‘You will feel better still once you have got out of your wet clothing and had something to eat,’ Matthison said.

‘You have no idea what will make me feel better!’

How could he stand there so calmly, talking about eating, when her life lay in ruins?

Because he did not care. He had brought her to this. He had betrayed her! Held her in his arms and kissed her, when all the time…

She lurched to her feet on a wave of anguish and fury. Her fists were already raised before she knew how badly she wanted to hit him. But she did not manage to land a single blow. He caught hold of her wrists, his reactions lightning-swift.

She flailed out at his imprisoning hands, kicking ineffectually at his booted legs. His eyes widened in horror, then narrowed with grim purpose as he lifted her off her feet.

Annie Burrows has been making up stories for her own amusement since she first went to school. As soon as she got the hang of using a pencil she began to write them down. Her love of books meant she had to do a degree in English literature. And her love of writing meant she could never take on a job where she didn’t have time to jot down notes when inspiration for a new plot struck her. She still wants the heroines of her stories to wear beautiful floaty dresses and triumph over all that life can throw at them. But when she got married she discovered that finding a hero is an essential ingredient to arriving at ‘happy ever after’.

Recent novels by Annie Burrows:

HIS CINDERELLA BRIDE

MY LADY INNOCENT

THE EARL’S UNTOUCHED BRIDE

CAPTAIN FAWLEY’S INNOCENT BRIDE

THE RAKE’S SECRET SON (part of Regency Candlelit Christmas anthology)

Also available in eBook format in Mills & Boon® Historical Undone:

NOTORIOUS LORD, COMPROMISED MISS

DEVILISH LORD,
MYSTERIOUS MISS
Annie Burrows

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Author Note

When I was a little girl I loved reading fairy stories. One of my favourites was The Sleeping Beauty. The prince had to hack his way through a thicket of thorns to get to the castle where Aurora lay, bound by the wicked witch’s spells. He would have got cut and bruised, probably ending up with half a forest’s worth of leaves stuck all over his clothes and in his hair. He must have been quite a sight to wake up to!

I always hoped that the first thing the Princess would do would be to bathe his wounds…

Lord Matthison is convinced he has to fight his way through a thicket of thorns to rescue his own lady love from the spell that seems to hold her in its grip. But is she the one who is bound by a spell, or is he the one who is really under a witch’s curse?

For Peter and Ruth, Steadfast Friends

Chapter One

Lord Matthison reached for the area railings to steady himself, blinking up at the façade of the house where Miss Winters lived.

With her ambitious mother.

And her ruthless father.

He had no idea how he’d fetched up on Curzon Street, at the house of the scheming jade who had stripped him of his last vestige of hope.

He was drunk, of course. He had been drinking steadily since just before midnight. Any man who’d had the week he’d just had would have done exactly the same—made for the nearest gin shop and called for a bottle. Though he had assiduously avoided taking the road that led to oblivion during the past seven years, when the cards had turned against him, and he’d gone down to the tune of five hundred guineas for the third night in a row, he’d had to accept it was over.

‘Cora,’ he moaned, as the pain of her loss struck him with an intensity he had not felt since the first day she’d gone. Gin was so deceitful! It promised to relieve all woe, but all it had done was strip him of the ability to pretend he did not care. He’d assumed he would have found at least a measure of respite, before coming round in some gutter. Possibly even staggering back to his own lodgings. He’d never dreamed he would turn out to have such a hard head, he would still be on his feet by dawn. Or that those wayward feet would have brought him to the last place on earth he would willingly have gone.

‘But I won’t marry you!’ he yelled, shaking his fist at the shuttered windows.

A milkmaid who was passing eyed him with suspicion, and gave him a wide berth. He scarcely noticed her as he straightened up with renewed resolve. What did he care if Miss Winters was ruined!

He had not lured her into her father’s study, tousled her hair, and torn the bodice of her gown. No, she’d done all that herself. Then launched herself at him just as the door swung open, making it look as though they had been locked in a passionate embrace.

Not that she wanted to marry him so much now, he laughed mirthlessly. He’d soon wiped that triumphant smile from her face!

‘So, you want to dance with the devil, do you?’ he had mocked, seizing her by the upper arms when she would have broken free.

‘You are hurting me,’ she had protested, beginning to look a little uncertain.

