Chapter Two
Adrian Philip Rande,formerly of the Royal Horse Guards, and, for the past two years, the Marquess of Redver, studied his cards. His blank expression held no indication of his unlucky hand, nor did a stitch out of place betray any of the incessant demands made by his physical discomfort.
Were he to publicly reveal the recent, intermittent return of his childhood medical condition—which, of course, he was decidedly not inclined to do—the metaphor of scuttling spiders would have aptly described the sensation.
Spiders with jointed pins for legs and low, dragging abdomens.
The sensation that had tormented him in his youth had begun to plague him again sometime around last year’s Guy Fawkes Day. Of late, he suffered with greater and greater frequency. Added to his difficulties, he experienced gracefully submitting to Society’s conventions ever since the Battle of Waterloo, he’d an ever-present feeling of self-disgust.
He no longer sought explanation. He simply wanted to escape.
No reputable physician had been able to give him relief, even less so the quacks and charlatans hawking all manner of salves.So, he’d turned to cards, drink, and women for brief but blessed moments of transport. One was good, two, even better, and three, the holy bloody grail.
Tonight, he meant to capture the trifecta. Losing a small fortune would not prove a hindrance.
With a slow, pinched-lip slant of a smile, he laid down his cards.
“Gentlemen”—he nodded to the other players—“time for me to bow out. You may apply at my residence to redeem your vowels on the morrow.”
“Depriving us of your company so soon?”
Adrian’s gaze moved to the young man who’d spoken.
Insinuating chap. They’d been introduced when the fellow had first started appearing at the Den last fall, and the young man had made a persistent pest out of himself ever since.
What was his name? Dane? Crain?
Whomever he was, the man had developed the irritating tendency to show up in Adrian’s presence with alarming frequency. And the lad repeatedly failed grasp Adrian’s disinclination for closer acquaintance.
Adrian’s small circle of family, childhood, and military friends proved quite enough for him to manage, thank you.
The gentleman to Adrian’s right—his friend Harbury’s cousin Neville—rebuked the pup with a subtle shake of his head. Not the thing to question a peer’s decisions, he could almost hear Neville say.
“What I meant was goodnight, my lord,” the young man revised.
Adrian might have responded graciously.
Instead, he gave the young man a withering once-over. As the pup’s face colored, with great condescension, Adrian inclined his head.
He ignored Neville’s frown. He’d intended to be rude. Then, he shoved back his chair, and without a word, made his way across the room toward the proprietress.
He passed table after table, instinctively marking the positions of the Black Widow’s lackies, the ones who kept order. The wolf pack, she called them. Like himself, they were all former soldiers.
He appreciated that gesture on her part. Too many former soldiers barely eked out an existence since the end of the war. Many bore physical evidence of their wounds. Even more, he suspected, suffered invisible scars.
His difficulties, he didn’t count.
The war had changed him, of course. Two years had passed, and he still hadn’t learned to be comfortable at Society functions. But war had not caused his affliction to return.
Damnable thing was, he wasn’t sure what—if anything—had.
Perhaps he was simply cursed.
“Mrs. Dove-Lyon,” he greeted.
“Redver.” She used his title but did not curtsey, as usual.
In this domain, she, and she alone, reigned as queen.
