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"I give you good day, cousin," a voice slurred from the depths of an armchair as the Duke of Redmayne entered the library of his house on Albermarle Street.

"To what do I owe this pleasure, Lucien?" the duke inquired in bland tones, although a flicker of disgust crossed his face. "Escaping your creditors? Or are you simply paying me a courtesy visit?"

"Lud, such sarcasm, cousin." Lucien Courtney rose to his feet and surveyed with a mocking insouciance his cousin and the man who'd entered close behind him. "Well, well, and if it isn't our dear Reverend Courtney as well. What an embarrassment of relatives. How d'ye do, dear boy."

"Well enough," the other man responded easily. He was soberly dressed in gray, with a plain white neck cloth, in startling contrast to the duke's peacock-blue satin coat, with its gold frogged burtons and deep embroidered cuffs. But the physical resemblance to the duke was startling: the same aquiline nose and deep-set gray eyes, the same than, well-shaped mouth, the same cleft chin. However, there the resemblance ended. Whereas Quentin Courtney regarded the world and its vagaries with the gentle and genuine sympathy of a devout man of the cloth, his half brother Tarquin, the Duke of Redmayne, saw his fellow man through the sharp and disillusioned eyes of the cynic.

"So what brings you to the fleshpots?" Lucien inquired with a sneer. "I thought you'd become an important offi cial in some country bishop's diocese."

"Canon of Melchester Cathedral," Quentin said coolly. "I'm on my bishop's business with the Archbishop of Canterbury at the moment."

"Oh, aren't we rising far, fast, and holy,” Lucien declared with a curled lip. Quentin ignored:he statement.

"May I offer you some refreshment, Lucien?" Tarquin strolled to the decanters on the sideboard. "Oh, but I see you've already taken care of yourself." He added. noting the brandy goblet in the younger man's hand. "You don't think it's a little early in the morning for cognac?”

"Dear boy, I haven't been to bed as yet,” Lucien said with a yawn. "Far as I'm concerned, this is a nightcap " He put down the glass and strolled to the door, somewhat unsteadily. "You don't object to putting me up for a few nights?"

"How should I?" returned Tarquin with a sardonically raised eyebrow.

"Fact is, my own house is under siege," Lucien declared, leaning against the door and fumbling for his snuffbox. "Damned creditors and bailiffs bangin’ at the door at all hours of the day and night. Man can't get a decent night's rest."

"And what are you going to sell to satisfy them this time?" the duke asked, pouring madeira for himself and his brother.

"Have to be Edgecombe," Lucien said, taking a pinch of snuff. He sighed with exaggerated heaviness. "Terrible thing. But I can't see what else to do… unless, of course, you could see your way to helpin' a relative out."

His pale-brown eyes, burning in their deep sockets like the last embers of a dying fire, suddenly sharpened, and he regarded his cousin with sly knowledge. He smiled as he saw the telltale muscle twitch in Tarquin's jaw as he fought to control his anger.

"Well," he said carelessly. "We'll discuss it later… when I've had some sleep. Dinner, perhaps?"

"Get out of here," Tarquin said, turning his back.

Lucien's chuckle hung in the air as the door closed behind him.

“There's going to be little enough left of Edgecombe for poor Godfrey to inherit," Quentin said, sipping his wine. "Since Lucien gained his majority a mere six months ago, he's run through a fortune that would keep most men in luxury for a lifetime."

"I'll not stand by and see him sell Edgecombe," Tarquin stated almost without expression. "And neither will I stand by and see what remnants are left pass into the hands of Lucien's pitiful cousin."

"I fail to see how you can stop it," Quentin said in some surprise. "I know poor Godfrey has no more wits than an infant, but he's still Lucien's legitimate heir."

"He would be if Lucien left no heir of his own," the duke pointed out, casually riffling through the pages of the Gazette.

"Well, we all know that's an impossibility," Quentin declared, stating what he had always believed to be an immutable fact. "And Lucien's free of your rein now; there's little you can do to control him."

"Aye, and he never ceases to taunt me with it," Tarquin responded. "But it'll be a rainy day in hell, my friend, when Lucien Courtney gets the better of me." He looked up and met his half brother's gaze.

Quentin felt a little shiver prickle his spine at this soft-spoken declaration. He knew Tarquin as no one else did. He knew the softer side of an apparently unbending nature: he knew his half brother's vulnerabilities: he knew that the hard cynicism Tarquin presented to the world was a defense learned in his youth against those who would use the friendship of a future duke for their own ambitions.

Quentin also knew not to underestimate the Duke of Redmayne's ruthlessness in getting what he wanted. He asked simply "What are you going to do?"

Tarquin drained his glass. He smiled, but it was not a humorous smile. "It's time our little cousin took himself a wife and set up his nursery," he said. “That should settle the matter of an heir to Edgecombe.”

Quentin stared at him as if he'd taken leave of his senses. "No one's going to marry Lucien, even if he was prepared to marry. He's riddled with the pox, and the only women who figure on his agenda of pleasure are whores from the stews prepared to play the lad."

"True. But how long do you think he has to live?” Tarquin inquired almost casually. "You only have to look at him. He's burned out with debauchery and the clap. I'd give him maybe six months…a year at the outside."

Quentin said nothing, but his gaze remained unwaveringly on his brother's countenance.

"He knows it, too," Tarquin continued. “He's living each day as if it's his last. He doesn't give a damn what happens to Edgecombe or the Courtney fortune. Why should he? But I intend to ensure that Edgecombe, at the very least, passes intact into competent hands."

Quentin looked horrified. "In the nam of pity, Tarquin! You couldn't condemn a woman to share his bed, even if he'd take her into it. It would be a death sentence."

"Listen well, dear brother. It’s perfectly simple.

By the time the stagecoach lumbered into the yard of the Bell in Wood Street, Cheapside, Juliana had almost forgotten there was a world outside the cramped interior and the company of her six fellow passengers. At five miles an hour, with an enforced stop at sunset because neither coachman nor passengers would travel the highways after dark, it had taken over twenty-four hours to accomplish the seventy miles between Winchester and London. Juliana, like the rest of the passengers, had sat up in the taproom of the coaching inn during the night stop. Despite the discomfort of the hard wooden settles, it was a welcome change from the bone-racking jolting of the iron wheels over the unpaved roads.

They set off again, just before dawn, and it was soon after seven in the morning when she alighted from the coach for the last time. She stood in the yard of the Bell, arching the small of her back against her hands in an effort to get the cricks out. The York coach had also just arrived and was disgorging its blinking, exhausted passengers. The June air was already warm, heavy with city smells, and she wrinkled her nose at the pervading odor of rotting garbage in the kennels, manure piled in the narrow cobbled lanes.

"Ye got a box up 'ere. lad?"

It took Juliana a moment to realize the coachman's question was addressed to her. She was still huddled in her cloak, her cap pulled down over her ears as it had been throughout the journey. She turned to the man sitting atop the coach, unlashing the passenger's baggage.