Lauren Smith

fine set of clothes did not make someone a good man.

She settled into the back seat, her hands clutching her reticule tight enough that the beadwork dug into her palms through her gloves.

er palms through her gloves.

he man was a lecherous creature with beetle-black eyes and hands that tended to wander too freely whenever he was near her. Emily was not worldly, having only just turned eighteen a few months earlier, but this last year with her uncle had enlightened her to a new side of life and none of it had been good.

Lady Rochester had apparently been in the midst of welcoming the Cavendishes, who had arrived at the same time as Lawrence and Avery.

interest in her once he’d learned she was none other than Miss Darby, the beloved lady of the ton who all sought to please with their praise and their many invitations.

This book is a work of fiction.

Even the street urchins

companions.
“We all agreed he needs intervention,” Godric reminded him. The duke’s eyes were full of a pain that Cedric felt deep in his bones. When one man in the League hurt, they all hurt. It wasn’t easy to explain, but it was undeniably true.
Resigned to his duty, Cedric pointed out Charles. They turned to look where he was pointing. All the faces in the crowd were turned skyward to watch the fireworks, but something was amiss. A man about twenty feet from Charles was watching Charles. Then he seemed to notice the League watching him.
“My God, it’s him,” Cedric said, half to himself.
“Who?” asked Godric.
“Gordon.” Cedric would never forget the face of the man who’d almost murdered him and his sister Horatia. He remembered the gardener’s cottage burning all around them, and how he’d been left blind for months afterward.
The man locked eyes with Cedric and gave him a nod, then turned his attention back on Charles and reached into his coat.
“Who is Gordon?” Godric asked.
“My former footman,” said Lucien. “One of Hugo’s assassins!”
Ashton spurred them into action. “Go! Stop him!”
The League broke apart, each man shoving at the crowds around them, trying to find the quickest path to Charles and the man stalking him.
Charles turned away and slipped into the hedgerows, vanishing from view, unaware of his peril. The assassin followed him like a black wraith into the shadows. Cedric was not a man to dwell on fanciful notions. He was a sportsman who needed to believe in things he could feel and touch, but the sight of that man haunting Charles’s steps in the cloaked gloom made Cedric wonder if devils were in fact real.
Cedric shouldered a rather plump woman out of his way, who harrumphed in indignation, swinging at him with her fan, but he was already out of her way. Lucien, however

I know society dictates we stop living while we mourn, but I, for one, think it is wrong.