Chapter One

Chapter One

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Loren Copeland

The Marquess of Remington

Hawkvale

The City of Lincstone

HeddellyArch District

Avon Bordello

The Parallel

One Week Later

“I feel like I should pay you,” the whore purred behind him.

“That can be arranged,” he muttered, reaching for his breeches.

He felt her hand touch the bare skin of his back.

“Another go,” she whispered. And then, far quieter, “For free.”

Her hand went away as Loren stood, pulling up his trousers.

He didn’t look at her as he buttoned them at the same time he moved to where he’d thrown his shirt.

“Another time,” he replied.

He said this, but there would be no other time.

There were those, and she was one, where he made a call.

He’d made that call.

This time, he came.

Then he went.

And it went without saying, especially this time.

He finished with his trousers and reached for his shirt.

“I’m not…” She didn’t continue.

He didn’t much care what she wasn’t, but she was lovely and naked and a much better view than the maroon flocked wallpaper.

Therefore, after he pulled on his shirt and in a slapdash manner tucked it in, he reached for his waistcoat, turned to her and lifted his brow.

“I didn’t fake it,” she said softly.

“I sense you know that wasn’t my first time,” he replied, buttoning the three brocade-covered buttons at his lower abdominals.

She smiled.

Very lovely.

Pity she was a Come-and-Go.

“Therefore, dear heart, I know that,” he told her.

He then bent to snatch up his socks and boots.

He turned his back on her to sit by the side of the bed to tug them on.

“I won’t tell Winnow.”

Winnow was the madam of this very establishment.

Winnow held great beauty.

Winnow had the soul of a snake.

He didn’t like her. He didn’t trust her.

But it could not be denied, she had an eye for talent.

He looked down at his companion for the evening, reached out and cupped her graceful jaw.

“She, or one of her lackeys, watched every second of our coupling, lovely Mayda. You’re as aware of this as I. I will get away with no favors, no bonuses, and assuredly, no giveaways. I will pay for tasting your lovely cunt. I will pay for penetrating your round ass. I will pay for having you on your back, your knees, and I will pay for watching you ride my cock. I will pay for the two climaxes I gave you. And I will pay top tier, for you are top shelf, aren’t you, dear heart?”

“My lord—”

He put a finger to her lips. “I have a rule. When a woman takes me up her arse, and in her mouth, not in that order, in the same night, she’s allowed to call me by my name.”

Her eyes flared at this unusual benefaction.

He took his finger from her lips. “Now, you were saying?”

Her attention darted over his shoulder to one of the several paintings in which, Loren knew, the walls had eyes.

A warning.

One she likely never gave another client.

Loren sighed.

It never failed to surprise him.

Give a whore an orgasm, and they became aggravatingly clingy.

He turned from her and reached for his frock coat.

“Loren,” she said his name so low he had to turn back to her to prove he’d heard it. “You should—”

She lost his attention when he felt how his coat bunched in his hand.

Or, more precisely, what shouldn’t bunch, but did.

He looked at his coat, running it through his fists.

By the gods, he’d thought they’d let him through unscathed.

He hadn’t even felt it.

However, what he felt in that moment was the bed move as Mayda shifted in it. He heard the velvet and silks of the covers sliding against each other as she pulled them to cover her, but he glanced about the floor just in case it had fallen out.

It had not.

“Loren, I—”

“Silence,” he hissed.

“It wasn’t my ide—”

He turned his head to her.

She quieted.

“Did you do it?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Is it here?”

She bit her lip.

And shook her head again.

That was when he heard it.

A noise in the hall.

Abruptly standing, he pulled on the coat, then he sat yet again, swiftly. He lifted one boot to his other knee, reached to the inner base of the heel, and hit the miniscule catch with his thumbnail.

Winnow didn’t allow weapons in her establishment.

He had his suspicions, these being why he was there at all, but now he knew it was for this very reason.

Loren didn’t go anywhere without a weapon.

As the catch released, the hidden blade jumped out of his heel.

Mayda gasped.

“Speak one word, you’re the first cut I make,” Loren warned, not looking at her.

He hadn’t the time.

He transferred his other boot to his opposite knee and repeated these actions.

The blades were broad in width, blunt in length, with razor-sharp edges that came to a point. At the end of the short shaft was not a handle but a narrow rod that went side to side.

With a twist and click, the blade was at crosses with the rod.

Loren curled his fists around the rods, the blades protruding through his fingers.

He did this with his hands in front of him, his back to the various views to the room.

And he curled his hands carefully into the sleeves of his coat as he walked to the door.

He heard a noise, a wordless call.