‘But that is the kind of man I am,’ he had answered. ‘Have you not heard the rumours? Damsels of a sensitive nature practically swoon with fright whenever I walk into a room. With good reason, wouldn’t you say?’

The confusion in her eyes had made him wonder if she really did not know. It was just possible. Her family did not mix in the best circles. Her mother had no intimates privy to the type of gossip circulating about him. They might have managed to secure a house at a fashionable address, but Miss Winters was never going to receive vouchers for Almack’s.

‘Or were you fooled by the fact that I still get invited everywhere?’ he had mused. ‘That was naïve of you. But as you do not seem to understand the ways of the ton, I will explain. Some of them ignore my reputation, because of the vast amount of wealth I have accrued since I made my pact with the devil. They claim not to care how I came by it, because my birth is sufficiently exalted for them to turn a blind eye. But they would never let me near any of their daughters.

‘And there are others who are fascinated by the aura of evil I carry with me. They get quite a thrill from telling people they’ve been daring enough to ask the man who murdered his fiancée to attend one of their insipid gatherings. Oh,’he’d said, when a look of horror had spread across her face. ‘So you had not heard? That I had made a pact with the devil, or that I had been engaged, long ago? To the innocent and unsuspecting Miss Montague…’

Suddenly it had felt like a kind of blasphemy, to speak her name aloud while he was holding another woman in his arms. He had flung the trembling Miss Winters from him, but kept between her and the door. He had not finished with her yet!

‘They never found her body,’ he relished informing her, ‘so they could never bring me to trial. But, since it was my best friend, the man who had known me since childhood, who brought the accusation against me, I must have done it, must I not?’

Miss Winters had begun to rub at the spot on her arms where he’d been holding her, but he’d felt not one ounce of remorse. He deliberately discarded the ice-cold persona he had adopted to disguise his state of mind, expressing all the bitterness that he normally held in check, through his next words.

‘Since the day she disappeared, I have had phenomenal luck at the tables. Is that not proof that I have stained my soul with the blood of a virgin? I often wonder,’ he’d grated, ‘why people still sit down to play cards with me, when they know I can’t lose. Just as I wonder—’ he had paced slowly towards her, his fury unchecked ‘—why you expected this little charade to have any effect upon me. You do not suppose a man whose soul is as black as mine, is going to send off a notice to the Morning Post just because someone saw me in a compromising position with a virgin, do you?’

He had thought that would have been an end to it. Last thing he’d seen of her, she’d fled from the room, sobbing, and flung herself into her mother’s arms. His mouth twisted into a cynical sneer as he recalled what a short distance she’d had to go. Her mother had been hovering right outside the door.

Anyway, he shrugged, she had definitely changed her mind about wanting to marry him.

Her father, though, was made of sterner stuff.

‘Now look here!’ he’d blustered, storming into Lord Matthison’s rooms late the next afternoon. ‘You cannot go about compromising young girls, and then scaring them off with half-baked tales that sound as though they’ve come out of a Gothic novel!’

‘Is that so?’ he’d drawled, not even bothering to raise his eyes from the deck of cards he was shuffling from his left hand into his right.

‘It most certainly is! As a gentleman, you owe it to my daughter to offer marriage!’

‘Out of the question,’ he’d replied, taking the pack in his right hand, splitting it in half, and dextrously folding it over on itself with supple, practised fingers. ‘I am already betrothed.’

That assertion had not silenced Mr Winters for more than a couple of seconds. ‘Ah. You are referring to the Montague girl!’

Lord Matthison had felt the shock of hearing the man speak her name in such an offhand way clear through to his bones. And when Mr Winters had gone on to say, ‘She’s dead, ain’t she?’ the cards had spluttered from his hand to land in a confused jumble on the table top.

He’d got up, stalked across the room and leaned his forearm against the window frame, staring sightlessly down into the bustling courtyard while he grappled with the urge to do his visitor some serious bodily harm.

‘Yes,’ he had finally managed to say, with lethal calm. For nobody knew better than he that Cora walked the spirit world. ‘Technically, I suppose you could claim I am free to marry again. But since nobody has ever managed to discover her body, her family prefer to think of her as missing. And I, therefore, am still legally bound to her.’ With bonds that went beyond the realm of mere legalities, far tighter than any mortal man could ever suspect.

