Playing with scandal

Lady Joan Morland has already risked her reputation once with dashing Drew Rockleigh. And when her coach is set upon, it’s Drew who rescues her, more roguish and tempting than ever!

Then Joan discovers Drew has lost his fortune and decides to repay her debt by helping him. But after a sizzling kiss, she finds herself compromised once again! This time, scandal is surely inevitable...and the only thing to quell it is a walk down the aisle!

With her puny fists Joan battered a chest that felt like granite, trying to squirm away, but he suddenly shifted sideways on the seat and brought her down on her back beside him.

Drew braced an arm over her so she was trapped against the upholstery. Slowly his face descended and, mesmerised, Joan watched his mouth until it blurred out of focus. But he didn’t kiss her; his lips skimmed her hot cheek, the faintest tickle of bristle scouring her skin.

‘Do you know what I think, my lady?’ he murmured against her small, sensitive earlobe. ‘I think my conceit is making me believe your interest in me is personal. I think you’re as eager to taste me as I am to have you.’

Author Note

This novel is the second of two books featuring characters linked by family and friendship. In Tarnished, Tempted and Tamed Lady Joan Morland’s beloved stepsister Fiona finds happiness with dashing Luke Wolfson, following an adventure that plunges her into the midst of a smuggling gang.

In Compromising the Duke’s Daughter Lady Joan is aware that impeccable behaviour is expected of a young woman of her privileged status. She is sure that a youthful peccadillo with one of her brother-in-law’s rakish friends is firmly buried in her past. Then Drew Rockleigh bursts back into her life and Joan is astonished to see how low the handsome gentleman has fallen. She knows she owes him a debt of gratitude for having kept her secret...a secret that could ruin her and break her father’s heart should it leak out.

Keen to prove that she trusts him, Joan probes the mystery behind Rockleigh’s downfall. Infuriatingly, he seems not to need or want her assistance. But he does want her, and soon Joan realises that she wants him too, and will do her utmost to help him regain his rightful position in society.

The drama sweeps Lady Joan from the elegant drawing rooms of Mayfair, pitching her headlong into the squalid slums of the East End of London where, unbelievably, this duke’s daughter finds she has fallen in love with a streetfighter and will do whatever it takes to capture Rockleigh’s heart.

I hope you enjoy reading about Joan and Drew’s passionate skirmishes, and the obstacles they must overcome on the road to winning their happy-ever-after.

Compromising the Duke’s Daughter

Mary Brendan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARY BRENDAN was born in North London, but now lives in rural Suffolk. She has always had a fascination with bygone days, and enjoys the research involved in writing historical fiction. When not at her word processor she can be found trying to bring order to a large overgrown garden, or browsing local fairs and junk shops for that elusive bargain.

Books by Mary Brendan

Mills & Boon Historical Romance

Linked by Character

Tarnished, Tempted and Tamed

Compromising the Duke’s Daughter

Society Scandals

A Date with Dishonour

The Rake’s Ruined Lady

Regency Rogues

Chivalrous Rake, Scandalous Lady

Dangerous Lord, Seductive Miss

The Hunter Brothers

A Practical Mistress

The Wanton Bride

The Meredith Sisters

Wedding Night Revenge

The Unknown Wife

A Scandalous Marriage

The Rake and the Rebel

Visit the Author Profile page

at millsandboon.co.uk for more titles.

For Sheila Hodgson, my editor, with thanks for advice and support given over many years.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Author Note

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

‘Get us from this infernal place at once, you stupid boy!’

‘Calm yourself, Aunt, and please don’t shout at Pip—it will only make matters worse. If he panics he might overset the coach, or trample somebody underfoot.’

‘I wish the horses would trample the savages to death!’ Dorothea warbled hysterically.

‘Hush!’ Joan slammed an unsteady finger to her soft mouth, hissing from behind it, ‘If we infuriate these people, heaven only knows what will become of us all!’

Lady Joan Morland was attempting to combat her fright as well as pacify her companion. Joan knew she was to blame for their terrifying predicament, but her aunt’s callous remark about running over their attackers had shocked and angered her. Just a short while ago Joan had been sitting in the same room as these folks’ youngsters and she’d not willingly orphan any child.

Joan had wanted to visit a ragged school in the eastern quarter of the metropolis to assist her friend the Reverend Walters teaching at his vicarage. Thus, she accepted that it was her fault that their novice driver had taken a wrong turning and ended up in the heart of a slum. Pip was into his apprenticeship and was now allowed to drive the smaller carriages, but this calamity had proved that he hadn’t the necessary experience to negotiate a detour about the London stews as his master would have done. The youth had plunged headlong into the midst of a crowd of spectators at a street fight. Their crested coach and team of fine chestnuts had drawn interest in the way bluebottles would swarm to a joint of prime beef.

‘Get away...you vile creature!’ Dorothea flapped her handkerchief at a bold urchin who’d clung to the side of the vehicle and was thrusting a grimy hand at her, palm up.

‘Come on, lady, give us summat or I’ll have them baubles off yer chest instead.’ The boy bared a set of brown teeth in a grin while his filthy fingers mimicked an approaching spider.

Dorothea squeaked in alarm, jamming a hand over the pearl mourning brooch pinned to her cloak.

‘Here...take this and please leave us be.’ Joan slid forward on the seat to throw the boy some coppers dug from her reticule. He caught them deftly and leapt down.

Had Joan thought more carefully about it she would have realised that her action was inflammatory rather than calming. Within seconds of the boy whooping with glee, his hand aloft displaying his treasure, a horde had clambered on to the running boards. Youthful and aged faces began competing for space at the windows, all with the same wide, avaricious grins stretching their mouths. Dorothea clung to her niece, shivering, as the vehicle swayed precariously from side to side with the weight of unwashed bodies hanging off the coachwork.

‘We are about to be murdered!’ the hysterical widow screeched before rolling sideways on to the seat in a dead faint.

Joan pressed herself back against the luxurious squabs of her father’s coach, her heart hammering in consternation beneath her breastbone. Although her aunt had been raving moments ago, Joan had preferred Dorothea being conscious. At least they might have both alighted from the vehicle and attempted some sort of escape. Now Joan knew she was hampered by the need to stay with her aunt’s comatose form because she couldn’t in all conscience abandon her relative to save herself.

‘Pip!’ Joan yelled above the noise of the baying crowd. ‘Can you hear me? Are you all right?’

‘Can’t move an inch forward or back, my lady. Hemmed in good and proper, we are,’ the youth wailed, sounding on the point of tears.

Joan glanced fearfully at the prominent face at the window. A man who appeared to be middle aged, but might have been considerably younger beneath the caked dirt, was lasciviously licking his lips while looking her over.

‘Reckon your daddy might pay more’n a handful of coins to get you back. You’re a sight fer sore eyes and no mistake.’ He dropped a crusty eyelid in a lewd wink.

‘Miss High ’n’ Mighty won’t be worth a farthing if you tumble her first,’ a rough female voice called out from behind and started off some raucous laughter.

Suddenly the lecher’s face disappeared as he was yanked backwards and the door was flung open.

Joan shot to the furthest corner of the coach, her fists raised in readiness to beat off an assailant. Although she was quaking with fright, there was a piercing sadness in her breast that she’d chalked letters with children who had no better future than this brutishness to look forward to.

‘What in damnation do you think you’re doing here?’ a cultured male voice barked. ‘You stupid little fool!’

Joan blinked in astonishment and her jaw sagged. Heat streaked into her complexion at the sight of a man, stripped to the waist, his muscled chest and solid broad shoulders glistening with sweat. And so were his features, beneath a tumble of matted silvery hair that clung to his bronzed forehead and cheeks. It was a face that seemed familiar, yet she couldn’t understand how that could be. Shock had rendered her speechless thus she was unable to demand he satisfy her curiosity by giving his name. And then he was gone.

But she could hear him shouting abusive commands at the mob and no more people leered in at her. A moment later the coach jerked one final time, then was set into motion. After a laboured start the vehicle picked up speed.

Stunned into inertia for some minutes by her ordeal, Joan shook herself into action and patted briskly at her aunt’s dropped jaw to try to bring her round. When that didn’t work she delved into Dorothea’s reticule for some smelling salts. Having unstoppered it, she thrust the bottle beneath her aunt’s nose, but the woman remained stubbornly unresponsive to her ministrations.

‘Oh, well done, Pip. Oh, very well done, indeed.’

Joan felt light-headed with relief. She slid across the hide seat to peer out of the window at cottages and carts and people going about their business. Thankfully, it seemed they had taken a turning out of that awful place.

‘I shall let my father know how excellently you are learning the ropes, Pip...’

But never must he know all the details of what has gone on today, Joan inwardly wailed. If the Duke of Thornley discovered what dangers his daughter had risked that afternoon, he’d have her under lock and key till Christmastide! Joan knew it would be hard to make her aunt button her lip. Dorothea was the world’s worst blabber and reported to her brother every little slip her niece made.

‘Pip...are we approaching safety yet? Where exactly are we?’

‘Cheapside...now settle down and be quiet,’ growled a rich baritone voice very unlike Pip’s.

Joan dropped the bottle of smelling salts and craned out of the window, looking up. But she couldn’t see any more of him than a long breeched leg and a single sinewy forearm terminating in grazed fingers entwined in the reins.

‘Stop the coach at once. Whoever you are you may pull over immediately! I didn’t give you permission to drive my father’s coach!’

He obeyed her order with such alacrity that Joan tipped off the seat on to her knees on the floor and Aunt Dorothea almost landed on top of her.

Joan was scrambling upright just as the door opened and without a by your leave an athletic figure vaulted in and sat down at the same time she did.

She gawped at him in alarm while obliquely aware of Dorothea stirring and muttering incoherently. Joan knew that once her aunt rejoined the land of the living, the woman was likely to swoon again at the sight of the dishevelled ruffian lounging opposite, even if he had now covered up his bare chest.

Yet he wasn’t a ruffian; of that Joan was certain. Oh, he might be dressed in clothes that had seen better days, but they were of good quality. He sported a stylish, if stained, lawn shirt, and his brawny legs were encased in buckskin breeches that had once been fawn, she guessed, but were now the hue of mud.

Her protracted inspection seemed to amuse him and he raised an arm, wiping blood from his cheek with a sleeve. ‘Well?’ he sardonically asked for her verdict.

‘Well what?’ Joan breathed and with an inner jolt suddenly realised to whom she spoke. ‘Well, am I disgusted by what you appear to have turned into, Mr Rockleigh? If that is what you require an answer to...then the answer is yes.’

‘So you remember me, do you? I’m flattered.’

