Lady Second, flustered at being caught criticizing a potential duke, grasped at another topic. "Oh, I remember that scientist brother, the one named Orion. The nonsense those Worthingtons named their children!"

The two indulged in a gleeful tsk-tsk before the second lady continued. "It was rumored that Orion Worthington was headed for greatness in the world of scholarly pursuits — that is, until he fell passionately in love with that bluestocking ward of Sir Geoffrey Blayne. I heard that Francesca girl was half-Italian, so who knows what madness she caused in that household? Sir Geoffrey is still locked away in Bedlam, is he not?"

Lady First nodded with a satisfied purr. "Quite so. Then there was that other young lady, a cousin, I believe. An uncommonly pretty girl, that Bliss Worthington. We all thought she was heading toward a very satisfying union with the young Duke of Camberton — until she ran away in the middle of the night and wed his bastard brother instead! Who in their right mind would choose an illegitimate ship captain over a duke? Who were her parents, did we ever learn? Well, no matter. It turns out she was just another mad Worthington after all!"

Lady Second shivered with delicious dismay. "And there is the silent brother, the darkest one, Lysander Worthington, the one who never truly came all the way back from the war. Goodness, I wonder what will become of him?"

CHAPTER 1

Chapter 1

IF THE DEVIL KEPT sheep — and Lysander Worthington, of the London Worthingtons, had no reason to suppose that the devil didn't keep a fiendish herd in some fiery version of the Yorkshire Dales — then the devil would have had Lysander's adversary as his personal pet ram. The creature had surely come straight from hell.

I was only riding through. Just through the blasted village and out again.

It wasn't simply the eerie narrow iris of the ram's eye. All sheep had a similar gaze and Lysander had met a few perfectly angelic woolly creatures in his thirty-one years. It wasn't the ram's multicolored face, splotched with black and white in a highwayman's larcenous mask. Lysander's own mount, his brother's fine riding horse Icarus, had a striking white blaze down his nose, and Icarus was as well behaved as any slightly nervy thoroughbred could be.

Perhaps it was the creature's curling horns that twisted a bit wrong, spiraling straight out from each side of its hellish head like armored corkscrews. The cruel projections had clearly been waxed to a fine shine by the ram's attentive owner. Lysander had a light-headed vision of a scarlet-skinned devil, cooing fondly at his straggle-woolen pet whilst stropping the beast's horns with a polishing cloth.