A nasty smile had spread across Mr Winters’s avaricious face. ‘Then we will just have to, legally, unbind you, will we not? So you can have no more excuse to avoid making an honest woman of my daughter.’

Before he could express his opinion that nobody had the power to make his daughter honest, since duplicity was such an intrinsic part of her nature, Mr Winters had declared, ‘I do not care what it costs, or how long it takes. I will have Miss Montague declared legally dead. And then, my lord, we shall have you!’

Three days ago, that had been. Three days since Mr. Winters had declared his intent to instigate the proceedings that would kill Cora Montague all over again.

But he did not know Robbie Montague. Good ol’ Robbie, he grimaced, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back against the area railings.

Robbie would have no truck with Mr Winters’s suggestion that it was time to let go of his sister by holding a memorial service and finally putting up a gravestone. Robbie would never set him free to marry again, and fill Kingsmede with children that were not his sister’s. If he could not see him hang, Robbie’s only satisfaction would be to make sure he remained suspended in a legal limbo.

Mr Winters, he smirked, had quite a fight on his hands.

The amount of hawkers pushing their handcarts up to the big houses, and the shortening of the shadows on his side of the street told him that it was well past daybreak now. Of the fourth day. His smirk turned to a grimace of despair. For the three consecutive nights since Mr. Winters had declared war on Cora’s memory, he’d lost heavily at the card tables.

Last night, he had finally accepted what that meant.

He had thrown down his losing hand, tossed what he owed onto the green baize tablecloth, and stumbled from the gaming hell into the street. To confront his own personal hell. He’d had to clutch at the door frame for a few seconds, his heart had been beating so fast, while he’d fought down a rising tide of horror.

Not that he cared one whit for the money he’d lost. It was no longer financial necessity that kept him going back to the tables, night after night, but need of an entirely different nature.

‘Cora,’ he’d moaned uselessly into the empty alley way. ‘I couldn’thelpit!’Butthere had notevenbeen an answering echo.

She was not there.

For the first time in seven years, he could not feel her presence, anywhere.

He’d damned Mrs Winters for conspiring with her daughter to compromise him. He’d damned Miss Winters for forcing her lips against his in that unholy parody of a kiss. And he’d damned Mr. Winters for daring to speak of Cora as though she was of no account. Between the three of them, they had managed to do what even death could not.

They had driven her away.

He had never told anybody that she haunted him. They would have thought he had gone crazy. Hell, he often wondered about his sanity himself!

But it had only been a few days after the last time he had touched her warm soft skin, that he had felt her spirit hovering close by.

At a race track, of all places.

He had gone there with Robbie’s accusations and curses ringing in his ears. He had been stunned when Robbie had accused him of murdering his sister. ‘If you can believe that of me, then you will want this back!’ he had yelled, throwing what was left of the money Robbie had lent him to pay for the wedding at his chest. ‘I thought you were my friend!’

The purse had fallen unheeded to the floor. ‘You have enough friends in these parts, it seems,’ Robbie had sneered. ‘Nobody will say one word against ye. And without a body, that magistrate says he dare not put the only son of the local lord on trial.’

They had flung increasingly harsh words at each other, which had culminated in Robbie yelling, ‘Curse you and your title! May you rot in hell with it!’

Hell, he’d mused. Yes, he had felt as though he was in hell. And like so many of the damned, he had set out on a path of deliberate self-destruction, staking all that was left of Cora’s wedding fund on a horse that was certain to lose.

He’d eyed up the runners, and been drawn to one that was being soundly whipped by its infuriated jockey. It was frothing at the mouth, its eyes rolling as it went round and round in circles. The jockey had lashed at it some more. He still couldn’t get it to the starting line.

That horse doesn’t want to be here any more than you do, he could imagine his tender-hearted Cora saying. Poor creature.

And that was when he knew he had to lay her blood money on the horse she would have felt sorry for.

When had it romped home a length ahead of its nearest rival, he heard her delighted laughter. He would swear to it. And pictured her clapping her hands in glee.

In a daze, he’d gone back to the betting post, feeling like Judas at the thought of the cascade of silver that would soon be poured into his hands. In the next race, he’d backed the most broken-down nag he could see in a last-ditch attempt to purge away his overriding sense of guilt. He had to get rid of that money. Robbie had cursed it!

