The Naked Viscount-Sally MacKenzie

Chapter One

Edmund Smyth, Viscount Motton, tested the French window. It opened easily. Tsk. The butler was shockingly lax or, more likely, drunk as an emperor.

He pushed the window all the way up and stepped into poor, dead Clarence Widmore’s study. The Parker-Roth ladies were currently in residence; he should drop a word in Parker-Roth’s ear. Stephen would want to know his mother and sister were not being properly looked after. This was London, after all. Any sort of riffraff might try to break in.

Motton took a candle from the mantel and held it to the embers in the fireplace. It flared to life.

Of course, if Parker-Roth were living under this roof, he’d already know of the problem, but he couldn’t fault the man for wanting to keep his own rooms. He’d like to do the same–the aunties were driving him mad. Winifred had arrived today with her parrot and monkey, so now all five of his paternal aunts and their pets were in residence. Zeus. Bedlam might be quieter than his town house at the moment. The worst of it was the women were convening to mount an attack on his single state. Aunt Winifred’s arrival was especially alarming. She was a wily campaigner. He would have to be extremely alert until she returned to the country.

He surveyed the room. Damn, it would help if he’d been given a hint where to look. Searching through every book for this mysterious sketch of French spies the Earl of Ardley wanted would keep him here until tomorrow. The Parker-Roth ladies would not be out that long.

He opened the nearest book and ruffled its pages. If he wasn’t Widmore’s neighbor and hadn’t been so damn bored, he would have politely–or not so politely–declined Ardley’s request. The man was a pompous ass with a decidedly odd kick to his gallop. But when Ardley had cornered him at White’s, he’d been in the doldrums. The jollifications of the Season were wearing very thin and even his extracurricular activities–tracking down and eliminating underworld vermin–were proving painfully frustrating.

If only he could discover the identity of the man behind so much of London’s criminal activity, but he’d been stymied at every turn. Everyone knew the miscreant only as “Satan.” He was beginning to believe the fellow was indeed the incorporeal spirit of evil.

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