“Sir?”
“Ah, my apologies. I wasn’t clear enough for you, Burke? It has become apparent to me for reasons I won’t bore you with at the moment that my opponent must cease drawing breath in the next quarter hour at most.” The earl replaced the handkerchief and shot his cuffs before smoothing down the lilac velvet of his frock coat, putting out his right foot to admire the dull sheen of his satin breeches in the waning moonlight. “Too much, do you think, Burke? This rig-out, I mean. I didn’t wish to appear shabby, although I might make a richer target in this cursed moonlight than previously considered. Well, no matter. Shall we be on with it?”
“If there is no other way?”
The earl’s jawline went hard as he touched a hand to the small golden pin in the shape of a rose in full bloom stuck into the foaming lace of his cravat. “There probably exist a veritable plethora of other ways, but I have chosen this one, magnanimously granting the dishonorable creature an honorable death. Civilized murder, if you will, with man-made rules. And, of course, a lesson quite literally brought home to my lady wife, hmm, when I bring his bloodied body to her bedchamber, to fling it at her feet? Please allow my fornicating opponent first choice of weapons.”
Burke did as he was told, and much too short a time later he was huddled alongside the surgeon and the other second, watching the combatants stand backto-back, pistols raised to their shoulders, the duel about to commence. The earl appeared to be at his ease, a smile on his handsome face. The Frenchman, his chin held high, was pale-cheeked yet determined, as if knowing he was probably about to die.
Yes, Burke thought, civilized murder. All but an execution.
The earl himself began counting out the paces before they would stop, turn and shoot. “…eight…nine…ten.”
Burke closed his eyes, only opening them again when the sound of a single shot ripped the morning silence, jolting nesting birds into startled flight. The two men now faced each other across the expanse of winter dead grass, their right arms extended, their pistols aimed at each other. Rather like statues, frozen in place.
But then the earl turned about rather stiffly, as if hunting something, and Burke looked to the opposite line of trees and the cloaked figure standing there, head and shoulders wreathed in blue smoke.
“Now there’s something I hadn’t expected…” the Earl of Saltwood said at last, just before he dropped to his knees and pitched forward onto the ground, dead.
CHAPTER ONE
London, England 1810
THE EIGHTEENTH EARL of Saltwood, one Gideon Redgrave by name, struck a pose just inside the entrance of the narrow house in Jermyn Street, looking for all the world a sketch from the Journal des Dames et des Modes come to life. Not by so much as a flicker of an eyelid did he give away the fact that he’d no idea he’d knocked on the door of number forty-seven only to be ushered into a gaming house. His man of business would answer for that omission when next he saw him; the earl didn’t care for surprises.
He allowed a curtsying maid of indeterminate years to relieve him of his hat, gloves and cane, and then shrugged off his evening cloak, watching as the woman folded it lovingly over her arm. A gold coin appeared from his pocket, and he held it in front of her wideopen blue eyes. A copper coin would do for most, but Gideon Redgrave believed the gold coin to be an investment, one that would pay dividends when his belongings came back to him in the same pristine condition in which they’d been handed over, rather than having suffered the unfortunate accident of walking out the door in his absence.
“Yours if my possessions are safely returned when I leave,” he told her, and the maid bobbed her head enthusiastically before scurrying away.
He resumed his pose, meant to have all eyes come to him and their owners too busy being either envious or impressed to think up mischief while he surreptitiously acclimated himself to his surroundings. And the eighteenth Earl of Saltwood’s appearance was, without fail, nothing short of enviably impressive.
The superb tailoring of his darkest blue cut-away tailcoat accentuated the snowy perfection of his silk brocade waistcoat, but not so much as it displayed the earl’s astonishingly fit physique, broad shoulders, flat stomach and narrow waist. Pantaloons of formfitting buff doeskin clung lovingly to long, muscular lower limbs, ending just at the calf, above silk stockings and low-heeled black patent evening shoes.
His only ornamentation, other than the thin black grosgrain ribbon hanging about his neck and attached to the quizzing glass tucked into a small pocket of his waistcoat, was the small golden rose depicted in full bloom and no more than a single inch in circumference, nestled in the folds of his intricately tied cravat. This latter bit of fancy was a recent affectation, one that had caused comment in some circles, but to date, no one had dared speak of it to his lordship.
Thick, longish hair the color of midnight tumbled over his smooth forehead in natural curls that sent other gentlemen to their valets and the crimping iron to duplicate. Hints of his Spanish mother could be seen in the strong, aquiline nose that saved him from too much beauty, the unexpected fullness of his mouth, the sensual smolder in his dark eyes. There was an earthiness about the man not completely disguised by the trappings of fine clothes, a sense of dangerous energy tightly leashed yet always simmering just below the sophisticated surface.
In a word, the eighteenth Earl of Saltwood was intimidating. In two, if applying to the female population, he was marvelously irresistible.
When he was noticed, and he was always noticed, several of the men who recognized him for what he was, if not who he was, prudently realized they had pressing business elsewhere and quit the room in some haste. Conversations broke off abruptly. Hands stilled in the act of shuffling cards or pulling in chips. The more daring among the players turned their chairs about for a better view of what was sure to be an interesting few minutes, at the least.
One of the hostesses, the term surely taken quite as loosely as the morals of any female in the hall, ran her moist tongue around her lips rather hungrily. She gave her smiling approval of the impossible-to-disguise manly muscle between the gentleman’s thighs and took two steps forward, tugging down on the already low neckline of her cherry-red gown before she was grabbed at the elbow and hastily pulled back.
“For Lord’s sake, Mildred, control yourself. He’s not here for that.”
Gideon Redgrave extracted his chased-gold quizzing glass, raising it to one eye, and slowly surveyed the surprisingly well-lit and clean yet faintly down-at-the-heels room before allowing his gaze to halt and hold on the woman who had just spoken.
She advanced on him with some purpose, the light of confrontation in her sherry-brown eyes, her fairly remarkable chin tilted up as if she had somehow raised the battle flag and was announcing her intention to unleash a broadside. But then she stopped, smiled and dropped into a mocking curtsy.
“Lord Saltwood,” she intoned quietly, her voice slightly husky, as if she might be whispering risqué endearments in the privacy of a candlelit boudoir, “I’ve been expecting you. Do you prefer a public airing of our differences, or would you care to retire to my apartments for our chat?”
She was…magnificent. Gideon could think of no other description. Taller than most women, slim almost to the point of thinness, yet subtly curved. Hair the color of flame against the severity of her high-necked black gown, skin the color of finest ivory. The eyes, mocking, the mouth, full and wide…and knowing. No sane man could look at her without imagining his fingers tangling in that mass of warm curls tumbling around her shoulders, sinking himself deep between her thighs, plunging into the promised fire as she wrapped long legs up high around him.
Which, of course, would be total madness.
Gideon’s