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       Prologue

       London —June 18th, 1823

      Death had officially come to Mayfair. Richard Penlerick, Duke of Newlyn, and his Duchess were buried, and the funeral witnessed by the ton’s finest that morning in the hopes of bringing closure to the tragedy that had stunned their exalted world a week earlier: a peer—a duke, no less—and his wife, stabbed to death in an alley after an evening theatre performance.

      Eaton Falmage, Marquess of Lynford, closed the front door behind the last of the funeral guests, wishing he could just as easily shut the door on the week’s horror for the sake of those who remained within the Newlyn town house on Portland Square. But for them the journey into grief was only just beginning. Now that the pageantry of death was over, the real mourning could commence, as he and those closest to the Penlericks could give free rein to their emotions.

      Eaton found that inner circle, a collection of friends he’d known and loved since childhood, gathered in the library, a male conclave of power and strength, both of which had been lent unreservedly this week to Vennor Penlerick, the heir.

      Vennor stood by the sideboard, pouring brandies, a rare blond in a room full of dark-haired men. He glanced in Eaton’s direction, his eyes asking the question.

      ‘Yes, they are all gone,’ Eaton offered in low tones. ‘I had the servants sweep the halls for stragglers.’ He gripped Vennor’s arm in a gesture of assurance. ‘We are entirely alone. At last.’

      The week had been nightmarish for all of them, but none so much as Vennor, and it showed. Despite his immaculate grooming, Vennor bore the unmistakable signs of strain and grief. To lose one’s parents without warning, even at twenty-eight, was devastating. Vennor had been strong all week, the ideal heir, the consummate host to those who’d imposed their company and their own grief. Eaton took both the glasses. ‘Come, sit, you needn’t be on display with us.’

      The group had gathered around the cold hearth. Someone, Inigo perhaps, had culled chairs from about the room and arranged them in one central place to accommodate the group known throughout the ton as ‘the Cornish Dukes’: heirs from four long-standing ducal families whose patriarchs had grown up together in the wilds of Cornwall and in turn so had their four sons. The bond between those fathers and their sons was legendary, as was their loyalty to one another.

      That impressive connection had been on view throughout the week for all of London to see, as if to say ‘let no one doubt there are no lengths to which we would not go for one another’. The fathers had taken their leave discreetly a half an hour ago to give the four friends privacy to grieve together, as they would no doubt be doing themselves at another undisclosed location. They had lost their dear friend just as Eaton and the others had lost a man they’d looked upon as an uncle and mentor but Vennor had lost a father and СКАЧАТЬ