Earnest Hooker shuffled files while he sat in judgment of the Marquis of Deene’s aspirations. When the ensuing silence stretched more than a few moments, the solicitor readjusted his neck cloth, cleared his throat, and shifted his inkwell one inch closer to the edge of the blotter centered on his gargantuan desk.

Two of his minions watched the client—whom they no doubt expected to rant and throw things in the grand family tradition—from a careful distance.

Lucas Denning, newly minted Marquis of Deene, took out the gold watch Marie had given him when he’d come down from university. The thing had stopped for lack of timely winding, but Deene made it a point to stare at his timepiece before speaking.

“Impossible, Hooker? I’m curious as to the motivation for such hyperbole from a man of the law.”

One clerk glanced nervously at the other when Hooker stopped fussing with his files.

“My lord, you cannot mean to deprive a man of the company of his legitimate offspring.” Hooker’s pudgy, lily-white hands continued to fiddle with the accoutrements of his trade. “We’re discussing a girl child, true, but one in her father’s possession in even the simplest sense. The courts do not exist to satisfy anybody’s whims, and you can’t expect them to pluck that child from her father’s care and place her in… in yours. You have no children of your own, my lord, no wife, no experience raising children, and you’ve yet to see to your own succession. Even were the man demented, the courts would likely consider other possibilities before placing the girl in your care.”

Deene snapped the watch shut. “I heard her mother’s dying wishes. That should count for something. Wellington wrote me up in the dispatches often enough.”

One of the other men came forward, a prissier, desiccated version of Hooker, with fewer chins and less hair.

“My lord, do you proceed on dying declarations alone, that will land you in Chancery, where you’ll be lucky to have the case heard before the girl reaches her majority. And endorsements of a man’s wartime abilities by the Iron Duke are all well and good, but consider that raising children, most especially young girl children, should not have much in common with battling the Corsican.”

An insult lurked in that soft reply, but truth as well. Every street sweeper in London knew the futility of resorting to the Court of Chancery. The clerk had not exaggerated about the delays and idiosyncrasies of that institution.

“I’m sorry, my lord.” Hooker rose, while Deene remained seated. “We look forward to serving the marquessate in all of its legal undertakings, but in this, I’m afraid, we cannot honestly advise you to proceed.”

Deene got to his feet, taking small satisfaction from being able to look down his nose, quite literally, at the useless ciphers whose families he kept housed and fed. “Draw up the pleadings anyway.”

He stalked out of the room, the urge to destroy something, to pitch Hooker’s idiot files into the fire, to snatch up the fireplace poker and lay about with it, nigh overcoming his self-discipline.

“My lord?”

The third man had the temerity to follow Deene from the room, which was going to serve as a wonderful excuse for Deene’s long-denied display of frustration—a marquis did not have tantrums—when Deene realized the man was carrying a pair of well-made leather gloves.

“My thanks.” Deene snatched the gloves from the man’s hand, but to his consternation, the fellow held onto the gloves for a bit, making for a short tug-of-war.

“If your lordship has one more moment?”

The clerk let the gloves go. The exchange had been bizarre enough to penetrate Deene’s ire, mostly because, between Hooker & Sons and the Marquis of Deene, obsequies were the order of the day and had been for generations.

“Speak.” Deene pulled on a glove. “You’re obviously ready to burst with some crumb of legal wisdom your confreres were not inclined to share.”

“Not legal wisdom, my lord.” The man glanced over his shoulder at the closed door behind them. “Simple common sense. You’ll not be able to wrest the girl from her father through litigious means, but there are other ways.”

Yes, there were. Most of them illegal, dangerous, and unethical—but tempting.

Deene yanked on the second glove. “If I provoke him to a duel, Dolan stands an even chance of putting out my lights, sir, a consummation my cousin and sole heir claims would serve him very ill. I doubt I’d enjoy it myself.”

This fellow was considerably younger than the other two, with an underfed, scholarly air about him and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses gracing his nose. The man drew himself up as if preparing for oral argument.

“I do not advocate murder, my lord, but every man, every person, has considerations motivating them. The girl’s father is noted to be mindful of his social standing and his wealth.”

Vulgarly so. “Your point?”

“If you offer him something he wants more than he wants to torment you over the girl, he might part with her. The problem isn’t legal. The solution might not be legal either.”

If there was sense in what the young man was saying, Deene was too angry to parse it out.

“My thanks. I will consider the not legal alternatives, as you suggest. Good day.”

“My lord, that wasn’t what I meant—”

Deene was down the stairs and out the door before the idiot could finish his sentence. Fortunately for all in Deene’s path, his coachman was just bringing the horses around the corner at a sedate walk. Deene climbed in before the vehicle even stopped moving.

Anthony Denning folded down his edition of the Times, his expression impassive. “Any luck with your pet weasels?”

Deene appropriated the spot beside him, since Anthony was on the forward-facing seat. “They were waiting for me to lay waste to the office from the moment I arrived.”

“Uncle once said that was the best way to get their attention.”

Deene stared out the window, knowing Anthony was simply trying to make conversation. “His tempers were just another way for him to feel powerful while incurring ridiculous costs and earning a reputation as a dangerous lunatic.”

Anthony set the paper aside as Deene banged twice on the roof quite stoutly. The horses moved up to the trot only to come back to the walk two blocks later.

“I should have ridden.”

