Page 4 of The Duke of Deceit

When he reached the footpath fronting the opera house, he let out a muttered curse. He just remembered that he’d sent his carriage on with Lucille, and there were no hackneys for hire anywhere in sight. Overhead, a cold drizzle began to fall. That was when he also remembered he’d left his coat and hat in his box. There was no going back for them.

“Just as I’ve always said,” he muttered as he hunched his shoulders against the rain and made his way on foot toward St James’s. “No good deed goes unpunished.”

Apparently, that was true even if the good deed wasn’t his.

He jogged across the busy street, dodging carriages and mud puddles. When he stepped onto the opposite footpath, he saw a small movement in a dark doorway. A child. No—two children, huddled together in rags against the cold, rainy night.

He halted. “You there.”

The children froze at his voice, but they couldn’t stop the shivers that racked their little bodies.

“Do you have somewhere to spend the night?”

“Here,” the boy answered.

The little girl shrank into the lad’s skinny side and peered fearfully up at Lucien. Dirt smeared her pale face, and her cottondress, which was too big for her, did nothing to protect her from the cold air.

“Nothere,” Lucien growled as he removed his jacket and placed it around the little girl’s shoulders. “Go to Brechenhurst in Seven Dials. You’ve heard of it, I’m certain.”

The boy nodded. The girl stared warily at Lucien, eyes wide as saucers.

Lucien pulled two coins from his waistcoat pocket and handed one to each child. “Go there and ask for Mrs. Martin. Tell her that Mr. Hunter sent you. She’ll help you. All right?”

The boy nodded and repeated back the instructions, not knowing they were actually a secret code. The manageress of the shelter would understand and take in the two children, even though the doors had closed for the evening, giving them a meal and providing them a safe and warm place to spend the night.

The boy climbed to his feet and helped the girl properly into Lucien’s jacket which hung down to her ankles, so tiny was the little wisp of a creature. The boy took her hand and led her away in the direction of Seven Dials.

She glanced back over her shoulder at Lucien. “Thank you, sir.”

The soft sound tore through his chest like a bullet. He replied hoarsely, “You’re welcome.”

Then the two took off, running into the rabbit warren of narrow alleys. Lucien turned back toward the street—

A carriage sped by and splashed water high into the air. It cascaded over him from head to boots and soaked him through to his skin.

He froze for a moment and simply let the water drip off his body onto the footpath. Then he blew out a hard breath and walked on toward St James’s.

No good deed, indeed.

Twenty minutes—and one very wet mile and a half later—he stepped into Brooks’s small drawing room to wide-eyed stares from the other members. It took Lucien a full minute before he realized they weren’t staring because of the ruined state of his waistcoat and trousers or his scandalous appearance in shirtsleeves. They were staring because they’d heard the same mistaken rumors as the opera audience.

News of his false generosity had preceded him.

“Welcome, sir.” An attendant appeared at his side. “Would you like a drink?”

“I’d like a towel,” he grumbled. He tossed the young man a shilling. “Lord Abernathy keeps a spare set of clothes upstairs. Tell Barnaby to set them out for me.” The club’s butler could be counted on to tell everyone that Crewe needed a change of clothes, and perhaps Lucien could twist the club’s gossip about tonight’s events into some much more wicked reason why he’d been removing his clothes than the truth. “And yes, fetch me a cognac. A generous pour.”

The attendant nodded and hurried toward the dining room and its ground-floor bar.

“Good Lord, man,” Henry Merchant-Fox called out from beside the fireplace as he flicked ash from the end of his cigar and raked an amused look over Lucien, from his sopping wet hair to his muddied boots. “Awfully cold night to be swimming in the Thames, isn’t it?”

“Not the Thames,” Sir Michael Darnley corrected loudly, snagging the attention of the half dozen men lounging about the room on its brown leather sofas and chairs. “Haven’t you heard? Crewe’s turned charitable. Surely, he was saving drowning swans in the Long Water.”

“I heard he was rescuing kittens at Buckingham House,” another man piped up.

“No, no,” another interjected. “It was puppies in the park—”

“Queen Charlotte from Farmer George!”