ROTTER.
Six letters, and nothing that London didn’t already know. Nothing London did not turn from, averting its collective gaze, because money and name and privilege made for unbeatable, undeniable power when it came to titled men.
But that evening, Sesily beat it. Sesily denied it.
And gave permission to the rest of the aristocracy to do the same.
He looked back at her. Saw the emotion on her face. Felt it in his own chest—not that he’d ever admit it. Pride.
“Sesily Talbot, you court trouble.”
“You disappoint me, Mr. Calhoun,” she said, the words distracted as she watched the play unfold on the stunning stage laid out before them. “I would have thought that after what you’d witnessed tonight, you’d know that I’ve no need to court trouble.”
He should leave her there. Leave her in the darkness to find her way back inside, or back home, or wherever it was Valkyries went to when they were done with their battles.
He should walk away from that woman who had been a danger to him from the moment he met her.
He certainly shouldn’t ask her, “And why is that?”
But he did, and then he watched her full, red lips curve before she turned to reply, the pure, unadulterated satisfaction in her eyes a punch to the gut. “Haven’t you noticed, American? I am trouble.”
The Place
Covent Garden
Three Nights Later
There weren’t many locations in London where a known scandal could drink and socialize unnoticed, but The Place, tucked deep in Covent Garden and accessible only to those who knew the tangled web of streets between Bedford Street and St. Martin’s Lane, was one of them.
Which made the pub Sesily’s favorite haunt.
Yes, there were several casinos that received women (one that was women-exclusive), a handful of pubs where women were protected (including the one owned by her sister), and 72 Shelton Street—a ladies’ club that threw some of London’s best parties and specialized in women’s pleasure of all kinds. While discretion was guaranteed at every one of those places, however, those who frequented them were often there to be seen. In the rare instance that they weren’t looking to be recognized, no one could escape it—and recognition made things complicated.
Doubly so when you might be overheard discussing the destruction of society’s worst.
The Place wasn’t for being seen. It was for living. For drinking and dancing and laughing and being welcomed without hesitation.
The kind of place that felt like home to someone who spent her days under the stern censure of society. The kind of place that would tell society precisely what it could do with its censure … if only society could find it. Which it couldn’t.
The perfect haunt for four women who made it their work to bend the rules society and the world insisted they follow, and who did all in support of anyone who wished to do the same.
No one at the place cared that Sesily was a scandal, or that Adelaide was a wallflower, or that Imogen was odd, or that the duchess lived her life as though she’d never been married in the first place. And because of that, the foursome made it their haunt.
“I heard from Miss Fenwick this morning,” the Duchess of Trevescan said as Sesily slid into the chair next to her at the table in a back rear corner of the large central room of the pub—one of the only spots in The Place that wasn’t aglow with lamplight refracted through brightly colored glass and filled with a riot of laughter and good-natured shouts and raucous music that would soon tempt half those assembled to dancing.
“Happy with our work, I hope?” Sesily said, blowing quick kisses across the table to Imogen and Adelaide. She smiled up at the barman who appeared at her elbow. “Good evening, Geoffrey.”
“Whiskey tonight, luv?” He winked and Sesily imagined for a moment that she might find him handsome in another place, at another time.
Four nights ago. A year ago. Two.
She nodded. “I’m a crashing bore, I know.”
“Impossible,” he replied, and was off to fetch her drink.
Adelaide blinked from behind her enormous spectacles. “How is it that we waited three quarters of an hour to be noticed, and you arrive at the height of the evening and receive attention in mere seconds?”
“My ineffable charm,” Sesily said with a grin as she reached across the table and snatched a roasted carrot from Adelaide’s plate.
“That, and half of London wants to swiv you,” Imogen pointed out.
“Only half?” Sesily retorted, removing her cloak. “You wound me.”
“With that dress, perhaps more than half.”
Sesily looked down at the wine red silk, brand new and cut low and tight enough to display ample breasts. When she stood, it would flatter every swell and curve. As well it should. It had cost a small fortune.
“You’re damned right more than half,” she quipped. She looked excellent.
Imogen snorted, Adelaide shook her head with a laugh and returned her attention to her gossip rag, and the duchess drank her champagne as though she were at court, which Sesily imagined she was. In the two years Sesily had worked alongside her, the duchess had used her wide-reaching influence to solve scores of what she referred to simply as problems—many for the women in this room.
Brutal husbands with heavy hands, fathers and brothers who treated daughters and sisters like chattel, business owners who mistreated their employees, brothel owners who didn’t respect their girls’ work, men who didn’t take kindly to the word no.
Memory flashed—a long ago meeting at Trevescan House, when the duchess had invited Sesily to join her. Proposing a new kind of partnership. One for which Sesily was uniquely qualified. The reckless scandal, who was never taken seriously, and so could move about in full view of the wide world.
Sesily could still feel the way her heart had pounded at the offer—to be part of something bigger than herself.
To trod a new path that had led her here. To this table, three days after she’d given Tilly Fenwick freedom from a marriage that would have destroyed her … or worse.
“What did Miss Fenwick have to say?”
The duchess smiled and tipped her glass in Sesily’s direction. “Well, it began with effusive thanks.”
Pride burst in Sesily’s breast. “The betrothal?”
“It seems Mr. Fenwick has decided that there is little value in having a daughter who is a countess if everyone will call her Countess Rotter behind her back.”
“To her face, at this point,” Sesily said. Society might not be able to remove the title from Totting, but they could eliminate its value for a generation or two.
“And so poor Tilly lives to be married off another day,” Adelaide said from behind her newspaper.
“Well, now that Tilly Fenwick has such a committed group of benefactors … her father may be required to think twice next time.”
“Lucky girl,” Sesily offered, casually.
It was the truth. While many of the motley, raucous crowd at The Place marveled at the duchess’s immense power and how she did her best to use it for good, far fewer recognized that she’d aligned herself with a far-reaching network of some of the most fearsome women in London … including the trio who joined her that night.