James Fordyce, the Earl of Pembroke, stared at the card tables in the private gathering place of what London knew existed only in rumors. The Wicked Earls’ Club. Members could be identified by a small silver pin they wore in their cravats. Once, it had been a guild of prominent and powerful men who met in secret to make deals and curry favors, but their purpose had dissolved into a more corrupt world. It was not a place of malevolence or evil, but as James considered the men around him, their eyes locked on the flipping cards, the bottles abundant on the tables and the occasional woman draped over men’s arms, breasts spilling over to please the eyes of every man in the room, there was a darkness of a kind here. The darkness that came from broken lost souls.
Souls like mine.
A dark figure
