Page 1 of The Duke Decides

Chapter One

Knightsbridge, London, May 1830

A charitable institution for orphans and outcast women was the perfect hideout for a murderer.

Louisa Bickford would know; she had been hiding at the Sisters of Benevolence Hospital for the Relief of Poor Orphans and Women in Distressed Circumstances for fifteen years.

So why not add to her list of her crimes? She could find the man blackmailing her, do him in, and dispose of the body, perhaps even here on the premises. Thus would she defeat the threat to her future and hide the evidence, all in one fell swoop.

“Ought the matter, mum?” Her newest maid, Alice, hugged herself with worry, watching Louisa slump in the wooden chair before her desk. “Your face come over all queer. Like you’ve taken a fright.”

She was only staring at the possible end of her life, Louisa thought. The life she had built carefully, painstakingly, always looking over her shoulder for the bloodhounds of judgment and destiny to pounce and tear her to pieces.

When they hadn’t, for so many years, she’d become complacent. Thought she’d escaped.

Thought, foolishly, that she might have expiated her former crimes with good works and honest living. For the past fifteen years, she had been humble, penitent, and poor. She had been chaste, God knew. She had made sacrifices and endured humiliations.

And the bloodhounds had been waiting, all this time. Now that she had built something good and lasting, that could be a credit to her name and testament to her reform, this villain turned up to tear it all down and take everything. Not only her name, not only her own self, but every stick of furniture in this place that had been her refuge, every brick that held up its once-safe walls.

“No,” Louisa said aloud, staring at the letter in her hands. “No, Alice, naught is amiss.” She forced a smile, brittle on her lips. “I won’t allow it to be.”

“Aye, mum.” Alice dipped in a brief curtsy, her eyes wide. She had not been at the Hospital long, but she clearly comprehended the power of the Matron’s dictum. What the Matron did and did not allow ruled the Sisters of Benevolence Hospital, and no one questioned her judgment or brooked her will.

Matron did not permit impertinence or unkindness directed at the residents from anyone, visitors or staff. She did not condone rivalries and petty jealousies among the Sisters. She did not sanction bullying among the children nor cruel gossip among the women in their care.

Matron did not allow tradesmen to overcharge the Hospital simply because they were an institution staffed by and devoted to the care of women and girls. She did not permit residents of the Hospital to behave in ways that would cast a shadow on the upright reputation of their home.

She did not let thieves or loiterers on the grounds of the Hospital, and she did not allow employers to take her children unless they could promise them safe homes and decent pay.

And Matron did not, under any circumstances, conduct herself in ways that might raise questions about the integrity or morals of the institution over which she presided. She was generous within the bounds of wisdom, scrupulously fair to those in her care, and every aspect of her person bespoke the qualities of piety, chastity, and modesty. She was as much as the modern world could offer of the medieval nun, though the Order of the Sisters of Benevolence was not Catholic.

In short, Matron had left every shred of her reckless past behind. Yet this letter promised that her crimes had caught up with her, and she would be brought to account for every wrong she had done before, no matter how she tried to hide behind the edifice of her good works now.

Louisa folded the letter as small as she could, the thick vellum digging into her palm through her lace indoor mittens. No, she decided. No. She would not allow this belligerent unknown to take everything away from her.

What kind of man used high-quality parchment for a blackmail letter? The seal bore the ominous insignia of a raven perched on a death’s head, wings outspread and beak partially open as if prepared to devour its prey. She knew that mark and had hoped she might never see it again.

“Alice,” she asked, “did this come through the regular post?” How humiliating if she were obliged to pay for her own extortion, but there was no signature for a frank.

“Nay, mum, a messenger come to the door. One of the street boys as brings us things.”

Messenger, of course. Nothing about the letter identified the sender, aside from the pseudonymous signature—Lord Vérité.

A thief who would sign himself Lord Truth was almost certainly out for her blood.

Alice shifted on her feet, detecting the turmoil within Louisa’s breast, hard as she strove to let nothing appear on her face. “Shall I bring yer tea, mum?”

“Thank you, no. I shall make some calls. Have you a notion where Sister Agatha might be found?”

“In the herb garden, more’n likely, mum,” Alice reported. “D’ye need ought else?” She accompanied the request with another small, awkward curtsy, a gesture that seemed instinctive but not yet natural.

She needed a knight of old to fight a dragon for her, Louisa thought. But in this year of our Lord 1830, while there might be knights aplenty, they were none of them the dragon-slaying kind, and not at all likely to take up the cause of a matron running a home for orphans and distressed women.

She rose from the inlaid desk where she stored her correspondence, locking the rest of the post in one of the small drawers. The hated letter she slipped into the pocket of her skirt, where it lay like a bare blade against her thigh.

“You needn’t call me mum with every breath, Alice, nor is there reason to curtsy to me. I am not a grand lady.” She had sacrificed that right long ago.

The girl’s eyes went wide. Louisa had yet to properly place Alice’s age, and the girl herself had to notion of it. Her earliest memory was of everyone mourning a dead princess and her dead child—the death of the Princess Charlotte, Louisa supposed, which would place the girl’s age at perhaps fourteen or fifteen.