“They expect everyone and everything to shift around them,” he continued. “They always get what they want—no thought to the cost to those around them. You have a little of it yourself.” He glanced at me, softening the statement with a small smile. “I used to walk like that too—a long time ago—until the other prisoners reminded me I owned nothing. I was nothing.”

Although I wanted to know what had happened to him—I wanted to know everything about him—I did not ask how he had been “reminded.” Painfully, I suspected.

And I? As an earl’s daughter, I did expect the world to bend my way, although of course on many occasions it did not because of my sex. Now that I thought about it, I certainly held an expectation that my wishes and wants held intrinsic importance. Yet here sat Evan, living proof that it was all arbitrary. He had held such a belief, too, and lived that belief, until he had been forcibly reminded that it was built from hierarchies, traditions and laws that were designed to keep people in their place. A place in life that was believed to be God-given and therefore immutable: Long Sal had certainly believed that. And yet it was another pillar of society that my newfound apostasy could not help but question. If there was no God, then rank could not be God-given. It was not immutable.

Lud, if I was not careful, I would be joining a Thomas Paine society soon and risking life and limb for reform.

I looked back at the three men as they entered the club, the athletic man first, then the stout one, and finally Whitmore behind them. No doubt that order was also governed by status. England was, if anything, an island of rank. So who were the athletic devil and the mid-rank king?

It transpired that half past eleven was the arrival time for the club. More masked men arrived in evening clothes, with one group escorting five women. They were, it seemed, of Harris’s higher order of demimonde, for they all wore clean gowns, prettily styled hair, and reasonable slippers. One even had the trappings of gentility—she wore a plainer, respectable gown with her hair arranged in a neat middling braided style and no rouge or lip color.

“She does not look like a Covent Garden girl,” I said. Was this one of Long Sal’s cits or genteel girls? “She looks as if she belongs in a drawing room.”

“She is probably just dressed up to look genteel. There are men who like to pretend to rape respectable girls. A specialty.”

“Really?” I shook my head; I could not fathom such a debased predilection.

All five women were clearly inebriated, for they were stumbling and lurching upon the arms of their masked escorts. One was also singing a rather bawdy shanty in a tuneless voice, which the others were trying, unsuccessfully, to hush.