Chapter One
Lucifer’s Fall might be a den of depravity, but it resembled a cathedral.
Honeyed light poured through a pair of tall, arched windows. Beneath them, exuberantly healthy ferns sprang from pots. Guinevere Woodville eyed this evidence of a well-trained and well-paid staff wistfully. When she’d departed their family home in Sussex for London two days ago, their housekeeper, Mrs. Haddock, had been moodily smoking a cheroot in the kitchen, one gouty leg hoisted on a chair. Mrs. Haddock had come to them with dubious references, a murky London past, and a large hairy mole on her left cheek. While she could not be relied upon to adequately nurture indoor plants, the suspicion that she might be a witch ensured the maids never balked at obeying her instructions. Mrs. Haddock did not steal the silver, and, most importantly, she was willing to work for the pittance the Woodvilles were able to pay. Somehow the ancient Woodville manor was maintained in a shambling semblance of gentility.
But during her interview for admission to the Grand Palace on the Thames yesterday, a darling little boardinghouse near the London docks, of all places, Ginny had watched as themaid called Dot slowly—torturously slowly, if Ginny was being honest—lowered the tea tray to the table, then leaped backward with a celebratory clap. The proprietresses, Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand, had sighed happily. Imagine servants who took such joy in their work! Employers who took such joy in their servants! It was her dream.
But Ginny had learned to pick her battles, which was how she’d managed to raise herself and her three younger siblings into adulthood with their limbs, senses, and virtues intact. In so doing she’d fulfilled the first of the two promises she’d made to her mother before she died eight years ago. Which was two days after her father died, and three days after he’d driven the two of them in the Woodville high-flyer around a corner too fast one time too many.
Just a fortnight ago she’d been on the brink of fulfilling part of the second promise—ensuring the Woodville siblings made spectacular marriages—in the most triumphant imaginable way, thanks to a glorious bit of providence.
And then her brother had returned from London and thrown himself at her feet in sobbing hysterics, babbling about “Lucifer’s Fall” and “the Reaper” and begging her forgiveness for what he’d just done.
The icy terror that washed through Ginny left in its wake the usual calm and preternatural clarity that overtook her when confronted with disasters.
It was only money (a lot of it); no one had died this time (yet). It conceivablycouldbe remedied. And surely, no matter how scary, this “the Reaper” (how patently ridiculous was that name?) was just a man? They were not fundamentally mysterious creatures.
She had a fortnight to fix the unfixable. She would need to go to London.
But thanks to that frivolous concept men liked to call honor, her brother refused to divulge any more than a few bone-chilling details of his disgraceful evening. None were names, but one perhaps held a hint:He had satyrs on his waistcoat buttons, and I swear they were jeering at me, Ginny! You would not have blamed me if you knew who it was.
No amount of haranguing would budge him.
She was forced to turn to other sources for reconnaissance.
Mrs. Haddock also had a tendency to speak in cryptic aphorisms, which made her seem like a sage. Ginny had her doubts about this. But shecouldbe a fount of surprisingly interesting information. When Ginny asked her, “Have you heard of a man in London called the Reaper who runs a gaming hell?” The housekeeper’s head turned toward her slowly. Her eyes had gone so wide the whites showed.
And so apparently important was the message she was about to impart, Mrs. Haddock actually leaned forward and stabbed out her cheroot on the chipped saucer next to her elbow. “Now, you listen to me, Miss Woodville,” she’d all but hissed. “Ye’re agoodgirl, and you want naught to do wi’ the Reaper. ’E be adangerousman. One of the worst men in London. Beware thestrivers. Them what come from nothin’ andstriveall the way to the top be right dangerous. And I don’t care what women say about the size of ’is...”
She sat back abruptly and pressed her lips together, her expression cagey.
“Fortune?” Ginny guessed.
“I’ll just go and see if the maids be done wi’ the upstairsdustin’, shall I?” Mrs. Haddock pushed herself out of the chair and shuffled off.
Ginny had then hastily called upon her neighbor, the giddy young Lady Tomelty, who was in the country to rest between bouts of London socializing. She was married to a much older earl and could be counted on to say things she shouldn’t, especially to an unmarried girl. Ginny asked her the same question.
“My goodness, where did youhearabout Gabriel Marchand and his little sin palace, Lucifer’s Fall? Not from your darling brother? Oh dear. The on-dit is that Marchand isdepraved.” Lady Tomelty gave a theatrical little shiver. “The men are desperate to be in his good graces and they all clamor to be members of his club and the ladies seem obsessed with him for—well, for reasons ofprowess, I’m given to understand. I hear he does delicious things with ropes and whatnot.”
She whispered all of this behind a gloved hand and then, maddeningly, pantomimed turning a key at her lips.
Ginny knew she could expect to blush every time she spoke with Lady Tomelty; she went in braced for it, because she felt it was worth the education. She had an inkling about what “prowess” meant. She wasn’t entirely naive. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t also appalled.
On the whole, the Reaper sounded like a bad and terrifying man, and this suited Ginny. Without a villain to blame or defeat, the Woodvilles’ latest predicament was merely ridiculous. Worse than that: pathetic.
No doubt many would consider her visit today to Lucifer’s Fall a fool’s errand. Viewing it that way was a luxury she could not afford. She had to start somewhere. Failure was unthinkable. She could see nothing beyond the horizon for the Woodvilles if she failed. The future might as well be an abyss.
Unlike Cerberus, the dog who guarded the gates of hell in mythology, the clerk who looked up from his desk when she approached possessed only one head. He wore spectacles and a crisply tailored blue coat. She could see the pale blur of her face in his gleaming brass buttons.
If he was shocked by the sudden appearance of a young unchaperoned woman, not a twitch betrayed it.
She handed her card to him. It was new, the lettering elegantly engraved rather than merely printed. For years she’d secretly yearned for such a fancy, expensive card; a few weeks ago, when the miracle that would have solved all of her family’s problems forever occurred, she’d allowed herself this one frivolous indulgence. Now she felt mocked by her own optimism. She ought to have known that everything was bound to go to pieces again.
“The Honorable Miss Guinevere Woodville,” the man read aloud. “Oh yes. We received your message yesterday.” The light reflecting from his spectacles made it difficult to read his expression, but his pause was eloquent and his tone was desert dry. “How did you get in the building, if I may ask, Miss Woodville?”
“Your guard at the front entrance assumed I was someone named Martine who is apparently expected. I didn’t disabuse him of the notion. He stepped aside and let me in.”
She did feel a slight twinge of guilt about that. But surely it wasn’t her fault they’d hired a gullible guard?