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CHAPTER TWO

R olfe did not immediately head to Seagrave House, the Montefort family house-in-town which stood along the elm-shaded walkways of Piccadilly.

First he would require further information, rather more than he'd been able to glean from the king through gentle prodding.

He wanted to find out more about Lady Cassia Montefort—suspected murderess and mistress to the king.

Quite simply, he wanted to find out what it was he was getting himself into.

It was not that he would refuse Charles's request should he find this assignment more than just a matter of simply transporting the lady from London to the country and keeping her secluded there while he set his colleagues in search of the truth.

Being a man experienced as he was in the art of investigation during the civil wars, Rolfe also realized there was always more to any situation than first met the eyes.

Where had Lady Cassia come from?

What sort of person was she?

With whom—outside of the king, obviously—did she associate?

And why would it be so readily accepted within the court of Whitehall that an otherwise refined young lady of gentle breeding could be capable of such a violent act?

Rolfe knew he would need to glean all this and more, and since his time in London was limited, he knew precisely where and to whom to go in order to find it.

The morning sun shone high above the steeply pitched rooftops by the time the tiltboat he'd hired to take him down the Thames from Westminster glided to the landing at Salisbury Stairs.

As he disembarked, Rolfe tossed a shilling to the boatman, a hunched-backed sort who muttered his thanks out of a toothless mouth.

He then started directly toward the piazza at Covent Garden, and the nearby home of his friend, Dante Tremaine.

Rolfe and Dante had been mates since their days at Oxford, and along with their third friend, Hadrian Ross, the three had weathered many a scrape together.

Through hardship and war, danger and fighting, they were as close as kin, as loyal as brothers, no matter the distance or time that might separate them.

Rolfe trusted no one more than these two men.

And with this particular assignment, Rolfe knew he would need that trust.

Rolfe tipped his plumed hat in greeting to a passerby as he approached the front steps of the timber-framed house at the end of the narrow lane off Henrietta Street.

He wondered, noting the shutters that were closed over a number of the windows, if Dante was even in residence.

Last he’d heard, he was in town, but after several minutes of insistent pounding, he nearly gave it up to leave.

The butler, however, a tall and slender man named Chilton, who reminded Rolfe of the strict schoolmaster they'd had as young men, finally answered the door.

He looked rather startled to see Rolfe standing there.

“Lord Blackwood, good morning. I was not made aware that Lord Morgan would be expecting you at this hour.”

Rolfe tossed the butler his hat, draping his cloak over the man's bony right shoulder as he pushed his way into the entrance hall. “His lordship wasn't expecting me, Chilton, and it has been Lord Ravenscroft for nearly a year now. Didn't Dante tell you? His Majesty has seen fit to make me an earl.”

Before the butler could respond, Rolfe was already bounding up the stairs two at a time before turning onto the upper floor landing.

“Wait! Lord Blackwood—I mean Lord Ravenscroft—Lord Morgan is yet abed!”

His warning, though well-intended, was sadly too late in coming. Rolfe had already thrown open the door to his friend’s bedchamber and was crossing to the draped windows, nearly stumbling over something—a discarded boot?—in the process.

“Dante, you calf-lolly, its full daylight out. I know you keep city hours here, but it's long past time you got your sorry arse out of bed.”

Rolfe whipped the heavy velvet drapery open wide. Bright morning sunlight blared in from the outside with all the suddenness of a trumpet call.

A scream—very feminine in pitch—sounded from the vicinity of the high poster bed behind him.

It was followed directly after by a muffled male curse.

“Damnation, Rolfe, what in perdition are you doing here at this ungodly hour?”

Dante Tremaine, the Earl of Morgan, lay quite naked atop the feather-filled mattress on the throne-like bed, a carved walnut concoction topped by oppressive-looking hawk's heads with beady gilded eyes.

The rich bedcoverings were rumpled around him in a disarray.

An assortment of clothing lay strewn about the floor with a single silk stocking draped around the neck of a table-top statuette of Aphrodite.

The room exuded sex and its aftermath, and Rolfe immediately saw why: a lovely sleep-dazed young woman was clutching the bedclothes to her chin and looking at Rolfe as if he were a vision of the Devil himself.

Rolfe grinned at her. “Ah, good morning to you, Portia—or should I say, Lady Winchester?

