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removing her.”
    Remington did indeed know her. In point of fact, he had been dodging her for two days. She had besieged his house with missives, sent her personal servants to his offices to insist he call upon her, then, late in the day, had arrived in person at his offices, causing him to have to flee down his own back stairs like a thief trying to avoid detection. Notes, messengers, and even her personal appearance at his office he might have withstood with some grace. But to invade his male sanctum, his club. And White’s, of all places! Had the harridan no decency at all?
    Roiling up out of his well-controlled depths came a surge of righteous anger. If years of dealing with her and the others like her had taught him anything, it was that decency was usually too much to expect of a woman. And this one was worse than most. He was sick to death of her incessant demands, hysterical appeals, and strident dependence. He paid her bills, oversaw her investments, and even pacified the household retainers who had to put up with her. But it was never enough.
    Well, this time she had pushed him too far. He fixed the beleaguered steward with narrowed eyes and a taut half smile that contained equal measures of fire and ice.
    “Do what you will with the woman, Richards. It is none of my concern.”
    Turning a shoulder on the steward’s confusion, he settled back in his chair and beckoned to the barman, calling for a new deck of cards and a fresh bottle of Scotch. He met Woolworth’s startled look with a vengeful smile. “It appears I won’t be leaving just yet. Cards, gentlemen?”
    The steward came running back moments later, ashen and wringing his hands. “My lord, my lord! That female person—”
    Behind him, above the drone of voices, came the sound of a woman’s scream. Talk in the bar ceased, play in the billiards room halted, and every breath in both rooms was bated in shock.
    Remington swore mentally, tightened his grip on the cards in his hand, and ignored her. But the termagant held an unexpected trump card: his name. “Remington Carr, how dare you refuse to see me!” she screamed. “I know you’re in there! Let go—unhand me, you thug! Remington, you cannot abandon me—ohhh—”
    Every eye in the bar turned in his direction, and a general murmur of outrage rose from the far end of the room. But he braced to weather the humiliation, telling himself it could not be the first time a scheming female had penetrated the club’s pristine male provinces. He had to stand his ground and refuse to allow her outrageous behavior to draw him into a public row. There was nothing for it but to gut out the embarrassment. He took a deep breath and steeled his tautly stretched nerves.
    “Good God,” Everstone said, shoving to his feet when the struggle made it to the door of the bar. “She’s got past Richards—she’s headed in here!” Several of his table mates lurched to their feet, their expressions ranging from fascination to terror.
    “Dash it all, Landon,” Woolworth demanded, staring frantically between the fracas in the doorway and Remington. “You must
do
something, man!”
    “So I must,” Remington said with seething calm, considering the pasteboards in his hand. “I’ll have three cards.” Adamantly oblivious to the wild tussle going on just thirty feet away, he laid three cards down on the tabletop and waited for the dealer to fulfill his request.
    The others gazed, confounded, between the porters grappling with the woman calling Remington’s name and his towering indifference to the spectacle. Never in their lives had they seen a more audacious display of coolness under fire. This incident would undoubtedly go down in clubmen’s lore along with the time old Lord Glasgow flung a waiter through a window and gruffly told the club secretary to “put him on the bill.”
    “Well, gentlemen, are we playing or not?” he demanded, seeming decidedly more concerned with the delay of the game than with the