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From across the room Pamela caught Clive’s gaze and smiled an intimate smile at him. Their exchange of glances was not lost on his two friends. Gentlemen inclined to wager on such things as a married woman’s first lover had put their money on his rivals. Clive enjoyed the satisfaction of knowing that tonight those bets were lost.

“Now that you’ve stolen the fair Pamela from under our noses, Walhouse, the least you could do is stake us to a rouleau for the EO table. Each,” Archer suggested.

“Of course.” Clive had no objections. With his father enjoying George Fawkener’s vast fortune, Clive at last had an allowance that permitted him to live like a gentleman and not a mere clerk. He offered Archer a fat wad of notes, and when the two friends went in search of the EO table, Clive resumed his study of Lady Pamela’s bosom.

Since his university years he had been poor Walhouse, the butt of jokes, the one fellow in his circle of friends with barely enough money to scrape by from one quarter to the next. Poverty had ultimately obliged him to take a job in the Foreign Office as an undersecretary to Lord Chartwell. It was the sort of position for which he had been told to feel grateful as the son of a titled but impoverished gentleman. Clive, however, had been unable to summon much gratitude for a position that required piles of tedious work and a degree of anonymity that grated on his sense of himself. He had ideas. He wished to be heard. But no one solicited his opinion or imagined that he had one.

He had chafed under the burden of mounting debts, which arose not from extravagance, but simply from the effort to live as a gentleman in London, and he resented the duns that gathered on the family doorstep. His father only gave a helpless shrug at the duns and pointed out that Clive had been provided with a fine education and could make his own way in the world. “And besides,” his father had added, tossing a scrap of paper at him, “Fawkener may die, and with the entail I’ll inherit his bloody fortune.”

The words on that paper started Clive thinking how handy it would be if his father’s cousin Fawkener, on assignment for the Foreign Office in some benighted place of sunbaked camel dung and feuding warlords, would die. From that moment Clive had taken an interest in George Fawkener’s career. Clive supposed he would have gone on toiling for Chartwell and hoping for news of Fawkener’s demise except for Lady Pamela. One night at an endless musicale while watching Lady Pamela slide her fan along the thigh of the scandalous Lord Blackstone, Clive had confessed his hopeless infatuation to Malikov. His career frustrations and his family’s appalling dependence on an inheritance that might never come got mixed into his account of the folly of Lord Chartwell.

His Russian friend reminded him to be patient and offered the comfort of the old saying that—Graveyards are full of indispensable men. The sympathetic count further suggested a way that Clive could earn some money while he waited for George Fawkener’s inevitable demise. If Clive were willing, he could help Malikov shape a more favorable political climate for himself back in Russia.

After that, Clive’s job had become easy and profitable. It was nothing to slip a letter here, or a document there to a man Malikov knew in return for the allowance Clive’s father could not provide. Almost at once he had been able to enter the competition for Lady Pamela’s favors, and he had seen what even Malikov missed, a way to the lady’s heart. And now with Fawkener’s death, Clive had resigned his post under Chartwell. He could at last live as a gentleman with no need to work or to sell scraps of paper. And he had Pamela.

He smiled as Malikov at last headed his way. Though Clive no longer helped his friend directly, they remained on good terms. Really, it was impossible to be at odds with the affable Russian. Malikov moved in the first ranks of London society and knew nearly everyone connected with the Foreign Office. He had come to England at the end of the long war with Napoleon and found it convenient to remain. With his easy manners and tall, fair good looks he was invited everywhere. Tonight the count’s apparent good humor left Clive unprepared for the sober face that looked into his when his friend approached.

“You’ve had bad news about the situation in St. Petersburg?” Clive asked, straightening from the wall.

“Not at all, my friend.” Malikov glanced at Lady Pamela. “You’ve won the fair lady, I hear.”

Clive permitted himself a grin.

Malikov gave him a congratulatory thump on the shoulder. “I knew you’d be the one, no matter the odds in the clubs. You’ll make her happy.”

The count studied him rather earnestly.

“But you didn’t come to congratulate me, did you?”

Malikov looked down into his drink, giving the wine a swirl in the glass. He shook his head. “Ah, no. My news concerns you, my friend. Nothing, perhaps to be too alarmed about, but nevertheless, a prudent man…” The count glanced around the room as if they might be overheard, but there was no chance of that.

Clive saw that Pamela was absorbed in the game and that the pile of chits in front of her was still sufficient for her to continue playing. “Tell me.”

“Your cousin’s daughter has returned to England.”

“Her return was to be expected, wasn’t it?” He studied the count’s face and found it surprisingly blank, devoid of its usual sympathetic warmth. “Jane Fawkener inherits next to nothing, a thousand pounds at most.”

“It’s not the immediate loss that should concern you.”

“What then? She has no legal recourse, has she?”

“She’s gone to the Foreign Office.”

Clive swallowed a substantial mouthful of claret. Malikov was making him uneasy, and he suspected the man enjoyed it. “Well, then I think my family has nothing to fear. We all know the level of confusion and error that reigns in that department.”

Malikov laughed, though Clive noted a distinct lack of warmth in the sound.

“Jane Fawkener claims to have proof that her father is alive.”

“Alive?”

Malikov watched him carefully.

Clive felt his self-command was just equal to that scrutiny. “Unlikely, isn’t it? And the Foreign Office will hardly act on some waif’s hopes.” He took another swallow of his wine.

Malikov’s glance shifted to Pamela. “You’re right, of course. I mention it only because apparently the Foreign Office tried to pass her off to your family, and your mother declined to take her in.”

“You think we should?”