Annesley leaned back in his chair, a flash of contempt on his changeable face. “You’ll regret this, you know.”

“Considering all I have to regret, this is negligible. Good-bye, Annesley. And good riddance.” Chase turned on his heel and left. The second he was outside, he stopped, lifted his face to the cooling breeze, and took a long, deep breath.

Around him, London trembled and toiled, carriages clattered down the streets, linkboys shouted, people scurried by, heads tucked against the swirl of dust and grit that lingered in the air. It was London in the spring, awakening after a long and bitter cold and shaking off the fetid fumes of a freezing winter held at bay with grim determination and tons of bleak coal fumes.

As ugly as it was, it was still home. Still where he’d grown up. It was a pity he had to leave it all behind. London and his family. His chest curiously tight, Chase turned and walked down the street, away from White’s. Away from his lodgings. Away from everything and everyone he’d ever known.

And it was only the beginning. If he was to make this journey successfully, he had to face both him self and his past. And face it, he would. One way or another.

At White’s, still comfortably seated at the table, Harry Annesley sipped his port and stared at the empty chair opposite his. Chase St. John was right about one thing—Harry Annesley was not what he seemed. Despite his fine clothing and his practiced ways, he was not a wealthy man at all. He was not from Wiltshire. He’d never inherited a house from his uncle. And his fortune was not tied up in a legal dispute. Nor had his father left him anything more than a pile of duns and a childhood of memories tainted by bruises and blood.

Harry had made his way on his wits and charm alone, watching with interest the rise of a man named Beau Brummel, the son of a tailor who’d breached the highest echelons of society with nothing more than his biting wit and impeccable dress. Harry thought that he could go one better, forging letters of introduction to gain entrance into places like White’s and Almack’s. He was accepted, but only because he was a personable young man and because he made it his business to know just how to dress and exactly how to act.

At first, Harry confined himself to married women who had access to their husbands’ fortunes and were not averse, in exchange for certain favors, to making sure Harry’s rent was paid and his wardrobe developed to the highest degree. Careful never to cross the lines of propriety, at least while in public, he became the preferred escort of half the married ladies of the ton, whose tolerant husbands would demand to know who their wives were going to the ball with, only to receive an airy, “Oh, it’s only Harry Annesley,” which earned an indulgent, “Well, then, madam. You may go. So long as it’s Harry and no one else.”