There was a pause. Patrick threw Braddon an amused glance. “You’re an easy target, aren’t you?” He fell back a pace and walked next to his friend. “You tell me when she’s found a house and I’ll plunk down the blunt for half,” he said as their boots clattered through the empty marble halls. Viscount and Viscountess Dewland had long ago retired to bed and only a weary-eyed butler bade them good night.

“I can sport the blunt,” Braddon said, his tone defensive.

“Well, I can buy and sell you,” Patrick drawled, “and I’d like to contribute to Arabella’s house.”

Braddon looked at him, his light blue eyes unenvious but curious. “So did you really come back from India as rich as a nabob, then?”

Patrick shrugged, tossing his hair back from his eyes. “M’father sent me out East by myself, you know. Not much fun raising hell without Alex. It seemed to come naturally.”

And it had. His mercurial, mocking nature took infinite pleasure in the delicate rhythms of Indian negotiation and export.

Designing trade routes, finding rare spices, loading the holds of ships with delicate gold bird cages, rippling silk so delicate that it tore at the touch of a fingernail, and casks of peacock feathers, pleased him. He took great risks and received greater rewards. At the moment, his fortune was to be rivaled in England only, perhaps, by those of his brother and a few others. Those London gentlemen like Braddon who limited their financial ambition to training a horse for the next Ascot were a dying breed.

Alex stepped into his carriage with a wave. Patrick shrugged off Braddon’s plan to visit the back door of the Duke’s Theater and then, in a sudden decision, waved off his own coachman as well. He stood in the deserted street, watching his well-slung carriage disappear around a corner.

A light rain had begun to fall. London was ripe with the smell of settling dust and horse manure. Patrick settled his cloak and started down the street, his legs eating up the pavement. As he walked, tension uncurled from his leg muscles and his stomach lost a knot he hadn’t been aware of. His scalp eased.

Patrick had walked the hot breathless alleys of Whampao Reach, Canton, strolled under the delicate arches of Baghdad, tramped the byways of mountain villages in Tibet. It was when he was ambling along a small back street in Lhasa that he’d heard a chorus of avadavats singing: the small black and red songbirds that he had later exported to England, and that had become the rage in London.

He wasn’t much of a sleeper at the best of times. It was while walking that ideas floated into his mind, unbeckoned. But now Patrick brooded rather than thought. Even the memory of the sweet curves of Sophie York’s breasts—exposed to the whole world in that ridiculous gown she was wearing!—made his loins tighten. And so he strode on, telling himself to cut Sophie from his mind.