Chapter 1

      Lady Fiona Hollingsworth felt wretchedly guilty for sitting there in her theatre box, and even more guilty for pondering a flame-haired actress, when her brother’s very life was being threatened—not that Randy was likely to expire this very night. She had a week before the situation turned truly desperate.

      “Who is that beautiful creature?” she asked her theatre companion.

      Trevor Simpson screwed in his quizzing glass and, following Fiona’s gaze, stared at the actress on the stage below. “Ah, that would be Diane Foley. Lovely, is she not?”

      “She certainly is.”

      Trevor bent his head to hers and whispered, “Miss Foley’s protector sits in the box opposite us.”

      “You are not supposed to discuss such matters with a maiden,” Fiona scolded as she playfully swatted the flamboyantly dressed man beside her with her fan. Trevor’s disregard for convention could always bring a smile to Fiona’s lips. She did not know what she would have done this past year of overwhelming grief had she not had Trevor to cheer her. It was Trevor who had insisted she come here tonight. “Do you good,” he had told her that afternoon, “to get your mind off the wretched business with Randolph.” Though she had tearfully protested, Trevor’s persistence eventually won out.

      Curious to see the lovely actress’s “protector,” Fiona immediately swept her gaze to the lone man in the box across from hers. He was an extremely handsome man in his early thirties, tall and dark and exceptionally well dressed. She thought that even were he not possessed of such striking good looks, the man’s haughty air of bored arrogance would have commanded attention. Only once before had she seen such a man. Her spine stiffened. She had met this man before. “Is that Mr. Nicholas Birmingham?” she asked her companion.

      Trevor’s eyes sparkled, and a grin pinched his slender cheeks. “He’s utterly gorgeous, is he not?”

      Fiona found herself smirking into her fan. Randy would be appalled over Trevor’s blatant effeminism, but she had always found it rather amusing. “I don’t think Randy likes Mr. Birmingham,” she said.

      “Of course not, my dear lady! The man’s completely ineligible.”

      “Then why did Randy introduce him to me?”

      “Can’t imagine Birmingham being at the same gathering with a viscount’s daughter. He’s not of the ton, you know. Where could you have met the fellow?”

      “Actually I persuaded my brother to allow me to go to Tattersall’s with him. Once. Since Randy had been to Cambridge with Mr. Birmingham, he must have felt compelled to introduce us when Mr. Birmingham greeted him, but Randy was exceedingly cool to him.”

      “As well he should be! Even though they’re wealthier than the Duke of Devonshire, Birmingham and his brothers are as ruthless as their late father—a man who was brilliant at banking and making money but who made a poor choice in a wife. The boys’ mother’s painfully crass. And . . .” Trevor lowered his voice. “It’s said Nicholas Birmingham even has one of his bastards living with him.”

      Decidedly improper, she thought.

      “He’s the one,” Trevor said authoritatively, “who’s building that disgustingly opulent mansion on Piccadilly, you know.”

      No, she did not know, though she certainly knew about the Piccadilly mansion. London