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Orpheus, and Alynwick and I have taken over the investigation of the House of Orpheus. Although, being allowed admittanceinto the secret club is proving more difficult than either of us had anticipated. Still, Alynwick won’t let it rest.”
    “Alynwick,” Lizzy snorted. “You’ll only find him of use if you can keep him out of the bedchambers.”
    Frowning, he realized his sister was right. Iain, the Marquis of Alynwick, was a rake, and little induced him to be anything but.
    “If Alynwick would put his head into it—and not the one he’s so fond of using—you might discover the identity of Orpheus much faster. Alas, the marquis is selfish and only interested in what amuses him. And it is not, I am afraid, Brethren business. Oh, if only I had been born a male, I would have kicked Alynwick in his rear end, and forced him to remember his oath.”
    Smiling, he thought of Elizabeth as a boy—and a Brethren Guardian. She was brave, smart and so disciplined—not to mention she was the eldest child. She would have made an excellent Guardian—better than him—and she certainly would have given the marquis some much needed grief.
    “Alas, I am only a poor helpless female, concerned only with fashion and fiction. Speaking of that—Lady Lucy and Lady Black are due here any moment. They’re bringing the new penny dreadfuls.”
    Adrian hid his groan. Lucy in his house. He could hardly bear it. But he would, for Elizabeth’s sake. She had very few real friends, and he would never think to deprive her of Isabella and Lucy’s companionship.
    “Now, you know that I don’t condone this…this snooping about, but should I question Lucy about anything?”
    Elizabeth could not see the surprise on his face, but she sensed it.
    “You didn’t think I knew, did you? Adrian, really, she’s my friend. And you’re my brother. I want to help you find the man responsible for stealing the pendant and murdering Mr. Knighton. I want also to keep Lucy out of danger, if indeed she is in danger.”
    “She is,” he growled, “believe me, she is.” He thought of the murderer who had been carrying Lucy’s handkerchief. What the devil had she been about giving a man such as that any token of her affection? A strange sense of betrayal filtered through his blood but he shook it off, determined to try to think of other things.
    “Why don’t you tell me what it is, so that I may aid both of you?”
    He’d kept the secret well-guarded, deep in his heart. It haunted him at night, and he wanted to be purged of it, to forget he had ever discovered it. But was telling his sister the thing to do? Was it betraying Lucy?
    “Adrian?” she asked. “There is no need to war with yourself over this. I just thought, well, sometimes secrets are a burden when one must shoulder them alone.”
    Suddenly he was speaking, not thinking it through, only knowing he needed this, the ability to talk to another soul who might have some wisdom to impart to him.
    “The man who shot Knighton,” he began, recalling the scene a few weeks ago when the pendant, one of the relics the Brethren Guardians were responsible for keeping, went missing, and Isabella’s—now Lady Black’s—former suitor, Knighton, had been found withit. “He was involved with Orpheus. Hell, he might even be Orpheus.”
    Orpheus was a rogue Freemason. Adrian was certain. This Orpheus had an uncanny knowledge of the Brethren Guardians. Their existence was a secret. No one but the three of them and their families knew of it. No one knew that the relics they protected even existed. But Orpheus knew. And so had Wendell Knighton. The urge to find and unmask this Orpheus positively seethed and festered inside him. It should have been because of his oath—the liege he owed to the generations of his family who had successfully kept the chalice and the secret of the Brethren Guardians carefully hidden. But it was not. It was the knowledge that Lucy was intimately acquainted with the bastard that