Penguin
March 2005
On Sale: March 1, 2005
Featuring: Arthur Lancaster, earl of St. Merryn; Elenora Lodge
388 pages ISBN: 0515138649 EAN: 9780515138641 Kindle: B000OCXIJE Paperback / e-Book (reprint) Add to Wish List
It is a truth universally acknowledged . . . . . . that a jilted earl must be in want of a fiancee who is something other than a flibbertigibbet, knows her place, and is not entirely unpleasant to look on: a description that precisely fits a paid companion.
Arthur Lancaster, the Earl of St. Merryn, is a logical man who desires only peace and quiet and seeks to contract a suitable marriage with a reasonable female. But there seem to be none in London-or at least the redoubtable matrons who hire out exceedingly respectable companions for so much per annum have shown him none that he could envision under his roof or in his bed.
Enter Miss Elenora Lodge, a disheveled beauty wearing prop spectacles in order to pass for prim, who beguiles Arthur, who in turn proposes an Arrangement. She, newly arrived in London after bailiffs have turned her off her bankrupt stepfather's country property, says yes. Ibbits, the earl's scheming butler, is quite put out. A handsome fellow who once provided paid companionship of a very different sort to lonely ladies of the ton, Ibbits was forced to go into service when-damnable luck!-he became impotent.
Thanks to his employers' peccadilloes, he makes extra money on the side retailing their secrets-and simultaneously blackmailing them. But is Ibbits wicked enough to commit murder? And what does the eccentric scientist who prowls the underground network of lost London streams have to do with it all?