His advance on the exit was noted.

The order was made.

Therefore, he was not surprised when the door burst open and two of Winnow’s large, lugubrious henchmen entered the room.

“Leaving without paying, your grace?” the one in the lead asked snidely.

“You return the wallet one of your staff lifted from my coat, I’d be happy to do so,” Loren drawled.

“We don’t operate that way at Avon,” came the reply. “And we don’t give pussy away for free.”

This was tiresome.

It always was.

He was rich.

He was titled.

His father was richer.

And his title was better.

Loren was not at fault for the happenstance of his birth.

But what never failed to infuriate him was that he knew just looking at them that neither of these men had stood proud for Hawkvale.

Neither of these men hunted the dying, but irritatingly prolific, bands of Middlelandian true believers.

Neither of them found their fourteen-year-old scout with his throat slit and a strip of his scalp taken as a prize.

Neither of them witnessed their best friend take an arrow through the throat.

Neither of them held his friend’s mother in their arms as she wept when he returned her son’s possessions.

He didn’t expect pussy for free, not as a veteran who put his life on the line to keep their country safe, not as the son of a veteran who did the same, or the latest in a line of many men who did just that.

He didn’t expect pussy for free because of his title or his connections, either.

He didn’t expect anything for free.

He paid and he paid well.

Though one could say he liked games.

But only those he wished to play.

So Loren had no patience at all for this shite.

In five seconds, both men were on the floor, their blood flowing freely into the silk rugs.

They would never again take their feet.

Mayda whimpered.

Loren stepped over them and into the hall.

In the end, he was vaguely disappointed it wasn’t much of a challenge.

Patrons and workers alike were shrieking and falling over themselves, as well as slipping on blood and bodies, in order to get out while Loren held Winnow against the wall of her office with his forearm.

“Where is it?” he asked mildly.

Her green gaze flicked to her desk.

He transferred one bloody blade to the other hand, still held at the ready, took her by the side of the neck and pulled her to the desk.

“Fetch it,” he ordered.

With trembling hands, she took the keys that dangled from the ribbon that served as a belt, bent to the bottom drawer, and Loren stayed vigilant and alert as he watched her open the drawer.

She came out with naught but his wallet.

But he saw what else was inside.

He took the wallet from her and slammed the drawer shut with the toe of his boot.

“I hope my message has been made clear,” he began. “It will be ill-advised that you ever do this again.”

He then moved his hand to the back of her skull and slammed her forehead down on the desk.

She slithered, unconscious, to the floor.

Through the now quiet and deserted space, Loren sauntered up to Mayda’s room.

Standing at the foot of her bed, where she was pressed to the headboard, covers to her mouth, weeping silently, he asked, “It’s fifteen normal, twenty up the arse, five for the suckling, five for eating, no?”

She stared at him in horror for a moment before she slowly nodded her head.

Loren rifled through the paper notes King Noctorno had instituted several years ago, one of his many brilliant ideas.

Carrying coin was burdensome.

This was far better.

He tossed three twenty-pound notes on her bed, then regarded the dead men on her floor.

As such, he pulled out another two bills, both hundreds, and threw those down too.

“Thank you for a memorable evening,” he said.

And then he walked away.

* * * *

The Next Morning

“Loren, I simply cannot believe I have to tell you again, you are not at liberty to kill people willy-nilly,” his father admonished.

“They’d stolen my wallet.”

“Yes, that happens at Avon Bordello. Everyone knows that,” Ansley Copeland returned. “As such, you have two choices. Don’t go to Avon Bordello. Or don’t go to Avon Bordello.”

“I sense, Father, that they will not be stealing another man’s wallet in order to extort a higher charge for their services as they detain him and expose him to his wife, his children, his employers, his commanding officer, or simply detaining him from his life until he agrees to pay for his own release. All of this on the weak excuse they provide to the constabulary that he intended to partake of their services for free, when he had no such intention at all.”

“It’s my understanding the constabulary was as aware as everyone else about this situation and working to sort it,” Ansley retorted.

Briefly, Loren thought about what he knew the constables would find in Winnow’s desk.

He then replied, “I’ve saved them that trouble.”

Ansley blew out a breath.

Loren was seated at the front of his father’s desk, hunched down, legs stretched in front of him, booted ankles crossed, elbows to the arms, fingers steepled before him.

His father was behind the desk, scowling at his son.

“Winnow Dupont is furious,” Ansley noted.

“Winnow Dupont is an unscrupulous crook,” Loren said quietly. “And sometime this morning, if she hasn’t been already, Winnow Dupont will be detained by the authorities and asked to explain some of the activities she gets up to in Avon.”

