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The tall ruffian shoved another clodpole out of the way and pushed forward. "All this daring and daunting will burst your stays, my fair delicates. And all for what? The smallest problem: one chick, and two hens wanting her. Lots of chicks about, aren't there? Not worth disturbing the King's peace and annoying the constables, is it? Certainly not."
    He drew out his purse. "Here's what we'll do. A screen apiece for you, my dears
    —and I'll take the little one off your hands."
    Lydia recognized the distinctive accents of the upper orders, but she was too outraged to wonder at it. "A screen?" she cried. "Is that the value you place on a human life? One pound?"
    He turned a glinting green gaze upon her. Down upon her. He topped her by several inches, no common occurrence in Lydia's experience.
    "From what I've seen of your driving, you place no value on human life whatsoever," he said coolly. "You nearly killed three people in the Strand in the space of a minute." His impudent gaze drifted over the assembled audience.
    "There ought to be a law against women drivers," he announced. "A public menace."
    "Aye, Ainswood, be sure to mention it in your next speech in the House of Lords," someone called out.

    Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion
    "Next?" cried another. "More like the first—if the roof don't fall in when he staggers into Parliament."
    "I'll be blowed!" came a voice from the back. "That ain't Ainswood, is it?"
    "Aye, and playing King Solomon, no less," someone from the front shouted back. "And got the wrong mare by the tail, as usual. Tell His Grace, Miss Grenville. He's put you down as a Covent Garden abbess."
    "No surprise," said one of his fellows. "Took the Marchioness of Dain for a tart, didn't he?"
    That was when Lydia realized who the lout was.
    In May, a drunken Ainswood had encountered Dain and the marquess's bride at an inn on their wedding night, and refused to believe the lady was a lady, let alone Dain's wife.* [* See Lord of Scoundrels , Avon Books, ©1995.] Dain had been obliged to correct his erstwhile schoolmate's misapprehension with his fists. The incident had been the talk of London for weeks afterward.
    Small wonder, then, that Lydia had mistaken His Grace for another Covent Garden lowlife. By all accounts, the Duke of Ainswood was one of the most depraved, reckless, and thickheaded rakes listed in Debrett's Peerage —no small achievement, given the present lamentable state of the aristocracy.
    He was also, Lydia saw, one of the untidiest. He'd apparently donned his expensively tailored garments days earlier and had debauched as well as slept in them. He was hatless, and a shock of thick chestnut hair dangled over one eye, which like its mate evidenced months of insufficient sleep and more than sufficient dissipation. His only concession to basic grooming had been letting someone shave him recently—probably while he was stupefied by drink.
    She saw more than this: the hellfire sparking in the green depths of his gaze, the arrogant tilt of his nose, the hard lines of cheekbone and jaw… and the devil's Loretta Chase - The Last Hellion
    own curve of a mouth, promising everything, ripe for laughter, sin, what have you.
    She was not unaffected. The devil in her, one she normally kept well concealed, was bound to be drawn to its counterpart in him. But she was not a fool, either.
    She knew well enough that this was a rogue's own countenance, and she could sum it up in one word: trouble.
    Still, this rogue was a duke, and even the worst of noblemen had more influence with the authorities than a mere journalist did, especially a woman journalist.
    "Your Grace, you've mistaken only one of us," she said with stiff politeness. "I am Grenville, of the Argus . This woman is a known procuress. She was luring the girl to a brothel, under pretext of taking her to Bow Street. If you would take the bawd into custody, I shall gladly accompany you there and testify—"
    "She's a false, scheming liar!" Coralie cried.