There was, however, an incipient frown in her eyes, a slight line between her brows.

Before he could ask, she volunteered, “That wretch Dalziel isn’t here.”

“He’s never attended any of our weddings. Didn’t the other ladies tell you?”

“They did, but given the timing, his absence today is, in my opinion, taking the whole thing simply too far.”

He hesitated, then asked, “What thing?”

She looked at him, then shook her head. “Never mind. You’ll learn all about it soon enough-any day, as it happens.”

Any day?

Christian knew well enough that he would get no more from her. Jack Warnefleet had confirmed that his wife, Lady Clarice, also knew exactly who Dalziel was. The others, including Jack Hendon, who like the rest of them had become obsessed with learning Dalziel’s true identity, had grumbled and admitted they now believed all their wives knew the truth-and none of them would say. Regardless of the persuasion, the interrogation tactics employed.

That they’d worked so closely with the man for the past decade and more yet still didn’t know his identity irked. Yet it appeared that all the ladies of the ton had colluded in keeping Dalziel’s secret.

“Which is frankly amazing,” Tony later remarked, when Christian, having left Letitia chatting with her cousins, joined the other club members. “There are so many inveterate gossips, you’d swear at least one would be unable to resist whispering his name, but no. On that one subject, total silence reigns.”

The others all grumped, and sipped their wine. They’d gathered just like this at each successive wedding, to toast the man fallen and fix their sights on the next one to go. This time, however, there were no more club members left unwed; consequently their thoughts turned to their ex-commander, who had become an all but formally declared ex-officio member.

But Dalziel wasn’t there to prod.

Justin detached himself from the throng, charmingly disengaging from two young ladies who would happily have continued to monopolize his time-and sought refuge with them. Christian cocked a brow at him.

He grimaced. “I’m seriously contemplating becoming a recluse.”

Deverell grunted. “Won’t do you any good. The more determined will still hunt you down.”

Justin didn’t look thrilled.

“You know who Dalziel is,” Christian murmured. “I don’t suppose, given all is now over and done, that you’d like to share the information?”

Justin hesitated.

They all held their breaths.

Then he shook his head. “I can’t.” He met Christian’s gaze. “The punishment is too dire. But anyway, you’ll know soon enough.”

“Everyone keeps saying that,” Jack Warnefleet complained. “‘Soon enough.’ When is ‘soon enough’ going to be?”

Justin frowned at him. “Well, obviously, any day now.”

“It’s not obvious to us,” Charles replied, his tone threatening all manner of violence.

Justin looked at him, then at the others. “It is obvious. You’ll learn who he is when he resigns his commission and returns to civilian life. And by all accounts that’s any day now.”

That gave them all something to think about. Leaving them to it, Justin slipped away. There was something he needed to do.

He knew the corridors like the back of his hand; avoiding the guests-so many of them female-flitting about, he made his way into the other wing, to the library.

In the wake of Swithin’s babbling revelations, Justin had visited Trowbridge, who had confirmed that the huge investment loss incurred by the earl eight years before, leading to Letitia’s marriage to Randall, had indeed been arranged by Randall, the scheme itself engineered by Swithin.

There was no proof to be had, or ever likely to be found, yet the simple knowledge had cured the malaise that had for years eaten at Justin’s heart.

He entered the library on silent feet. As he’d expected, his father was there, seated in his favorite armchair, a book open on his lap.

The earl had dutifully walked Letitia down the aisle, given her away, then attended the wedding breakfast and made a short speech-surprising everyone by being no more than mildly blunt. Then he’d disappeared.

Justin quietly walked to the chair opposite the earl’s. Halting beside it, he looked down on his sire. “It wasn’t your fault.”

The earl grunted; he didn’t look up. “I know. I just couldn’t prove it. And you…you and Letitia both seemed so ready to believe I’d risk such a lot-your lives, in effect.” One long finger marking his place, the earl lifted his gaze, staring across the room. “But I didn’t. I never would have.”

“No,” Justin said. “We know that now.”

The earl finally looked up, through shrewd hazel eyes scanned his son’s features, then he nodded. “Good.”

With that, he returned to his book.

Justin looked down on his sire’s white head, then his lips curved in a slow smile.