As the pack set off, he thought he felt Cora sigh as the sorry specimen he’d backed lumbered wearily along the track. Dammit if he hadn’t wagered on the very horse she would have chosen again! This time, he had felt there was a certain inevitability about the outcome of the race. Two furlongs from the finish, a riderless horse ran across the field, causing the leaders to stumble, and creating a few moments of mayhem, during which Cora’s favourite wheezed up on the outside, crossing the finishing line while the rest were still disentangling themselves from the pile-up.

Cora had cheered. He’d heard her. No question.

The noisy crowds of race-goers faded from his consciousness as his mind had gone back to the day he had finally managed to place his ring on her finger.

‘Nothing will be able to part us now,’ he had said with grim satisfaction. And then, anticipating their wedding vows, he’d added, ‘Except death.’

‘Not even that,’ she had breathed, gazing up at him with naked adoration in her eyes.

And that was the moment he’d realised that no matter what Robbie might think, Cora was still his. He had felt her lay her hand on his sleeve, and hold him back when he would have tossed even those winnings away on the favourite in the next race. ‘Enough now,’ she had cautioned him. And tears had sprung to his eyes, because he had known, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that she loved him far too much to want to watch him blight his future with reckless gambling. And he had walked away.

From that day forward, he had done nothing without considering what she would have made of it. And the more he asked her opinion, the more often he had felt her hovering close by.

Robbie had stormed off back to Scotland, his parents had washed their hands of him, neighbours regarded him with suspicion, and former acquaintances shunned him.

But Cora had stood by him.

There had been times when he had sunk into such despair that he considered following her into the after-life.

But he could see her shaking her head in reproof, and hear her declaring that suicide was a mortal sin. He did not care if it was a sin, if it could bring them together. But something told him that whatever part of the after-world she inhabited would exclude sinners of that sort.

And so, since he knew she did not want him to take that course, he’d just had to go on existing. He could not call it living. Cut off from his family and friends, he had begun to haunt the lowest gaming hells in London. They were the only places whose doors were still open to him.

But even there, she watched over him, giggling at the stunned faces of the men from whom he’d won cash, deeds to mines, and shares in canal companies.

And it was she who urged him, when he had just donned the first set of good quality, brand-new clothes he had ever owned, to walk into White’s and face them all down. She had crowed with laughter when he had walked out, £20,000 the richer.

It had brought him a measure of satisfaction to pay off the mortgage on Kingsmede, when his father had died. And to pay off his inherited debts out of winnings he’d gleaned from the very men who had fleeced his shiftless parent. Since then, he had gradually been able to make all the improvements to his estate Cora had talked about when she had been there. His tenants might whisper about him, and the way he came by his money, but it did not stop them from being glad he was re-thatching their cottages, or draining low-lying fields to improve their harvests.

Not that he cared what they thought of him. He was not doing it for them, but to please her. Her opinion was the only one that mattered to him.

She was the only person he felt any connection with any more.

Even though she was dead.

If that made him crazy, then so be it.

If it was madness that drove him back to the card tables, so that he could hear her muttering about the drunkenness of his opponents as he ruthlessly stripped them of their money, or feel her breath fan his cheek as she blew on his dice for luck, then it beat the alternative! He had not cared that her unseen presence, walking at his side, acted like a barrier between him and the rest of the world.

She was still there.

Until Miss Winters had kissed him.

‘Cora,’ he moaned again, sagging against the railings in defeat.

A seller of kindling, pushing his cart before him, shot him a piercing look, before shaking his head and hurrying on.

He knew what he must look like. He was standing here, in the first light of day, crying out for a woman who had been dead for seven dark, hellishly lonely years. And he didn’t care what anyone might think. If he only had the supernatural powers that people attributed to him, by Lucifer and all that was unholy, he would use them now! If he really knew of some incantation…

A line from somewhere sprang to mind. Something about three times three times three…

And even as he muttered what he could remember of what he dimly suspected was something from Shakespeare, a movement from the area steps of a house further down the street caught his eye. A short young woman, modishly yet soberly dressed, in a dark blue coat and poke bonnet, was climbing up on to the pavement. At first, he did not know why, out of all the people bustling about their business, this one insignificant female had attracted his attention. But then she turned to scan the traffic before venturing out into the road, and he caught a glimpse of her face.

