Page 1 of The Duke and Lady Scandal (Princes of London #1)

Bedford Square, London

September 29, 1896

Detective Inspector Benedict Drake crossed his arms to fight off a shiver. A thick fog had settled over the city and put a vicious bite in the air. He’d asked the cabbie to let him out a block away, and now he’d taken up his watch, waiting in the midnight darkness for movement in the townhouse across the square.

His heartbeat roared in his ears, and he fought the urge to run across the street, rip open the front door, and finally lay his hands on the man he’d been hunting for weeks.

But this criminal was wily and unpredictable.

Drake understood that patience would serve him best, but it was bloody hard to remain still.

The man who’d entered the townhouse ten minutes ago was a petty thief, but his connection to the master criminal was clear. It was why Drake had become Amos Howe’s shadow, trailing the man to gambling dens, brothels, and loathsome pits where animals fought for the pleasure of drunken men. On a few occasions, he’d considered following other leads, despairing that this particular conspirator would ever take him to the one who mattered most.

But while he might struggle with patience, tenacity was his bedrock. He never lost the scent once he’d found a trail, and intuition paired with cold, hard logic rarely failed him.

And logic told him that Howe had just led him to the heart of this criminal enterprise. The fashionable townhouse the thug had slipped into a quarter of an hour ago wasn’t his. Howe had made his name in the darkest alleys of the East End, and all the haunts he frequented were in those streets.

The mastermind of the blackmail scheme resided here. Drake knew it in his bones.

He slipped his revolver from his pocket. Violence was never his preference, but he suspected the blackmailer, known only as M, would have firearms at the ready.

He couldn’t be certain how many might await him inside, but he would face them alone.

This case had been classified at the highest level of security, requiring the greatest discretion, and he’d been handpicked by his mentor because of his reputation for succeeding where others failed.

Tonight would be no different.

The townhouse wasn’t located in the most fashionable of London squares, but it was elegant and well lit. Someone of consequence resided here at the edge of Bedford Square.

But was that someone bold enough to blackmail the heir to the British throne?

The letters had come in red-stained envelopes, the words on them cobbled together from newspaper clippings or scrawled in a spidery hand that was barely legible. The blackmailer claimed to have letters and photographs of Prince Edward VII that, if made public, would spell scandal for the Crown.

Drake didn’t much care how the prince spent his leisure hours, but the royal family cared a great deal about avoiding scandal.

And so he waited until waiting seemed fruitless.

After half an hour had passed, Drake stepped out of the concealing trees and bushes of the square and made his way into the mews behind the row of townhouses. As he approached the gate of the house Howe had disappeared into, he was met by growls and then the rapid, panicked barks of a guard dog he’d somehow failed to spot. As the creature strained forward on the chain that tethered him, Drake could see he was a poorly looking fellow—matted hair, scrawny body, and eyes that telegraphed fear rather than ferocity.

“You’ve nothing to fear from me,”

he whispered to the canine, trying for the same gentle tone his sister used with the strays she was addicted to bringing home.

The dog barked once more and then cocked an ear.

“That’s right, boy. Nothing to be afraid of.”

But as soon as he took a step forward, the dog growled low in his throat. The creature knew what was expected of him, even if whoever owned this townhouse mistreated him.

“You’re doing a good job,”

Drake admitted, and then noticed a light flick on beyond the house’s back door. He retreated into the shadows as the dog’s barks flattened to a whine.

The back door swung open, and a man’s silhouette filled the space.

“What the bloody ’ell you barking at?”

The man in the doorway—Howe, judging by his stocky build and battered stovepipe hat—scanned the mews and darkened back garden.

Drake ducked his head further into his high collar and willed Howe’s gaze to pass him over.

Howe stepped forward. “Bleeding fool mutt.”

The dog drew back, letting out a mournful yelp.

Don’t you bloody dare. Drake moved quickly, darting closer while Howe’s back was turned as he shouted invectives at the canine.

He was making such a ruckus that a servant poked his head out from the back door of a townhouse abutting M’s. Drake shooed the man back inside with the wave of his hand.

Then he seized the moment to sprint toward Howe, who finally heard his approach and turned to face him. The thief fumbled with his pocket, but Drake had his own revolver up and pointed at the man’s face.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,”

he told the thief quietly.

In the light spilling from the open door, Howe’s face turned ashen.

They’d met before, but Howe had somehow never noticed Drake’s shadowing presence over the last weeks. He’d been too busy finding marks and emptying pockets.

“How many are inside?”

Drake held the revolver steady.

Howe’s gaze had locked on it, and fear seemed to freeze him in place.

The dozen or so crimes Drake had witnessed while following Howe would justify hauling him off to jail, but the thief was smart enough to know that the blackmail scheme was the worst of it because it involved the royal family. Few threatened the power of the Crown and walked away unscathed.

“Only me,”

he finally mumbled.

“Try again. How many are inside?”

“?’E’ll kill me,”

he whispered. The man seemed to reduce in front of Drake’s eyes. His shoulders slumped, and he bent his chin down as if to protect his neck. “One word and ’e’ll slit me throat.”

“Perhaps you should choose your friends more carefully, Amos.”

