Chapter One
Where a rake stops pretending.
April 1822
Percival Everard Trentham, Earl of Merevale, knew her by reputation.
Easily bored. Clever. Stunning. Bloodlines hauling her into society while she sought—with surgical precision—to heave herself out of it. Exactly the sort he made a point to avoid.
Ever sighed. Sadly, he and the girl shared more attributes than he liked.
He would have had to be blind not to notice her. Isabella Anstruther-Colbrook unsettled a ballroom simply by standing at its modest fringes. She asked controversial questions in putrid pink parlors no one wished to answer. She’d once turned him down for a waltz when he hadn’t even truly wanted to dance, a courtesy extended to a young woman with an empty card, nothing more. She was trouble, her beautifulface marked by an amused air, a trait common to those who refused to behave properly.
Women like her didn’t let a man lounge in the shadows.
And Ever had worked far too hard to do exactly that.
“Where is she?” he asked, bracing his hands on the mahogany beast of a desk that had been in his family for generations as he rose to his feet. It appeared, despite the masquerade he was hosting downstairs, that this evening’s solitude was over. Had he not recently entered into a covert—and, he hoped, successful—steam engine endeavor with her brother-in-law, Weston Whitaker, he would have let the Colbrook chit dig her own grave and lie in it. Ruin herself in one fell swoop while he slept with the peace of babes.
As it was, he had his own susceptibilities: a sister he loved above all others, a stubborn miss who’d provided hours of daily torment before finding the man she would marry, giving Ever a clear understanding of how vulnerable one could be in this world without proper protection.
Even if that protection endured only long enough to see a young woman safely returned to her family’s palatial estate.
“I thought I should warn ye’, being connected to the brother and such, that she’s known to be a bit of a termagant,” Brick said, cracking his lumpy knuckles, his lisp leagues better now that they’d been practicing. “Stumbled in with a crowd of weary elites, not enough in Mayfair to keep ’em occupied. You know the dizzy type.”
“I know the type,” Ever said quietly. He had run from them all his life.
“Course, course, you’re an earl, but low on the post, so to speak, what with them engineered scandals and boozy spectacles. Surprised the Colbrook gel would come this far afield. Took a scrap of pluck, I’ll say. Near to demi-monde, this crowd.”
“It’s that ridiculousRake Reviewcolumn, attracting moths to the brightest flame. Though I’m happy for it since every piece of publicity is icing on the cake of this pretense, one I’ll gladly cast off when I retire. Now, however, thanks to this intrusion, I’ll be forced to attend my own party.” Ever snatched his mask off the sideboard as he passed it. Black velvet, shaped close to his face. No adornment, no shimmer, just enough to blend in.
He wasn’t offended to be considered “low on the post” by a valet who was not a valet at all, but an enforcer attached to him for the duration of his tenure in the intelligence profession, which was another forty-three days.
And counting.
Looping the mask’s satin ties into a tight knot at the back of his head, Ever gave his hair a brisk burnish, leaving it as though he’d just tumbled from bed. Dissoluteness was key to his presentation. “Isn’t she marrying that fop of a marquess?” Halting before Brick, he dipped his fingers into his sentry’s glass and flicked brandy across his own face and neck. The scent of liquor went well with the package. “Ireton, isn’t it? That chap sits a horse like a crone, threatening to tumble off at any moment. I can’t imagine anyone choosing him.”
Brick scowled and glanced into the glass his employer had dipped his fingers into. “How the bleeding hell should I know?” Then he grinned, revealing the crookedest set of teeth London had ever seen. “And why the bleeding hell do you?”
Ever paused in the doorway of his study, a frown tugging at his lips. Arranging his cravat until the ends dangled carelessly down his chest, he let the question flutter through his mind.
Whydidhe know anything about Isabella Anstruther-Colbrook?
He wasn’t sure, he only recognized that he did.
The man thetoncalled Tipsy Trentham, or on the particularly brutal occasions, Pickled Percival, ambled Isabella’s way, slipping between the islands of people who had spilled onto his veranda with a negligent grace she’d always found rather perplexing. He rarely moved like someone tipsy or pickled, but rather like a panther on the hunt. And his eyes were a sharp, clear green. Crystalline. The color of calm seas that deepened upon submersion. Nothing like her father’s dilated amber when he’d been at his worst.
It was as if no one else in the world but her noticed.
Which presented a riddle to a woman desperate for entertainment.
Ignoring Isabella as usual, the Earl of Merevale halted fifteen yards away to share a seeming witticism with a medieval knight Isabella believed was Baron Redcliffe; then paused to trifle with a nymph swathed in gauzy satin, silk tea roses trembling in her chignon as she laughed at something he said. Isabella had no notion who she was.
They presented a stunning portrait—tall, willowy, flirting fools touching just enough to make one wonder what the night might bring, their beauty burnished by a full moon in a rare cloudless sky. A golden shimmer swam over them, teasing the ends of his cravat and the wispy hem of her gown. Isabella had never been tall, nor anything close to willowy herself.
If she painted worth a damn, she’d give these two a go on canvas, though she doubted they were worth the effort.
Glancing away after suffering a moment’s irrational pique, Isabella lifted her champagne glass to her lips, searching the crowd for what she wouldn’t find—a spark of life to dull her helplessness, herpowerlessness.