‘There’s no need to be,’ Joan retorted hoarsely. ‘Nothing about you pleases me. Now remove yourself from my carriage and let us proceed towards home.’

‘No thanks from you, my lady? No offer to reward me for the service I have done you?’ he taunted. ‘At least on the last occasion that I saved you from yourself, you had the grace to apologise for the nuisance you’d been to me.’

‘I didn’t ask you to save me then or now!’ Joan snapped.

‘I’ll take you back to Ratcliffe Highway then, shall I?’ he suggested, lunging towards the door as though to again climb aboard the driver’s perch and carry out his threat.

Joan snatched at his arm. ‘You will not, you villain!’ Her fingers sprang away from him as though he’d scalded her, although his moist skin warming her palm had not felt unpleasant. But the muscle she’d gripped had flexed to iron at her feeble restraint. She knew if he wanted to appropriate their vehicle, or do any of them harm, she’d not be able to stop him. Neither would young Pip.

‘Remove yourself...please...before my aunt awakens and sees you,’ Joan uttered coolly.

Rockleigh glanced at the woman sprawled on the seat, her eyelids fluttering. ‘I’ll go when you tell me what a duke’s daughter is doing driving around the slums of Wapping.’

‘I would have thought it quite obvious we were lost,’ Joan returned.

‘Is your father reduced to hiring such incompetents to steer his coaches?’

‘No, he is not!’ Joan spluttered indignantly. ‘Pip has only recently been allowed to drive and I chose to employ his services today.’

‘Ah...so you planned to keep your father in the dark about your trip, did you?’ He idly assessed the coach’s interior. ‘Nice, but I imagine the Duke of Thornley has several better conveyances for his daughter’s use. You might be older, my lady, but it seems you’re no wiser,’ he drawled, lazy amusement glinting in his hazel eyes.

‘A remark that I could certainly return to you, sir, had I any wish for this conversation to continue.’ Joan had blushed hotly at his astute interpretation of events. She had intentionally chosen to employ Pip and a plain carriage because their loss from service was unlikely to be noteworthy, should her father call for a vehicle to be brought round. The grooms would assume that the master’s daughter and her chaperon had simply gone shopping locally. ‘I recall you once had good connections and were friendly with my brother-in-law. But not any more, that’s clear to see.’

‘I’ve not fallen out with Luke Wolfson.’

‘But I imagine he avoids your company!’

‘I avoid his...’

‘Ah, so you’re ashamed of yourself, and I’m not surprised.’

‘I’m not ashamed of myself. I do honest work for honest pay.’

‘You were brawling in the street like a common criminal!’ Joan choked out. She recalled Fiona mentioning that Drew Rockleigh had suffered a run of bad luck, but her stepsister had not made much of it. Joan imagined that Fiona was ignorant of just how low her husband’s friend had sunk.

‘Fighting for purses pays my way. What’s your excuse for trawling through the squalor, my lady? Did you think it a novelty to come to see how poor wretches live and end up with more than you bargained for?’

‘No, I did not! I was helping a friend teach those poor wretches’ children to read...’ Joan clammed up, furious that she’d allowed him to push her into explaining herself.

A shrill scream made Joan almost start from her skin; it announced the fact that her widowed aunt had come fully awake.

Without another word, but with a lingering stare that sent a shiver through her, Rockleigh jumped from the carriage. Joan could hear him talking in a low, fluid tone to Pip.

‘Who was that?’ Dorothea gasped out, a hand pressed to her heaving bosom.

‘He...he did us a service and helped us find our way out of that slum,’ Joan swiftly explained, rubbing energetically at her aunt’s hand to soothe her.

Dorothea flopped back against the squabs. ‘Your father will flay you alive when he discovers what you have done this afternoon.’

‘There is no need for him to be apprised of it. All has ended well and no harm done to any of us.’

‘Only by lucky chance!’ Dorothea squeaked. ‘What is our Good Samaritan’s name? Your father will want to know it and reward him.’

‘I...I...he didn’t introduce himself,’ Joan stuttered quite truthfully, glad her aunt had not recognised the boxer as a fellow who, not so long ago, had graced society with his elegant presence.

Once, Rockleigh had owned a house in Mayfair and a hunting lodge in the West Country, close to her father’s ancestral seat. He had mingled with the cream of society although he’d rarely attend tame entertainments. Many a hostess keen to have such an eligible bachelor at her daughter’s debut ball had been disappointed by Rockleigh’s absence. But on one occasion when Joan had attended the opera with her father and stepmother she had spied Drew Rockleigh in a box opposite with a female companion. Her father had pretended not to know the identity of the pretty blonde when Joan enquired after her. She’d realised then that Rockleigh was out with his mistress. That sighting of him in Drury Lane had been about a year ago; Joan imagined that in the meantime he must have lost a great deal.

As the coach set off at a very sedate pace, Joan guessed that Pip was too scared to set the horses to more than a trot. She scoured the pavements for a tall muscular fellow with very fair hair, but there was no sign of him—no doubt he had slipped back into that stew of destitution. But for the snuffling of her aunt, and a musky male scent within the coach strengthening her rapidly beating pulse, Joan might have thought none of it had happened and she’d simply awakened from a nightmare.

But it was real. Her heartfelt wish to assist the Reverend Vincent Walters teach children to read and write at the St George’s in the East vicarage school would have very great repercussions. And none of it beneficial, Joan feared.

Chapter Two

Joan massaged her temples to ease her headache, then rolled on to her stomach, pulling a plump feather pillow over her head in an attempt to block out the sound of raised voices.

She had been in the process of replying to a letter from her beloved Fiona when her father’s bellows threatened to blow the roof off his opulent Mayfair mansion. Unable to concentrate, she’d abandoned the parchment and pen on her desk and curled up on her bed. Joan realised that her aunt had, despite being asked not to, blabbed to the Duke of Thornley about their disastrous trip that afternoon.

As the noise reached a crescendo, Joan swung her stockinged feet to the floor and felt for her slippers with her toes.

At any minute she was expecting to be summoned by her irate father so brushed the creases from her skirt and tidied straggling tendrils of conker-coloured hair into their pins. She knew the Duke would be livid...with good reason...and she would sooner go downstairs of her own volition than remain on tenterhooks till a sympathetic-looking servant tapped on her door. She knew that she must protect her aunt and Pip—especially Pip—from her father’s wrath. In a way she didn’t pity Dorothea; she’d asked the woman to keep quiet about the incident, as no harm had been done to them in the end. But it seemed her aunt had not been able to simply rest in her chamber while recovering from her scare.

Joan guessed Dorothea had found her brother in the small library, as that was from where the cacophony seemed to be issuing. Sighing, Joan immediately set off to own up to her father and take her punishment.

‘Ah...there you are,’ his Grace barked as his daughter entered the room. ‘You have saved me the task of sending a servant to summon you, miss. Philip Rook is on his way, as I hear he drove you on this madcap excursion. While we wait for him to arrive let me have your version of this afternoon’s folly.’

‘There is no need for Pip, or for Aunt Dorothea for that matter, to give an account, Papa,’ Joan said. She gave her aunt a rather disappointed look. ‘I can tell you what occurred and that it was all my fault.’

‘Very noble,’ the Duke said scathingly before snapping a harsh stare on his grizzling sister. ‘You can turn off the waterworks, madam. You were brought here to chaperon my daughter in my wife’s absence...a task as I recall you avowed was well within your capabilities.’ Alfred Thornley strode to and fro in front of the ornate chimneypiece. ‘There have been other instances when I have had to reprimand you over your inability to control a situation.’

‘I do my best, Brother,’ Dorothea mewled from behind her lace hanky. ‘I tried to dissuade her from having anything to do with the vicar. He is not suitable company for a person of Joan’s station...and neither are the brutes with whom he associates.’

‘The Reverend is perfectly nice!’ Joan retorted. ‘And the fact that he dedicates much time to those far less fortunate does him credit.’

‘Has Vincent Walters asked you to stump up any funds to assist him in his good deeds?’ Alfred demanded to know, depressingly aware of how alluring was his daughter to fortune hunters.

‘He has not, Papa,’ Joan replied flatly. ‘It was my idea to offer to teach the children to learn to read. How else are the disadvantaged ever to better themselves if they are denied skills to make accessible to them shop or clerical positions?’

The Duke’s expression softened slightly. ‘Your sincere concern for these vagabonds is very worthy, Joan. But you will not correct society’s ills by placing yourself in mortal danger.’

‘Getting lost was foolish...I admit it. But we arrived home safely,’ Joan argued. ‘We have so much and take it all for granted. It is our duty to endeavour to brighten the bleak futures facing those youngsters.’

‘I cannot gainsay you on that, my dear, but it doesn’t alter the fact that I might have been arranging the funerals of my daughter and sister and a member of my staff had things turned bad for you all. The Ratcliffe Highway murders are fresh in my mind, if not yours. You were but a schoolgirl at the time of the heinous crimes, of course,’ the Duke pointed out, but less robustly than he might have minutes before.

He despaired of his daughter’s impetuousness, but he grudgingly admired her, too, for her independence and benevolence. But from what he’d heard from Dorothea, and he believed it to be the truth, his travelling coach had been almost overrun with beggars threatening robbery and violence. And as a responsible parent he must punish his daughter’s bad behaviour.

The door opened and the butler, looking stern, ushered Philip Rook into the room.

Joan guessed that poor Pip had felt the rough side of Tobias Bartlett’s tongue; the youth looked terrified to be summoned into his eminent employer’s presence for the very first time. In the past the lad had merely seen the Duke in the stable yard from beneath the forelock he tugged. Pip’s complexion was alternating between scarlet and white as he stood, Adam’s apple bobbing, waiting to hear his fate.

‘You, Rook, were driving the coach this afternoon that got beset by a mob,’ the Duke stated.

‘I was, your Grace,’ Pip answered faintly, as his master continued to glare at him.

‘Pray why were you doing so and without a footman at least accompanying you?’

Pip licked his lips and blinked a glance Joan’s way.

‘He was doing so at my behest, Papa.’

Dorothea flapped her handkerchief at her brother, nodding vigorously to indicate the extent of the task confronting her to manage his wayward child.

‘And in this way you guessed the escapade might evade my notice, did you?’ the Duke suggested drily.

Joan winced as the barb hit home. Nothing escaped her father’s sharp mind.

‘In fact, had one of the other drivers taken you to St George’s in the East you might have avoided getting lost at all and returned home without me being aware of any of it.’

Joan’s blush deepened at the hint that she was an incompetent schemer.

