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,...