Surveying the nearby shelves, he crossed to one, pulled out a book, glanced inside it.

Then returning to the armchair opposite his father’s, he sat, opened the book on his knee, and started to read.

Back in the ballroom, Letitia swept up to Christian’s side where he stood with his fellow Bastion Club members. They were toasting the last man to fall into wedlock-Christian; she linked her arm with his, smiled graciously, and allowed them to toast her as well.

Christian looked down at her. “One point you can clarify-Dalziel, Royce Whoever-he-is, isn’t married, is he?”

She looked at him, then at them all, eagerly waiting on her answer; she clearly debated whether that information could be shared, then said, “No. He’s not.”

“But,” Charles put in, “he’s the sort of gentleman who has to marry, isn’t he? If he’s a marquess, then that follows as night follows day.”

“So,” Tony suggested, “there’s really one more wedding to come.” He caught Letitia’s eye. “Isn’t there?”

She returned Tony’s gaze; anticipation bloomed, then grew until it gleamed in her eyes. “Yes, indeed.” She smiled ecstatically. “He’ll have to marry. And quite soon-at least if he wants any peace.”

“Once he ends his commission…?” Jack Warnefleet prompted.

She nodded. “Once he goes back to being who he really is, there won’t be a matchmaking mama in London, or indeed the country, who won’t have him squarely in her sights.”

The members of the Bastion Club exchanged a communal glance.

“Now that,” Tristan said, “is a toast we can make with alacrity.”

“Indeed.” Charles, their unofficial toastmaster, raised his glass high. “To the end of Dalziel’s commission. It can’t come too soon.”

With a cheer, they all raised their glasses high and drank.

“And to Dalziel’s bride,” Christian added. “Whoever and wherever she might be.”

Epilogue

Two days later

London

Standing in the center of the study in his elegant town house, Royce dropped the last of the files he’d cleared from his desk into a storage trunk. Chances were he’d never look at them again, but they were, in effect, all that remained as proof of his existence over the past sixteen years.

He stood looking down at the trunk. Felt the full weight of all he’d done, all he’d ordered to be done, over those sixteen years. Knew the price-exacted on so many different levels-he’d paid that it all should be so.

Faced with the same choice, he would pay that price again, regardless.

He’d been barely twenty-two when he’d been approached and asked-all but begged-to take on a very particular commission with His Majesty’s Secret Service. Despite his lack of years, there were few others with connections in Europe the equal of his, still fewer with his talents, with his inherent ability to command, along with the zeal to inspire others with similar background and skills, to willingly go into extreme danger, trusting in him to be their anchor, their only contact, their sole lifeline to safety.

Few who could have, as he had done, readily recruited the best, brightest, and most able of a generation of Guards.

Especially when they hadn’t, quite, known who he was.

Memories threatened to claim him; abruptly shaking free, he stalked back to his desk. Rounding it, he dropped into the leather-covered chair behind it. Once again his thoughts circled; he would have preferred not to indulge them, yet the hour was, it seemed, one for taking stock.

He’d never lost an agent, not one solely under his command. That, he felt, was his greatest triumph.

His greatest failure was equally easy to define; he’d never succeeded in identifying his “last traitor,” a fiend he and his ex-colleagues now knew to be flesh and blood, a man they’d come within a whisker of catching a month ago, but, as always, he’d slipped through their-his-fingers.

Although it went very much against his grain, he’d accepted that he would have to let that failure lie; he’d run out of time.

But as for all the rest-all the years of keeping strictly to himself, a social pariah of his own making, while ruthlessly and relentlessly managing the reins of the agents he’d deployed far and wide across the Continent-he was more than satisfied with what he’d achieved, the contribution he and those men had made to England’s safety over the last fraught decade.

They’d been good men all; some-the seven members of the Bastion Club-he would now consider friends. They’d consistently included him in the adventures that had befallen each of them in returning to civilian life.

Now he faced the same prospect, although he seriously doubted there would be any interesting adventure attached.

Fate, in his experience, was rarely that kind.

His resignation from his commission was effective from that day. He’d spent the last weeks tidying up, writing and delivering the inevitable reports to various ministers and government functionaries.