There it stood, for centuries the ultimate arbiter of whether one was a gentleman or not. Whether or not onebelonged. White’s. That he’d never been blackballed was purely a miracle, but they did seem to like their quotient of eccentrics and bastards, literally and figuratively. It made the members feel that much more superior. And his father was a duke, after all. By virtue of that alone his blood was bluer than most of the men who passed through the doors of White’s.
Whether ghosts were ever admitted was another thing altogether. Ghosts did what they pleased, he suspected.
The famous bowed window was aglow with lamplight and blurred with the smoke of London’s elite.
When he entered, he found the place teeming; conversation was lively and the hum of it meant attention was fixed elsewhere when he walked in, which was precisely what he wanted.
Head down, Lucien slipped through swiftly, found an unoccupied table in a dim corner next to a wall, and settled into one of the incomparably comfortable chairs.
After a moment or two of leafing through a newspaper someone had left behind, he accepted a drink from a passing waiter. A face he recognized. Older now, of course. As was he.
“Brandy,” he said. He let his hand rest in the soft beam thrown by a sconce.
The waiter lowered a glass, and as he did, his eyes naturally were drawn to the gleam of gold circling his finger.
They lingered on that signet ring with its emblazoned “B.”
Then slowly rose to Lucien’s face.
Lucien regarded him with utter neutrality.
The man’s expression didn’t change at all as he backed away and moved to another table. But he was positively vibrating with suspicion.
Lucien smiled to himself.
He heard Lord Cuttweiler laugh—a great loud shout of it—at something one of his companions said. Cutty had always been quick with a laugh.
And Mr. Exeter had said Cutty would be here at this time, because he always was.
Lucien rose from his table and sauntered in that direction, his head down until he passed Cuttweiler’s table.
At which point he looked Cuttweiler full in the face for the count of one... two. That was all it took.
Cuttweiler reared back as though acid had been dashed in his face.
And Lucien had the pleasure of seeing him blanch the color of the flawless napkins as he passed and disappeared swiftly out the door.
Chapter Five
BOLT IS BACK!
Dot lowered the broadsheet. It was a veritable shout, that particular sentence. Her reflex was to give it a little distance.
She’d read it aloud in the kitchen and Helga and the other maids gathered around, as had become their habit.
What were the men smoking at White’s yesterday? One could not be blamed for thinking they had traded in their cigars in favor of passing about a hookah. Because at least five usually sober citizens swore Lucien Durand, Lord Bolt, everyone’s favorite bastard, was sitting at the table behind them, reading a newspaper and sipping a brandy.
Ghosts don’t drink brandy, gentlemen.
Are things in London about to get livelier?
“Well, then. He did say to read the broadsheets,” Angelique murmured.
She had slipped into the room to stand over Dot’s shoulder. Dot and all the maids gave a guilty start.
What was Lord Bolt playing at? He seemed to be, out of mischief or some larger plan, establishing a general air of nervous dread or drumming up fanfare. Which was either sinister or rather funny, depending upon how one wished to view it. Her instincts told her it was meant to be some combination of the two.
Wherever he’d been last night, he’d come back by curfew without a fuss, as the chambermaid who had lost the coin toss and was forced to wait upon him this morning reported to her on a whisper. Angelique did not want to examine too closely the quality of the relief she felt. It felt a little too much like gladness, and surely gladness was an unnecessarily specific way to feel.