‘My sister tells me that you were extremely fortunate that one of the locals did the decent thing and steered you out of the rookery before a disaster occurred.’ His Grace was frowning fiercely at his novice driver.

‘He weren’t a local, your Grace, he were Mr Rockleigh.’

The Duke of Thornley had been marching to and fro with his hands clasped behind his back and his head lowered in concentration. Now he halted and pivoted on a heel to gawp at his servant. Joan also stared Pip’s way. She’d not believed for a second that her driver had recognised Drew Rockleigh from that one brief meeting, in the dark, over two years ago.

‘Mr Rockleigh?’ Alfred parroted in utter disbelief. ‘Do you mean Drew Rockleigh?’ The Duke looked to his daughter for a reply.

‘Yes, it was him, Papa,’ Joan answered quietly.

‘You knew that ruffian?’ Dorothea snorted. ‘I believed him to be one of them.’ She flapped a hand in disgust.

‘I believe he is now one of them,’ Joan said with genuine sorrow trembling her voice.

‘You may return to your post, Rook, and you, Sister, may also retire.’

‘I certainly did not know the ruffian was your stepson-in-law’s friend,’ Dorothea avowed while trotting towards the door. ‘I swear I got no proper look at him, Alfred...just his back was to me as he leapt down.’

His Grace hurried his sister on her way with a hand flap, but as Joan also approached the exit he halted her with a curt, ‘You stay, miss. I have much to discuss with you.’

Once the door had been closed the Duke again prowled about, much to his daughter’s relief. Joan had been expecting an immediate dressing down, but it seemed her father was still pondering on the startling news that Luke Wolfson’s best friend had been reduced to such poverty.

‘Did Rockleigh know your identity, Joan?’ Alfred enquired, still pacing.

‘He did, Papa.’

‘Did you talk about what prompted his fall from grace?’

‘No...we exchanged little conversation. It wasn’t the time or place for social niceties.’ Joan kept to herself that Drew Rockleigh had roundly castigated her for being abroad in the vicinity of Ratcliffe Highway.

‘I know some business went bad for him, but never would I have imagined he now frequents a notorious slum.’ The Duke of Thornley sorrowfully shook his head.

‘He seems quite able to take care of himself...but it was horrid meeting him there,’ Joan replied. ‘I’m sorry, Papa, that I put myself and my aunt and Pip in peril. But please don’t ask me to stop helping at the school—’

‘I ask nothing,’ the Duke interrupted. ‘I am telling you categorically that you will never attend that place again. And I shall write personally to your friend Vincent Walters to make it clear that I hold him responsible for imperilling you.’ The Duke’s impassioned speech had turned his complexion florid.

‘You cannot! It’s not the Reverend’s fault that I volunteered my services. And in any case he did impress on me that...’ Joan’s voice tailed away.

‘He did impress on you...what?’ his Grace demanded.

‘He said I shouldn’t undertake anything without your consent,’ Joan admitted sheepishly. She didn’t want Vincent Walters added to the list of people she’d caused to be scolded because of her determination to help those far less fortunate than herself.

The Duke appeared slightly mollified to know that the vicar had acted correctly. ‘I will not write and admonish him, then, if you promise to behave as you should.’ The Duke’s mind returned to the topic most engaging it. ‘Did Rockleigh appear much changed to you?’

‘Oddly...no...it took me only a short while to recognise him. Oh, the elements have browned his skin and bleached his hair. His body seemed broader, more muscled...’ The memory of that naked torso slick with sweat and blood streaks caused Joan to blush. ‘Of course his clothes were very grimy,’ she hastened on. ‘But he appeared quite healthy, apart from some cuts and bruises to his hands and face.’ She noticed her father’s deep frown. ‘He prize fights to pay for his keep, you see,’ she explained.

‘Fights? What...in the street?’ Alfred snorted. He recalled that he had once watched his stepson-in-law and Rockleigh sparring at Gentleman Jim’s gymnasium and thought them evenly matched. Rockleigh had won the bout and gone on to take a fencing match against Luke, too, that afternoon.

‘He pays his way by winning purses, so he said,’ Joan added.

‘I suppose something must be done to help him,’ the Duke rumbled beneath his breath. ‘Not so long ago that fellow did us a great service in keeping you safe and keeping confidential another of your hare-brained jaunts; now he has come to your assistance once more. He deserves a reward and methinks that he will be inclined to accept it this time.’

Joan shot a glance at her father. ‘You offered to reward him last time?’

‘I did, indeed!’ the Duke admitted forcefully. ‘What occurred wasn’t Rockleigh’s fault.’ He harrumphed. ‘I was embarrassed and humbled to learn that I’d wrongly accused him of seducing you, when all the fellow had done was put himself to the trouble of returning you home after you turned up on his doorstep.’

Joan flinched from the reminder of her shameful behaviour and from the memory of her father’s attempt to make Rockleigh marry her. He had refused to have her and in the end there had been no need for a forced marriage because the scandal had never leaked out. Only family and the reluctant bridegroom had ever been privy to what had gone on.

‘I will set an investigator to unearth him and arrange a payment.’ The Duke of Thornley was not simply being philanthropic; his busy mind was weighing up how the possession of a wealthy man’s secrets might corrupt a person down on his luck.

A muttered oath exploded between Alfred’s teeth as he imagined all manner of disastrous consequences following on from that dratted calamity in Wapping. He dismissed his daughter with urgent finger flicks, pondering on whether the vicar or Rockleigh or both of them might present him with a problem.

When she’d been about fifteen Joan had been soft on her best friend’s cousin. Vincent Walters, for his part, had encouraged Lady Joan’s attention more than was decent for a fellow of his calling or station in life, in Alfred’s opinion. His late wife had reassured him that there was nothing to worry about. Girls blossoming into womanhood liked to flirt at such a tender age, she’d told him, because they were fascinated by the new power they had recently acquired over gentlemen. She’d maintained that Vincent was simply being courteous and kind in his mild responses. By then the Duchess had been quite poorly and Alfred had not wanted to worry his wife by overreacting. Privately he had let the Reverend know by glowering look and barbed comment that he wasn’t happy about the situation. In hindsight, Alfred accepted it had amounted to little more than Joan fluttering her eyelashes and the vicar and his relations being entertained to tea more often than was usual. Within a few months his daughter had turned sixteen and had made her come out at her mama’s insistence. The doctor had warned that the Duchess might not survive the coming winter weather and his wife had dearly wanted to see Joan launched into society.

During that glittering Season in town Joan had been plagued by admirers. However, Alfred had made sure that the gentlemen’s clubs had been rife with talk that the Duke of Thornley considered his sixteen-year-old daughter too young to become a wife and wouldn’t countenance a meeting with any suitor for at least two years. But Joan’s girlhood crush on the vicar had mellowed into a friendship even before the leaves on the trees turned to gold that year, and shortly after her beloved mama’s passing had caused a black cloud to descend on the entire Thornley household.

With a sigh, Alfred wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. He was quite sure that no renewed infatuation with the vicar had made Joan risk the trip to the East End of London. She was a young woman who was too aware of her privileges and society’s injustices, and would help those less fortunate when an opportunity arose.

Alfred dragged his mind back to the pressing matter of the real or imaginary threat that a different fellow might present to his family.

Drew Rockleigh had it within his power to ruin Lady Joan Morland. Their unexpected meeting today might have jogged the fellow’s memory to the value of the information he held against her. Alfred knew the boxer might even now be pondering making contact with him to quote a price for his continuing silence. He would like to think that conscience and morals would prevent Rockleigh ever stooping so low, but an empty belly could make a sinner out of a saint.

Jerking open a bureau drawer, Alfred found a pen and parchment. He was keen to write to the Pryke Detective Agency to have the matter nipped in the bud rather than wait for it to flourish.

Chapter Three

‘What is this?’

‘It’s a letter, as you can see, sir.’ The fellow sneered the final word. He peered upwards along his bulbous nose at the tall blond fellow whose sun-beaten profile was presented to him. Thadeus Pryke attempted to swipe five biting fingers from his forearm, but found he could not budge the bronzed digits an inch.

‘I can see that it is a letter. Why give it to me?’ The unaddressed parchment, having been examined, was thrust back at the messenger.

‘Because I believe you to be Mr Rockleigh...although I hear you’re known as the Squire round these parts.’ Again Pryke’s top lip curled. ‘My client has asked me to deliver the letter to you.’

‘And your client is?’ Drew Rockleigh stuck a slim cheroot in his mouth, then lit it from a match flaring in his cupped palm.

‘And my client is...my business.’ Thadeus smirked. He was inordinately pleased with himself to have secured such an illustrious patron. He had been an army corporal in his time, before he’d bettered himself and gained employment in his brother’s detective agency. But what he really wanted was to set up in business on his own account.

The Squire’s precise speech and confident manner proclaimed him to be a man of good stock. The steely strength in his grip, taken together with the battle wounds on his knuckles and cheeks, spoke of his employment entertaining the crowds in a makeshift boxing ring that sprang up illicitly in the neighbourhood, then disappeared equally swiftly. Thadeus knew that the purses could reach quite a sum and attracted talented pugilists from far and wide. There were no holds barred with these men and wily assailants used every bodily weapon they possessed, from head to foot, to gain victory.

‘Stay there, while I read it,’ Drew commanded. Taking back the parchment, he stepped clear of a group of rowdies who had been loitering outside the Cock and Hen. He’d been on the point of entering the tavern when Pryke intercepted him a few moments ago.

A laugh grazed his throat as his eyes flitted over the few lines of thick black script.

‘Have you a pencil?’ he enquired of Thadeus, sticking the cheroot back between a set of even white teeth.

The investigator immediately produced one.

Drew scrawled two words across the bottom of the paper, then refolded it and resealed the broken wax with hot ash flicked from his cigar and strong pressure from a calloused thumb. ‘Return it, if you please.’

From beneath a pair of wiry brows Thadeus watched Rockleigh’s impressively broad back as the fellow strode away into the inn, a pretty blonde tavern wench greeting him eagerly at the doorway.

* * *

‘Where is he?’ the Duke of Thornley demanded to know when the detective returned alone. In his note he’d commanded Rockleigh to accompany Thadeus Pryke to meet him and claim his reward.

Alfred had taken the precaution of garbing himself in a sober suit of clothes and hiring a creaky rig to take him to the Eastern Quarter. He had wanted to blend in with the prevalent atmosphere of lower-middle-class aspiration; lawyers and shopkeepers had colonised an area in Cheapside in which Alfred had instructed his driver to stop. The Duke of Thornley had decided that if his daughter were brave enough to journey into the bowels of the Wapping docks to school children, then he must have sufficient backbone to park on the outskirts to pay the man who had ensured her safe passage home to Mayfair.

