Prologue

Lady Georgiana was beginning to be certain that she'd made a terrible, terrible mistake in coming to this party. She'd made a lot of mistakes in the past – last summer had been one huge blunder, she'd done one stupid and irresponsible thing after another for months – but this was something altogether different. A spectacular disaster, even by her standards.

And it wasn't really a party, was it? To call it that implied that it was just like all the other parties she had attended in her past two London seasons, or while travelling abroad with her brother Hal after Bonaparte's final defeat last year. There were elegant, expensive rooms here, to be sure, filled with elegant, expensive people. There was fine wine – oceans of wine, she had just seized a glass herself and gulped it down – and beautifully presented food. There was the hum of conversation, laughter, a little music, liveried servants, and candlelight reflecting in lovely Venetian mirrors. She might easily have been in Venice, in fact. How she wished she were. Everyone here was masked – that didn't signify anything by itself; she had attended many masquerades before. But all those similarities didn't make it a party. The differences between this… this gathering and every other she had ever been to were some of them subtle and some of them all too obvious.

Georgie had often, especially last summer, complained of the restrictions imposed upon young ladies by chaperons, and spent a great deal of time trying to evade them. Now it seemed she had her wish: there were no chaperons here. They would be distinctly de trop in such a setting. And she found she desperately missed them now they were gone; one of her aunts, her sister-in-law Cassandra – anybody, really, who could rescue her from the consequences of her own folly, even at the cost of a severe dressing-down.

But no. She'd thought herself too worldly-wise, too clever to need a chaperon, she'd been restless, discontented, a little bored, and so she had sought out a faster, more fashionable set this season, and had swiftly become firm friends with the dashing Mrs Aubrey, a widow a few years older than herself, a lady understood to be of respectable birth and slightly spicy reputation, but one who was received everywhere in the haut ton. They had found each other entertaining company over the past few weeks, had swiftly become firm friends in a superficial sort of a way, and there had been nothing at all before tonight to raise the slightest doubts on Georgie's part about the lady's intentions towards her. And Mrs Aubrey had brought her here, telling her that she would enjoy herself excessively; that she was sure Georgiana had had enough of Almack's, and vacuous debutantes, and dull, dull respectability. She would show her, Mrs Aubrey said, something much more interesting. Georgiana had agreed fervently, secretly thrilled that Caro, who was so clever and sophisticated, could see she was not just another silly girl.

And now here she was. At an orgy.

She should, she thought, have made her escape when she noticed that the servants and musicians were masked, as well as the guests. That had been the first warning sign, which she would have been wise to heed. But this was an elegant townhouse in Mayfair, much like her own family home, thronged with fashionable people, not some den of iniquity in Covent Garden, and Mrs Aubrey's hand at her back had urged her on, the older lady laughing a little at her sudden hesitation, mocking her. She had told herself that it was foolish to be apprehensive; Caroline Aubrey's friends might indeed be interesting, free-thinking people of whom prudes would disapprove, but nothing more extreme than that. She had been wrong.

Mrs Aubrey, having brought her here, had abandoned her almost immediately. The house, it seemed, was a labyrinth of small rooms, and Caro had disappeared into one of them with another lady and a gentleman, clearly intimate acquaintances of hers, shooting an enigmatic glance at Georgie from her glittering, suddenly malicious black eyes as she did so.

They had attended another, perfectly ordinary masquerade first, a respectable private ball, shrugging off Georgie's conveniently casual chaperon, a schoolfriend's mother, along the way, as it was easy enough to do when everyone was masked and disguised. Mrs Aubrey was dressed in a daring low-cut scarlet gown in the extreme of fashion, covered by an anonymous black domino. Her face was largely hidden by her black loo mask, but her new companions here at the orgy had gone some way beyond conventional dress; the lady who had kissed Caro full on the mouth in greeting then grasped her hands tightly and drawn her away had remembered her stays but forgotten her gown, and the gentleman… Georgie did not want to think about the gentleman. Suffice it to say that he was not sporting conventional eveningwear. Or daywear. Or… any wear. Various questions of a precise anatomical nature that she had wondered about for years suddenly became clearer to her, and in the light of them it seemed unlikely that the trio were going apart to discuss the news from overseas or the latest Paris modes. She was not completely na?ve, and was growing less na?ve by the second.

At least they had sought privacy. Many of the party guests had felt no such need for discretion. It seemed, instead, that conspicuous public display added to their pleasure. In the largest room, on, around and in several cases under the elegant velvet chairs and sofas, couples, groups of people, were…

Huddled in a corner in her mask, trying to make herself small and inconspicuous, Georgie was dressed as a boy. Tiring of her long curls and suddenly finding them childish, heavy and restrictive, she had recently had them cropped, and perhaps that had put the idea into her head. It was not entirely unknown that ladies should attend masquerades disguised in masculine attire, and she had found that her brother Fred's best suit, outgrown by him and put aside until it should be required by one of the twins, fitted her perfectly. It was surprisingly comfortable, and unlike a young lady's thin muslin gown had any number of useful pockets. The cloth was a very deep red, a crimson, and as she had admired herself in the mirror, swaggering a little and striking amusing masculine attitudes, she had thought that it presented a pleasantly dashing appearance, and set off her short dark hair and bright blue eyes, not to mention her long legs, extremely well.

