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married a Turk?”
    “Not one, dear Ned, but a half-dozen of them,” DeVere cor-
    rected.
    “The devil you say!” Ned exclaimed.
    DeVere laughed. “I assure you ‘tis true! He set up his own
    private seraglio.”
    “Seraglio?” Annalee turned to her husband. “What is a sera-
    glio?”
    Ned flushed. “It is a polygamous arrangement, my love, fa-
    vored by many in the uncivilized world. Also known as a harem.”
    DeVere grinned. “Now perhaps you understand why this
    house is constructed with so many separate living apartments?”
    Ned was incredulous. “You can’t mean he kept a harem here? ”
    “I can, and he did,” DeVere replied. “Though the tale grows
    more illicit still.”
    “How is that even possible?” asked Annalee.
    “Apparently, even a half-dozen concubines were not enough
    to satisfy Baltimore’s carnal appetite. He ordered the construction
    of another house in London to better accommodate his adopted
    27
    lifestyle and then secured the services of a number of...procuress-
    es to keep him supplied with fresh conquests.”
    Diana was aghast. “It’s illegal and immoral! I’ve never heard
    anything so shocking!”
    “Because you live in the country.” The duchess chuckled.
    “There is all manner of intrigue in London. It is a most diverting
    place. But polygamy and private prostitution? Flouting the law
    on such a grand scale? How deliciously dissolute. I marvel that
    he got away with it.”
    “Only for a time, my dear. For our bold Baron Baltimore be-
    came obsessed with a young woman he could not procure for any
    price, a comely Quakeress who reputedly kept a milliner’s shop
    at Tower Hill.” He paused in his narrative, his lips curving at his
    guests’ rapt expressions.
    “Finally, a bit of virtue enters into this sordid tale,” Hew re-
    marked.
    “Though virtue and vice divide the world, vice has by far the
    better share,” quoted DeVere.
    “None can argue that,” said Ned dryly.
    “Well, what happened to the girl?” demanded Annalee.
    “He abducted her, of course,” DeVere said.
    “Impossible!” Edward scoffed. “This is melodrama worthy of
    the Drury Lane Stage. Surely you have fabricated this entire story
    just to entertain us.”
    “I wish I were making it up. But since you doubt me…” De-
    Vere stood and strode from the room, leaving his guests with puz-
    zled frowns. He returned a few minutes later, with a yellowed
    news journal in hand. He dropped it in front of Ned.
    “Why I’ll be…hung,” his friend murmured at the headline
    dated March 1768. “So the devil was caught red-handed.”
    “He was tried for abducting and ravishing one Sarah Wood-
    cock, but acquitted after less than two hours deliberation. It is all
    there in sordid detail in the Gentleman’s Magazine. ”
    “What then happened to the girl?” Annalee asked.
    “The jury believed she made no sincere effort to escape her
    captor. The broadsheets further claimed that while Baltimore was
    undoubtedly guilty, neither was she truly innocent.”
    “How horribly unfair for the victim to be painted with the
    same brush as the perpetrator of the crime!” exclaimed Annalee.
    DeVere shrugged. “As I said, it is a man’s world.”
    28
    Victoria Vane
    “I marvel that you have taken such a very keen interest in this
    Lord Baltimore,” Diana remarked.
    “I am so easily bored that you might say he has become my
    hobby,” DeVere said. “His life has provided me endless enter-
    tainment. I have acquired his diaries and travel journals, and
    my agent even now seeks to purchase the notorious Bloomsbury
    House from the Duke of Bolton.”
    “Why on earth would you desire such a tainted thing?” Diana
    asked.
    DeVere cocked a brow. “Must I have a reason? ”
    “But what happened to him in the end?” Annalee asked. “You
    said the scoundrel was acquitted. Was he never held to account
    for his crimes?”
    “Can one ever truly escape one’s sins?” DeVere asked, waxing
    philosophic. “No