Page 1 of The Lady and the Secret Lord (The Duke’s Men #3)

Verwood Hall

Wormley

Sunday, the third of October, 1835

N o one asked him, but Robin Jones thought a wedding breakfast at a country house a most unlikely place for a London copper. Verwood Hall, stately and solid, rose behind the guests, its windows flashing in the sun of a golden October morning. Robin felt the warmth of it on his shoulders. Around him a few last stragglers found their places in the crowd of friends and neighbors. In the center of the guests, the Duchess of Wenlocke knelt down, blue silken skirts trailing in the grass, her gloved hands cupped to receive an offering from a small girl in pink, as she had once received Robin’s offering at Daventry Hall. That day he had given her a toad he believed to be a baby dragon. She had accepted the gift and more, his solemn belief in the possibility of dragons. He knew better now.

On the other side of the head table, the Duke of Wenlocke stood waiting to toast the bride and groom, with an air of calm command, as if he could slow time itself, letting his duchess freely bestow her kindness on the child, until the girl scurried off. The duchess straightened, her hands still holding the gift, and made her way to her husband’s side. She tipped open her palms to show him the object, and he smiled at the treasure. Then he lifted his glass and looked about, finding each of them, the lost boys who had been his companions in the darkest rookery of London, whom he now counted as brothers. Nearly all of them had come together to toast one of their own. Lark was there with Viv, his soon-to-be bride, and Jay Kydd, who had been Raven’s closest friend in their youth, and Swallow, Finch, and Robin. Only Rook was missing, having traveled to the other side of the world to begin a new life.

Raven and his bride sat gazing at each other, set apart by the glow of their spirits. Raven was obscenely rich and perfectly happy. He, like the rest, most lately Lark, had been reunited with the family he’d once lost. Many summers before, Wenlocke had offered to use all the resources available to him as duke to find the boys’ families. And he had. Only Robin steadfastly refused the duke’s offer. He wanted no other names than the ones Wenlocke had given him in the rookery— Robin and Jones . He did not need to find the people who had lost him all those years before, whether from indifference or carelessness or simply misfortune. He had a family.

He raised his glass. These were his brothers. This was his family. He wished them every happiness, but their happy endings were not for him. Being overdressed and overfed and making polite conversation with the local beauties made him restless. There was not a coiner, a receiver, a housebreaker, or a cosh-carrying thief in the lot. A wedding party was no place for a detective. As cheers and laughter followed the duke’s toast, what Robin wanted was a dose of London. He wanted fog and dirt and noise and river stink and something like a good murder to solve. As soon as the happy couple departed for their wedding trip, Robin would head for London, for Scotland Yard.