CHEROOT SMOKE HUNG thick in the air and men grunted in various stages of inebriation, frustration, and satisfaction as cards passed through hands and bills, trinkets, and vowels passed across the tables. Luc swallowed the last of his whiskey and blinked to clear his vision.

It would not clear. How a man could win a game of anything in this cloud of vice he’d no idea. And how he could bear another night of such excruciatingly dull hedonism without gaining anything for his efforts he was equally at a loss to predict.

He wanted salt air, sea breeze, and a ship deck beneath his feet. Or alternately he wanted country air, wind off the Shropshire hills, and his wife’s body beneath his own.

Actually, scratch the first. The second was all he needed.

But this must be done. Of all the clubs in London, Absalom Fletcher, the Bishop of Barris, exclusively frequented White’s. The last time Luc saw his former guardian he’d said he would cut him into little pieces with a sword and feed the bits to sharks if he could but get him aboard ship, so he thought it prudent to approach him in this subtle manner. Paying a call on him at his house near Richmond probably wouldn’t do. The old duke’s man of business, Firth, had requested a meeting of Combe’s trustees to which Fletcher had not yet responded.

The last had not come as a surprise to Luc. It seemed that the Bishop of Barris employed a one-thumbed coachman. The coincidence with the sailor Mundy’s claim that a one-thumbed man had hired him in Plymouth was too great.

Thus Luc’s current strategy. A skillfully prepared accidental meeting might accomplish what a direct assault never could.

After a fortnight, however, he was beginning to doubt.

“Probably too busy fleecing innocent churchgoers out of their bread money to come out for a game of cards,” Tony muttered, his hand on his hip. The doorman had collected his sword.

Cam strolled into the chamber and wandered over. “Care for a visit to the opera tonight, gentlemen?” he said casually.

“Good God, Charles,” Tony groaned. “All that screeching is enough to send a man back to war, no matter the temptations of the green room. If we must see a show, why not Drury Lane?”

“I have just heard that tonight’s patrons of the opera might be even more interesting than the denizens of the stage or the green room.” Cam lifted a speaking brow at Luc.

Luc threw in his hand and stood. “I am particularly fond of the production tonight. What show is it again, Bedwyr?”

“Hamlet.”

Luc cast him a glance over his shoulder.

“They don’t play Hamlet at the opera house.” Tony followed, weaving a bit. He peered at the doorman who gave him his sword. “Do they?”

“Only the version in which Uncle Claudius employs a coachman who is missing a thumb to murder Hamlet,” Cam said.

Tony screwed up his brow. He turned to Luc abruptly. “Hamlet murders Claudius.”

Luc shot Cam a scowl. “And dies moments later.”

Tony shook his head. “Charles, you rapscallion, there is no version of Hamlet that includes a coachman.”

Luc’s carriage pulled up before the club and they drove to Lycombe House, where he changed his clothes for the opera. Not black for his uncle Theodore, who had allowed the people under his protection to starve, but brilliant blue with a silver and yellow striped waistcoat. Cam’s tailor had clapped in glee when Luc selected the fabrics. He would be the most fashionable man about town in the robin’s egg blue and canary yellow.

Luc could barely look at the avian monstrosity. But if it roused the sober, severely disciplined, and righteous Fletcher’s ire, he would wear a basket over his head and trot up Bond Street braying like an ass.

In point of fact he was an ass. He should not have left Arabella so abruptly. He should have invited her to come to London with him. But he could not protect her when all he wanted to do was ravish her.

Not true. He did want to ravish her. Often. But holding her in his arms during the Channel crossing had been nearly as satisfying. And watching her take tea with the tenant farmers’ wives and listening to her speak with their children and hearing her laugh with her sisters made his chest hurt the way it did when her chin ticked upward with courage. And when she looked at him and her eyes asked questions that made his gut ache and stole his reason, he could not think straight.

Ravishing her was infinitely easier, especially when they didn’t speak.

His hands were clumsy on the neck cloth. Miles tsked and gave him another. He botched that one too.

“If your grace would allow me—”

“I can tie my own damned cravat, Miles,” he growled.

“All evidence to the contrary, your grace. Perhaps a glass of brandy would soothe your grace’s nerves.”

“My grace’s nerves are just fine.” He grappled with the linen. He didn’t need more to drink. He needed a fiery-haired temptress with cornflower eyes hazy in passion, supple raspberry lips, and the softest—

He snapped himself out of fantasy. He’d had to leave her at Combe. With Absalom Fletcher and his one-thumbed coachman in town, she was safest where she could not get caught in the cross fire between him and his would-be assassins.

“This is futile,” he grumbled to his cousin as they took their seats in the box Cam had arranged at the opera house. “I’m wasting my time. Even if I do speak with Fletcher, he is unlikely to confess to hiring men to murder me in France.”

“Too true.” Tony nodded and drew a flask from his uniform pocket. “And I’ll say, these shenanigans are becoming tiresome, Luc. That hideous coat is an absolute travesty. And that little race we enacted in the park yesterday to shock the bystanders left me fifty guineas in the hole.”

“Luc will pay it back to you,” Cam said.

“I wouldn’t have it! He won it fair and square, galloping down Rotten Row like hell was after him.”

“All for show,” Cam said, producing a folded journal page. “It was in the gossip columns today, as hoped. I quote: ‘Are the sporty amusements and defiance of mourning for his uncle merely the fruit of Lord W’s frustration over his continued distance from the ducal title? Or—’ ”

“Idiocy,” Luc scowled.

Cam casually surveyed the theater’s gathering patrons. “But what tack do you propose to take instead, cousin? Break into his house to search his private documents for proof that he tried to kill you?”

“Not a bad idea, though terribly illegal of course.” Tony quaffed from the flask and carefully wiped his moustaches with a kerchief.

“Anthony, you are occasionally a perfect imbecile. It is a wonder the Royal Navy allows you a dinghy.”

“Exceptional service to the king,” Tony pointed to the ribbons and medals pinned across his chest. “Order of the Garter and whatnot.”

“God help our empire,” Cam murmured. “Any word from your brother, Lucien?”

“Nothing. But I have cause to believe he sailed from France a fortnight ago. My man in Calais—” His tongue failed.

From across the theater a slender man with a narrow face and a cloak of black velvet slung dramatically over his black coat, cravat, and knee breeches met Luc’s gaze. He scanned Luc and his eyes narrowed.

Luc’s palms were cold and slick. Streaks of silver swept across Absalom Fletcher’s temples, enhancing the portrait of severe, sophisticated sobriety. But otherwise he looked like the same pious, sanctimonious bastard Luc had last seen a dozen years earlier.

On that occasion he had gone to him demanding to know where Christos had gone. Not yet a bishop but striving diligently by making connections in Parliament and at court, the priest denied having any knowledge of the boy’s whereabouts. He recommended that if Luc found his brother he should return him to his house in Richmond, where Christos would be cared for in a manner suitable to one so prone to hysterical fits.