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Clare snorted and put down his drink in disgust. “Some consolation. A silver trinket in a velvet box.”

Hazelwood stretched out on his favorite couch. “Ah no, my friend. There’s to be a full investiture ceremony with bunting, a band, and royal personages. Fawkener’s daughter is to receive the honor in her father’s name. That’s where I come in. I’m the protocol officer assigned to see the girl through the ceremony.”

Clare saluted him. “Is she pretty?”

The question shouldn’t throw him. It was the expected question after all. They had joked for a year about their mysterious benefactor and spymaster Goldsworthy having an ugly daughter tucked away somewhere that he planned to foist on one of them. But Hazelwood found he didn’t quite know how to answer. Jane Fawkener wasn’t pretty in the conventional sense, but he had wanted to wake her with a kiss, an odd impulse in a man of his experience.

Blackstone spoke up next. “More to the point, Hazelwood, why the government charade? Why does the Foreign Office want you to shadow the girl?”

Trust Blackstone to focus on the main point. Hazelwood took a pull on his mug of punch. “It’s more a case of keeping British secrets from the enemy. Goldsworthy suspects they will try to get some papers off of her.”

“No one entrusted dispatches to her, did they?” As a professional soldier, Clare hated it when the government used unreliable civilians for its business.

“Not at all, but the girl insists her father’s alive, and she seems to know his route. In other words, she knows more than she should about the government’s secrets.”

They were silent a moment.

“So your real job is to keep her from falling into the enemy’s hands.” Blackstone was instantly grim. He knew from personal experience how dangerous England’s enemies could be and how easily they could strike within London itself. “The Russians won’t be kind.”

And we will be? Hazelwood finished his punch. He meant to keep the girl from the Russians, but he doubted she’d appreciate his efforts. He couldn’t be sure, but he suspected that he had pushed her into declaring her intention to become a husband hunter. After years of living abroad, she would have no idea what that meant.

Wilde picked up the mug Hazelwood had put aside, and Hazelwood had a thought. “Wilde, I could use your help with this one.”

“My help, my lord?” The youth set down his tray.

“I’d like you to get a copy of this book for me tomorrow.” Hazelwood found a pencil on the table and scrawled the title and publisher’s name on a two-day-old copy of the Morning Chronicle. “Go to as many booksellers as you need to, but get it.”

Wilde studied the scrap of paper, a dismayed expression on his face, his ears reddening. “The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London? But, Lord Hazelwood, sir, you can’t be serious. I can’t ask for this book in…”

“Public? Afraid of a little humor at your expense, Wilde?”

“Sir, I’ll be laughed out of every shop I enter.”

“You could say it’s for your sister.”

“Don’t ‘ave a sister, my lord.” Wilde’s old accent slipped out with his unease.

“I know what. Take Miranda with you. Tell her she’ll be doing me a favor.”

The youth’s face changed instantly at the girl’s name. Miranda Kirby was the daughter of the club’s in-house tailor. With her fiery hair, smooth rosy cheeks, china-blue eyes, and lush figure, she possessed Wilde’s heart. Whether she would eventually return Wilde’s admiration or not was the subject of a wager between Hazelwood and Clare. Hazelwood was glad to give the lad another opportunity to win the girl’s affections.

“Yes, my lord. Tomorrow, my lord?”

“If you can manage it, Wilde.”

As soon as the youth left the coffee room, Clare turned to Hazelwood. “You’ll set the whelp back,” Clare grumbled. “He was making a good recovery by staying away from Miranda for weeks.”

Hazelwood shook his head. “He’s not going to get over her, Clare, and he needs all the help he can get.”

“The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London? Doesn’t sound like your usual reading, Hazelwood.” Blackstone turned the discussion back to the case.

Hazelwood sat up and swung his feet to the floor. “Not in the least. But tell me what you think. Fawkener used his bankers, the Hammersleys, to deliver one thing to his daughter.”

“This absurd book?” Clare asked.

“Exactly. And the girl holds on to the book as if it were the Holy Grail.”

“So?” Blackstone raised a skeptical brow.