His young son and heir was away at school and as much as Alfred adored George, he doted equally on his eldest child, trial that Joan was, because she reminded him of the love of his life—her late mother. He would do his utmost to protect Joan from scandal...and in that he hoped—but was not convinced—that he and the boxer were of a single mind.

Thadeus executed a deep bow, his hat secured beneath an arm. Climbing aboard the rig, he closed the door so they might converse in private. Drawing forth the letter, he proffered it. ‘The Squire returned you a message, your Grace.’

‘The Squire?’ Alfred echoed quizzically.

‘Beg pardon, your Grace... I have inadvertently used the fellow’s nickname.’ In fact, Thadeus had intentionally aired the sobriquet in the hope that the Duke would find the boxer risible. The impatience with which his Grace snatched the missive disappointed Thadeus. Whether he was Rockleigh or the Squire, the man was obviously of great importance to Thornley.

Impatiently Alfred broke the seal and gaped at Rockleigh’s answer to his offer of fifty pounds’ compensation for time and trouble expended on his daughter’s behalf. Nothing required was the sum of the man’s response and he hadn’t seen it necessary to add either his gratitude, or his signature.

Alfred slouched back against the upholstery, feeling miffed by the snub. He was a duke with several lesser titles and a number of ancestral estates established in the countryside from Cumberland in the north to Devon in the south. Yet a man who was rumoured to have lost everything in bad business deals, and was reduced to brawling to earn a crust, wanted nothing from him. And Rockleigh hadn’t even been sufficiently flattered by the Duke of Thornley’s interest in him to come and pay his respects.

Alfred dismissed Thadeus, who on reaching the pavement swivelled on a heel to jerk an obsequious bow. The investigator then rammed his hat back on his head and strode off. Alfred banged on the roof of the rig for the driver to head towards Mayfair. Far from accepting that that was the end of it, he was more determined than ever to have a meeting with Joan’s saviour. Curiosity about Drew Rockleigh’s decline played a part, but overriding all else was Alfred’s prickling suspicion that no impoverished fellow would turn down the opportunity to exploit his secret knowledge. If Rockleigh was playing a long game and heightening Alfred’s anxiety with uncertainty, then the tactic was working. The Duke sourly acknowledged that he was tempted to turn the rig about and drive straight into the heart of the rookery to demand Rockleigh spit out how much he did want if the sum offered wasn’t sufficient for him to drag himself out of squalor.

He pressed his shoulders against the lumpy squabs, rueing his missed chance of quizzing his son-in-law over Rockleigh the last time they’d been in each other’s company. Luke was sure to know a good deal about his friend’s degradation, yet Alfred had not previously been interested enough to probe. He was not one to want to pick over another chap’s misfortune. But now things were different.

* * *

‘I expect your father will put a stop to our meetings now.’

Vincent had sounded sorrowful. He had always been chary of upsetting the Duke of Thornley. His cousin Louise was very friendly with Lady Joan and their mothers were close, too. Years ago, Lady Joan’s infatuation with him had initially been flattering, but having the Duke’s good opinion was crucial to Vincent. Rich and powerful patrons of the church were hard to come by, and Vincent had been relieved rather than disappointed when Lady Joan’s flirtatious behaviour waned as she grew more mature. Vincent was a pragmatic man. He knew there was no real prospect of a clergyman marrying a duke’s daughter, so he had accepted early on that their relationship must remain platonic.

‘Oh, Papa is just up in the boughs over my misadventure, but he will calm down in a week or so.’ Joan gave her companion a smile as they strolled side by side in Hyde Park.

A short distance behind the couple, Aunt Dorothea was stomping along assisted by her silver-topped cane and her maid. The young servant was wielding a parasol to shield her mistress’s lined complexion from the April sun.

Joan would sooner just a maid accompanied her when she went out, but her father insisted that she be properly chaperoned even though he’d recently deemed his sister unequal to the task.

‘I don’t think Lady Dorothea cares for me at all,’ Vincent said, slanting a glance over a shoulder. ‘But for her manners forcing her to respond, I believe your aunt would have ignored my greeting earlier.’

‘She took the upset very badly that afternoon,’ Joan explained.

On the day in question Joan had entered Vincent’s back parlour to find nine children grouped in a semi-circle, sitting cross-legged on the rug. They’d ranged in age from about six to ten years old. She’d gladly assisted Vincent in chalking letters on the children’s slates for them to copy, but her aunt had refused to get involved or to budge from the front room of the vicarage. Dorothea had huddled into her widow’s weeds and sat all alone for two hours rather than make herself useful.

‘My aunt prefers it when we take a drive round the park, or head towards the emporiums where her cronies congregate. She has a fine time being scandalised by the latest on dits during their gossips.’

‘No doubt she had quite a tale to tell them after that drama.’

‘I believe my aunt is too ashamed to breathe a word about it...other than to her brother, of course,’ Joan added flatly. ‘But let’s not dwell on what disasters might have been.’ She slipped her hand through the crook of Vincent’s arm.

She had written to Vincent to inform him that she’d be unable to visit the vicarage again as soon as planned and why that was. She’d only briefly outlined the unpleasant encounter with the beggars because she didn’t want Vincent blaming himself. It was not his fault that Pip had lost his way. Sure that her father couldn’t object to her and Vincent promenading in Hyde Park, Joan had suggested in her note that they meet up to talk. She and Vincent had been friends for too long to allow a mishap to drive a wedge between them.

Next week the Duke would be reunited with his spouse and Joan was confident he’d be in a better mood then. The Duchess was presently with her daughter in Essex, as Fiona was increasing again and feeling very poorly. Maude had sped off many weeks ago to give support and encouragement, sure the signs were there that an heir to the Wolfson name was on his way.

Her brother-in-law would be immensely proud to have his longed-for son, Joan thought before her mind wandered on...to a person Luke would certainly not be proud of: his degenerate best friend...

An impatient tut escaped her as she realised Drew Rockleigh again occupied her thoughts. Since the hair-raising incident with the beggars she had not managed to forget the dratted man for any length of time, much as she wanted to. His astonishing way of life depressed her the more she dwelt on it. Infuriating though she found him, he deserved better than to end up trading blows in a boxing ring.

‘I hope the Duke won’t stop you seeing me or make me abandon the vicarage school.’ Vincent sounded anxious.

‘Of course he won’t, on either count! Papa knows that you are a good friend and he is not without compassion for the poor. He will mellow in time.’ Joan paused, searching for a new subject to talk about. ‘How is Louise liking her sojourn in the countryside?’

Louise Finch and Joan had been close since childhood. Louise’s mother and Vincent’s mother were kin and, despite one sister marrying a wealthy fellow while the other’s husband was a man of the cloth, the women remained close. Vincent had followed in his father’s footsteps, but had gained a living administering to a flock in the London stews rather than in a Kentish village.

‘I understand from my mother that her guests will be returning early next week. Apparently Louise misses the social whirl and is bored with cattle for company.’ Vincent gave a rather disapproving sniff.

Joan bit her lip to subdue a smile. It was the sort of blunt opinion she would expect from her best friend, yet she doubted Louise had intended her hostess to overhear it.

‘I shall be glad to have her back, anyway,’ Joan said, patting Vincent’s arm in a consoling manner. She gave him a smile and his indignation disintegrated. Vincent was a man of adequate height and build with coppery brown hair and pleasant looks. As they strolled around the perimeter of the lake Joan noticed that they were under observation.

‘Your association with me attracts attention, you know,’ Vincent said wryly, his thoughts mirroring Joan’s. He nodded discreetly at some people craning their necks at them as their barouche passed by.

‘No doubt they are recalling how abominably I embarrassed you when I was younger,’ Joan teased, making Vincent cough and blush. ‘Oh, the gossips should be used to us being friends by now.’ She wrinkled her petite nose in a display of insouciance. ‘It is more likely those young ladies are staring because they think you handsome and eligible,’ she added with a twinkling smile.

‘I doubt they would think my bank balance very attractive,’ Vincent countered wryly. ‘Even the clergy need to pay their bills.’ Vincent paused. ‘They appear to be returning for a second look,’ he said as the barouche again approached.

‘Oh, let them look.’ Joan sighed. ‘That is Miss Greenvale and her cousin. They are heiresses and could spare a few pounds from their trust funds to put towards your new church roof.’

‘I fear I’ll have no luck there and will carry on collecting rainwater in buckets for the foreseeable future.’

‘I’ll speak to Papa about releasing some of my money—’

‘You must not!’ Vincent interrupted sharply. ‘I’ll not let you do that.’ His features softened into a grateful smile. ‘You are a very generous and good-natured young woman.’ Vincent slanted a glance at the pearly contours of Joan’s profile, framed by chestnut curls. ‘I hate that you suffered for your goodness. Will you tell me more about this dreadful attack by those beggars?’

‘There isn’t much to tell...it was over very quickly after we received help...’ Joan said carefully. She’d sooner not make much of the incident with Rockleigh.

‘Gracious! Over there by the trees is a fellow I know.’ Vincent discreetly waggled a hand indicating to his left. ‘He is the Ratcliffe Highway’s most successful pugilist. Of course, I rarely attend those contests lest I encourage the men in their barbarism.’

Joan came to an abrupt standstill as her eyes widened on the person who rarely quit her thoughts. He was standing many yards away on a patch of grass fringed by a copse and appeared to be deep in conversation with another fellow. From their position close to shady branches, and their unsmiling expressions, Joan guessed that the meeting was not a social one.

‘Is he known to you?’ Vincent had heard Joan’s quiet intake of breath. ‘He wasn’t one of the beasts who beset your coach, was he? The fellow is known locally as the Squire. One only needs to be in his company for a short while to know he is well bred. He must be badly down on his luck, but I’d be surprised if he stooped to bullying women or begging.’

‘No...he would never do that...’ Joan murmured with a throb of conviction in her voice. ‘He was our rescuer—I told you that we received help. He drove the carriage out of the slum.’

‘I’m not surprised he was your Good Samaritan. He’s courteous, if brutal, and that’s a rarity in the parish. The Squire’s got no need to beg as the victor’s purses can be considerable.’ Vincent looked enquiringly at Joan. ‘Shall we speak to him? I’m keen to persuade some of the families to attend the Sunday services more often than they do. The ne’er-do-wells congregate in the Cock and Hen on the Sabbath when they might better spend their time seeking the Lord’s forgiveness, or their own salvation.’ Vincent clucked his tongue. ‘A few of their wives are regular church goers though...’

