The following afternoon, St. Clare returned from Jackson’s Boxing Saloon, his mind still in a state of turmoil. Exercise usually served to settle it, but not today. No amount of sparring had calmed him, not even during those minutes when he’d imagined that his opponent was Frederick Burton-Smythe.

Entering the marble-tiled hall at Grosvenor Square, he divested himself of his hat and gloves and handed them to Jessup.

“Lord Allendale requests your presence in the library, my lord,” the antiquated butler said.

St. Clare ran a hand over his rumpled hair. “Now?”

“Immediately upon your return. He was quite clear on that point.”

St. Clare made for the library. If his grandfather wanted to see him so urgently, it was nothing to the good. Best to get it over with.

He entered without knocking, finding his grandfather seated behind his carved mahogany desk. His head was bent over what looked to be a newspaper.

“You wished to see me?” St. Clare crossed the thickly carpeted floor to stand in front of him.

The library at Grosvenor Square was a masculine room, smelling of pipe smoke and leather. Wooden shelves lined the walls, sagging under the weight of old books and new ones. Volumes on travel, archaeology, and natural history abounded, stacked on every available surface. They were complemented by inlaid tables draped in maps of the world, and a magnificent terrestrial globe standing in a tall carved frame.

Allendale looked up from his paper. He scowled. “Back at last, are you?” He gestured to the leather-upholstered chair in front of his desk. “Sit.”

St. Clare sat down. “You expected me sooner? I can’t think why.” His grandfather had known he was going to Tattersall’s this morning, and then to Jackson’s Saloon after that. “We agreed at breakfast that we’d dine together before attending Lady Colchester’s ball.”

“That was this morning. Before I saw this.” Allendale thrust his newspaper across the desk.

St. Clare retrieved and opened it. But it wasn’t a newspaper at all. It was a gossip rag. One of the most unsavory, too. A veritable scandal sheet. He skimmed the small, smudged black print before looking up at his grandfather with a scowl. “What—”

“The second page,” Allendale said. “Quarter of the way down. Under that bit about the opera dancer.”

St. Clare looked again. This time he saw it. Indeed, he wondered that he hadn’t noticed it the first time. It was written there, plain as day, under the heading Tittle Tattle of the Fashionable World:

At long last, the Earl of A— has returned from exile, accompanied by his golden heir. But was the mysterious Lord S— born on the right side of the blanket?

St. Clare lowered the paper back to the desk. A chill settled into his veins. “Is that all?”