Prologue
1816, London
An insistent banging awakened Philip from a sound sleep. Sitting upright, his heart pounded until he realized it was neither gunfire nor cannon blast. Merely a thoughtless arse on his doorstep on Cavendish Square.
Glancing at the mantel clock, he swore aloud. It must be some cork-brained tippler who had no idea of the hour and needed a swift kick and a reminder of what constituted civilized manners.
Sighing, he glanced down at his soft pillow and then out at the dawn’s rays already cresting the sash of his window. As a major in the British Army, with three years engagement in the Peninsular War against France, fighting alongside the Spanish and Portuguese, Philip thoroughly enjoyed his comfortable bed. Anyone or anything that took him from it — save a beautiful woman — was most unwelcome.
His butler, Mr. Cherville, would be in his dressing gown by now and ascending from his basement dwelling to see who was knocking. Swinging his feet onto the floor, Philip wrapped his naked body in a silk banyan, donned slippers, and yanked open his bedroom door.
This had better be a matter of life or death!
Chapter One
Lord Philip Mercer could not stop pacing the parlor of the magistrate’s private residence. For a matter as delicate as the one that plagued him, he had decided to seek out the powerful official at his home on Russell Square. The terraced house with all its comforts was exactly as he’d expected of the upper-middle-class Sir William Bright, a man who might end up presiding over a court session involving Philip’s future.
Unfortunately, while the magistrate was not there, a prying servant was.
He’d discovered the pretty maid halfway up a ladder in the magistrate’s study with a dusting cloth tucked under one of her arms, reading a book which she was obviously supposed to be cleaning. Although she sported a lacy cap, her hair was haphazardly braided with much of it loose and hanging down around her slender shoulders instead of in a tidy knot. She had a smudge on one cheek and wore a rumpled apron over a dress too fetching for a servant.
Philip’s next impression was that he’d encountered a barely tamed creature without the social graces to leave him alone. It was as if the young woman had never seen a man before, so intent was she on speaking with him, staring at him, and even following him around when he paced into the front hall and back again.
It was when he had done this for the third time, turning abruptly on the polished floorboards and nearly knocking the maid off her feet, that he finally exploded.
“Will you leave me in peace?” Then softening his tone, he asked, “Did you say Sir William was expected to return soon?”
The brown-haired female with hazel eyes didn’t seem the least put off by his abruptness.
“He will return when he is able. I am certain.”
That told him nothing, and Philip fingered the calling card in his pocket. Five more minutes and he would give it to her with the request she have the magistrate send him word when he was available.
A quarter hour earlier this shapely housemaid had descended the ladder after another maid had shown him into the study. He’d noted at once the household had no proper butler and filed away the knowledge as indicative of Sir William’s income and the magistrate’s potential for bribery, should it come to that.
After returning the book to its shelf, the curious female had come down to greet him and offered him a chair and a cup of tea, both of which he’d refused. Instead of returning to her duties, she’d begun to pester him incessantly.
Ignoring his request for peace, she asked him yet another question.
“Are you on the run, sir?”
“I am not asir,” he pointed out, hoping to put her in her place. “I am Lord Mercer.”
“My apologies,my lord. Are you on the run?”
“What on earth can you mean by such a strange question?” Philip demanded, wondering if she were daft in the head. “From whom or from what?”
She stared at him, and her large eyes, more green than brown, did not blink for a few seconds. Then she said, “I recognize your name fromThe Morning SunandThe Times. You were linked with Miss Waltham at a house party in Twickenham, and none too favorably.”
He grimaced. The Grub Street papers were ruthless. Even the servants had heard of his latest scandal.
“You read the papers, do you?”
“I do,” she confessed with glee, and he supposed she had little else in her humdrum existence from which to derive pleasure. “I love the gossipmongering and the rumors. Who is doing what, and all that. It’s not my world, and therefore, everyone is just like a character in a story.”
Then she gave a snap of her fingers. “You’re a baron, are you not?”
Good God!He was surprised they didn’t have his height and weight listed, too. But the maid wasn’t finished with him.
