Lucien Tregellas. Margaret McPhee

      Not so very far away in Brooks’s Club on St James’s Street, Cyril Farquharson was also sipping brandy. His attention was not on the small circle of fashionable gentlemen with whom he was sitting. Indeed, Lord Farquharson’s thoughts were concerned with someone else entirely; and that someone was Miss Madeline Langley. The whores at Madame Fouet’s had been meagre rations to feed his appetite. Five years was a long time to starve. He had grown tired of them. They were too willing, too coarse and worldly wise, and, even though they role-played otherwise, that fact detracted something from the experience for Farquharson. And he was tired too of Tregellas’s constant watching, his constant waiting. Damn the man for curtailing the best of his pleasures. But Farquharson would be held in check no longer. He hungered for a gentlewoman, someone young and innocent and fearful, someone with that unique je ne sais quoi; in short, someone like Madeline Langley.

      She had taken years in the finding, but Farquharson had known that Madeline was the one from the moment he had seen her. She was quiet and reserved and afraid of him, all the things he liked in a woman. He played with her, like a cat played with a mouse. He liked to see her discomfort when he stepped too close or lingered too long over her hand. He liked the way she tried to hide her fear and her futile efforts to avoid him. Dear, sweet, fearful Madeline. He meant to take his pleasure of her…in the worst possible way. If the empty-headed Mrs Langley was determined to dangle her delicious daughter before him in the hope of trapping him in marriage, who was he to refuse the bait? Cyril Farquharson was far too cunning to be caught. So he had enjoyed his game with Madeline Langley until Tregellas had entered the scene.

      The interruption in the Theatre Royal during the play had been an irritation. Tregellas’s dance with the girl at Lady Gilmour’s ball went beyond that. It smacked of more than a desire to thwart Farquharson. Tregellas had not looked at a female in years, and now he had waltzed with the very woman that Farquharson held within his sights. Perhaps Tregellas had an interest in Miss Langley. There was an irony in that thought. Lord Farquharson mulled the matter over. By the time that he finished his brandy and headed for home, he knew just what he was going to do. In one fell swoop, not only would he secure Miss Langley to do with whatsoever he might please, but he would also effectively thwart any move that Tregellas might mean to make. And that idea appealed very much to Cyril Farquharson. He smiled at his own ingenuity and looked forward to Madeline Langley’s reaction when she learned what he meant to do.