Three Nights with a Scoundrel (Stud Club #3)

“Lady Lily,” Meredith began, “I know you are anxious. But even if there is danger, our husbands are better equipped to handle it than most men.”


Lily ignored her. “If they went to meet prisoners being released … How many prisons are there? The Fleet? Newgate? Bridewell? And so many more, just in London alone. Oh, but a London jail makes no sense. Why would they ride out on horseback? It must be somewhere further away.”

Amelia touched her wrist, then waited for her attention. “Lily, my dear—”

Lily cut her off. “I know what you’re going to say, Amelia. That our husbands have the situation in hand, and we can only make a muddle of things by interfering. But I know you’re wrong. I can’t tell you how I know, but I know. Julian would not have left me that letter if there was no reason to fear.” She took a deep breath. “Now, the two of you can either help me find him … or you can leave, and I’ll do it myself.”

Meredith sighed. “Rhys gave me no details about their destination. He said only that they were riding into the country.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know any more than that,” Amelia said. “I confess, when Spencer’s talk turns to horses and riding, I don’t always listen so closely as I ought.”

“We need a list,” Lily said. “A list of prisons and jails within easy riding distance.”

“Even if we obtain such a list,” Amelia asked, “what will you do with it? We can’t possibly go searching in every direction at once.”

Lily dropped her gaze and blinked back the tears of frustration stinging her eyes. Crying wouldn’t help matters.

Her attention was jerked upward by a flurry of rainbow-hued feathers. Tartuffe swooped the length of the drawing room, circling back to perch on the chandelier.

“Damnable bird,” she cursed up at him. “How did you escape your cage?”

Amelia clapped with astonishment. “Is he yours?”

Lily nodded.

“He’s lovely,” said Meredith. “And he seems to share your distress over Mr. Bellamy’s fate. He keeps singing his name. ‘Oh, Julian,’ he says. Over and over. ‘Oh, Julian.’” She chuckled. “And now, ‘Guilty, guilty.’”

“He belonged to a barrister once,” Lily explained. “And yes, he has quite a fondness for Julian’s name.”

Something pecked at her memory. A line from Julian’s horrible, heartbreaking letter.

I’m a bastard, a scoundrel, and as you’ve said, an unmitigated ass. Even the damned bird knows it’s true.

Just what did this damned bird know about Julian? Guilty, guilty indeed.

“Don’t … you … move,” she warned the parrot, slowly backing away. Once she’d reached the room’s exit, she darted into the corridor and found two footmen standing there.

She snapped her fingers at the first. “You—bring quill and paper.” She swung her gaze on the second. “Run and ask Cook for a dish of minced fruit and nutmeats. And both of you, be quick.”

They dispersed as ordered, and Lily returned to the drawing room. It was a wild, likely futile idea, but it was the only idea she had.

“Amelia,” she said, retaking her seat and keeping her eyes trained on the feathered menace overhead, “I know you are a duchess, and this task is horribly beneath your station in life. But I must ask you to do it anyway.”

“Whatever can you mean?”

The footman arrived with paper and quill, and Lily waved him toward Amelia, saying, “I must ask you to take dictation from a bird.”

“What time are they set to be released?” Ashworth asked.

Extricating his boots from the squelching marsh, Julian climbed a small ridge and squinted toward the Thames. In the deep center of the river, the prison hulks floated at anchor—skeletal, rotting corpses of ships, stripped of masts and sails. Retired from their work as sailing vessels, now serving as overflow prisons for convicted felons.

“After the day’s work,” he answered. “This time of year, labor ends at four o’clock.”

“Odd, isn’t it?” Ashworth mused. “That they put convicts to work around all those weapons and guns?”

“I reckon the officers watch them close.”

Longboats ferried the prisoners back and forth from the shore, where they spent their days laboring in the Woolwich Warren, England’s largest armory. To the south of where they stood now, a large wall rose up from the marshland, enclosing the Warren—a maze of shipyards, weapon foundries, powder magazines, and more.

“Four o’clock?” Morland consulted his timepiece. “It’s not yet noon. We have plenty of time, then. Let’s take a meal at the inn beforehand.”

They’d ridden out from Town before dawn, tracing the Thames some distance on its journey toward the sea. Around daybreak, they’d come within sight of Woolwich and the fleet of hulks. They’d stabled the horses at a nearby inn and set out on foot to scout the area.

“Let’s go over the plan again,” Julian said.