CHAPTER 1
“Why is it that I never win at dice and cards, Wrex?” Christopher Sheffield kicked aside a mound of rotting cabbage before leading the way through a low archway. “While you always walk away from the gaming hells with your pockets stuffed with blunt.” He expelled a mournful sigh. “It defies logic.”
The Earl of Wrexford raised a brow in bemusement. “Hearing you invoke the word ‘logic’ is what defies reason.”
“No need to be sarcastic,” grumbled Sheffield.
“Fine. If your question was truly meant to be more than rhetorical, the answer is I watch the cards carefully and calculate my chances.” He sidestepped a broken barrel. “Try thinking, Kit. And counting.”
“Higher mathematics confuses my feeble brain,” retorted his friend.
“Then why do you play?”
“I was under the impression that one doesn’t have to be smart to gamble,” protested Sheffield.
“Didn’t that fellow Pascal—and his friend Fermat—formulate ideas on risk and probability ?
I thought the odds should be roughly fifty-fifty for me winning simply by playing blindly.
” He made a rueful grimace. “Bloody hell, by that calculation, I must be due to win a fortune, and soon.”
“So you weren’t actually sleeping through lectures at Oxford?” said Wrexford dryly.
“I was just dozing.” A pause. “Or more likely I was cup-shot. Aberdeen was awfully generous with his supply of fine brandy.”
“Speaking of brandy,” murmured the earl as he watched his friend stumble and nearly fall on his arse. “You’ve been drinking too much lately.”
“Hell’s teeth, since when did you become such a stick in the mud?”
“Since you led me into this putrid-smelling swamp of an alleyway,” he retorted.
His own wits were a little fuzzed with alcohol, and he winced as he slipped, nearly losing his balance.
“Pray, why are we taking this route past Half Moon Gate? Tyler will raise holy hell at having to clean this disgusting muck from my boots.”
“Heaven forbid we upset your valet.” Sheffield made a face. “You know, you’re in danger of becoming no fun to carouse with.”
Wrexford came to a halt as the alley branched off into three twisting passages. “Which way?”
“The middle one,” said Sheffield without hesitation.
“As for why we’re cutting through here, there are two reasons.
It’s much shorter than circling around by the main street.
” A grunt, as he slipped again. “More importantly, there’s a chance we’ll encounter a footpad, and given my recent losses at the gambling tables, I’m in the mood to thrash someone to a bloody pulp. ”
The earl tactfully refrained from comment.
Like many younger sons of aristocratic families, his friend was caught in a damnably difficult position.
The heir and firstborn usually had a generous stipend—and if not, tradesmen were willing to advance generous credit.
But those who trailed behind were dependent on parental pursestrings.
Sheffield’s father, however, was a notorious nipcheese, and kept him on a very puny allowance.
In retaliation, Sheffield made a point of acting badly, a vicious cycle that did no one any good.
It was, mused Wrexford, a pity, for Kit had a very sharp mind when challenged to use it. He had been of great help in solving a complicated crime a handful of months ago—
“Has Mrs. Sloane decided to move to a different neighborhood?” asked his friend, abruptly changing the subject.
“The last time I paid her a visit, she made no mention of it,” he replied.
Sheffield shot him an odd look. “You didn’t ask?”
The squish-squish of their steps filled the air. Wrexford deliberately said nothing.
“Never mind,” murmured his friend.
Charlotte Sloane. A sudden stumble forced a sharp huff of air from his lungs. That was a subject he didn’t care to discuss, especially as the throbbing at the back of his skull was growing worse.
He and Charlotte Sloane had been drawn together—quite literally—by the gruesome murder of a leading religious zealot, a crime for which he had been the leading suspect.
Secrets twisted around secrets—one of the more surprising ones had been that the notorious A.
J. Quill, London’s leading satirical artist, was a woman.
Circumstances had led him and Charlotte to join forces in order to unravel a diabolically cunning plot and unmask the real miscreant.
Their initial mistrust had turned into wary collaboration, and then to friendship—though that was, mused Wrexford, a far too simple word to describe the bond between them.
Chemistry. As an expert in science, Wrexford could describe in objective detail how the combination of their special talents seemed to stir a powerful reaction.
However, they lived in different worlds and moved in vastly different circles here in Town.
