Despite the Scottish chill that burrowed beneath her clothing and under her skin, Amarantha had discovered that port towns were alike in at least one particular: spending coin was the fastest route to learning anything useful.

“If you be wanting information about a pretty girl traveling alone,” said the proprietor of the eighth pub as he pocketed the shillings she laid before him, “you’d best be asking Mrs. Eagan up at Kirkgate.”

A madam, surely. Where sailors sojourned, there were always women to serve their needs.

“Isn’t that quite a fine neighborhood?”

“Mrs. Eagan’s callers no’ be the sorts to trawl the docks seeking company, lass.”

Even after five years that word—lass—still pinched at the back of her neck. Only one man had ever called her that.

“I see.” Penny would not have willingly sought shelter in a brothel. But if she had been desperate, or frightened . . .

Amarantha set off.

Mrs. Eagan’s house was a modest, Georgian-style building with amphorae overflowing with flowers by the entrance. A footman escorted Amarantha to a pretty parlor that revealed the madam’s fondness for cherubs: chubby little nudes decorated the papered walls, the ceiling, and the mantel.

She smiled. Paul would be horrified that she was seeing this.

But her grin faded swiftly. She had displeased him so constantly that she hardly remembered his face in an attitude of pleasure—except on one occasion, the grand finale to four years of lies.

“Miss Foster?”

Amarantha started. She still hardly recognized her false name, Anne Foster. But it was necessary. Anonymity had already allowed her to search for Penny in places where an earl’s daughter or missionary’s wife would never go.

Mrs. Eagan stood haloed by the gilded door frame. Neither plain nor beautiful, with sweeping brows and straight black hair, she seemed entirely regular.

“Mrs. Foster, actually,” Amarantha said.

“I am Loretta Eagan. What brings you to my home? It cannot be your husband, for at present there are no men in the house except my footman, and he is neither handsome nor wealthy enough to attract a woman of your beauty.”

“You needn’t flatter me, Mrs. Eagan. I have not in fact come here looking for a man.” She extended her hand.

The madam’s grasp was light but it lingered.

“I entertain guests in this parlor, Mrs. Foster. If you have come here seeking work, we must remove to my study for that conversation.”

“I do not seek work here.” A cherub seemed to wink at her.

“You smile,” Mrs. Eagan said. “But you do not smile in derision.”

“I don’t, in fact. But how do you know it?”

“On occasion I welcome into my home women of your quality.”

“Oh? I imagined your callers were—”

“My clients are indeed gentlemen.”

“I don’t suppose you hire these women as housemaids and such?”

Mrs. Eagan’s smile was knowing. “Some are bored in their marriages. Others are confused. Some seek pleasure they are not allowed at home. And some seek forbidden adventure.” Her gaze traveled over Amarantha’s figure. “Have you come here seeking adventure, Mrs. Foster?”

“No.”

“Are you certain?”

“Oh, yes. I have had my fill of forbidden adventure.” Once. Enough to convince her to never seek it again. “Enough for a lifetime.”

“Then what of your betraying smile?”

“I was imagining what my husband would think to see me here.”

“No doubt that you are a woman of passion.”

“No doubt.” The hypocrite. “But I have not come here to speak of me. I seek a friend who disembarked three months ago from a merchant ship. A dear friend. A sister, in truth, through my late husband’s family.”

“How intriguing that a moment ago you spoke of him as your husband only.”

“I have had only the one.”

“A woman of enterprise can possess more than one husband in a lifetime.”

Not this woman.

“Mrs. Eagan, I was told that you take a particular interest in pretty young women who arrive alone in Leith.”

“I do, if they are well-spoken and free of disease. Is this friend also of your quality?”

“She is well-spoken and English, with the accent of those raised on the island of Jamaica. At the time she left home she was in excellent health.”

She seemed to study Amarantha. “How young?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“I might have encountered her.” Moving to a sofa, she draped herself upon it. “But I typically take little interest in mature women. For he does not take any interest in them.”

“He?”

She laid a beautifully rounded arm upon the sofa’s gilded back. “The Devil, of course.”

“The—I beg your pardon, did you say the devil?”

“Have you come from the colonies so recently, Mrs. Foster, that you have not yet heard of the Devil’s Duke?”

“It seems so.” The mantel cherubs grinned. “Is this devil a client of yours?”

“Come, make yourself at ease and I will tell you.”

Amarantha perched on a satin cushioned chair.

“Last autumn a girl from Edinburgh disappeared abruptly,” Mrs. Eagan said. “She was eighteen, attractive, modestly educated, and pious, the daughter of a tradesman of no particular social distinction but comfortable income, and a maiden. Her name was Cassandra Finn.”

“Was?”

“Three months later, another girl disappeared. This time it was a laborer’s daughter, also lovely and young, but unlike her parents she was schooled.”