And it felt as though something had sucked all the air from his lungs.

It was Cora.

‘Bloody hell!’ he swore, clutching the railings even harder as his knees threatened to give way beneath him. Somehow, with all that three-times-three business, and invoking unholy powers, he had managed to conjure up her shade! For the last seven years, he had heard her, caught her scent on the breeze, felt her presence, but never, ever had she allowed him so much as one brief glimpse of her…

‘Bloody hell!’ he swore again. While he had been standing there, completely stunned at having called up her spirit, or whatever the hell it was had just happened, she had disappeared round the corner. She had walked away from him as though he was of no account. As though she had somewhere far more important to be.

Uttering another curse, he set off in pursuit. It should have been easy to catch up with her. She did not have that much of a head start. But as he attempted to break into a run, the pavement undulated beneath his feet as though it had a life of its own, throwing him into the path of a furniture mender carrying a bunch of rushes. Lord Matthison had to grab on to the man’s shoulders to steady himself before he could lurch off in the direction Cora had gone.

For a few terrible minutes, he thought he would never see her again. The streets were full of tradesmen making early deliveries to the houses of the wealthy now, and it was as if the crowds had swallowed her up. Panic brought him out in a cold sweat, until he caught a glimpse of that dark blue coat on the far side of Berkeley Square, and he plunged into the gardens after her.

She was half-way up Bruton Street before he sighted her again, gliding effortlessly through the throng. He bit back a curse as a rabbit, dangling from the pole of its vendor, struck him full in the face.

‘Cora!’ he yelled in desperation as the rabbit seller laid hands on him, angrily demanding something…recompense for the damage to his wares probably, but he paid no heed. ‘Wait!’he cried, thrusting the man rudely aside. He could not let anything prevent him from discovering where Cora was going!

He saw her half-turn. Felt the moment she recognised him with the force of a punch to the gut. For there was no tenderness, no understanding in her eyes. On the contrary, she recoiled from him, and with a look of horror hitched up her skirts and began to run.

He tried to run too, but she just kept on getting further and further away from him. She could melt through the throng, because she was a wraith. But his own body was all too solid, so that he was obliged to swerve around, or shove people aside. But he kept his eyes fixed on her. Until the very moment she darted into one of the shops on Conduit Street, and slammed the door behind her.

He stumbled to a halt on the pavement opposite what turned out to be a modiste’s. A very high-class modiste with the name ‘Madame Pichot’ picked out in gold leaf on a signboard above the door.

His heart was hammering in his chest, which was still heaving with shortened breath. What was he to do now? Barge into the shop, which probably wasn’t even open to customers yet, and demand they let him speak to the ghost he’d just seen take refuge inside? They would call for the watch, and have him locked up. In an asylum for the insane, most like.

He bent over, his hands resting on his knees as he fought to get his breath back. And make some sense of what had just happened.

Why, for God’s sake, had Cora fled from him, the very moment she had finally deigned to let him see her? And what was the significance of bringing him here?

He straightened up, staring at the shop front as though it might provide him with some answer to this unholy muddle.

‘Evening gowns a speciality’, read a card prominently displayed in the window, underneath a sample of the fabulously intricate beadwork that had become all the rage amongst the fashionable this year.

And a cold thread of foreboding slithered down his spine.

The very night after Mr Winters had declared his intention to lay Cora’s ghost to rest for good, the first night he’d had a run of such spectacularly bad hands even he could do nothing with them, he had partnered a woman wearing a dress that came from this modiste. He had laid the blame for their defeat at whist at the feet of the woman wearing the expensive gown, a French chit, who had as little grasp of the game as she had of the English language. But in his heart he had known she had nothing to do with his wins or losses.

All gamblers were superstitious, but he supposed he must be the most superstitious of the lot. Knowing Cora’s influence to be the source of his success, he had taken great pains, from the first day he had sensed her presence, to avoid offending her. He never touched strong liquor, nor did he succumb to the lures cast out by women who were fascinated by his aura of dark menace. How could he have contemplated bedding anyone, even if any woman had ever stirred him on any level, knowing that Cora hovered not far away, watching his every move? Not that she would have watched for long. Her puritanical soul would have been so shocked, she would have fled, perhaps never to return.

