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Chapter 1

August 1816

London

He should make her wait

Thoughts and wild conjecture roiling in his head, Christian Michael Allardyce, 6th Marquess of Dearne, slowly descended the stairs of the Bastion Club He’d been nursing a brandy and his despondency in the library when Gasthorpe, the club’s majordomo, had appeared with a note

A note su him to face his past

That past awaited him in the front parlor, the room he and the club’s other six owners—all ex-members of one of the more secret and select arms of His Majesty’s services who had established the club as their bolt hole against the i ladies of the ton—had stipulated as the only room in which ladies were to be per, that rule had, incident by incident, fallen by the wayside, but Gasthorpe had rightly shown this particular lady into the formal front parlor

He really should make her wait

She’d said she would, twelve years ago, but then another had co, and while he’d been buried deep in Napoleon’s Europe, she’d lightly thrown aside her proe Randall

She was now Lady Letitia Randall

Instead of the Marchioness of Dearne

Deep in his heart, where nothing and no one any longer touched, he still felt betrayed

She’d been Lady Letitia Randall for eight years Although he’d returned to England ten o, and he and she ed not one word They hadn’t even exchanged nods Even that was too iven their past She seehtily distant, as if he and she had never been close—never been lovers—she’d studiously kept her distance

Until now

Christian—

I need your help There’s no one else I can turn to

L

That was all the words her note had contained, yet between them those bare words spoke volumes