‘Is he married?’ Joan blurted out, unsure why the thought of Drew Rockleigh having a wife appalled her.

‘The Squire married? Not to my knowledge. He’s popular with the ladies though...’ Vincent cleared his throat to cover his slip. ‘Forgive me, Lady Joan...that was most crass...’

But Joan was no longer listening; her eyes had become entangled with a steady tawny stare. Drew stepped away from his soberly dressed companion and the man scuttled into the copse out of sight.

Joan’s heart began pounding beneath her ribs as she watched Rockleigh plunge his hands into his pockets on his casual stroll over the grass towards them. Alert to her aunt’s presence, Joan shot a look over her shoulder. ‘Lady Dorothea is occupied with Lady Regan, so we can briefly say hello to Mr Rockleigh,’ she rattled off.

‘Rockleigh? Is that his name?’

Joan gave a brief nod, already on her way to meet him and so rapidly that Vincent had to trot to keep up with her.

‘My lady... Reverend Walters...’ Drew dipped his head, then glanced thoughtfully from one to the other of them.

‘You are a distance from home today, sir,’ Vincent burst out when his companions stared at one another rather than exchanging a greeting.

‘I had an appointment to keep,’ Drew informed, sliding his attention back to Joan.

‘I must thank you very much for the service you did Lady Joan. I’ve heard how you helped her and her aunt out of a very unpleasant situation.’ Vincent thrust out a hand.

‘She wouldn’t have been in that unpleasant situation but for you encouraging her into the neighbourhood,’ Drew returned coolly, giving the Reverend’s fingers a single firm shake.

‘I need no encouragement to be benevolent,’ Joan interjected sharply, conscious of the vicar fidgeting on being reprimanded. ‘I made up my own mind to go to the vicarage school.’

‘Against your father’s wishes.’

‘You are not privy to my father’s wishes,’ Joan retorted, becoming aware of Vincent’s alarmed expression as she bickered with his disreputable parishioner.

‘I know your father’s wishes, Lady Joan,’ Drew said quietly. ‘Furthermore I endorse them and advise you to heed them.’

Joan furiously pressed her lips together. So her father had gone ahead and made contact with Rockleigh to reward him for rescuing her. Joan realised such a good deed deserved an acknowledgement; nevertheless, she felt piqued that he’d been venal enough to accept a payment.

‘I...um... Lady Dorothea is about to join us, I think. Shall we move on?’ Vincent burbled.

‘Please go and keep her company,’ Joan said, without breaking eye contact with Rockleigh. ‘I will be but a moment longer speaking to...my brother-in-law’s friend.’

The news that the Squire was an acquaintance of Joan’s family caused Vincent’s jaw to drop. ‘You know Mr Wolfson?’

‘I do...very well...’ Drew’s smile acknowledged the vicar’s astonishment on learning he had lofty connections.

Vincent composed himself and with a crisp nod, hurried away over the grass towards Dorothea.

‘How much did he pay you?’ Joan demanded the moment Vincent was out of earshot. ‘Ten pounds?’ she guessed. ‘Twenty?’

‘Your father offered fifty.’

Joan’s astonishment caused her full pink lips to part. She moistened them with a tongue flick that drew a pair of lupine eyes.

‘So...you were a moment ago conversing with your banker, were you?’ Joan asked mellifluously, nodding at the wooded area into which the fellow had disappeared. ‘Is he to invest the cash, or pay off your duns with it, Mr Rockleigh?’ When Drew remained infuriatingly silent and unperturbed by her barb, Joan prodded, ‘Is that sufficient a sum to get you back on your feet or would you like me to play the damsel in distress one more time so you might again test my father’s generosity?’

‘You know nothing about me,’ Drew said quietly. ‘And I’m not about to satisfy your curiosity. Go back to your vicar friend and enjoy your promenade, but stay away from Ratcliffe Highway and me. Don’t test my generosity, my lady, or my patience, because you’ll find both lacking next time.’

Joan gasped in astonishment and outrage as he made to walk away from her. Nobody, apart from her papa, spoke to her in that tone of voice. Imperiously she retorted, ‘You may halt this instant. I have not finished speaking to you, sir.’

‘But I have finished with you...’ was sent casually over a shoulder as he strolled away.

‘Come here this instant, you impertinent lout.’

He pivoted about and returned so swiftly that Joan skittered back some steps, her heart pulsing in her throat.

‘Well? What do you want?’ Drew enquired with silky softness.

Joan could think of nothing to say and neither could she raise her eyes to meet those that were singeing the top of her head. His muscled thighs were in her lowered line of vision, encased today in black breeches that seemed as closely moulded to his powerful physique as the charcoal-grey tailcoat he wore. Had she not known what Drew Rockleigh did for a living she might have mistaken him for a businessman rather than a barbarian. Only the faint healing marks on his face and knuckles gave the game away that he was a street fighter.

‘You’re finding it hard to apologise for your rudeness, are you?’ Drew suggested, mockery in his tone, as she continued to glower at the small space of grass that separated them.

‘I have done nothing that requires an apology.’ To her shame Joan knew that was far from the truth. She’d just been horribly pompous and arrogant and her bewilderment at having allowed him to taunt her to act out of character simply added to her inner turmoil.

‘You need not apologise?’ he paraphrased silkily. ‘I seem to recall having heard that from you before. It was no truer then than now.’

Heat seeped into Joan’s cheeks. She had indeed said something similar to him following her outrageous visit to his hunting lodge. With Pip driving the trap, she’d journeyed late at night, seeking Luke Wolfson, but her future brother-in-law had not been there. Rockleigh had found himself in the unenviable position of having compromised a duke’s daughter while minding his own business in his own home. Joan had felt ashamed to have caused him trouble, but even when he delivered her safely home and prevented her father chastising her with a slap, a simple ‘sorry’ had refused to roll off her tongue. Neither had she graciously thanked her escort. She had thought of writing to him and humbling herself...until her father recounted that Drew Rockleigh had refused point blank to salvage her reputation and marry her, even with great financial inducement to do so.

No doubt he would have her like a shot now, Joan thought sourly. The jibe withered on her tongue as she saw his sardonic expression and knew he’d read her thoughts.

‘Nothing’s changed for me...’ he drawled.

‘Oh, but I think it has,’ Joan replied, bristling with indignation. ‘Once you displayed a modicum of gentility and good breeding—now you appear to be just a violent heathen.’

Drew smiled, glanced over her head to where her aunt and Vincent Walters were pretending not to gawp too obviously. ‘The vicar told you he wants to save my soul and get me to attend church, did he?’

‘Reverend Walters told me more besides about you,’ Joan blurted before she could stop herself.

‘He told you what about me?’ Drew’s demand was speciously soft.

‘Nothing I want to repeat.’ Joan knew she would never explain her comment so spun about, preparing to retreat. She’d discovered he was a womaniser and, tempted though she was to fling it in his face, there were certain breaches of etiquette she baulked at committing. Hot-headed she might be, but Joan hoped she was never vulgar.

‘Come...we both know I’m not decent and the vicar’s put some embellishment to the fact.’ With a single stride Drew strategically repositioned himself in her path. ‘We’re also both aware that you’re no shrinking violet and your reputation won’t stand scrutiny,’ he purred. ‘So tell me what Walters said.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Joan demanded.

‘I’m guessing he told you I’m an incurable reprobate, best avoided.’

‘I’m guessing that you have deliberately misconstrued my meaning.’ Joan eyed him warily. ‘You commented on my reputation and I’d like to know why.’

‘You know why. I compromised you two years ago. Or rather you compromised me. Your father attempted to make me pay for your mistake.’

‘Perhaps he did, but you were never in any danger of having to do so, sir. I made it clear from the outset that I’d sooner enter a nunnery than become your wife.’

Drew’s amusement turned to silent laughter. ‘So you did...but, capital fellow that I am, I saved you from a life of vows and celibacy by rejecting your hand and your father’s bribe of lands and riches to go with it.’

‘Very noble...’ Joan scoffed croakily. ‘I trust, despite your unfortunate position, that I can count on you still being a capital fellow?’

‘Your secret’s safe with me, my lady.’ Drew’s voice was rich with humour as his honey-coloured eyes flowed with insolent leisure over her figure. ‘But that might be all that is...so stay in Mayfair and do your good works there.’

Mingling thrill and alarm streaked through Joan. She knew if she pushed this man too far she might bitterly regret it...so flight was now the sensible option. Indeed, it was the only option because her aunt was marching towards her. Lady Regan was also staring at them and passing carriages were slowing down so the occupants could covertly watch the Duke of Thornley’s daughter conversing with a handsome, if ill-matched, stranger. Joan wondered whether any of them had recognised her modestly attired companion as Drew Rockleigh.

‘Move aside,’ Joan commanded. Chin elevating, she attempted to step past him, but was again thwarted. ‘Should my father find out about this he will punish you for your insolence.’

‘I should have let him punish you. God knows you’re in need of some sense and discipline instilled in you.’

‘Why did you not, then?’ Joan challenged. She held her breath, unsure why his answer was of vital importance to her.

‘Damned if I know...’ Drew sauntered off with a low, throaty chuckle.

Joan pressed together her lips, preventing herself again succumbing to an urge to order him back. She was furious that he’d had the last word—blasphemous, too!—and then walked away from her before she could quit his presence. But she was also hurt by his final remark. She’d hoped he’d say he’d wanted to protect her from her father’s wrath, but perhaps she’d played a minor role in the incident and it had really been a contest of egos between two antagonistic gentlemen.

Chapter Four

‘You must accompany me to Pall Mall and speak to Lady Regan.’ Dorothea’s small fierce eyes fastened on her niece’s profile. ‘Everybody suspected that more than how the Wolfsons do was occupying the two of you. I fielded questions as best I could, so make sure you tell your papa how I tried to protect you from gossip.’

‘Mr Rockleigh and I also talked about the beggars who stopped our coach,’ Joan offered up one truthful titbit.

‘It’s your duty to come with me to explain yourself.’ Dorothea snorted as a blush spread on Joan’s cheeks. ‘If you colour up, Lady Regan will know you’re guilty of something. And never mention those atrocious vagabonds, I implore you.’ Dorothea’s nose wrinkled in disgust as she fingered the mourning brooch on her shoulder. ‘I thank the Lord that this precious memento of my dear departed husband didn’t fall into the clutches of that avaricious wretch.’

‘It is not avarice, but cold and hunger that makes the poor act so.’

‘You defend them?’ Dorothea barked, eyes popping in shock.

