Lena had never met a Mr. Thornwell. And none of their acquaintance should know the Neybridges were in Wittenden. Perhaps this was an agent going by another name, sent with a message for Mr. Neybridge. But if so, why hadn’t he gone by one of a dozen secret keywords given to Lena and Mr. Neybridge so that they would recognize any Ramparts agents sent with messages for them? Melinda looked confused and glanced at Lena with raised eyebrows. To Lady Faine, she said, “I am afraid I am not acquainted with him.” “Perhaps he is known to Mr. Neybridge,” Lena said. “We should greet him, if you would not mind, my lady.” Melinda turned to Lena with eyebrows raised. “Oh yes,” she said in a flat voice, “I so enjoy meeting complete strangers in the absence of my father.” Lena turned to her with a too-wide smile and an aggressive twitch of her eyebrow. “If he is indeed an acquaintance of Mr. Neybridge, would it not be better to see his face so that we may tell your father all about him later?” ...

Michael slipped unnoticed into the antechamber and retrieved his own cloak, hat, and gloves. He had ridden in a hackney to the party, and so he walked to the corner and hailed another one, giving the name of a street a few minutes away, but on the edge of a less affluent part of town. The brothel was discreet, without a sign. Once inside the unmarked door, the entry hall had a closed set of double doors to the right, guarded by two very tall and broad men in livery, and a servant’s door directly ahead in the shadow of a set of stairs leading to the next floor. Michael didn’t acknowledge the two door guardians and instead headed up the stairs. The narrow hallway was dimly but elegantly lit by brass wall sconces, set into the striped wallpaper. Each door had a numbered brass plate, and Michael entered number six. He thought at first that the room was empty, but then he felt the hard, cold barrel of a pistol against the back of his head, and he froze. He raised his empty hands and ask...

I was writing the below dinner scene in Lady Wynwood’s Spies, Volume 4: Betrayer , and since I wanted to be authentic, I went looking in some antique cookbooks that had been published around that time period. In the cookbook, The Experienced English Housekeeper by Elizabeth Raffald , I found an interesting recipe, Hare Soup. (If you click the link, you can download a pdf copy of the scanned antique book.) The book was reprinted many times over the Georgian and Regency eras (the edition I was looking at was published in 1808, which is 3 years before the events in Lady Wynwood’s Spies ), so this soup would have been served at Laura’s dining table. Laura’s heart ached for Phoebe, and she had prayed over her niece. But Phoebe hadn’t appeared calmed by the prayer. She declined dinner and retreated to her room down the hallway, and so now Laura was sitting to a solitary meal. After Aya had set a bowl of hare soup in front of her, she asked the question Laura had been expecting. “What wi...

Mr. Norton is a gentleman spy for the Crown, but he broke every rule in his agency to save one woman's life. Now his superior officer has come to collect. Norton was about to settle down to a delicious dinner prepared by his club’s cook and a bottle or two of wine when a man seemed to appear out of thin air. “Norton,” the harsh voice said. The tall, spare man addressed him familiarly, but there was no warmth or cordiality in his grating tones. Norton liked to play the reckless fool, for it caused men to underestimate him. In actuality, while his actions were usually very daring, most of the time he had already looked at the situation and conjured up a dozen different ways that everything could go wrong, and considered what he might do in response if any of those occurred. So he had accustomed himself to a certain level of preparedness no matter where he found himself, and he did not like being surprised. But this man, being here and approaching Norton, was not only a surprise,...

It was only a torn piece of paper—until Phoebe turned it over. A piece of watercolor paper wasn’t something Phoebe would have expected Mr. Coulton-Jones to carry with him when meeting someone about a horse. But after what happened today, she began to suspect that there was much about him that was unexpected. Perhaps the smooth facade he showed to the rest of the world was far more fake than she had realized. She flipped the piece over. A circular symbol had been drawn on the paper, but the majority of it was missing because of the torn edge. The symbol had two long narrow leaves radiating from the center, and the stalks of two flowers in between the leaves. She gasped and nearly dropped the paper. She recognized this symbol. Or rather, it triggered a hazy memory from her childhood. She had seen the symbol carved into wood somewhere, but she couldn’t remember where or when. She remembered the smell of dust and maybe a bit of dirt and mold. She also knew that the symbol was circu...

Most of us have never been a debutante, but historical romance readers can imagine the flutter of a first Season—the nervous anticipation, the whispered judgments, the delicate balance of being noticed without being too noticed. For modern sensibilities, the Regency debut can feel both enchanting and impossibly rigid. At its heart lies a simple but loaded question: at what age was a young woman considered ready to enter society? In Jane Austen’s world, the answer was far more fluid than a single birthday. A girl was “out” when her family declared her available for courtship, and this could happen anywhere from fifteen to twenty or even later, depending on family circumstances, maturity, and social strategy. Take Lydia Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. At just fifteen, she is already “out,” attending balls and flirting shamelessly. Austen uses her to show the dangers of launching a girl too early—Lydia’s impulsiveness and lack of guidance lead to near-ruin. By contrast, her older sis...

Mr. Coulton-Jones didn’t see Phoebe because she was sitting behind the enormous flower arrangement, but he had just approached a man who stood against the wall near the fireplace. Mr. Coulton-Jones’s fine, coffee-brown hair had been forced into a fashionable style, and his cravat was elegantly tied, his shirt-points high but not overly so. His jacket was perhaps a couple of years old but not out of style, and it suited his muscular physique admirably. “Aunt.” Phoebe nodded toward the two men. “He only just arrived a moment ago.” She wasn’t certain how she ought to feel upon seeing him again. Now that she knew the connection between the symbol she had found on the Heath, her late Uncle Wynwood and Uncle Sol, Mr. Coulton-Jones’s meeting with that strange man took on a more sinister cast. Was he involved in something to oppose the government or the war? Because if Uncle Sol were investigating something for the Home Office, it possibly involved one of those two. Yet remembering her co...