"Viscount's upstairs." The body belonging to the hand was skinny, the narrow face weasel-like, with a pair of very long incisors that jutted beyond the thin lips. The man jerked his head toward the stairs. "First door on the left." Then he slithered away into the shadows beyond the staircase.

George, his scowl deepening, stomped up the stairs, which were thick with dust. His eyes were red with drink and burned with a rage so fearsome it was almost inhuman. George Ridge was a goaded bull, only one thought and one aim in view. Vengeance on the man who had ordered him thrashed like a serf. A vengeance he would obtain through Juliana. The Duke of Redmayne had made it painfully clear that Juliana's health, reputation, and general well-being were vitally important to him. Juliana would burn at the stake in Winchester marketplace. And before she did, her stepson would possess her… would bring her arrogant contempt to the dust. He would see her humbled, he would see her protector powerless to protect. And with her conviction he would regain his own inheritance.

He pushed open the door at the left of the staircase. It creaked on unoiled hinges, revealing a sparsely furnished apartment, its air of neglect failing to mask its handsome proportions and the elaborate moldings on the ceiling.

Lucien was slumped in a sagging elbow chair by a grate filled with last winter's ashes. A cognac bottle was at his feet, another, empty, lying on the threadbare carpet. A glass dangled from his fingers.

He jerked upright as George entered. "Dick, you bastard, I told you I… oh." He surveyed his visitor with an air of sardonic inquiry. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"You're going to help me," George stated. He bent to pick up the cognac bottle, raised it to his lips, and drank deeply.

Lucien's eyes sharpened. Something very interesting had occurred. Sir George had lost his air of bumbling, overawed ineptitude.

"Help yourself, dear boy," Lucien invited, his languid tone belled by the arrested look in his eyes. "There's more where that came from. At least I trust there is."

"Thankee." George drank again, his throat working as the fiery liquid burned down his gullet to add fuel to the fire that raged in his belly.

"So how can I be of assistance?" Lucien took back the bottle and tilted it to his own mouth. "Damnation, it's empty! Ring the bell for Dick, dear fellow." He gestured to the frayed bell rope beside the door.

George pulled on it, half expecting it to come away in his hand, but faintly, from the bowels of the silent house, came the jangle of the bell.

"I am going to take Juliana," he said, pacing the room, each movement generating a painful stab, reminding him with hideous clarity of his humiliation at the hands of the duke's groom. "And this time I'll not be stopped."

"Oh?" Lucien sat up, the gleam of malevolent curiosity in his eye intensifying.

"I intend to abduct her tomorrow," George said, almost in a monotone, as if he were reciting a well-learned lesson. "I will have a closed carriage ready, and we'll take her immediately to Winchester. The Forsetts will be compelled to identify her if the magistrates demand it. And there are plenty of other folk in the neighborhood who'll recognize her. She won't have that devil to run to, and once she's locked up in Winchester jail, there'll be nothing he can do to save her."

Lucien tugged his right earlobe. "Something happen to rouse you, dear boy… Ah, Dick. Bring up another bottle of that gut-rotting brandy."

"Not sure there is any," the surly manservant muttered.

"Then go and buy some!"

"Wi' what, m'lord?" he demanded with a mock bow.

"Here." George dug a note from his pocket and handed it to him.

"Ah, good man!" Lucien approved. "Get going, then, you lazy varlet. I'm dry as a witch's tit."

Dick sniffed, pocketed the note, and disappeared.

"Impudent bugger," Lucien observed. "Only stays around because I haven't paid him in six months and he knows if he leaves before I'm dead, he won't see a penny. So," he continued with another sharp glance, "why the urgency about this abduction?"

George was not about to reveal to his malicious partner what the duke had done to him. He shrugged, controlled a wince, and said, "I've an estate to get back to. I can't hang around here much longer. But I need your help."

Lucien nodded. "And what incentive are you offering, dear boy?"

George looked startled. He'd assumed that Lucien's own desire for vengeance would be sufficient incentive. "You'll have her in your hands," he said. "You can have her first… for as long as you like."

He was astounded at the look of repulsion that crossed the viscount's expression.

"I want to be rid of her, man. Not have her," Lucien pointed out disgustedly. "I thought you understood that. You lay charges against her. I can repudiate her. Tarquin is helpless and mortified. The girl is destroyed. But I ask again, what incentives are you offering for my assistance?" His eyes narrowed.

George's puzzlement deepened. "Isn't that enough?"

Lucien chortled merrily. "Good God, no, man. I'll have a thousand guineas off you. I think that would be a reasonable remuneration. Depending, of course, on what you have in mind." He leaned back, crossing his legs with a casual grin.

George struggled with himself for barely a moment. He could lay hands on a thousand guineas, although it went against the grain to throw it down before this loathsome, grinning reptile. But he needed the viscount's help.

"I need you to help me get her out of the house," he said. "We have to go in there and winkle her out."

"Good God!" Lucien stared at him, for the first time startled out of his indolent and cynical amusement. "And just how do you propose doing that?"

"At dead of night. We go into her room. We overpower her while she's sleeping and we carry her out of there." George spoke with the flat, assertive confidence of a committed man. "You'll know where her room is. And you'll know how to get undetected into the house."

"What makes you think I can perform such miracles?" Lucien inquired with a lifted eyebrow.

"I know you can," George responded stubbornly. "You lived in the house. You probably have a key."

Lucien resumed the gentle tugging of his earlobe. He did have a key to the side door, as it happened. He'd had one copied several years earlier when he'd still been a lad. Tarquin had been an exasperatingly strict and watchful guardian, and Lucien had had frequent resort to subterfuge to evade both the duke's rules and his guard.

"Perhaps I do," he conceded after a minute. "Getting in might not be too difficult, but getting out again, with that red-haired virago screeching and fighting, is a different matter."

"She won't make any noise," George asserted in the same tone.

"Oh?" Lucien inclined his head inquiringly.

"I'll make sure of it."

Lucien examined his expression for a minute, then slowly nodded. "I believe you will. I almost feel sorry for my lady wife. I wonder what could have happened to arouse such vicious urgency in your breast, dear fellow." He waited, but no explanation was forthcoming. Ridge's reticence increased his curiosity a hundredfold, but he was prepared to bide his time. "There's one other small difficulty," he continued in a musing tone. "My estimable cousin has the chamber next door to our quarry. I daresay he finds the proximity convenient."

"You know for a fact that Juliana is his mistress?" George's voice was thick. He knew it, but he wanted it confirmed.

"Why else would my cousin take such an interest in the wench?" Lucien shrugged. "I've never known him to take a woman under his roof before, either. I suspect he'll be most disconcerted to lose her." He grinned. "I think I can contrive to lure my cousin from the house tomorrow. It would be best if he was elsewhere while we're abducting his doxy… Ah, at last… Dick with the cup that cheers. We will drink a toast to this enterprise. Set it down there, man. No need to pour it. I've strength enough for that."