‘No...theft is theft, but I understand how such an environment might corrode a person’s honesty and dignity. I know, too, that the rot could be stopped if the disadvantaged were able to share a few of the things that we take for granted.’ Joan cast a damning eye on her aunt. ‘Helping slum urchins to better themselves through learning to read and write is surely a step in the right direction; I find it inconceivable that any decent person would ignore the need for children to be given a basic education.’

Dorothea gulped indignantly at the pointed reminder of how she’d sat sulking in the vicar’s parlour rather than assist with the lessons that day. ‘Those vile people would have robbed and murdered us but for Mr Rockleigh’s intervention. They should be horsewhipped...every one of them,’ she warbled dramatically. ‘Say nothing about any of it to my friends; they will find it abhorrent to know we came close to such taint.’ Dorothea waggled a cautioning finger. ‘Of course, the dreadful tale of what occurred is bound to circulate eventually now you have told the vicar all about it.’ She sent her niece a blameful glare. ‘So you will come and have some tea with us?’

‘I’m afraid not; I shall go straight home.’

‘You are the most selfish miss!’ Dorothea hissed. ‘Your father will be livid to know you have been consorting with Rockleigh again.’

‘He won’t mind me having a conversation with my brother-in-law’s friend.’ Joan sounded more confident than she felt. ‘Besides, there is no need for Papa to be bothered with any of it.’

‘Had you been with the Rockleigh of old...then I would agree. But the fellow is now in the gutter and you would do well to remember that before accosting him.’

‘I did no such thing!’ Joan protested, although she recalled approaching him rapidly. She settled back into the squabs to stare sightlessly at passing scenery. ‘Would you have recognised Mr Rockleigh had the vicar not told you his identity?’

‘Oh, indeed I would have!’ Dorothea trilled. ‘I got a good look at him this time.’ She studied her niece’s reaction. ‘Such handsome features aren’t disguised by a heathenish tan, are they?’

Joan was saved from finding an answer; she’d suddenly realised that the coach was about to sail past the turning to her home. She rapped on the roof, determined to use her chance to escape.

‘Baldwin’s has in some fine new silk. You will want to choose from the bolts before all the best shades are sold out.’ Dorothea made a last attempt to keep her niece’s company.

Ignoring Dorothea’s angry huff, Joan said farewell, then alighted without waiting for the groom to open the door. Having hopped down, she immediately set off in the direction of Upper Brook Street.

Dorothea’s friends knew that Drew Rockleigh and Luke Wolfson were chums without Joan having to take tea with them and tell them so. The ton also knew that one man lived in luxury while the other... Her train of thought faltered as she realised she had no idea where Rockleigh resided. The idea that he took bed and board in a slum was outlandish considering who he was...or rather who he had been. He didn’t seem unfed...far from it; his strong solid physique spoke of nourishment as well as exercise. Vincent Walters had spoken of high-value purses being won by the victors such as the Squire, as he’d called Rockleigh.

Her aunt’s cronies would have quizzed her mercilessly so they could repeat details of Rockleigh’s disgrace in scandalised whispers. Joan wasn’t privy to his secrets, but if she were, she’d not betray him.

It puzzled Joan why she felt rather protective of a man who exasperated her, mocked her and also alarmed her. But Rockleigh had, not once, but twice now done her a great service. The need to act fairly and return a favour was quite understandable, as her father had recently pointed out. And what else could there be feeding her growing obsession with him?

Preoccupied, Joan entered her home. On looking up, she spotted her stepmother’s maid and some of the other servants hurrying towards the cloakroom laden with garments. Then her darting eyes pounced upon the woman herself. Maude had been tweaking her flattened coiffure into shape in front of a mirror spanning the length of a fancy console table. Packing cases and portmanteaux lined the walls and a convoy of footmen were converging on the vestibule to transport their mistress’s vast amount of luggage upstairs to her chamber.

‘Oh, it’s lovely to have you back and sooner than expected.’ Joan rushed to Maude to give her a hug that was warmly returned.

‘How is Fiona? Is she better now?’ Joan eagerly asked, breaking free of the older woman’s embrace.

‘Your sister is much brighter, my dear, so I decided to get myself from under their feet. The physician has assured Fiona that the queasiness will ease as the babe grows.’ Maude linked arms with her stepdaughter. ‘Come, I am parched and want some tea. Let us sit in the rose salon and have a chat. Then I must snooze for a while and look refreshed for your papa when he gets in.’ She sighed contentedly. ‘I have missed you both, you know. Tobias tells me that Alfred is at White’s and won’t return before we dine so there is plenty of time for us to catch up with all the news.’

‘And how is my lovely little niece?’ Joan asked, removing her bonnet. She ran five tidying fingers through a tumble of dark chestnut curls.

‘Oh, that tot is destined to be a tomboy. Diana likes sticks and stones to play with rather than a doll to dress.’ Maude sounded nostalgic while speaking of her granddaughter. ‘Fiona was the same as a youngster: she would crawl about the garden to catch worms and snails as pets while her little sister behaved prettily.’ The woman shuddered, glancing searchingly over a shoulder. ‘Tobias told me you’d gone for a drive with your aunt,’ she commented as they strolled over marble flags.

‘Dorothea has journeyed on to Pall Mall to browse the emporiums and meet Lady Regan in a teashop.’ Joan sighed. ‘I opted to come home. I cannot abide dawdling about those places just for the latest gossip.’

‘You and Fiona are alike, you know.’ Maude chuckled. ‘My eldest would never shop for new dresses either. It was always Verity who loved to have the seamstresses fluttering around her hem with needles and pins.’

‘I find the idea of being like Fiona very agreeable.’ Joan sounded wistful. Her stepsister was indeed fortunate to have a doting husband and an adorable daughter to cherish plus another little one on the way.

‘She has sent you a letter; it’s in my portmanteau. Fiona spoke about you constantly, asking me this and that and when will you visit. She was disappointed you did not accompany me.’

Joan would have very much liked to see her sister and brother-in-law, but when Maude had left for Essex over a month ago Joan had been suffering with a chill and too unwell to travel.

The refreshment arrived promptly after the two ladies had settled themselves in the rose salon.

‘So what scandals have I missed while away?’ Maude sipped from delicate bone china, her lively eyes displaying her eagerness to have some gossip.

‘Miss Richards has been jilted by her fiancé,’ Joan related after a cursory racking of her brains.

‘That doesn’t surprise me! He was a fortune hunter and has probably got wind of her father’s ship sinking off China.’

‘Has it?’ Joan’s eyes widened. ‘What cruel fate. Who told you of it?’

‘Luke had heard the news on the grapevine, then Fiona told me about another fellow who has been greatly reduced in circumstances. I understand that was entirely his own fault, though.’

Joan put down her cup, then waited till the maid had deposited some cakes and disappeared before asking hesitantly, ‘Was Fiona referring to Drew Rockleigh?’

Maude airily waved a tartlet she’d immediately selected and bitten into. ‘Rockleigh is out of favour and never mentioned. The culprit is another fellow who lost his house on a turn of a card to a professional gambler.’

‘How careless...’ Joan gulped her tea. She wished she’d not mentioned Rockleigh now because she feared her stepmother would pick up the thread of the conversation and she was confused as to how to continue. She was still smarting from his maddening attitude to her earlier. She was also still feeling embarrassed about her unpleasantly haughty response to his provocation. Yet, despite it all, there was within her a restlessness to see him again that was so powerful she felt tempted to fly to the stables, find Pip, then return to the slum and demand answers to the questions bedevilling her.

‘Fiona is aware that her husband’s friend has had a dreadful time of it.’ Maude popped some stray currants into her mouth. ‘Luke refuses to discuss Rockleigh because he is very angry with the ingrate.’ Maude sighed. ‘These men! They will get themselves into scrapes with their bad habits.’

‘He didn’t gamble away his money!’ Joan had immediately leapt to the ingrate’s defence.

‘Did he not?’ Maude sounded surprised. ‘What did he do?’

‘Um...I’m not sure,’ Joan admitted. ‘Papa heard that some business went bad for him.’

Maude helped herself to another cake. ‘I see...but Drew always seemed a devil-may-care charmer to me.’ She arched an eyebrow at Joan. ‘I recall he paid you rather a lot of attention at their wedding reception.’

‘For the short time he attended,’ Joan countered. Fiona and Luke’s wedding breakfast had been a wonderful celebration held in the ballroom that occupied a sizeable amount of the first floor of the Duke of Thornley’s town house. Wistfully Joan recalled Drew looking heartbreakingly handsome that evening. He had asked her to dance, causing fans to stir amongst the ladies present.

But by ten o’clock he had gone. Joan had been piqued enough by his abrupt disappearance to discreetly try to find him. Her search had taken her from the card room to the supper room and then to wander down the stairs. In the vestibule she had heard two dandies, lounging against a marble pillar, laughing that Rockleigh’s mistress had waited over two hours outside for him in a carriage. Joan had melted away into the shadows in a whisper of lemon silk, not wanting those chortling young bucks to spot her. She’d felt a fool, pining for a man who clearly wanted to be elsewhere and had danced with his host’s daughter out of politeness.

And that had been the last time Joan had been in Drew Rockleigh’s company...until very recently.

‘Why is Luke angry with him?’ Joan enquired. According to her sister, Drew had been a true friend to Luke when they were growing up and Luke had been unhappy at home. ‘Is Rockleigh no longer deemed fitting company since my brother-in-law settled down to a staid family life?’ Joan hoped Luke’s loyalty ran deeper than that.

‘Not at all!’ Maude wiped crumbs from her lips with a napkin. ‘Luke wants to be friends. Apparently he offered his chum a loan to get him back on his feet, but Rockleigh flatly refused to have it. Drew is now living like a degenerate, consorting with quite the wrong sort of people. Luke is out of patience with him.’ She frowned. ‘It is inconceivable that somebody would willingly remain in the gutter. It might be all exaggeration.’ Maude’s expression turned optimistic.

‘I fear this time the gossip might not live up to the reality, ma’am,’ Joan said quietly.

‘You know the ins and outs?’ Maude was intrigued enough to push away the tempting plate of tartlets and give her stepdaughter her full attention.

‘I might as well own up, for no doubt Papa will regale you with details of my latest scrape.’

‘Indeed, you must, if you wish to have my assistance in the matter,’ Maude answered with a wink.

Five minutes later when the saga about the beggars and Drew Rockleigh’s heroics had been related, Maude was looking much less amiable.

‘Oh, Joan!’ the woman wailed. ‘I wouldn’t have gone off to Essex for so long if I’d known you’d get embroiled in the vicar’s ragged school. There’s always a price to pay for doing a good deed, as my late husband would say.’ Maude sorrowfully shook her head. ‘I’ve always sanctioned your friendship with the vicar as he is kin of the Finches and I know your late mama liked him. Alfred is sure to remind me of my interference when he gets home.’