Drake had always suspected that M chose a man as rough-edged as Howe to do the dirtiest work. To threaten and perhaps take fists to whoever menaced their plot, but Howe was proving to be a rather flimsy thug.

“We’ll go in together, shall we?”

He flicked his weapon toward the back door, glancing up to make sure there were no weapons pointed at him from the windows at the back of the house. Most were curtain-covered and not a wink of light could be seen. Any watcher worth his salt would know darkness gave him a better view.

Howe approached the door, pressed a hand to the frame, and then seemed to recover a bit of his confidence. He pivoted to face Drake and then took a wide-legged stance, his sizable arms crossed. “You want in, you’ll ’ave to go through me.”

A little bravado had entered his tone, and the man would be a formidable opponent if it came to fisticuffs. But one of them was armed.

Drake lowered his gun a few inches, pointing it at the thief’s chest. “A bullet will go through you a lot quicker than I could. Care to risk that?”

Cowering near the step, the guard dog let out a low, ominous whine.

Howe glanced behind him as if he’d heard something that Drake couldn’t.

“Move aside.”

Drake took two steps closer. “Now.”

The dog stood and emitted one brave bark as Drake approached.

Howe gave a stubborn shake of his head. “I let you in, I’m as good as dead in the grave.”

He was stalling.

Then Drake heard why.

A man’s voice rang out at the front of the house. Then the rustle of traces and the clatter of horse hooves.

Drake rushed Howe so fast, the man barely had time to uncross his arms before Drake shoved him bodily and opened the back door. He registered a bare kitchen, then found a short staircase up to the ground floor. There were no furnishings in the house, and the light he’d seen out front had been doused.

He took it all in as he reached the main hall, but he could hear the carriage departing even as he wrenched the front door open.

Black and unmarked, the enclosed carriage with a single, dark-coated driver departed at breakneck speed, careening out of the square into the main thoroughfare.

He didn’t know if it was the elusive M or another conspirator who’d flown, but he had one of them at hand, and he meant to get all he could out of Amos Howe.

Stomping back to the kitchen, he found Howe heading toward the mews.

“Don’t make me chase you,”

Drake shouted. Then he lifted his revolver, pulled back the hammer, and hoped Howe heard the click.

The thief turned back to him. “I ’ad nothing to do with those letters.”

Drake approached, keeping his eyes on the man’s hands. Howe looked defeated again.

“Tired of all of it, if you must know,”

he mumbled as Drake clapped shackles around his wrists.

The thief was making this so easy that a shiver of warning trickled down Drake’s back.

He led Howe back inside. This time, he noticed the button Howe must have pushed. A black button in a gold-plated case attached to the frame of the kitchen threshold. A white-painted wire ran along the door frame and disappeared behind kitchen furnishings.

“You alerted him.”

Drake shoved the man into the kitchen and used his belt to lash Howe’s handcuffs to the kitchen’s grand enamel-glazed iron stove.

“Stay put.”

Drake met Howe’s gaze as he finished the knot. “This is your last chance to tell me how many men I’ll face upstairs.”

Howe shook his head. “Not a one, Inspector. Came for a delivery, then you appeared, and it all went tits up.”

“A delivery?”

“When ’e wants me to deliver something, I meet ’im.”

Howe shrugged. “Then take it where it needs to go.”

“Like a letter threatening the Prince of Wales?”

Howe swallowed and ducked his head again. “Wanted nothing to do with that, I tell ya.”

Drake didn’t believe him. Not a single bloody word.

But even if he’d believed Howe was telling the truth, he had to know for sure.

So he searched every room. Each empty, unfurnished room. The townhouse was as clean as if it was set for sale or had just been leased. Where there were built-in cupboards, drawers had been left open. Closet doors stood ajar. And the clatter of his own footsteps was the only sound he heard as he checked every inch of the structure. He even released the ladder hidden in an upstairs hallway ceiling to access the attic, but it contained only dust and a skeletal framework of wooden beams.

He slammed a fist against one of those solid beams.

Hell and damnation to false leads. There’d been far too many in this case.

Perhaps Howe had known he was being followed, and his surprise in the back garden had all been feigned. And if Howe had been aware, then the menace known as M had too.

And led him to an empty townhouse.

He let out a weary sigh, and fatigue washed over him. But he sucked in a breath to fill his lungs and fire his brain. There was still much to do this evening.

First, he found a cab. Then he hauled Howe into it. Just as he was about to climb inside himself, he heard a mournful howl from the back of M’s empty townhouse.

“What’s his name?”

Howe grumbled and gave one firm shake of his head.

“The dog, man. What’s the dog’s name?”

“How the bleedin’ ’ell should I know?”

The debate in Drake’s mind took only a moment. As soon as he considered Helen’s opinion on the matter, there was no question.

He turned and sprinted through the house and out the back again. The dog snapped its head up and looked shocked to see him.

“I may not have solved the case tonight, but I can get you a decent meal.”

He used a rock to bash the lock that kept the dog tethered to the townhouse’s wall and then walked him through the townhouse by the broken chain. The hound hunched low as he walked, as if trying to be furtive, fearful of whatever lurked within the pristine walls.

“You won’t ever see him again,”

Drake told the dog. “I can promise you that much.”