Chapter One

London, 1814

Shadows sculpted his sharp profile as he watched the crowded ballroom from the dim, high balcony; in the oscillating glow of the draft-buffeted wall candle, he seemed to flicker in and out of materiality like some tall, elegant phantom. Its shifting radiance glimmered over his raven-black hair and caught the Machiavellian glint of cunning in his quicksilver-colored eyes. Patience. Everything was in order.

Preparation was all, and he had been meticulous. With a musing expression, Lord Lucien Knight lifted his crystal goblet of burgundy to his lips, pausing to inhale its mellow bouquet before he drank. He did not yet know his enemies’ names or faces, but he could feel them inching closer like so many jackals. No matter. He was ready. He had laid his trap and baited it well, with all manner of sin and sex and the siren’s whisper of subversive political activity that no spy could resist.

There was nothing left to do now but watch and wait.

Twenty years of war had ceased this past spring with Napoleon’s defeat, abdication, and exile to the Mediterranean island of Elba. It was autumn now, and the leaders of Europe had gathered in Vienna to draw up the peace accord; but any man with half a brain could see that until Bonaparte was moved to a more secure location farther out in the Atlantic, Lucien thought dryly, the war was not necessarily over. Elba was but a stone’s throw from the Italian mainland, and there were those who opposed the peace—who saw no profit for themselves in the Bourbon King Louis XVIII’s return to the throne of France and who wanted Napoleon back. As one of the British Crown’s most skilled s