‘You know you have my father wrapped about your little finger.’ Joan managed a fraudulent smile, inwardly wincing at having caused yet another person’s upset. She’d not wanted to bring tears to her stepmother’s eyes, but equally she would never regret teaching some slum urchins their letters.

Thus far her stepmother had been her ally. Maude would gently chide her husband over keeping a too-strict rein on his eldest child. Her own daughter, she would remind him, had braved the hazards of travelling hundreds of miles in the seeking of employment and in the end the adventure had enriched Fiona’s life rather than ruining it.

The Duke would listen and nod. He would heed Maude in most things. In this particular case he had no need to humour her though, as there was great truth in her boast that Fiona’s courage had been well rewarded: Joan’s stepsister had travelled to Devon to take up a position as a governess when her life was at a low ebb and instead had fallen straight into the loving arms of her future husband.

‘Oh! That is your father back now.’ Maude had agitatedly gained her feet at the sound of voices in the corridor.

Joan had also heard the Duke’s baritone mingling with her Aunt Dorothea’s shrill treble. She was itching to speak to her father in private to discover why he’d found it necessary to reward Rockleigh with as much as fifty pounds. But now Maude was home husband and wife would want time alone, so Joan would have to wait her turn for an audience with him.

She was wrong on that score. Her father strode into the rose salon with his sister trotting in his wake. ‘Ah, capital to have you home, m’dear,’ he addressed his wife with a fond beam. A moment later Alfred’s beady gaze was turned on his daughter. ‘It seems you and I must have another serious talk, miss,’ he announced.

Over his shoulder Joan could see Dorothea’s fingers nervously plucking at the skirts of her widow’s weeds. So her aunt had blabbed about the encounter with Rockleigh in Hyde Park and had doubtless put her own fantastic interpretation on it.

‘I should like to speak to you, too, Papa,’ Joan replied stoutly.

‘You will have an immediate opportunity to do so, miss, never fear,’ the Duke retorted. He turned a softer gaze on his wife. ‘Why do you not retire for a while, Maude, and I’ll join you shortly?’ He raised her fingers to his lips in tender salute. ‘Off you go, now. There is no point in bringing you in on this half the way through. I’ll explain it in private, for deuce knows there are bits that stretch the bounds of credibility and might need oft repeating.’

Maude glanced at her stepdaughter, seeking a small signal that Joan had no need of her support. Satisfied by a smile, the Duchess greeted her sister-in-law by clasping Dorothea’s thin hands before quitting the room.

‘I should like permission to retire, too, Alfred,’ Dorothea piped up the moment her niece’s fierce grey gaze veered her way. ‘My headache is worse. I have missed an appointment with Lady Regan because of it.’

Joan guessed that it wasn’t a migraine, but the thought of awkward questions being fired at her over the teacups that had caused the woman to abort her social engagement.

A grunt of agreement sanctioned Dorothea’s request. Before his sister quit the room the Duke said, ‘Now my wife is home you will no doubt wish to hurry back to your own hearth, Dorothea. Tobias will see to it that you have every help to get packed up to leave the moment you are ready.’

‘Indeed, I should like to be back in Marylebone, Alfred.’ Dorothea’s puckered lips formed a thin line at the termination of her services. ‘My nerves have been stretched beyond bearing these past weeks.’ A blameful gaze landed on her niece.

‘My bank draft for your trouble will no doubt soothe them, my dear.’ Alfred followed up that dry remark with an unmistakable nod of dismissal. He then sat down. Having shaken the teapot, he poured tepid tea into his wife’s abandoned cup, then took a gulp.

‘So...explain yourself, if you will,’ he commenced testily, jabbing a glance Joan’s way. ‘You had a meeting this afternoon with Rockleigh in the park, under cover of a stroll with your vicar friend, that much I know.’ He waved an impatient hand at his daughter’s immediate protest. ‘I’m not so easily duped by the use of a beard. I’ve some personal experience of a clandestine tête-à-tête from my own youth, you know.’

‘It was no arranged meeting!’ Joan burst out. ‘I was promenading with the Reverend Walters and we came upon Mr Rockleigh with a companion.’

‘A companion, eh?’ The Duke seemed interested to hear that. ‘And who was this person?’

‘I’ve no idea. He was dressed like a clerk; when Mr Rockleigh caught sight of us they parted and the fellow disappeared into the trees. Why on earth would you believe I’d plot an assignation with a man I don’t like?’

‘So...it is all an innocent coincidence. There are no lingering passions between you in danger of rekindling?’

Joan spluttered a sound that hovered between amusement and amazement. ‘If you mean pleasant feelings, then, no, there are not! Nor were there ever any. And I don’t know why you’d think differently; we were constantly at one another’s throats when you tried to force us to wed. And I have just said I have no liking for him.’

‘Mmm...love and hate are close kin. I recall you both protested too much,’ the Duke commented reflectively. ‘You mooned about for a while and as for Rockleigh...most fellows would have accepted a token of my gratitude and esteem if only to humour me. But he wouldn’t take a penny, then or now. I applauded his lack of avarice two years ago, but this time I’m uneasy about it.’

‘But you recently gave him fifty pounds, didn’t you?’ Joan sounded perplexed.

‘Is that what he said during this private talk you had?’

‘Yes...no...’ Joan amended in confusion. ‘He told me you’d offered him that amount and I assumed he’d taken it.’

‘I did offer it, but he would not have it. He also refused to come and thank me for my most generous gesture.’ Alfred was still smarting over the snub.

‘You wanted a street fighter to come here?’ Joan’s dark brows shot together in disbelief.

‘Of course not, my dear,’ Alfred answered tetchily. ‘I travelled to his territory and waited in a carriage in Cheapside. The detective I engaged delivered the note asking him to meet me and claim his reward.’ Alfred snorted in indignation. ‘Rockleigh dismissed me as though I were a nobody! Deuced cheek of the man!’

Joan nibbled her lower lip while digesting that astonishing fact. People—even those with wealth and standing—kowtowed to her father, bowing and scraping to earn his favours. But Rockleigh was a breed apart, it seemed.

‘So...what are we to do about all of this?’ the Duke muttered to himself as he got up from the sofa and began prowling the Aubusson carpet. ‘I’m hoping the Squire, as my man Thadeus Pryke named him, is as honest and sincere as was Drew Rockleigh, but I’m not sure.’

‘What do you mean, Papa?’ A shiver of apprehension rippled through Joan. The Duke of Thornley was rarely lacking in confidence, or at a loss to know what to do about any situation.

‘Rockleigh is cognizant with our secrets. He has not once hinted to me about your youthful indiscretion since you committed it and in the past we’ve often met at clubs and functions. But he is a different person now; who is to say the Squire will not seek to capitalise on what he knows? A man who has lost wealth and rank might claw his way back into society by whatever means present themselves,’ Alfred concluded bleakly.

Joan realised that her father’s attitude was horribly cynical, yet a similar fear had tormented her when Rockleigh had reminded her of her disgrace. ‘Your secret’s safe with me, my lady...but that might be all that is...’ A sultry gleam had been in his eyes, leading her to believe that lust was behind the threat. But perhaps the base desire he had was not for her, but for the riches lodged in her father’s bank vault. ‘He promised not to betray us, Papa,’ Joan said forcefully in an attempt to reassure herself as much as her father.

‘Promised? You talked about your disgraceful behaviour two years ago?’ The Duke had stopped roaming the room to bark questions at his daughter.

Joan nodded, inwardly berating herself for having brought her heated exchange with Rockleigh to such a dangerous point. The vicar had told her the Squire was a womaniser and she’d been unable to resist hinting at what she knew. He’d retaliated by bringing up the subject of her brazen visit to his hunting lodge.

‘If he means to blackmail me...’ The Duke left the rest unsaid, but his florid physiognomy told of the impotent rage he felt at the idea becoming reality. ‘He is no longer friendly with your brother-in-law so there is no loyalty at stake to make him hesitate.’

‘He will never risk you calling his bluff, Papa. A gentleman accused of seduction is not completely off the hook.’ Joan managed a wan smile, but her rapid heartbeat made her quite breathless.

‘It seems Rockleigh is no longer a gentleman and I doubt he gives a toss for fair play or etiquette.’ The Duke headed towards the sideboard to use the decanter. The cognac he poured was shot back in a single swallow. ‘Of course he might welcome marrying you now to get himself out of the mess he’s in.’ The Duke rubbed his chin with thumb and forefinger, adding rather wistfully, ‘If I truly believed that beneath the Squire’s scruffy exterior still beat Drew Rockleigh’s heart, then I’d hear him out if he called.’

A few of Joan’s slender fingers stifled her horrified laugh. ‘Well, thank heavens he made it clear he wants no more of me now than he did then.’

‘That must have galled,’ the Duke said gently, eyeing his daughter’s proud profile. His little Joan was easily wounded; indeed, when he’d told her two years ago that Rockleigh had declined several thousand acres of prime Devon farmland, together with a handful of Mayfair freeholds, rather than contract to marry her, Alfred had thought she might blub. Of course she had not...pride had seen to that. His daughter had concealed her humiliated expression. Then she had acted as though Rockleigh’s slight was to her liking. Just as she was doing now.

‘I don’t know why the matter cropped up,’ Joan rattled off airily. ‘Our lucky escape from a forced marriage was of little importance then or now.’

‘Yet crop up, it did,’ Alfred said. ‘And who raised it?’

‘It wasn’t raised...just hinted at.’

‘By whom?’ The Duke stubbornly insisted on knowing, even though he could tell that his daughter desired the subject to be dropped.

‘I don’t recall, Papa.’ It was a fib. Joan could remember everything that had occurred during her meeting with Rockleigh. She’d wanted to know whether a street fighter regretted turning down the chance of netting a fortune and a duke’s daughter. And she’d received an answer without asking the question. ‘Nothing’s changed for me...’ he’d drawled while looking privately amused that she might have thought otherwise.

‘Do you believe him corrupt, Papa, and capable of blackmail?’ Joan asked solemnly.

For a moment the Duke said nothing, simply shaking his head slowly from side to side. ‘I always liked the fellow; Rockleigh was not only your brother-in-law’s chum, but a friend to you and me when he dealt so coolly with your misbehaviour. But now...who knows? An empty belly might turn a saint into a sinner...’

Chapter Five

‘You are lucky, Joan! Nothing thrilling ever happens to me.’

‘Lucky?’ Joan spluttered, gently extricating herself from her friend’s welcoming embrace. ‘You think it fortunate to be set upon by beggars while an elderly relative swoons at one’s side?’