The regard his father was treating his son to changed.

“Did you…go there in order to…handle this?” Ansley asked.

Loren started studying his fingernails.

Ansley waited.

When the silence stretched, Loren broke it.

“The constabulary sometimes dawdles,” he murmured his answer.

Ansley’s voice was rising. “That’s because they must act within the letter of the law!”

Loren straightened in his chair and leveled his attention on his sire.

“Is it not the letter of the law that a man has the right to defend his own person?”

“Yes, however—”

“And is it not the letter of the law that a man has the right to defend his property, in this case, my purse?”

“Son—”

“They connived to steal from me, detain me, and I can assure you, Father, that the men who confronted me at the door to the lovely creature’s rooms were not there to politely ask me to sit down over a smooth whisky with Winnow and sort these matters. They intended me harm. I defended myself. A possession of mine was stolen from me. I retrieved it. That is the end of the matter. I’ve already talked to the inspector. They’ve put a line under it. It’s done.”

“You killed five men and dealt cuts that I’m told will visibly scar two others for life.”

“Then they shan’t forget the lesson they learned last night, shall they?”

“You had a friend detained by her, didn’t you?” his father demanded to know.

“Farrell made a stupid mistake, visiting his favorite to say good-bye before his wedding. He is now without a fiancée, a woman, incidentally, he loved deeply. Though what he’s gained is an angry father who is demanding he and his family cover the costs of the deposits set for a wedding that did not happen. Unfortunately, Farrell feels it is only proper he do so. Profoundly unfortunately, his lost fiancée had extravagant tastes.”

Ansley’s gaze turned to the ceiling.

“Are we done?” Loren asked.

Ansley’s gaze returned to his son.

And when he spoke, he did it softly.

“You cannot right every wrong, my beloved boy.”

On that, Loren stood.

And his only reply was, “How soon we forget.”

“Learn from a father’s mistakes.”

“That is your mistake, old man,” Loren replied good-naturedly. “Thinking they were mistakes.”

After delivering that, even though his father opened his mouth to say more, Loren turned and walked away.

* * * *

Ansley Copeland

The Duke of Dalton

He was still at his desk when his post was brought to him that afternoon.

And he was surprised to see the Derryman seal on the back of one of the letters.

He broke it, unfolded the paper, and read,

My dear Dalton~

It is with joy that I share that my beautiful, darling daughter, Maxine, has finally finished her studies, returned from Fleuridia, and is now amenable to meeting her affianced in order to begin preparations to be wed.

Would you like us to come to you at Dalwin? Or would you be our guests at Posey Park? Or we could meet in the middle as we both have houses in Newton.

Please advise.

We so look forward to this alliance of Derryman and Dalton.

It will be a jubilant day for us both!

Yours in humble service to Hawkvale~

Edgar Dawes

7th Count of Derryman

Ansley stared at the note, aghast.

Maxine Dawes, albeit lovely, and very sweet, and a young woman he had enjoyed spending several visits with at Lancester Sanatorium, was in absolutely no condition to marry his son, and she never would be.

He had, of course, set about discovering why Derryman persistently avoided all communications and attempts to bring the betrothal contract to fruition.

What he had found was that Derryman had been lying to him for twenty years.

His daughter had taken a tumble from a horse when she was but six years of age, she’d hit her head, and she hadn’t been the same since.

Or, rather, she was the same.

In behavior, she was still six.

However, her age was twenty-six.

This might also answer the question on everyone’s lips, when Maxine was supposedly sent to Fleuridia to attend boarding school, and shortly thereafter, Derryman’s wife took her own life in a ghastly manner that still was spoken of with shock.

He had hoped Derryman would beg off himself, however the man needed to do that to save face.

But this…

Ansley sat back in his chair.

He’d had a lengthy, and confidential, discussion with her doctor. He was told she would never recover. It was an impossibility.

Unless they found some miracle.

He couldn’t even begin to imagine what Derryman’s play was.

But he would find out.

And then they would finish this, and Loren would be free.

Further, Ansley would be free to put his foot down.

His son was to find a woman, settle down, make her heavy with child (repeatedly) and stop galivanting about Hawkvale (and farther afield), bedding women, partaking in games of chance, larking about…with heavy, terrifying doses of his activities of the night before.

Playing a vigilante.

The House of Dalton was at stake.

And every Duke in his line made several vows when he accepted that title, all of which were crucial.

But the continuation of the line was the most important of all.

Even more important than their vow of loyalty to the king.

On this thought, Ansley sat forward and took out a crisp piece of his stationery.

And he wrote his reply.