Chapter 1

VOLUME ONE: LOVING LADY LAZULI

Sometimes we are drawn to people with terrible flaws in them because passion overrules reason.'-Carol Balawyder

Berkshire England 1809

Ten years for a kiss. Yes. Devorlane Hawley, the fifth Duke of Chessington, could understand his companion wanting to get this straight. Ten sodding years. Imagine. What he'd have gotten for a bleeding fuck wasn't worth considering, especially given he'd just finished indulging in the said activity.

"Probably more." Edging himself free of the woman facing opposite, he let the clatter of hooves echo in his head as the coach rattled forward. "But let's keep this decent, shall we, Charlie? It happens I do have sisters, you know."

"Sisters? You, Guv?"

"Two of them. For the time being anyway."

It was bad enough the first time he'd told that story, ten years ago, in his crass, blundering naivety and blind stupidity, to those he'd thought might help him. Now that the coach finally clattered up the driveway, he was hardly about to expend further precious time wondering just how many more years might have been lost, not when he needed to prepare himself for what lay ahead.

Nor, when his immaculately pressed trousers had cost a fool's fortune, did he want them creased or stained. His best as what he intended looking here today.

Chessington. The place he had sworn never to return to, not even in a box.

Chessington. The place of ivory turrets and golden crenulations.

Chessington. Whose front door had been slammed in his face so acrimoniously that frost-flecked Christmas Eve.

Chessington ...

Devorlane glanced through the steam blighted window. Not eagerly exactly-at least, he tried not to be, for all a thousand memories drew his sleeve, worse,his gaze, and even worse it nearly drew him to leap up and press his nose to the pane for a better view.

Chessington-damn it all to hell and back-seemed to have shrunk since that door had reverberated inches from his nose, despite the glowing palette of late autumn sunlight painting the stone. How the hell as that? He remembered it bigger, much grander, with ornate statues on the sweeping green lawn and, beyond the bare trees, spaces that boasted gilded cupolas, bowers festooned by a scented myriad of roses, that even on a winter's day held fascination in their black roots and thorny stems. A twisted paradise. A place of awe and wonder, he'd only ever had to stand on the doorstep of to breathe the rose-scented air.

Memory? A kittle thing for all it didn't alter his plans one solitary jot. Whether the building was small or large, was no odds to him.

The coach rumbled to a halt and he strove, when so much was required of his dignity, not to throw open the door and clamber out, in anything less than a leisurely fashion. Lucifer re-ascending to heaven would take his time, savor the moment. So would he.

Although, standing on the rough stone of what was now his doorstep, he admitted the house looked ... poorer ... dilapidated. A place from where the soul had fled, as opposed to a place he fully intended flaying the soul from. The plant pots crumbled around their desiccated contents. Grime from the week's earlier storms coated the windows, peeling paint, the woodwork.

Eyeing his reflection darkening the coach window, he drew his brows the tiniest fraction, straightened his cravat, however. He looked like an uncertain prince of darkness perhaps. But damned diabolical as ever. He took a deep breath.

Ten years. To think there were times he'd been on the verge of letting go. How damnably glad he was he had resisted the temptation. Would he stand here now, staring at himself in the plate glass, older, harder, his boyish looks vanished, if he had done anything so inconceivably foolish? No. Which was why he squared his jaw and smoothed the tendril of flat, dark hair the wind had coaxed free. He had come to do this and do this he would. Keep this decent? Hell wouldn't just crust with ice first, its fiery core locked in subterranean depths for centuries to come. Hell would be obliterated. It would be their faults. Those who had disowned him without a thought for his welfare.

"Let's get on with this, shall we?"

"Hell and damnation, Guv." When it came to admiration, Charlie could barely suppress his, as he stumbled down from the coach. "You got a flagpole'n everything. My lot would have counted themselves lucky ter have afforded the bleedin' flag."

True. Which was why Devorlane's veins sang that his current good fortune could be shared with those far less fortunate than himself. Charlie. And this ... striving to find the words to describe the rare jewel he had scouted the sewers and whorehouses of London to find, he came up short enough as to be speechless. An exceptional occurrence, but one that certainly boded well, where the present occupants of Chessington were concerned.

"'Ow! A cut above moine then. He'll be wanting us ter call him His bleedin' lordship now, Charlie. Just you watch this space. And him a bleedin' thief at that. Did you ever? I mean, look at the size of this bleedin' place. Out of our depths here, I'd say." The rare creature adjusted her voluminous pink skirts.

He extended a hand and drew her down from the coach. He didn't know her name. He didn't need to. He didn't want to know, any more than he wanted to know any of their names. Those cheaply perfumed whores. Those exotic creatures of the night, who for years had satisfied his every whim. Every craving and carnal requirement.

All he knew was that none, no matter the essence of their perfume, or accomplishment of their ruby lips, the throaty edge to their voice, or the intoxicating softness of their skin, were her.

The name he'd remember till the day he died.

The name he cursed to the furthest regions of hell.

Sapphire.