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L ord Richard Orson looked about the upscale house of ill repute and frowned.

One of his closest mates was to marry at week’s end, and this was to be Sir Hunter Wickersham’s “final twitch,” so to speak.

Unfortunately for Richard, he was to stand up with Hunter at the wedding, and so he could not excuse himself from all the frivolities, though he was bored, as such foolishness often lost its appeal for him.

He was not opposed to enjoying the finer qualities of an appealing woman in his bed, but the idea of choosing one of Madame Ahrens’s ladies, without a care for which one, was not his style.

Wickersham slid up beside Richard. “Who should I choose? Which one?” his friend ironically asked.

“It is for you to choose,” he said with a smile as Hunter Wickersham swayed in place.

This was the third of their stops this evening, and, at each, Hunt had imbibed steadily.

More than likely Hunt would spend the majority of the night sleeping off the whisky he had consumed for the last few hours.

“Yet, if it were up to me, I would choose the blonde.”

Wickersham frowned as he looked to where the two women vied for his attention. “They both are blonde,” Hunt declared.

Richard waited for the conversation in the room to wane and the clinks of the glassware to die away before he responded, “Then you cannot go wrong. You have always preferred your women to be blonde.”

Wickersham grinned widely. “Always have.”

Richard finished off his water-downed brandy. “Then why are you marrying a woman who has dark brown hair?”

“Miss David makes me happy.”

Richard and Hunt had been friends since their first days as nine-year-old frightened boys at Harrow.

They had stood back-to-back taking on all comers until the headmaster broke up the fight and dragged them, quite literally, by their ears into his office.

A bit over a year prior to Richard entering school, his father had died and Richard had come to live with Lord Macdonald Duncan.

Hunt’s father had also died, but his friend had not been uprooted, as had been Richard.

Within a year of his father’s passing, Richard’s mother also died, supposedly from a “broken heart,” whatever the hell that meant, for he had never observed his parents sharing any form of affection.

That was when he knew he would never leave the Duncan household until he reached his majority and could claim his earldom outright.

Periodically staying at Hunt’s house on school holidays was a real relief to the structure Lord Duncan demanded, for Hunter Wickersham possessed a large family of all ages, and someone was always available to assist in entertaining Richard.

It was not as if he had not known friendship with many of the other boys whom Lord Duncan had taken in, but it was a different type of friendship from the one he knew with Wickersham.

The boys to which Lord Duncan had attended had been groomed to serve the English government, as well as their titles, in ways Wickersham would never think possible.

Yet, somehow they had become the best of friends, always having each other’s back.

Sharing adventures, mostly across Hunt’s estate.

Fishing. Shooting. Making promises regarding the lives they would have when they were old enough to claim their titles and property.

Trying to identify what type of woman would best suit them when it came time to marry.

“Then if you are so set on Miss David, what are you doing choosing one of Madam Ahrens’s girls for the evening?” Richard asked with all seriousness, but his friend appeared not to hear him.

Most who knew him would think his current dudgeon had something to do with the dead ends all of Lord Duncan’s “sons” had encountered in their investigation of the recent attack on Duncan himself outside one of London’s most famous gaming hells, the Lyon’s Den.

He and Lord Alexander Dutton, Lord Navan Beaufort, and Lords Benjamin Thompson and Aaran Graham had all exited the Den at the same time, but Duncan had tarried a moment to speak to the Den’s mistress, Mrs. Bessie Dove-Lyon.

Though Richard did not think it possible, for no one spoke of the Den’s mistress as being the type to set up a man for anything beyond spending the evening with one of the women who resided at the gaming hell or to arrange a marriage for a substantial fee, yet, there were rumors her late husband had left her with a mound of debts.

Had Duncan been purposely delayed so he would be alone when he exited?

Duncan himself declared that idea impossible, but Richard’s mentor had never explained his objections to the way Richard saw the event.

Richard again could see the events of that tragic night clearly, as if they happened in this time and space.

