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“Are you ashamed to be seen with a harlot, then?” she teased with a pout, playing with a loose curl of her wig.

He walked up to her, so close her breasts touched the front of his coat. His fingers traced her cheek, then lower. He let his hand move past her collarbone and down the center of her chest.

Her breath hitched, the pulse visibly drumming against her throat.

Ford’s own heartbeat accelerated, he had to remind himself it was a game.

“If you think that just because I am a harlot, you get to touch me where you please, you are mistaken.” Yet her voice was oddly breathless.

“Am I?” he murmured. “But what if I want to seal the deal with a kiss.”

She looked straight into his eyes. “I thought you considered kissing a harlot to be unseemly. Unimaginable.”

“Perhaps I don’t want to imagine it.”

He lowered his head and kissed the juncture between her shoulder and her neck. She tensed in his arms, her breath hitching, her breasts pressing against his chest.

Ford’s cock awakened and stood proudly, straining against the breeches. The damn harlot was so alluring he’d almost forgotten his aim.

He peppered his kisses on her shoulder, while his arm circled her waist. With his other hand, he silently retrieved the papers she’d secured behind her chatelaine. He quickly slipped them into his pocket, as his lips traced her skin up her neck. He didn’t want to stop. And yet…

“It was a pleasure, Madame Tricheuse,” he whispered hoarsely into her ear, then took a step back before diving toward the exit and quickly slipping away.

* * *

Ford stepped out of the carriage in front of a beautiful townhouse. He hadn’t been to Mayfair in a while. He’d almost forgotten how lavish this area was.

He made his way to the front of the door of one of the houses and had barely knocked when the door swung open, the lean face of an old butler studying him down his nose.

How the old man managed to look at him down his nose, although he was shorter than Ford, was a mystery. Perhaps a long-time practice of serving aristocratic homes.

“How can I help you, sir?” The butler’s voice was even.

“I beg an audience with your master.” Ford handed the butler his card and the man dipped inside, leaving Ford waiting on the doorstep.

Ford looked down at his worn-down, unsophisticated attire. No wonder he was being treated worse than a servant. Perhaps the butler thought him to be a beggar.

Ford swallowed a laugh, imagining the expression on the poor butler’s face if Ford had brought Madame Tricheuse with him as she wanted.

When the door opened again a few minutes later, the butler’s demeanor had changed. He opened the door wide and let him in with a shallow bow. “Welcome, Mr. Gunning. His lordship will welcome you in the study.”

“I know the way, thank you.” Ford interrupted the butler’s attempt to lead him and made his way toward his old friend’s study.

Ford had known Blake since their debauched youth when the future earl did not quite discriminate whom he drank and whored around with. He had led quite an adventurous life, until the day he was abducted and thrown onto a slave ship.

After escaping and returning, he had turned a new leaf, but he hadn’t forgotten Ford’s friendship, especially since Ford had helped him once or twice since.

As Ford entered the study, he stopped short, taken aback by the fact that the earl wasn’t alone. His friend, Viscount St. John, sat across from him.

Ford stifled a groan. He didn’t exactly like the man. It didn’t help that he didn’t trust him, either.

A few years ago, the whispers of the secret society, The Shadows, appeared in every corner of London. The rumors painted them as vile monsters and murderers, while in reality, deep research into the roots of the group informed Ford that they were a group of vigilantes. Tasked, in all of things, to rid the world of other, more nefarious secret societies, like The Brotherhood of the Crimson Fist.

That was why he wasn’t exactly surprised at the idea that Erebus was the real perpetrator of the crimes. After all, the victims were all members of the Brotherhood.

And he was pretty certain—almost completely certain—that Viscount St. John was in fact a part of The Shadows.

Could he trust St. John? Probably not.