Chapter One
London, 1816
"It's time I went home," he said. The room was dark and
hot, and stank of smoke and too many men crammed together
for too long. The windows were covered with thick
draperies, so no one could see out. But one man knew what
time it was. Amyas St. Ives filled his pockets, pushed
back from the gaming table, and announced he was leaving.
"Aye, with all our money," another gamester at the table
grumbled as he eyed the diminished pile of coins in front
of him.
"Leave the lad be. He had the Devil's own luck with the
dice," a thickset gentleman muttered, looking up at the
departing man with bleary eyes. "We'll even up the score
next time, St. Ives." Then he blinked against the
guttering candlelight and groaned. "Damme if the play
didn't run so deep it stole my wits. Forgot the hour
entirely. Must be dawn or past it." He fumbled, trying to
dip two fingers into a waistcoat pocket that was stretched
tautly over his ample stomach. "Damme if I ain't been
robbed," he exclaimed. "My watch is gone!"
Amyas paused, reached into his own pocket, and drew out a
golden watch. He flipped it to the seated man. "Here it
is. You lost it, all right, to me. Remember?"
The other men laughed as the heavyset fellow turned
red. "No, no," he protested, handing back the watch. "Now
I remember, lost it fair and squarely. It's yours, St.
Ives. I'll win it back tomorrow night."
"Keep it," Amyas said. He stretched his long limbs and
stifled a yawn. "At least, keep it safe for me. Because we
won't meet at a table again for a long time. As I said,
I'm going home."
A dark young man sitting at the table suddenly looked up
from counting his winnings.
"Aye," Amyas told him. "All the way home. I'm going back
to Cornwall, gents. London town won't see me soon again."
"You, rusticate for long? In a pig's eye," the thickset
man said on a laugh. "Ain't a Hell or a bawdy house big
enough to keep your interest in a backwater like that for
long. Don't know why you're going at all, come to think
on. Nobody we know lives there, and I didn't think you
did. You always win, so I know you ain't got pockets to
let neither, so you ain't going there on a repairing
lease ... Unless you're getting shackled?" he added,
looking up with interest. "Who's the lucky girl?"
"I may find out," Amyas said lightly. "That, among other
things. Give you good night. I mean, good morning,
gentlemen."
Amyas shook hands with the thickset man, sketched a bow to
the others, and left the room. He took his hat and cape
from a footman, then left the gloom of the private gaming
Hell and trotted up a short stair to the street.
The dark young gentleman who had been at the hazard table
fell into step beside him. "Amyas," he said, "you're not,
really. Going to Cornwall, I mean."
"Oh, but I am," Amyas said, blinking against the sudden
gray light. He took a deep breath. "Even London smells
good at dawn, doesn't it? Lord! I've missed filling my
lungs with clean, sweet air. I'm ready to leave town for
more reasons than even I knew."
"I also long for the smell of open fields sometimes. But
Cornwall? You've got to be joking."
"No jest, Daffyd," Amyas said, as they walked up the
street together. "You knew I always meant to go there one
day. So why not now? We've sorted out things here, and the
future is ours, at last. We're back in England, with no
debts, no worries. We've seen our friends restored to
their rightful places. We've got plenty of money and
respectability, or at least, the best kind money can buy."
"Money and friendship," Daffyd corrected him.
"Yes, well, being friends with an earl helps wonderfully.
We're not exactly acceptable, but we're admitted to most
high places."
"Because they don't know what we are. They'd toss us out
the door if they knew we were convicts."
"We were," Amyas agreed. "And what of it? We're not now.
And we're not lying about who we are."
"We're not telling, neither."
Amyas shrugged. "Why should we? Look, we were in and out
of the nick a few times in our youth, true. And it's only
bad luck I picked a pocket that had a pound note in it and
showed it to you. They nabbed you for holding it and me
for lifting it, and it was transportation for us, true.
But you were eleven and I had only a year or so more to my
name."
"Old enough to be hanged," Daffyd muttered. He was a dark,
trim young man of medium height, with a thin, aristocratic
nose, shining blue-black hair, and startlingly blue eyes.
"Aye," Amyas said. "But we were lucky. We did our time and
earned our pardons, and now we're not convicts. Now we're
only gents of indeterminate origin."
"We're determinate enough for the Quality," his companion
said glumly. "They know we don't have 'names.' Men with
names use them. Them what don't are looking for trouble.
Don't look at me like that," he told Amyas. "It's what
some gentry mort told me the other night, when she didn't
recognize my name. She looked like she expected me to
devour her, too."
"And did you?"
The dour face broke into a grin. "No. But she wanted me
to. It was as much fun disappointing her as obliging her
would have been. No, more, I think. She was dead
respectable. If I'd had her, there'd have been enough
weeping, wailing, and bemoaning to raise the dead, or at
least her family, ten seconds after. She was a society
virgin. Having her would have got me a bucket of tears
down my neck and another stretch in Newgate, or a quick
wedding ..."
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