No Good Duke Goes Unpunished

She stood straight, scowled at the door where she’d seen him last.

“Well,” she said aloud to the empty room, “that won’t do.”

And she headed for the door, putting all her strength into the movement when she reached for the door handle, and found the door locked.

A little sound escaped her, a cross between shock and indignation, as Pippa tried the door again, certain that she was mistaken. Sure that there was no possible way that he had locked her in a room in a gaming hell.

After cheating her.

No possible way.

After several attempts, Pippa was confident of two things: First, he had indeed locked her in a room in a gaming hell after cheating her. And second, he was clearly mad.

Crouching low, she peered through the keyhole into the hallway beyond. She waited a few moments, uncertain of what precisely she was waiting for, but waiting nonetheless. When no one appeared or passed through the corridor on the other side of the door, she stood, pacing away from the door and back again, confronting the wide oak.

She had only one course of action. She had to pick the lock. Not that she’d ever done such a thing before, but she’d read about the practice in articles and novels and, honestly, if small children could accomplish the task, how difficult could it be?

Reaching up, she removed a hairpin and crouched low once more, jamming the little strip of metal into the lock and wiggling it about. Nothing happened. After what seemed like an eternity of attempting the impossible, growing more and more infuriated at her situation and the man who had caused it, Pippa sat down with a huff of frustration and returned the hairpin to its rightful place.

Apparently, there were a number of small children in London who were significantly more accomplished than she. She cast an eye at the enormous painting she’d noticed before. No doubt the young men in the oil would have no trouble at all with the lock. No doubt, they would have a half dozen ways of escaping this small room.

Like a secret passageway.

The thought had her on her feet in seconds, one hand against the silk wall coverings, tracing the edge of the small room in search of a secret door. It took her several minutes to check every inch of wall, from one side of the painting to the other, finding nothing out of the ordinary. There was no secret passage. Not unless it was into the painting itself.

She eyed the painting.

Unless.

Grabbing one side of the massive frame, she pulled, and the painting swung out into the room, revealing a wide, dark corridor.

“Triumph!” she crowed to the room at large before lifting a candelabrum from the nearby table and stepping into the corridor, pulling the wide door closed behind her with a thud.

She couldn’t help her self-satisfied smile. Cross would be shocked indeed when he unlocked her cage and discovered her gone.

And he would deserve it, the rogue.

As for Pippa, she would be wherever this passageway led.

Chapter Ten

I have studied a great many species of flora and fauna over the years, and if there is one truth to be found, it is this: Whether hounds or humans, siblings almost always display more heterogeneity than they do homogeneity. One need only look at Olivia and me to see the proof.

Parents are the red rosebush . . . offspring the white branch.

The Scientific Journal of Lady Philippa Marbury

March 28, 1831; eight days prior to her wedding

I came to tell you to leave us alone.”

Cross stood just inside the closed, locked door to his office, beyond which two hundred of Britain’s most powerful men wagered. On the way there, he’d considered a half dozen things he might say to his sister, all variations on the theme of “What in hell would possess you to come here?”

But he did not have the opportunity to say any of them. His sister spoke the instant the lock clicked, as though she had nothing in the world about which to worry but that single calm, clear sentence.

“Lavinia—” he began, but she cut him off, her serious brown gaze unwavering.

“I am not here to discuss it,” she said, the words like steel. “I came from Knight’s, and he refused to see me. Because of you.”

Ire flared. “As well it should be. You should never have gone to him. And if he knows what’s best for him, he’ll never see you again.”

She looked tired—pale and thin and uncomfortable, with dark circles beneath her eyes and hollow cheeks, as though she had not slept or eaten in days. But it had been more than days that had made her this way—that had stolen the bright-eyed, happy seventeen-year-old girl and left behind this stoic twenty-four-year-old woman who seemed years older and decades wiser.

Too wise. She did not back down. “This is none of your concern.”

“Of course it is my concern. You’re my sister.”

“You think that the pronouncement of the words makes them true?”

He moved toward her, hesitating when she pressed back, clasping the edge of his desk as though she could gain strength from the great slab of ebony. “There is no making about it. They are true.”

Her lips twisted in a bitter, humorless smile. “How simple you make it seem. As though you have done nothing wrong. As though we are all expected to forget that you deserted us. As though we are expected to pretend that all is well, and nothing has changed. As though we are to slaughter the fatted calf and welcome you back into our lives—our prodigal son.”

The words stung, even as Cross reminded himself that Lavinia had been so young when Baine had died. Seventeen and barely out, she’d been too focused on her own pain and her own tragedy to see the truth of what had happened. To see that Cross had had no choice but to leave the family.