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with his beautiful courtesan. He wanted children with a carefully chosen wife of impeccable pedigree and high social standing.
    Under his breath, he cursed the damned Black woman again and felt rage well in his stomach to sour the hopes he’d had to reclaim Arabella this afternoon. What good were money and a fine name when he couldn’t keep a beggarly little nobody from sneaking into his life like a thief and stealing away someone he treasured most deeply?
    Now Miss Black was staring down the barrel of his pistol, and he intended to pull the trigger. Not literally, of course, but she had to pay for her interference. He wouldn’t be satisfied until she was destitute and begging on the streets for moldy bread crusts, and hiking up her skirts for any man with the jangle of coin in his pocket.
    A slow grin passed over his face. Such an unseemly fate would certainly wipe the pinched line off her spinster’s mouth and knock the haughty and disrespectful glint out of her eyes.
    The coach slowed. “Collingwood House, Your Grace.” Pulling his mind from thoughts of revenge, he looked out the window at his home, a monolith of gray stone and red brick, a pair of columns bordering the entrance of the mansion. The home had been his family’s residence for two hundred years, ever since his great-great-grandfather won it over a hand of cards.
    Nicholas always wondered if the old man had cheated. It wasn’t common knowledge among the Ton that his ancestor sometimes donned a highwayman’s mask to recoup his gambling losses, but rather a carefully guarded family secret. Any whispers of such a scandal had been only that, whispers.
    The Drake name was one of the oldest in England and highly revered. Any ancestor who might have veered slightly off the proper ducal path to engage in nefarious behavior did so under the cover of darkness so as not to soil the family title.
    Yet, with the money and power Nicholas had at his disposal, and Collingwood House, he still couldn’t keep one mistress content under his care.
    Perhaps she would still be happy had she not crossed paths with Miss Black. The woman clearly put thoughts in her head that had no place being there. Arabella had been satisfied with their arrangement. He was as sure of it as he was of his own name. And he’d been content.
    Sighing, Nicholas climbed out of the coach and walked up the stone steps, the slightest of nods his only acknowledgment to his butler, Alfred.
    Alfred nodded. “Your Grace.”
    All sorts of wicked possibilities for extracting his pound of flesh from Miss Black tumbled in Nicolas’s head, each worse than the previous one. Most ended with her chained hand and foot for a year or two in a dank dungeon.
    However, he knew he’d do her no physical harm. He couldn’t go that far. No, she had to suffer in other ways; deep, dark, devious ways that showed no scars. His father had taught him the art of subtle torment, and for a second he recognized the old man in himself. He quickly brushed off the association. Miss Black was not his mother. The woman deserved her comeuppance.
    But he needed help with his plans, for a man of privilege did not soil his hands doing nefarious deeds.
    He paused outside the library and turned back to Alfred. “I need you to fetch Mister Crawford. Tell him I have another job that requires his special talents.”
    Alfred nodded his graying head. “Yes, Your Grace.”
    Nicholas slipped into the library and poured himself a brandy. The high-backed leather chair conformed to his body as he tugged his cravat loose and let the heat of the fire ease some of the chill in his bones. This space was his favorite when he had troublesome thoughts on his mind. The smell of dusty old books, a painting of his mother over the fireplace, boyhood memories of her laughter as she pulled some treasured book off the shelf always filled him with warmth and contentment.
    Not today. Nothing could ease his sour stomach and take away his anger. With Arabella in