Gabriel's Torment — Carole Mortimer

For the past five years Gabriel Templeton, the Duke of Blackborne, has been the owner of Club Venus, the high class brothel in London. When not running the club Gabriel continues to search for his sister who was cast off by their father almost twenty years ago, pregnant and alone, and has never seen again since.

Young Vic Jones lives on the dirty streets of London and will no doubt die there too, sooner rather than later. Seeing and speaking to the handsome Duke of Blackborne, as he strolls by on the way to his club every evening, is the single brightness in days and nights that are all too often dark with the despair of poverty.

Gabriel very much enjoys his daily exchanges with Vic, the cheeky imp who sells fruit or flowers on the street corner near Club Venus. But when Vic isn't in his usual spot for two days in a row Gabriel becomes concerned and goes in search of him in the Rookery, the most dangerous slum in all of London.

When he finds the boy Vic is sitting silent and numb, the body of his dead mother having been consigned to a pauper's grave that morning.

Deciding to take the devastated Vic home with him, and sending for his friend and doctor, Lord Benedict Winter, to attend the lad, reveals a secret that totally stuns Gabriel.

Undecided as to what to do next, it isn't the time for someone from Gabriel's past to seek vengeance on the people he cares for.