“Well-spoken too?”

The madam nodded. “And betrothed to be married to a man who would lift her from poverty into respectability. Her name was Maggie Poultney.”

“You have twice said ‘was.’ Are Miss Finn and Miss Poultney now deceased?”

“The Edinburgh police believe they are.” Fingernails painted crimson stroked the gilded wood. “Cassandra Finn’s abductor—”

“Abductor?”

“—left no trace of her behind. But Maggie Poultney’s cloak was discovered. Drawn in chalk on it was a peculiar symbol: a star with three additional symbols at three points.”

“How curious.” Amarantha shifted on the soft seat, impatience jittering in her empty stomach. She had not traveled all the way to Scotland to hear tales of runaways and occult symbols. “Mrs. Eagan, I wonder if I could describe to you my—”

“And blood, Mrs. Foster.”

“Oh. On Miss Poultney’s cloak?”

“Yes.”

“Why do the police believe that a devil abducted them?”

“They found the cloak at the edge of his property. Several months later, another girl went missing. Her name was Chloe Edwards. From the gentry.”

“The police have not yet discovered the whereabouts of the three girls, I assume?”

“Four girls. Again, the discovery was at the edge of his property. This time it was her lifeless body.”

“Good heavens.” Amarantha folded her hands. “I believe I understand now your interest in young, lone women. You wish to protect them, don’t you?”

“To warn them, Mrs. Foster. And to teach them how to withstand the dangerous allure of the unknown.”

Amarantha could not believe that she had sailed thousands of miles from her husband’s church to sit in the parlor of a brothel in which young women were cautioned to avoid temptation.

“Mrs. Eagan, who is this man whom the police believe is perpetrating crimes, and why do you call him the Devil’s Duke?”

“Not only I. Everybody.”

“In Leith or Edinburgh?”

“In Scotland. Even London. His infamy has spread far beyond Edinburgh.”

Not to Kingston. But news traveled slowly across the ocean.

“Why has he such a dramatic name?”

“Surely it is obvious. He is the devil incarnate, living alone, eschewing society, speaking to none, plotting evil deeds, and then in the dark of night venturing forth to destroy innocence. The name suits him ideally.”

“Interesting. The devil I have heard preached in pulpits always seems remarkably active in people’s lives, encouraging them to bad behavior.” That devil had been one of her husband’s favorite topics, especially when he was vexed with her. “But I suppose the double D has a pleasantly alliterative ring to it. What of that other part of the name? Why do they call him a duke?”

“Because he is a duke.”

“A duke? An actual duke?”

Her hostess nodded.

“A titled lord?”

“Yes.”

“The police and everybody in Scotland believe a peer of the realm to be an abductor and murderer of maidens? Because the body of a young woman was found near his estate?”

“Not his principal estate. Rather, the property he owns in Edinburgh.”

“Mrs. Eagan, for five years I lived on an island about which English people regularly tell stories of heathen rituals and dark magical goings-on, none of which I ever actually witnessed. Nor has anybody that I know. It is all hearsay and exaggeration of matters that outsiders do not understand. Englishmen adore believing in fantastical stories.”

“These are not stories, Mrs. Foster, nor fantasy. There is proof.”

“A symbol written in chalk on a cloak?”

“The same symbol is carved in stone on the lintel of the gate of the duke’s castle. That castle is quite close to Edinburgh.”

Emily’s dear friend, Constance Read, was the daughter of a duke whose estate was near Edinburgh. But surely a man of the Duke of Read’s stature would not be mistaken for a criminal. On the other hand, Amarantha’s pious missionary husband had in fact been a cheating bigot.

“You asked if the Devil’s Duke was a client of mine,” Mrs. Eagan continued. “He never was. But I have made his acquaintance. A year ago, I was hostess at a dinner party for a gentleman of means in Edinburgh. The duke was a guest that night. Mrs. Foster, you have never seen a man more suited to villainy. He is handsome in a dark, formidable manner, and powerfully formed. He spoke to few. Throughout the evening he studied all of us as though he had particular use for each person at that gathering, as though he were surveying his prey in preparation for the black mass over which he would preside later that night.”

“This party occurred before the first of the maidens disappeared?”

“Several months before Cassandra Finn’s disappearance.”

“And did he?”

The madam tilted her head. “Did he . . . ?”

“Did he host a black mass that night at which he sacrificed some of your party guests?”

Her nostrils flared. “Jest, if you will, Mrs. Foster. He is a dangerous man.”

“Mrs. Eagan, you have succeeded: my curiosity is now thoroughly aroused. Will you tell me the name of this dark lord whom everybody fears so greatly?”

“But of course.” Her fingers stroked the elaborately carved edge of the sofa again. “He is Gabriel Hume, the Duke of Loch Irvine.”