Clearly, others were of the same opinion, and Georgie found herself paralysed. Her swagger had deserted her entirely. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she should leave. Immediately. Her safe, respectable home was only a street or two away. It might be highly improper for a young lady, even one dressed as she was, to walk unescorted through London at night, but there was no question that it was far more improper to stay here and witness… this. All this. And that was setting aside any question of participation.

She might have imagined that the nature of her masquerade dress would protect her from any unwelcome invitations, since at a casual glance she would pass for a boy, but the truth was far otherwise; in the few moments she had been here, both ladies and gentlemen had approached her, had made suggestions, some of them shockingly explicit, which she had refused with a forced smile and a brief, emphatic shake of her glossy dark head. These ladies and gentlemen all seemed to share a positive mania for acquainting themselves with the contents of her breeches, though it was not entirely clear to her whether they were all fully aware of what she kept concealed there. Perhaps they didn't care either way. Perhaps they liked surprises. She felt eyes on her now, assessing her, undressing her.

And still, despite all this, she could not force herself to go. Her mind was a blank – she could not muster sufficient coherence of thought to force her legs, her body, to turn, to make an exit. She was reasonably confident that no one would try to stop her if she moved with sufficient assurance, and she hardly owed Mrs Aubrey any consideration. She would have a great deal of explaining to do, of course, when she gained the safety of her family home, but that could scarcely be her chief concern now. And yet she stayed, watching almost in a daze as a voluptuous blonde lady, masked and dripping with many-coloured jewels but otherwise essentially unclothed, encouraged a gentleman armed with a short riding whip to… Good God.

A voice in her ear, rich, deep and honeyed. ‘You find their activities… interesting?'

Another one. She sighed, and, making her voice gruff – not that it had helped before – said, ‘No, sir. I thank you for your kind offer, but I was about to go.'

‘Were you, I wonder? But in point of fact, fair Rosalind, I made no offer, kind or otherwise.' This man, at least, realised she was a girl, and thought to make a Shakespearian joke of the fact, though she wasn't in the humour to be amused. But there was no denying that it was an extraordinary voice, more expressive, she thought, than any she had ever heard before, and containing, especially in such a setting, a wealth of highly dangerous possibilities.

She turned involuntarily to look at him. Up at him, for he had bent his head to address her. He was very tall and well-built, dressed in immaculate evening black cut by the hand of a master, and his mask was plain black too. Behind it, unusual silvery-grey eyes glittered, and his glossy black hair too was streaked with silver-grey, and longer than the current mode for gentlemen, though his face, what she could see of it, was unmarked by age.

His expression seemed to change as he looked down at her. His mouth was resolute, sensual, beautifully sculpted, and as he regarded her searchingly it thinned into a grim line. ‘Oh, you really don't belong here, do you? I thought as much. Come with me!'

He took her firmly by the arm and drew her, without unseemly haste, from the overheated room into the marble hallway. She went, unresisting. A door opened across the passage, providentially discharging a dishevelled, laughing group of people in scanty Grecian costume into the atrium, and one of the female members of the party seemed inclined to engage her in drunken conversation, but her – what, her rescuer? Her abductor? – made a small sound of satisfaction and pulled her swiftly into the room they had just vacated. He closed the door behind them, locked it in the woman's flushed face, and turned to survey her.

Georgiana had had previous experience of gentlemen, or so-called gentlemen, locking her in rooms and advancing upon her with dishonourable intentions. Last year Captain Hart, who had most improperly met and wooed her in secret for months while she was still at school and had wished to marry her – or, more accurately and humiliatingly, to marry her substantial fortune – had attempted as much, had tried to force himself on her, and she had fought him off, taking no hurt and leaving him much the worse for the encounter. She was on the alert, ready to defend herself by the use of violence if necessary. She had done so before and could do so again. If all else failed, she could always scream. Loudly.

But the masked stranger did not attempt to pocket the key, nor did he approach her more nearly now. Instead, he said abruptly, ‘You are obviously an innocent, and a full ten years younger than anyone else in this maison d'intrigue. How in God's name did you come to be here? Were you brought here against your will, or are you, as I conjecture, a complete fool with a reckless appetite for danger and far more hair than wit?'

This was the point at which Lady Georgiana Pendlebury should have told the truth, confessed that indeed she had been brought here under false pretences by someone she had mistakenly thought a friend, and begged the formidable stranger's help in making her escape. Undoubtedly he would have conveyed her home in safety, at the cost perhaps of a stinging dressing-down for her folly. This evening would then have become merely an embarrassing incident, but one which had, after all, done her virtue and her reputation no lasting harm. Nobody had laid a hand on her with amorous intent, nobody here could have the least idea who she was. Caroline Aubrey, who was plainly not the friend she had foolishly believed her to be, she would deal with later. She could have made a naughty story of it, and later have related it to friends in strict secrecy, to scandalised giggles. One day, when she was married, she might perhaps tell her husband of it, supposing he turned out to be the right kind of husband.

But she did not.