Chapter 1 #3
“It is not flattering,” Jude remarked with a grin. “I daresay Mr. Fairchild is not overly fond of you.”
That caught Luca’s full attention. He extended his hand, palm up. “Let me see.”
With evident relish, Jude surrendered the newssheets.
Luca’s eyes scanned the Society column, his practiced gaze devouring the tidy lines of print until his name leapt out at him in stark black ink: Lord Luca Dexter looked like a preening peacock at the ball, no doubt searching for his next dull, uninspired article.
Luca stared at the words, heat prickling his collar. A preening peacock? His jaw tightened. What had he done—merely observed, merely existed—to earn Fairchild’s scorn? And worse, in a rival’s column, no less.
The newssheets crackled under his grip as his hand clenched.
“Careful,” Jude warned lightly, reaching as though the newssheets were precious. “I still want to finish reading that.”
With deliberate disdain, Luca tossed the offending newssheets onto the table.
Jude wasted no time in snatching them up again, his grin widening.
“Now that I think of it, you do rather resemble a peacock, especially when you enter a room with that chest lifted and eyes scanning as if the world were your stage.”
Luca shot him a glare, but Jude only laughed.
Their father’s voice intervened, calm but commanding. “Do not let Mr. Fairchild’s words trouble you. He merely writes for the newssheets.”
Luca straightened at that. “As do I,” he reminded firmly.
“Yes,” his father replied, “but you are also a son of a duke. There is a difference.”
The sting of that subtle dismissal settled heavily in Luca’s chest. A son of a duke. As though that made his work a mere pastime rather than an endeavor worthy of respect.
At that moment, the door opened and Alfrey, their solemn, long-faced butler, stepped into the room. His presence was as unbending as his posture, his voice pitched with quiet formality. “A Mr. Cloward is here to see you, my lord. He claims to be a Bow Street Runner.”
Luca pushed back from the table, rising with purpose. Finally—progress. “Inform Mr. Cloward that I will join him shortly.”
The butler inclined his head and withdrew.
“Who is Mr. Cloward?” the duke asked, his brows furrowing.
Before Luca could answer, Jude spoke with infuriating nonchalance. “He is the Bow Street Runner that Luca hired to help him poach Mr. Fairchild from The Morning Post.”
“Poaching?” Their father’s lip curled, his voice dripping with disapproval. “That is a rather distasteful practice.”
Luca drew a steadying breath. This was why he worked as he did. To prove, to himself and to them, that words mattered. That influence wielded by a quill could be as powerful as any dukedom.
And if it meant luring Mr. Fairchild from the shadows? So be it.
“Excuse me,” Luca said, not bothering to linger for his father’s inevitable disapproval or Jude’s amusement.
He left the dining room with long strides, pulse ticking quickly in his throat.
Cloward had better not come empty-handed again.
His patience, though broad when chasing a story, was wearing thin when it came to this particular hunt.
Standing in the center of the drawing room was Cloward. He was a compact man, shorter than Luca by half a head, his dark hair cropped untidily, and his red waistcoat stretched across his broad chest. He looked utterly out of place amid the carved wainscoting and gilt frames of the townhouse.
Cloward tipped his head in a quick nod. “My lord. Thank you for agreeing to see me.”
Luca dispensed with niceties. “Did you discover who Mr. Fairchild is and how I may contact him?”
“I did.” Cloward drew a folded slip of paper from his brown jacket pocket. “Trust me when I say that this information was not easy to acquire. The truth was locked away as though it were the Crown jewels. But I had no trouble picking the lock of The Morning Post’s editor-in-chief, Mr. Lyttelton.”
“Did anyone see you?”
The Bow Street Runner shook his head. “No, my lord. I know how to be discreet.” He extended the slip of paper with an almost ceremonial air. “If you require further assistance, you know where to find me.”
Luca accepted the paper, his fingers brushing the worn edge. He waited until Cloward’s boots had receded down the corridor before unfolding it.
One name stared back at him in stark ink.
Miss Charlotte Winslow.
Luca’s breath caught. “Good gads,” he murmured. Of all the people… Miss Winslow was Mr. Fairchild?
This revelation brought with it a far greater problem. Miss Winslow detested him. Her disdain was evident in every quip, every arched brow, every studied glance that dismissed him as though he were an irritant beneath her slipper.
How, then, was he to persuade her to write for his newssheets? To leave The Morning Post and join The London Gazette?
Luca pressed the slip of paper flat against his palm, his mind already whirring. He had hunted Mr. Fairchild for months, but what he had caught was no phantom. It was a woman—brilliant, vexing, and utterly opposed to him.
And if he wanted her pen, he would have to win over Miss Winslow herself.