Rich and poor. Aristocrat and Nobody. Charlotte had made it clear after solving the crime that said circles were unlikely to overlap again.
Despite her assumption, he did pay an occasional visit to her humble home—simply out of friendship—to ensure that she and the two urchin orphans she had taken under her wing were suffering no consequences for helping prove his innocence.
But given his own reputation for being a cold-hearted bastard, Sheffield didn’t need to know—
“We turn again here.”
Sheffield’s murmur drew Wrexford from his brooding.
“Mind your head,” added his friend as he squeezed through a gap between two derelict buildings. “A beam has broken loose from the roof.”
The alleyway widened, allowing them to walk on side by side.
Wrexford grimaced as a particularly noxious odor rose up to assault his nostrils.
“The next time you want my company while you try your luck at the gaming tables, let’s choose a more civilized spot than The Wolf’s Lair.
I really don’t fancy—” His words cut off sharply as he spotted a flutter of movement in the shadows up ahead.
He heard an oath and the sudden rustling of some unseen person scrambling to his feet and racing away.
“Don’t fancy what?” asked Sheffield, who had stopped to light a cheroot.
“Strike another match and hand it over,” demanded Wrexford. “Quickly!”
Sheffield dipped a phosphorus-tipped stick into a tiny bottle of nitric acid, igniting a flame.
Wrexford took it and approached the corner of a brick warehouse. Crouching down, he watched the sparking point of fire illuminate what lay in the mud and then expelled a harried sigh.
“I really don’t fancy finding yet another dead body.”
* * *
Setting aside her pen, Charlotte Sloane took up a fine-pointed sable brush and added several bold strokes of blood-red crimson to her drawing.
Man versus Machine. Her latest series of satirical prints was proving very popular.
And thank God for it, considering that there had been no sensational murder or flagrant royal scandal of late to titillate the public’s prurient interest. As A.
J. Quill, London’s most celebrated gadfly, she made her living by skewering the high and mighty, as well as highlighting the foibles of society.
Peace and quiet put no pennies in her pocket.
Charlotte expelled a small sigh. Financial need had compelled her to take over her late husband’s identity as the infamous Quill, and she was damnably good at it.
However, her income would disappear in a heartbeat if it ever became known that a woman was wielding the pen.
She, of all people, knew that no secret—however well hidden—was perfectly safe.
But among the many hard-won skills she had acquired over the last few years was the art of survival.
Forcing aside such distractions, she turned her attention back to her drawing. The recent unrest at the textile mills in the north had struck a raw nerve in the country. A heated debate was now raging over whether steam power would soon replace manual labor. Many people lauded the new technology.
And many feared it.
Charlotte leaned back in her chair, studying the violent clash of workers and local militia she had created, the human figures balanced precariously on the iron-dark pistons and condensers of a monstrous, steam-belching engine.
We are all creatures of habit, she mused. However awful, the known was preferable to the unknown.
The thought caused a wry smile to tug at the corners of her mouth. She seemed to be one of those rare souls drawn to exploring beyond the boundaries of convention.
“Not that I had much choice,” she murmured.
Not to begin with, perhaps. But honesty compelled her to admit that the challenges, no matter how daunting, were what added a spice of excitement to the humdrum blandness of everyday existence.
Raising her gaze, Charlotte looked around at the half-packed boxes scattered around the room and was once again reminded of the current theme of her art.
Change.
“Change is good,” she told herself. Only unimaginative minds saw it as terrifying.
But at the sight of all her earthly possessions—a rather unimpressive collection of flotsam and jetsam—lying in disorderly piles, she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of trepidation.
For several months she had wrestled with the idea of moving from her cramped but cheap quarters on the fringes of the St. Giles stews to a more respectable neighborhood.
The previous week she had finally made up her mind, and, with the help of a trusted friend, had leased a modest house on Buckridge Street, near Bedford Square.
Her art was now bringing in a handsome salary from Fores’s print shop. And along with the unexpected windfall she’d received for partnering with Lord Wrexford . . .
Charlotte expelled a long breath. She had not yet come to grips with how she felt about taking the earl’s money. Yes, she had earned every last farthing of it. And yet . . .
Beggars can’t be choosy. She silenced her misgivings with an old English adage.