“May I enter?”
“Name?”
“Is that required?”
The woman looked her up and down. She seemed to be deciphering who she might be and how wealthy.
“Come in, my lady.” She stepped back respectfully. “I suspect this is your first time at the Lyon’s Den. Would you like someone to assist you?”
“No, I want to look around myself.”
Amelia was taken up a flight of stairs. This appeared to be like a regular town home, and yet... not. The woman held a door open and waved her into an entry room. After taking her cloak, the woman returned to Amelia and smiled.
“My name is Helena. How may I be of service, my lady?”
Amelia wasn’t quite sure. “Where do I go from here?”
“Would you like to play a game? Place a bet? We have the ladies’ parlor to your left and the ladies’ dining room and gallery just this way. Whatever you wish, the Lyon’s Den can usually provide. Anything, anything you wish.”
She said it in a way that made Amelia pause. Anything could beanything. It was no wonder her brother didn’t want her here. But she wasn’t here for just anything. She was on an investigative mission, and if she stumbled upon a certain veiled widow, well, that was only a happy coincidence.
“Why don’t I sit you at a table in the gallery? It overlooks the main playing so you can get an idea for what might interest you,” Helena suggested.
“That would be lovely, thank you.”
Helena led her through the dining room to an open gallery where women were milling. She brought her to a small table—one of several—at the edge of the gallery near the railing, and soon a maid brought her a pot of tea and a plate of lemon cake. Amelia surveyed her surroundings noting the elegant, papered walls and intricate plasterwork of the ceiling. Everywhere she looked, it was luxurious. Amelia surveyed the other women at the gallery tables enjoying refreshment and watching the festivities below, noting some she knew and others she did not. She removed her hood. She wasn’t going to hide her presence. She was a woman of two and twenty and engaged, as all society knew. She had every right to be here and no need to fear judgment.
It didn’t escape her notice that while sitting here she was doing some of the very things she swore she wouldn’t do any longer—like indulging her mad impulses. However, here she was. But this wasn’t too scandalous, was it? She was sipping tea. Nothing scandalous happened while sipping tea.
But then she felt a presence behind her, like a ghost stood over her shoulder.
“Mr. Chase.”
He took the open seat across from her at a table that was far too small and intimate to share with a man who wasn’t her betrothed.
“Why am I not surprised to see you here? Alone,” he said with a smile.
“How do you know I’m alone?”
“If you were with your fiancé, you’d be elsewhere, wouldn’t you?” he taunted.
“Where is elsewhere?”
He smirked. “Where indeed?”
“You told me I should visit, and so I am.”
He looked down over the railing. “You ought to play a game. According to rumors, you play Commerce exceptionally well. Sir Daniel is quite enamored of you.”
Amelia ignored that.
“Any word from your brother?” he continued.
Amelia smiled, thinking of her brother sitting in boredom. Sam was already complaining about his restrictive rest. He was never a man to sit still.
“No. I’m certain he is busy sorting out matters at the estate. I don’t expect to hear from him often.”
He stroked his chin. “Is that so?”