“You should have let me accompany you,” Anthony said. He had the knack of sounding not like he was scolding, which he was, but like he was saddened to have been denied an opportunity to serve.

“You’ll make a lousy marquis when Dolan douses my lights, Anthony. I appreciate the support, but my problems with Dolan are personal.”

Anthony bore the same Denning family features as his cousin: blue eyes, wavy blond hair, a lanky build, and decent features. He’d look like a Marquis of Deene, but he’d never be able to carry out the displays of temper, incontinent drinking, and excesses of sexual indulgence Polite Society expected of the titleholder.

Anthony did, however, make a fine supervisor to the myriad Deene land stewards, for which Deene was shamelessly grateful.

“I’ll take Beast out this afternoon prior to the fashionable hour. Perhaps some carousing tonight will improve my humor as well.”

Anthony picked up his newspaper, a bland smile on his face. “A man newly out of mourning cannot neglect his carousing. Once the Season starts, you’ll be waltzing the night away. Then there’s every house party and shooting party in the land to attend while each ambitious mama in the realm tries to put you on a leash for her darling daughter.”

“If you’re trying to cheer me up, Cousin, you are failing spectacularly.”

Though the solicitors had mentioned that a man with a wife might stand a better chance in the courts than one without.

What a dolorous, uncomfortable thought.

* * *

Lady Eve Windham’s great fall had happened on her sixteenth birthday. In the eyes of Polite Society, it was a bad fall from a fast horse.

Eve’s family knew it to be a fall from grace, while Eve understood it to be a fall of even more disastrous dimensions than that. A long, hard fall, involving injury to her heart—not just her left wrist and hip—and requiring years of convalescence. Seven years later—she found something ominously biblical about the length of time—she still hadn’t gotten back on a horse.

Nor entirely mended her heart.

Neither situation merited much notice though, because she’d been born the youngest daughter of Their Graces, the Duke and Duchess of Moreland. The Windham family’s consequence was such that the exact nature of this youthful indiscretion was never allowed to reach the ears of the gossips, sparing Eve that most inconvenient and troublesome Windham family tradition—Great Scandal.

Great Scandal might as well have the status of a great-aunt, so frequently did it come to call upon the Windhams. His Grace’s offspring included two by-blows, both fortunately conceived prior to his acquisition of the title, and also—God be thanked—before his acquisition of a duchess.

When Windhams married, the firstborn was typically not a nine-months babe. In fact, nobody could recall when a Windham firstborn had been a nine-months babe, not even back to the present duke’s late grandfather. And yet, Windham infants were notoriously healthy from birth.

The Windham sisters had by a narrow margin evaded what amounted to the family curse. With Maggie and Sophie wed, that margin was so narrow as to suggest Windham brides conceived on their very wedding nights. The third Windham sister to marry, Louisa, Countess of Kesmore, was being closely watched to see if she too was going to present her earl with an heir in such spanking time.

Eve Windham, by contrast, had no intention of allowing herself to encounter those circumstances conducive to the subsequent appearance of a baby.

Not now, not ever.

And therein lay a problem of disastrous—even scandalous—proportions, for no less a person than Esther, Her Grace, the Duchess of Moreland, had lately taken a notion to see her two remaining unwed daughters escorted up the aisle.

Locked in wed, as Eve’s brothers used to say.

All three brothers were married now, and saying very different things indeed.

“Smile, Evie. Trottenham is on his way over.”

Eve pasted the requisite smile on her face and glanced around the ballroom. “Be still my tender heart.” The tone of her words was at variance with their content, which caused Eve’s sister Genevieve to smile as well.

“He’s not so bad, or you wouldn’t have given him a minuet.”

Eve said nothing as her latest admiring swain wove ever closer through the crowd. Jenny was right: he wasn’t so bad, or so good. He’d serve as one of this Season’s decoys if need be.

Eve kept her smile in place, though the thought of another entire Season—months!—of social prevarication made her oppressively tired.

“My lady.” Trottenham bowed over her hand, bringing his heels together like some stuffy Prussian officer.

“Mr. Trottenham, a pleasure.” Though it wasn’t.

“I believe the sets are forming for my dance.” He wiggled his blond eyebrows, probably his attempt at flirtation. Jenny took a whiff of her wrist corsage, though Eve thought her sister might be hiding a smirk.

Eve placed her gloved fingers over his hand, and for the thousandth time, prepared to tread that fine line between reeling a man in and casting him away. In the course of the dance, she batted her eyes, though twice she forgot the name of Mr. Trottenham’s estate. She let him hold her a trifle too close—as she tittered. The grating titter was a rarefied art form.

“Lady Eve, has my conversation grown tiresome?” Trottenham twirled her gently under his arm while he spoke, and the slight resulting vertigo was Eve’s first clue she was in trouble.

“Nonsense, Mr. Trottenham. I’m merely concentrating a bit on the steps of the dance.” She treated him to her most fatuous simper, while sounds around her altered as if from far away, including the sound of Eve’s own voice. Each sound became both clearer—more detached from other noises—and less real.

“One can’t expect such a pretty little lady to dance and follow a conversation.” Trottenham beamed an indulgent smile at her. “Though my sisters tell me…”

He prattled on, while Eve dealt with the peculiar sense that her head was three feet wide and that she could feel sensations with her hair. By the time the dance concluded, the visual distortions had begun.