How a Lady Weds a Rogue
Falcon Club - 3
Katharine Ashe
To Atlas and Idaho, my constant writing companions. You warm my toes. You lay softly contented in the sun that shines through my office window as though sunshine is all you need. You make me play when I foolishly imagine I must only work. And you remind me every day that love can be unconditional. Thank you for making me a better human.
Chapter 1
Fellow Subjects of Britain,
Scandal!
At night I lie abed, heart pounding, breaths short, and mourn England’s ravagement. My soul cries and my frail feminine form aches to know that the Elite of Society to whom we all pay homage are stealing from our Kingdom to serve their profligate ways.
Stealing!
For three years now I have sought the identities of the members of the elusive Falcon Club, a gentleman’s leisure establishment that regularly receives funds from the Treasury without due process in Parliament. Today I announce my greatest accomplishment in this quest: I have discovered the identity of one member. I have hired an assistant to follow this man and learn of his activities. When I possess reports that I can trust, I will convey them to you.
Until then, if you are reading this pamphlet, Mr. Peregrine, Secretary of the Falcon Club, know that I look forward to the day you and I meet face-to-face and I will tell you exactly what sort of man you truly are.
—Lady Justice
Lady Justice
In Care of Brittle & Sons, Printers
London
My dearest lady,
I am nearly breathless (as I daresay three-quarters of the men in London are now) imagining you at rest upon your cot, your breast filled with emotion, your lips trembling with feeling. I am moved by your devotion. And, like a cock released into the ring, I am roused by your eagerness to meet me in person.
But perhaps you have discovered not one of my fellow club members, but me. Perhaps I shan’t be obliged to wait long for us to finally become acquainted. Perhaps my own nocturnal imaginings will soon rush from the realm of dreams into reality. I can only hope.
Increasingly yours,
Peregrine
Secretary, the Falcon Club
Peregrine,
Send Raven after Lady Priscilla.
—The Director
Sir,
I shall mince no words: You are making a mistake in this. England boasts no sharper intellect or finer natural instinct. I will send Raven after the beast, and he will go without quarrel. But with this insult you will have lost him.
Respectfully, &c.
Peregrine
Chapter 2
Must . . . get . . . to . . . the . . . stable.
Somewhere in a chamber abovestairs a girl screamed.
Not a girl. A woman. Throaty voice, inebriated, a scream of pleasure. The girl’s scream was in his head only. As always.
Get to the stable.
Rescue the lady.
Wyn pried his eyelids open. The parlor tilted. But he was standing. In a corner, against the wall. Nevertheless, standing. Far better situation than his host, who was lying unconscious over the threshold, bottle clutched in one hand, a woman’s naked ankle clutched in the other. The remainder of the woman lay in the corridor beyond, similarly indisposed.
Wyn cast his gaze about the chamber strewn with glasses and smoke. A ruined neck cloth decorated a bookshelf, and a pair of ladies’ stockings—sans lady—straddled the arms of a chair with suggestively vigorous intent. A snapped billiards cue protruded from a lamp top, and the butts of any number of cigars dug black holes in the carpet.
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Are we having fun yet?”
Then commenced the burning in his gut.
Ah. Awake a mere twenty seconds this time before the torture began; his most reliable nemesis had grown insistent of late. He’d no memory of eating since arriving at the country house three days earlier. Food quieted the torture in his belly. No time for that now. He’d been here too long already. If the others were in the same state as his host, he must take his leave with haste.
“Off to the races, then.” Focusing on the doorway, he pushed away from the wall.
“Wha’s that you say, Yale?”
Had he spoken aloud? Good God.
Carefully, so carefully, he shifted his gaze in the direction of the voice. He never hurried. Hurrying led to mistakes. Wyn Yale, agent of the Falcon Club and consummate gentleman from his sparkling boots to his neatly tied cravat, never made mistakes. He never fell. Never tripped. Never revealed a thing, not even when he could not make the sounds to pronounce his own name. Then he simply remained silent.
Pride did not drive this perfection. His father and elder brothers used to criticize him for his pride. They’d had no idea.
But apparently now he spoke aloud when he did not intend it. He was, perhaps, finally slipping. A shame. Rational precision was all he had left, after all, and of course the damned fireball that lived in his midsection.
“Wha’ races?” The other guest sprawled on the divan, this one without a woman at present, perhaps due to his waistcoat soaked in wine. Rule #3: Ladies expected a gentleman to maintain his accoutrements. Even demi- reps. Wyn’s great-aunt had insisted on that.
“Who’s racing?” the slovenly gentleman slurred. “I’ll lay ten guineas on you over any of’em. Clever son of a—”
“No race.” With deliberate steps Wyn moved to the sideboard and sloshed wine into a glass. Blinking hard to steady himself, he pivoted, carried the glass over, and curled the fellow’s hand around it. Warm. Human sinew and flesh. Strange that he should notice this. But it had been an age since he’d felt another human’s skin, touched another person. “Merely seeing to my horse.”