He had been right to take care. Cora’s love was so strong it had reached out to him from beyond the grave. But a love strong enough to cheat death was not a force to be trifled with.

Miss Winters had kissed him, her father had begun to search for lawyers cunning enough to lay her spirit in the grave for good, and Cora had turned her back on him. And getting blind drunk, and shouting curses up at Miss Winters’s windows, had not done him any favours. That slamming door was a clear enough message that even he could read it.

She had put back the barrier that existed between the living and the dead. And she was on the other side.

He ran a shaky hand over his face, feeling sick to his stomach.

He had only survived the last seven years because she had been right there with him. More real to him than all the gibbering idiots who populated the hells he frequented.

Would she come back to him, he wondered frantically, if he proclaimed the truth about her? He would not care if they declared him insane, and locked him up. He could afford to pay for a nice, cosy cell. It would almost be a relief to stop pretending his life made any sense. To stop hiding the anguish that tortured him night and day. He could just lie in the dark, and rant and curse to his heart’s content.

Mr Winters would surely abandon his ambition to have his daughter marry a peer, if that peer was a raving lunatic! And even Robbie would reap some benefit. It would appease his quest for justice, to see the man he believed had murdered his sister finally locked away.

If that was what it took to appease Cora, he decided, his jaw firming, then it would be a small price to pay!

‘You wanter cross or not, mister?’a little voice piped up, jerking him out of his darkly disturbing thoughts.

‘Cross?’

A ragged boy with a dirty broom was standing, palm outstretched, gazing up at him expectantly.

A crossing sweeper.

‘No,’ he replied. There was no point.

No point to anything, any more. He had offended Cora. Driven her away.

‘Want me to see if I can get a message to her?’ the lad persisted.

‘Message?’

‘To the red-haired piece you chased up the street.’

‘You saw her?’ Lord Matthison stared at the boy in shock. He had assumed he was the only one who had been able to see her. Especially after the way she had melted through the crowds as though she and they existed on different planes.

The boy leaned closer, and took an experimental sniff, his perplexed face creasing into a grin.

‘Clearer than you, I reckon, by the smell of your breath. Had a heavy night, have yer?’

Lord Matthison grimaced as the lad’s words sank in.

He had not taken a drink in seven years. Had been astounded by what a tolerance for gin he seemed to have, marvelling at the fact he was still on his feet. Well, he might be on his feet, but he was sure as hell not sober.

The woman was real. He had not called some spirit up out of the pit. Cora had not deliberately turned her back on him, run from him, and slammed the door in his face. He had just seen some servant girl climb up the area steps from the servants’entrance, and go about her legitimate business.

Which had nothing to do with him.

The fact that she had looked uncannily like Cora was mere coincidence. Or…had she even born that much of a resemblance to his late fiancée? He frowned. He had not been close enough to see her face clearly. It had been her build, and the way she walked, that had convinced him he was seeing a ghost.

His head began to ache.

Typical!

He was getting a hangover before he was even sober.

He pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes, digging his fingers into his scalp. There was no point in trying to make sense of any of this until he had sobered up.

‘Is this your patch?’ he asked the crossing sweeper, running his fingers through his hair.

‘Yessir!’ said the lad, rather too loudly for Lord Matthison’s liking.

‘Then find out whatever you can about the red-head,’ he said, dipping into his pocket, and flipping the lad a coin, ‘and I shall give you another of these.’

The boy’s face lit up when he saw it was a crown piece. ‘Right you are! When will you be coming back?’

‘I shall not,’he replied with a grimace of distaste. He despised men who loitered on street corners, hoping to catch a glimpse of the hapless female that was currently the object of their prurient interest.

‘You will report to my lodgings. What is your name?’

‘Grit,’ said the boy, causing Lord Matthison to look at him sharply. And then press his fingers to his throbbing temples. It was all of a piece. The boy he was employing to spy on Cora’s ghost could not possibly have a sensible name like Tom, or Jack! Everything about this night bore all the hallmarks of a nightmare.

‘I will tell my manservant, then, that if a short, dirty person answering to the name of Grit comes knocking, that he is to admit you. Or, if I am not there, to extract what information you have, and reward you with another coachwheel.’

‘And who might you be?’

‘Lord Matthison.’

