The Devil You Know (The Devil DeVere #3)(10)

Caroline slanted DeVere an inquiring look. His lashes fluttered briefly, he seemed to tense for a moment, and then he slumped back in his chair. Her hand returned to the table.

“Perhaps she just didn’t care for his philandering ways?” Diana suggested tersely, feeling more than a slight affinity to the duke’s daughter.

“But it is a man’s world.” DeVere gave a smug smile and raised his glass.

Diana felt her hackles rise. “So you believe all women should blindly accept profligacy and faithlessness in marriage?”

“Let us say, she would be much more content who does.”

“I differ with you on that score, my lord,” the duchess remarked. “I say the sauce for the gander is just as good for the goose.”

DeVere’s expression hardened. “Speaking as one with no personal inclination toward monogamy, my answer is then why wed at all?”

Caroline gave him a petulant look.

“More wine!” DeVere called out, breaking the strained silence. He took another great draught, and then his genial mask returned. “Where was I now? Ah! Conjugal felicity! This is precisely where the story gets interesting. Five years into their less-than-fruitful marriage, Lady Baltimore took a fatal fall from her husband’s phaeton.”

26

Victoria Vane

“I remember hearing of this!” Caroline declared. “He was highly suspected of foul play. After all, how can one possibly fall from a moving carriage unless it has overturned?”

“No charges were filed against him?” asked Annalee.

“None,” remarked DeVere. “One of the many privileges of being a well-connected peer of the realm. Yet suspicion lingered, so Baltimore left the country again, hoping the scandal would die down. He spent an extended period in Italy and then went east-ward, living amongst the Turks until he was forced to leave Constantinople for fear of his life.”

“Why would his life be endangered?” Hew asked.

“Because a Christian there is regarded in much the same manner as Jews here. Their existence is tolerated, but their rights are few. They are not permitted to own property, buy slaves, nor inter-marry with the Mahomedans. The penalty for any of these is death.”

Ned sat back, swirling a finger around rim of his glass with a puzzled expression.”Why would Baltimore need to buy slaves when he travelled with a full retinue?”

“Did I say he bought slaves?” DeVere asked with a sly smile.

“You don’t mean to say he married a Turk?”

“Not one, dear Ned, but a half-dozen of them,” DeVere corrected.

“The devil you say!” Ned exclaimed.

DeVere laughed. “I assure you ‘tis true! He set up his own private seraglio.”

“Seraglio?” Annalee turned to her husband. “What is a seraglio?”

Ned flushed. “It is a polygamous arrangement, my love, favored by many in the uncivilized world. Also known as a harem.”

DeVere grinned. “Now perhaps you understand why this house is constructed with so many separate living apartments?”

Ned was incredulous. “You can’t mean he kept a harem here? ”

“I can, and he did,” DeVere replied. “Though the tale grows more illicit still.”

“How is that even possible?” asked Annalee.

“Apparently, even a half-dozen concubines were not enough to satisfy Baltimore’s carnal appetite. He ordered the construction of another house in London to better accommodate his adopted 27

lifestyle and then secured the services of a number of...procuress-es to keep him supplied with fresh conquests.”

Diana was aghast. “It’s illegal and immoral! I’ve never heard anything so shocking!”

“Because you live in the country.” The duchess chuckled.

“There is all manner of intrigue in London. It is a most diverting place. But polygamy and private prostitution? Flouting the law on such a grand scale? How deliciously dissolute. I marvel that he got away with it.”

“Only for a time, my dear. For our bold Baron Baltimore became obsessed with a young woman he could not procure for any price, a comely Quakeress who reputedly kept a milliner’s shop at Tower Hill.” He paused in his narrative, his lips curving at his guests’ rapt expressions.

“Finally, a bit of virtue enters into this sordid tale,” Hew remarked.

“Though virtue and vice divide the world, vice has by far the better share,” quoted DeVere.

“None can argue that,” said Ned dryly.

“Well, what happened to the girl?” demanded Annalee.

“He abducted her, of course,” DeVere said.

“Impossible!” Edward scoffed. “This is melodrama worthy of the Drury Lane Stage. Surely you have fabricated this entire story just to entertain us.”

“I wish I were making it up. But since you doubt me…” DeVere stood and strode from the room, leaving his guests with puzzled frowns. He returned a few minutes later, with a yellowed news journal in hand. He dropped it in front of Ned.

“Why I’ll be…hung,” his friend murmured at the headline dated March 1768. “So the devil was caught red-handed.”

“He was tried for abducting and ravishing one Sarah Wood-cock, but acquitted after less than two hours deliberation. It is all there in sordid detail in the Gentleman’s Magazine. ”