any longer. But now, out of the blue, they needed his sort of expertise.The job came with a nice budget, so Grone had decided to take a carriage into Hyde Park and see what was what. He always called it surveillance in the old days. Now he’d lost his touch, he’d be the first to admit that. He couldn’t put a name to many a young man’s face he saw.

But it was all in the brains. And his brains told him that it wasn’t book-learning that would tell him who Hellgate was. If there were a clue in that book, someone else would have found it. Jessopp, more like. If there was anything known about the ton that Jessopp didn’t know…

No, it was going to take his special brand of journalism.

In the end, he had to ask someone to point out the man he sought. But once Grone found him, he couldn’t stop a grin of pure satisfaction. There was a face as foolish as a turnip. Took after his father, you could see that in a moment, from the puce waistcoat to the high-perch racing carriage that was absolutely improper for the park. An idiot. Just what he hoped for.

Grone rapped on the roof of the hackney and directed the driver to return him to his lodgings. That was enough of a trip for a man of his age. Once home, he got out of the carriage and tossed the driver a coin, biting back a curse as his right knee twinged. Early to bed tonight…because tomorrow he was taking out a bag of gold sovereigns and going to start what he did best.

Sweetening the pot.

12

From The Earl of Hellgate, Chapter the Eighth

My Titania sent me this letter written on blush paper, in a delicate purple ink:Carry me off into the blue skies of your love, roll me in dark clouds, trample me with your thunderstorms…but love me, love me.

S ylvie de la Broderie found that races, racehorses, and racetracks were productive of two things only: boredom and dust. She didn’t like either. Dust she could tolerate under the right circumstances, although she couldn’t bring those circumstances to mind at the moment. A picnic, perhaps. She wasn’t very interested in the out-of-doors, but picnics could be quite agreeable. And to tell the truth, she’d had something of a picnic in mind when she agreed to allow Mayne to accompany her to the races.

But Epsom Downs racetrack was a great distance from a charming linen tablecloth spread under a gracious willow tree, perhaps next to the Seine…Sylvie stifled a sigh. It was cruel to think that such a beautiful life as she anticipated in Paris had been interrupted. Frenchmen were so much more understanding of one’s inclinations than were Englishmen. The English had no imagination. If he had had even a scrap of imagination, her fiancé must have known instantly that the racetrack was no place for her.Instead, Mayne was briskly pointing out all the benefits of their position. They had seats in a box belonging to his friend, the Duke of Holbrook. Sylvie approved of that; she thought that dukes were good friends to have, and Holbrook had easy ways that spoke of an ancient title. Sylvie was a snob when it came to families: the older the better.

She had that from poor Maman. Once again Sylvie thought how pleased she was that Maman had been carried away by that terrible cold just before Papa made such a drastic decision as to move them all to England. True, Papa had been absolutely right. She and her sister Marguerite might well have suffered the same fate as so many of their dear friends, crowded into the Bastille—but Sylvie wrenched her mind away from that thought. She could not, she literally could not, contemplate what had happened to all the gay, exquisite people her papa had known. Albeit she had not yet debuted when they lived in Paris, but her maman had always discussed the goings-on of society with great freedom, so she felt that she did know them.

When Papa wrenched them away from France and settled Marguerite and her in this rainy cold spot, she had been only ten. Poor little Marguerite was merely a year, and far too young to know what she had lost.

The racetrack was extremely noisy. One had to assume that such things existed in Paris as well, but as far as she remembered, her maman had never mentioned such a thing. She could ask her father, but he was at their estate in Southwick, occupied with the dogs. Papa seemed to spend most of his day letting dogs in and out of the house. It was no way for a French aristocrat to behave, particularly one with a houseful of servants.

Sylvie sighed. The only enjoyable thing about the racecourse was that English gentlewomen were taking the opportunity to dress themselves with élégance. In the box next to hers, Lady Feddrington was wearing a bonnet that looked like nothing so much as an entire meringue, tied up with a ribbon. It wasn’t entirely successful, but it had a notable streak of originality about it. And she was waving a fan with a sweet little amber fringe; Sylvie decided that she would quite like to know where it came from. She glanced to her right. Mayne was scowling down at a book they’d given him on entering.

“When does your animal run?” she asked, to be gracious. She had to ask it twice, but he was quite apologetic once she got his attention. That was one thing she liked about her future husband. He was invariably polite.

“I am running two horses,” he said, “an elegant little filly named Sharon and the lazy sorrel gelding who just trotted in last.”

“Oh dear,” Sylvie said, “you should have told me that your horse was running by us, Mayne. I would have paid attention.”

“I told you he ran in the fourth race.”