Yet, no matter how often he relived the events, he still had no idea who had attacked Duncan.

They had all been standing together speaking their “good evenings.” There was to be an important vote in the Lords that morning, and they all needed to be on time for the roll call.

Thompson had just tossed his cheroot to the ground and made to stamp it out with his boot when Duncan walked into a shaft of light, and all hell had rained down on them in a single explosion of gunfire.

Though none of them had been shot, they were instantly looking for cover where none could be found as the world went silent for a matter of seconds.

Then a mass exodus of people scrambled out of the gaming hell, as Beaufort and Hartley took off after the gunman towards the gardens and Marksman darted about the other side of the building, past the women’s entrance, as Richard, Graham, and Thomspon rushed to where Duncan lay groaning in pain.

“My chest,” he had murmured as Richard took up a protective stance before Duncan’s body, while Thompson and the former soldier known as “Titan” attempted to stop the bleeding, and Graham kept the onlookers out of the way.

That had been more than a month prior. The surgeon had said Duncan had been knocking on death’s door, but the man had managed to survive, though he was still quite weak.

The Prime Minister had forbidden them to investigate what had occurred, but the directive had not stopped Richard or his friends from chasing down every possible clue.

A shooter dressed all in black and who disappeared into the streets of London’s Whitehall was not to be simply forgotten by a group of men who had been trained since childhood to keep England safe.

In truth, though the mystery of the shooting still perplexed him, Richard’s moodiness on this particular evening had more to do with a group of bluestockings who had dared to block his entrance to White’s earlier in the day.

They had been led by none other than Lady Emma Donoghue, the only child of Lord and Lady Simon Donoghue, an ambassador to the Northern Netherlands government.

Richard understood the necessity of the Donoghues leaving their daughter safely in England, what with the war against Napoleon and the French soldiers surrounding the pair, but a companion should have been hired to keep the girl in line.

Moreover, from what he had learned of Lady Emma Donoghue, her parents had been absent from her life for nearly ten years.

He had been both avoiding and watching Lady Emma Donoghue for over a year.

Like it or not, and Richard assuredly did not like it, the woman fascinated him.

The first time he had encountered her, she and a group of young women had also locked arms to block his way and that of several others from entering White’s.

She had been standing directly in front of him, chest heaving with indignation, and it had been all he could do not to snatch her into his arms and kiss her like there was no tomorrow.

From that day forward, he held a bit of an obsession about the chit, though not always in a good manner.

Today proved something must be done about the woman, for it was not proper for a lady of society to place herself, arms locked with her fellow protestors, before the doors of one of London’s most well-known gentlemen’s clubs and shout, “Go home to your family!” and “Shame on you for abandoning your wife and children!”

Hell! Richard had no wife or children to abandon.

Did these women not understand how much regarding the running of this great country was executed over a brandy and a hand of cards at a gentlemen’s club?

Deals were made. Alliances formed. And a man could nurse his drink as long as necessary before he joined others for supper and then went home to an empty terrace house.

On a most frustrating day already, Richard had not required a group of women encircling his favorite place to gather his thoughts and sort them out.

It was not as if any of the gentlemen meaning to enter the club could put their hands on the women and set them aside, though, in truth, he had once placed a bet in White’s infamous book that his hands could easily encircle Lady Emma Donoghue’s waist. No one had ever challenged him to prove it: His fellow club members all realized any man who attempted to do so would walk away with a cooking pot wedged upon his ears.

It was said, Lady Emma Donoghue had left many of her initial suitors with bloody knots on their heads.

Whatever was near—a silver salver, a vase of flowers, or a heavy tome—became a weapon of retribution against the man who thought she possessed a more feminine side.

“Did you observe how fast that—that woman scampered away when White’s manager rallied his footmen and kitchen staff?

Bye, bye to the top cat!” Hunt had asked Lord Sennet when the majority of the women had quietly dispersed, likely to reappear again tomorrow, or, if White’s members were fortunate, to block Brooks’s instead.