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dignity. Nor would he take his business to Covent Garden’s
filles de joie
. This was not to say he was a stoical celibate. No, the Mayfair Stallion was a furious, frustrated, fidgety and inappropriately tattooed celibate. To make matters worse, the bruises slowly resolved to reveal the tattoo’s full, unwelcome glory. The duke’s mood soured apace.
    His grim thoughts turned to the benefit of finding a cloistered, far-sighted virgin to marry and have done with it. Have done with the last vestige of his feckless bachelor’s existence? It was such a lowering thought.
    The Duke of Ainsworth remained out of the public eye as the last of aristocratic London emptied. He, too, eventually retired to Grayfriars Abbey the family seat in Hempstead to stew in exasperated solitude.
    Throughout the winter, his shoulder complained, refusing to heal properly. It remained vehemently tender and weak. He could afford England’s best doctors but they all wished to bleed him so he refused their services. He had bled more than sufficient amounts in June and still felt a few pints low.
    Ainsworth didn’t know if he would ever recuperate fully. No matter. When, not if, he discovered the little creature who tattooed him — even if only one of his arms functioned — he would strangle her somehow.

Chapter 4
In which our heroine cannot let sleeping dogs lie.
    S candal sheets and print shop illustrations depicting the Duke of Ainsworth’s amorous exploits as the Mayfair Stallion found their way to Bath throughout the autumn. In October, satirist George Cruikshank published a cheeky illustration of the handsome duke as a lusty centaur on a bridle path lined with short, buxom women standing on mounting blocks, waiting their turn to ride. In November and December prints appeared showing still other ladies riding him in Hyde Park or in a formal dressage ring.
    In the little stone cottage on Henrietta Street across the river from Bath, Prudence Haversham happened to read a particularly lurid account of the duke’s latest, rumored conquest.
    “Obviously,” Prudence said tartly, “the Duke of Ainsworth has no reason to complain about our little peccadillo. He’s in fine form, tattoo notwithstanding.”
    “Mayhap revealing it’s part of the seduction,” Mrs. Mason joked. “Bound to make an impression.”
    “I, for one, cannot imagine why ladies are in such raptures over him,” Prudence huffed. This was patently false, given how her body reacted whenever she recalled the brawny, bare-chested man in firelight.
    “Well, I can,” Mrs. Mason said with a chuckle.
    Prudence blushed but offered no rejoinder so the two women fell into a companionable silence in the kitchen. Each focused on her own pursuit. After all, Sunday was their day of leisure. Prudence continued to read about the scandalous Mayfair Stallion, snorting and tsking as she turned the page. Mrs. Mason prepared the evening meal.
    “Why take his doings to heart, Miss H.? He’s not a rakehell just to irk you.”
    “It’s so tawdry. Everyone excuses him with a wink and a laugh because he’s a duke.”
    “If I had to guess, the ladies winked first.”
    “We don’t know that, do we? Everyone simply assumes that whoever a duke favors with his attention must’ve sought it.”
    “Now, Miss H. we don’t know he’s that sort.”
    “His brother was.”
    “But you don’t know he is, do you?” Mrs. Mason reasoned.
    “How different could this duke possibly be? Probably worse! The ninth never turned up depicted as a stallion in the newspaper and we know how he behaved,” she muttered. “At least he was somewhat discreet in his lechery.”
    “For one thing,” Mrs. Mason replied. “The tenth became duke only after his brother died. And I’ll tell you this, Miss H., he didn’t act like a hoity-toity nob with his staff or the staff at his club that night we followed him. He seemed a decent sort.”
    “And yet…” Prudence stated flatly, waving the crinkled broadsheet in the