‘I almost swooned with boredom in Kent,’ Louise Finch riposted. ‘There was nothing to do in the evenings but play bridge with my elderly relatives. I did attend a jig at the local assembly rooms, but I can’t recommend a country affair. The ladies were quite standoffish and all the gentlemen had ugly clothes and loud voices.’

‘Not so different then from the people we are used to,’ Joan commented wryly as they strolled past two young bucks in garish waistcoats, quaffing champagne and chortling at their own jokes.

‘Speaking of coarse fellows...’ Louise winked slowly. ‘Vincent mentioned that a pugilist nicknamed the Squire acted the hero, putting an end to the skirmish in Wapping.’ She grinned on noticing Joan’s heightened colour. ‘A gentleman down on his luck who is acquainted with your brother-in-law, is how Vincent described him. I’ll wager your Mr Rockleigh is a very handsome rogue.’

‘Handsome is as handsome does...’ Joan bit her lip, feeling uncharitable. Her saviour might fight for a living, but just minutes spent in Rockleigh’s company proved him to be mannerly and intelligent. And protective...and provocative. Intriguing, too, she realised; she certainly couldn’t stop thinking about the infuriating individual.

Joan forced her concentration to another gentleman as they strolled on towards the supper room. She was miffed that Vincent had blurted out her news before she’d had a chance to tell Louise in her own way about the drama.

Within hours of his aunt and cousin arriving home from visiting his family in Kent the vicar had made a point of paying a call on the Finches. He’d been eager to report how one of the Duke’s coachmen had taken a wrong turning, landing his female passengers in a dreadful pickle. Louise had listened, open-mouthed, to her cousin’s account, but had been keen for more gory details. The invitation to the Wentworths’ ball, propped on the mantelshelf, had provided a prime opportunity for a chinwag with the main protagonist. Louise was confident that Joan would attend as the Duke and Duchess of Thornley were chummy with their hosts.

Moments ago the two young ladies had spied one another through the throng of guests. Simultaneously they’d left their groups to have a fond reunion beneath the scintillating chandeliers.

Joan linked arms with Louise and they began to perambulate the edge of the dance floor, avoiding the sets forming for a quadrille.

‘This is something else I’ve greatly missed,’ Louise said. They had arrived in the supper room, where a dining table was spread with silver platters filled with delicacies. ‘Country fare leaves much to be desired.’ Louise popped a marchpane pineapple into her mouth, enjoying it and licking her lips before adding, ‘Vincent’s people are nice folk, but I couldn’t live on broth and stew as much as they do.’

‘I enjoy a good pheasant casserole.’ Joan fondly remembered the hearty meals served up at Thornley Heights, her father’s primary ancestral seat. During dismal Devon evenings, when the winds sometimes blew so loud that it seemed banshees inhabited the chimneys, she’d loved to curl up by a roaring fire with a book, feeling cosy and content after a satisfying repast.

‘Who is that young lady? She keeps staring at us,’ Louise hissed, holding a napkin to her lips. ‘I’ve not seen her before.’

Joan had been choosing titbits from the buffet, but stopped to glance over a shoulder. Her grey gaze collided with a pair of china-blue eyes, then the stranger flounced aside her face. The girl was buxom and fair-haired, although a sulky twist to her lips marred her pretty features. By her side was a couple Joan guessed to be her parents. The woman was very similar in looks and colouring; the fellow dark-haired and heavy jowled. ‘I don’t recognise any of the family. Perhaps they are just arrived in town.’ Normally Joan might have taken more notice of newcomers, but since her friend had brought up the subject of the beggars moments ago her thoughts had been back in Wapping. She wanted to know what Rockleigh might be planning to do. In common with her father, she longed to believe him still honourable, despite his hardship, yet niggling doubts were chipping away at her peace of mind over his trustworthiness.

‘Ah, there you are, girls.’ Maude had sailed up to join them with Mrs Finch in tow. ‘Oh, those look tasty.’ The Duchess began filling a plate with an assortment of tiny vol-au-vents.

Hot on their tails came Aunt Dorothea’s thin bombazine-clad figure. She announced her presence with a cough.

Since the Duke had sent his sister back to her own home, Joan had seen nothing of her aunt. She felt rather mean thinking that the respite had been very welcome.

‘I promised Lady Regan that we would have a chat to Mrs Denby and her daughter.’ Dorothea swivelled her eyes to indicate the newcomers. ‘My friend has kindly taken the girl under her wing.’ Inclining closer, Dorothea muttered, ‘Sooner hers than mine, I can tell you.’ The widow’s loaded comment soon gained her companions’ interest.

‘What is amiss?’ Maude darted a glance at the strangers. ‘Is there some scandal?’

‘Indeed there would be! If news of it circulated.’

‘Surely it already has, if you know of it,’ the Duchess pointed out.

‘Oh, I have given Lady Regan my word not to tell a soul.’ Dorothea observed that several quizzical looks were turned on her. ‘Of course, I may confide the sorry tale to people I know I can trust.’ She gave her niece a hard stare.

Joan and Louise exchanged a look of muted amusement.

‘Well, don’t leave us in suspense,’ the Duchess prompted in an undertone. ‘I must say Mr Denby appears bored rather than embarrassed.’ As the fellow glanced her way Maude attended to her plate of food. ‘I expect he might prefer to play faro while the ladies mingle,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll ask Alfred to speak to him later about a game of cards.’

The Duke of Thornley had come to find endearing his second wife’s gauche social manners. Maude found nothing strange in expecting him to befriend lesser mortals. And neither did he since she’d entered his life like a breath of fresh air.

‘Oh, that is not Mrs Denby’s husband.’ Dorothea’s explanation emerged from behind her quivering fan. ‘She is a widow. Mr Saul Stokes is Cecilia’s guardian. The girl has just turned eighteen, although she made her come out last year and just as well she did!’ Dorothea added darkly. ‘For I doubt she’d shine this Season.’

‘She is surely old enough to do without a guardian,’ Maude responded. ‘My two girls were independent from an earlier age.’

‘And so was Louise,’ Mrs Finch piped up, keen to join the conversation.

‘Since her debut Cecilia has been a terrible trial to her mother.’ Dorothea pursed her lips. ‘The chit needs a father’s discipline. If she were mine I’d disown her...after I’d taken a stick to her back.’

Maude’s widening eyes prompted her sister-in-law to hurry on. ‘A while ago the minx was caught on the Great North Road, attempting to elope with a groom.’ Dorothea employed her fan so energetically her companions also received its benefit. ‘Of course, the family are adopting a united front, but then they would.’ The widow gave an emphatic nod. ‘Mrs Denby will want the little hussy sporting a wedding band as soon as may be.’

‘What a dreadful thing for her poor mama!’ The Duchess darted horrified eyes to Cecilia’s profile. ‘Mr Stokes caught up with the lovers in time then, you say.’

‘Oh, he didn’t save the day...it was her uncle brought her back and she behaved like a harpy all the way, so I’ve heard. At one point she tried to jump from his speeding carriage so he bound her hand and foot.’

‘Her uncle seems the better choice to keep her in check,’ Maude ventured.

‘He’s sunk out of sight following some trouble.’

‘Bad blood the lot of them,’ Patricia Finch summed up with a sniff, turning grateful eyes on her well-behaved daughter.

Louise was still single at twenty-one, having rejected the only proposal that had ever come her way when she was seventeen. At the time Patricia had been exasperated to lose a future son-in-law with so little consideration given on Louise’s part. Her daughter had said she needed no time to think: the fellow wasn’t right for her. As he had gone on to duel over a Covent Garden nun, then flee abroad to escape arrest, Patricia had to admit that Louise—despite her tender years—had been the wiser of the two of them on that occasion.

‘Your friend is taking a special interest in the girl, you say?’ Maude glanced through the open dining-room doors. Lady Regan, an influential, veteran hostess, was settled on a sofa with her entourage around her. She didn’t seem to be putting any effort into welcoming the Denby family herself.

Maude could pull rank on every female present, should she choose to, but she had not long been elevated through marriage to the peerage. She knew that there were those present who resented her good fortune and thought her an upstart. Her husband’s sister was a prime example, as was Lady Regan.

‘Is your friend related to the Denbys in some way?’ Maude was keen to understand why a snob would lend her name to nobodies.

‘I believe her ladyship’s husband has asked her to be of assistance in the matter.’ Dorothea raised her sparse eyebrows. ‘Mr Stokes is Lord Regan’s friend, I understand.’ Dorothea hurried on. ‘Vouchers for Almack’s have been procured for Cecilia. The little hussy is luckier than she deserves to be.’

Having listened with mounting interest to the older ladies’ debate Joan realised she felt rather sorry for Cecilia Denby. She was sure the strangers knew they were being gossiped about. There but for the grace of God went she. She’d acted recklessly when a similar age and Joan knew she’d no excuse, other than a hankering for an adventure, for having done so. Cecilia, on the other hand, could claim love as a purer motive for her outrageous conduct.

‘Shall we say hello to them?’ Joan suggested with a bright smile. On impulse she set off towards the Denbys and some hissed words of restraint told her that her stepmother and aunt were not far behind.

‘I’ve come to introduce myself,’ Joan blurted, giving a little bob and one of her hands to shake. ‘I’m Lady Joan Morland.’ For an awkward second it seemed her friendly overture might be rebuffed, then the older lady extended her gloved fingers.

‘How nice of you to take the trouble to speak to us. We know few people here this evening. I’m Mrs Denby and this is my daughter, Cecilia.’

‘Mr Stokes at your service, ladies,’ the gentleman trumpeted with a stiff bow.

After the other introductions had been politely made the silence lengthened. ‘There is a fine selection of dishes on the dining table,’ Joan rattled off. ‘Would you like to sample a few, Miss Denby?’

‘I’ve no appetite.’ Cecilia sighed.

‘The lemonade is very refreshing, too.’ Maude attempted to keep the conversation going. ‘I should like another glass.’ Her smile drooped when the gentleman present made no courteous offer to fetch it for her. She had hoped to get rid of Mr Stokes for a short while as he seemed to be a barrier to a more informal chat with the Denby women.

‘It is very warm in here...might I walk with you, Lady Joan?’ Cecilia flicked open her fan to cool her pink cheeks. ‘I noticed you and Miss Finch were strolling in the ballroom earlier.’

Joan crooked an elbow in an affable way. ‘Let’s go and watch the dancing.’ Her sympathy for Cecilia increased as she realised the poor thing was desperate for an excuse to escape her guardian’s eagle eye.

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