That is the name of the poor fellow you finally settled upon, isn't it?

I always knew at the very least you'd hook yourself an earl. Anything smaller would have only resulted in your throwing the poor minnow back in and offering more bait for a bigger catch.”

The young blonde narrowed her eyes at him. “Well, if it isn't the Exiled Earl finally come out from his cave. Had you decided you'd kept yourself in hiding long enough for the humiliation to pass, my lord?”

“That will do, Portia,” Dante warned.

But Rolfe only sallied back at her gibe. “I dare say, my lady, isn't it a bit late for you to be out? I'm certain Lord Winchester is beginning to wonder just where his new bride went off to last night, unless, of course, he is hiding somewhere under those sheets as well?”

Rolfe lifted the corner of the bedsheet by her feet as if to peek underneath. Portia furiously slapped the bedcover back down.

“No doubt my husband is yet abed himself in the rooms of his dog-faced, washerwoman of a mistress. I believe she was to be performing on the stage at Drury last night, a hideous rendition of Davenant’s latest production.

It wouldn't matter if she hadn't for my husband never rises before noon, since, of course, he never retires until dawn.

My absence, I'm certain, is far from noticed by the likes of him.”

Rolfe chuckled, dropping onto the mattress beside her. “What's this? Has the blushing bride's nuptial bed grown cold a’ready?”

Portia glared at him and pulled the bedsheet closer against her breasts.

“The condition of my marriage is none of your concern, Lord Ravenscroft, as is neither my presence here.

Now, since I'm certain Dante would never think of asking you to leave, kindly turn your head so I may retrieve my clothing and be gone from here and from the likes of you as soon as possible.”

Rolfe bowed his head in a gallant gesture, focusing on the opposite wall. “As you wish, my lady.”

She was gone in a flash of pearly skin and blonde mussed hair, along with any trace of her—including the stocking—slamming the door behind her.

“Thanks, friend,” Dante muttered from beneath the pillow he'd placed over his head while he’d waited out the departure of his bed companion. “You just saved me the trouble of getting her to leave quietly before breakfast.”

“Happy to be of service, my lord,” Rolfe said, standing. “Think nothing of it.”

Dante pulled on his breeches and ran a hand over a chin darkened by the shadow of a night's growth of beard.

The gesture reminded Rolfe that he, himself, was in dire need of a shave.

Indeed, had the two of them been brothers, they could not have shared a closer resemblance.

Both men stood tall, had hair blacker than sin, and a complexion that darkened easily in the sun.

And both had spent a goodly portion of their youths in pursuit of the ladies.

Unlike Dante, known far and wide as a veritable rakehell, Rolfe was not quite so profligate as his friend.

He had never truly mastered the ability to bed a woman at night .

.. then ask for her name in the morning.

“So, what number of notch cut into your bedpost is dear Portia?” Rolfe asked, tossing his friend a clean cambric shirt from the wardrobe across the room.

“Eleven...?” Dante ventured. “But who's counting? I'm a discreet man, Rolfe. Never bedded a woman who wasn't willing, nor one who was not already married. I don’t take innocents.”

Rolfe shook his head. “Good thing I've taken to living the bachelor life, else I'd spend every waking moment trying to make certain my wife didn't add to your collection. But you really should seek a mistress with a more pleasing disposition, Dante. That one is a harpy.”

“It's not Portia's disposition I am concerned with, my friend.

Old Winchester is a fool for seeking out the bed of another, even if she is an actress.

For a girl of nineteen, Portia is most inventive, but then again, what lady of our glorious king's court is not?

Seems a prerequisite to being allowed within the hallowed halls of Whitehall these days.

Can't for the life of me figure out what keeps you out at that lonely old estate in Sussex when there are all these fine young flowers here in the city to pluck.”

“That is precisely what keeps me in Sussex, Dante. I've had more than my fill of ‘plucking.’”

Dante chuckled. “You know what they say, my friend. Once you fall from the saddle, it is best to just climb back in it and ride hard and fast again.”

“It's not the riding that sent me to Sussex, but the perfidious fences one is made to hurdle once astride.”

Dante shrugged. “Perhaps it's simply time you sampled a different mount.”

Rolfe muttered something that Dante wasn’t able to discern in response. He chose not to pursue it.