who’d made his success possible. Otherwise, he’d probably still be bumbling around as a clerk in a shipping firm on the docks, making too little to offset his family’s financial needs.
Now, thanks to his reputation, he was able to send decent sums to his mother. He was able to write fabulous letters to his two sisters about the glittering parties he attended and all the latest fashions without making it up. Of course, they didn’t know what he did for a living, only that he was now a man of business. Thanks to his brother’s poor health, they would never know differently. There would be no chance for them to come up to London and see the reality, for which he was eternally grateful. A broken brother was bad enough. He couldn’t break his mother’s heart, too.
* * *
The milkmaids were starting their rounds when Nicholas climbed the front steps of Argosy House, nominally no different than any of the other houses along Jermyn Street quartering bachelor gentlemen of means. All the other windows on the street were dark, but lights still burned here. The boys would be up for another hour or so, reliving their evenings and then they would all retire.
A passing milkmaid gave him a flirty smile. ‘Good morning, Master Nick. You’ve been out all night again.’
Nick swept her a bow and blew her a kiss. ‘Good morning, Gracie.’ He knew all their names, every milkmaid, every vendor that claimed Jermyn Street as their venue. Women especially liked that sort of thing.
Gracie waved a scolding finger at him. ‘Don’t you try any of your gentleman’s tricks with me. I’m wise to all of them,’ she teased. ‘Besides, I’ve heard you’ve been up to no good.’
Nick was tempted to ask Gracie what she’d heard, but she’d already picked up her pails and moved down the street, her saucy hips swinging. Worry picked at him. Had his contretemps at Burroughs’s already made the rounds? He stepped inside Argosy House to the sound of raucous male laughter spilling from the drawing room. He smiled. There was comfort in knowing the routine, of having expectations about what one would find when one came home. This was the only home he had now, the only place where he felt comfortable. It had been a long time since he’d felt that way about his real home.
Inside the drawing room, seven men sprawled carelessly on the chairs and sofas. Cravats were undone, jackets were off, waistcoats unbuttoned. Snifters of brandy in varying states of emptiness sat at their elbows. These were his colleagues of the past four years, the fellow members of the secret league.
Jocelyn Eisley spotted him first. ‘Ho, ho, Nick my boy, you had a close call tonight. We were starting to worry.’
All heads turned towards him. Whistles and applause broke out. ‘You’ll be the talk of the broadsheets.’ Amery DeHart saluted him with a half-drunk snifter.
‘Three cheers for our man, Nick.’ Eisley cleared his throat and leapt up on to an ottoman in a graceful move for one so big. ‘I feel a poem coming on to commemorate the occasion. It’s not every night one of us pleasures a lady with her husband in the house.’
There was a collective, good-natured groan. Nick took a seat next to DeHart on the sofa. Eisley’s poems had become one of their traditions.
‘A limerick, Eisley,’ Miles Grafton called out. ‘A dirty deed requires a dirty poem.’
‘Here, here!’ the chorus went up.
‘All right then.’ The big blond called for attention. ‘I give you my latest creation.’ The big blond’s baritone resonated with enough dramatic flair for Drury Lane. ‘There once was a man named Nick who satisfied women with his prick. How women did swoon when Nick did moon. He was the envy of every man in the room.’ He gave an extravagant bow.
‘Aren’t we all?’ Amery put in more loudly than necessary. ‘We’re the rakes who make husbands jealous.’
‘And thank goodness for that,’ Captain Grahame Westmore said darkly from his corner by the fire. ‘If the men of the ton did their duty properly, we’d be out of a job.’ A former cavalry officer, Westmore was private, as private as Nick was himself. Of all the men present, Nick knew the least about him.
‘Well, what do you think?’ Eisley stepped off the ottoman. ‘Is it my best yet? I’ll recite it at White’s this afternoon and, by dinner, my little ditty will be repeated in every Mayfair drawing room—discreetly, of course. You’d better lay in another order for those French letters you like, Nick. Your popularity will soar. They’ll call it “Nick the Prick”.’
‘They’re calling it “In the Nick of Time”, in the papers, according to my sources,’ a sombre voice said from the doorway.
Nick winced. He didn’t have to look up to know Channing Deveril, the league’s founder, had heard the news already. It seemed quite a few people had heard if milkmaids and journalists knew. He’d hoped for a little more reprieve.
‘Close call tonight, eh, Nick?’ Channing’s blue eyes met his.
‘Only close, though.’ Nick shrugged. Maybe Channing wasn’t too upset. It was merely an occupational hazard. After all, it could happen to anyone.
Channing managed a half-grin. ‘We can all be grateful for that. Come to my office and we can speak of it more privately and decide what to do.’
Nick’s good spirits sank, replaced by a wary sense of caution. ‘What is there to decide?’ he asked, settling into the chair opposite Channing’s polished desk.
‘What do with you, of course.’ Channing eyed him as if he were an idiot. ‘You may have gone too far tonight.’
‘You can never go too far.’ Nicholas laughed, but Channing did not.
‘I’m serious, Nick, and you should be, too. This won’t blow over. Burroughs will know it was you.’
‘I prefer suspect. He doesn’t know it’s me, not for sure,’ Nicholas amended.
Channing cocked an eyebrow in disbelief. ‘You’re deluding yourself. With limericks like “Nick the Prick” and drawings labelled “In the Nick of Time” floating around London like so much flotsam?’ Channing had a point there. ‘Besides, I don’t think Alicia Burroughs wins any awards for secret keeping.’
Another point in Channing’s favour. A rather valid one, too, given tonight’s display. ‘The agency won’t be implicated,’ Nick put in, hoping to soothe Channing’s feathers.
‘My worry is not for the agency alone. I worry for you, too, Nick. I don’t want there to be a duel.’ Channing opened a drawer and pulled out a folder. He pushed it across the desk. ‘That’s why I have a new assignment for you.’
Nick scanned the document inside with a frown. ‘Five nights of pleasure? In the countryside? Is such a thing even possible? It sounds like a unlikely juxtaposition to me.’ Nicholas D’Arcy pushed the letter back across the polished surface of the desk with obvious disdain, his dark brow arched in sceptical disapproval of such a proposition. He was a London man. The city was his preferred environ with its refined women. There was nothing quite as fascinating as a city woman with her fashions and perfumes, her sharply honed repartee on a myriad of cutting-edge subjects and her bold overtures. In sum, a London woman was someone who knew what she wanted on all accounts. But a country woman? Lord spare him. ‘It’s really not my speciality, Channing.’
Behind