He watched the light die from the boy’s eyes. Saw him swallow. Saw him try to hide his consternation. But Grit was too young to quite manage to conceal the belief he had just agreed to serve the devil’s minion. He kissed goodbye to the prospect of ever finding out anything about the red-head who had worked him up into such a state. The lad would never pluck up the courage to venture to his lodgings. Or if he did, his conscience was bound to hold him in check. Even a dirt-poor guttersnipe would think twice about selling information about a defenceless female to a man of Lord Matthison’s reputation.

‘In the meantime, perhaps you could find me a cab,’ he drawled, eyeing the shop across the street one last time.And then, because he got a perverse kind of pleasure from playing up to the worst of what people expected of him, he added, ‘I dislike being abroad in daylight.’

Chapter Two

Mary dashed across the main shop, through the velvet curtains that divided it from the working areas, and pounded up the three flights of stairs that led to the workroom. The one place where she had learned to feel secure.

She had no idea why the way that man had emerged from the shadows on the other side of Curzon Street, with his black clothes, black hair and forbidding expression, had shaken her so badly. Or why, for an instant, she had got the peculiar impression that the shadows themselves had thickened, solidified and spawned the living embodiment of her nightmares.

It was terrifying, though, to feel as if your nightmares had invaded your waking life. Particularly since those nightmares were so vague.

All she could remember when she woke up from one of them was that there had been something hovering behind her. Something she dared not turn and face. Because she was sure that if she did, it would rear up and swallow her whole. And so she would curl up, trying to make herself disappear, so the Thing would not notice her. But she could always feel it coming nearer and nearer, its shadow growing bigger and bigger, until eventually, in sheer terror, she would leap up and try to run away.

In her dreams, she never managed to move one step. But her legs would always start to thrash around the bed.

‘Wake up, Mary,’ one of the other girls would complain, prodding her with their sharp elbows. ‘You’re having one of your dreams again.’

They would tell her to lie still, and she would, clutching the sheets to her chin, staring up at the ceiling, terrified to close her eyes lest the dream stalked her again.

She sighed, rubbing the heels of her hands against her eyes. Deep down she knew that shadows did not turn into men, and chase girls down the street.

Though it had not stopped her running from him.

Just as she fled from whatever it was that stalked her dreams.

‘Mary!’The angry voice of her employer made every girl in the workroom jump to attention. The fact that Madame Pichot had left her office at this hour of the morning did not bode well for any of them.

‘What is the matter with you now? You are as white as a sheet! You are not going to be ill again, are you?’

Mary could not blame her for looking so exasperated. She was nowhere near as robust as the other girls who sewed for Madame. Never had been.

‘That doctor promised me that if you took regular walks, your constitution would improve,’Madame complained. ‘I cannot afford for you to take to your bed at this time of year!’Although the workload had slackened off slightly, now that the presentations in the Queen’s drawing rooms had mostly taken place, there were still enough orders coming in for Madame to keep her girls working from dawn till they dropped into bed from sheer exhaustion.

Madame Pichot stalked across the bare floor and laid her hand on Mary’s forehead.

‘I am n-not ill,’ Mary stammered, as much alarmed now by Madame’s censure, as by what had happened in the street. ‘B-but there w-was a m-man…’

Madame Pichot rolled her eyes, raising her hands to the ceiling in one of her Gallic expressions of exasperation. ‘The streets are always full of men. I am sure none of them would be interested in a little dab of nothing like you!’ she snapped, tugging off Mary’s gloves, and untying her bonnet ribbons.

‘N-no, he was shouting,’ Mary exclaimed, recalling that fact for the first time herself.

‘There are a lot of men hawking their wares at this time of the morning,’ Madame scoffed. ‘He wasn’t shouting at you.’

‘But I think he was,’ she murmured, trying to examine what had happened without letting the panic that had gripped her on the street from clouding her perception. ‘He chased me!’ Though why some man she had never seen before should suddenly take it into his head to pursue her, shouting angrily, she could not imagine. But she had definitely seen him roughly pushing a tradesman out of his way. With his vengeful, dark eyes fixed on her. And for one awful moment, it had felt as though the curtain that separated what was real, from what existed only in her head, had been ripped in two. She had not known where she was. Or who she was.

That had been the most frightening moment of all.

‘Mary, really,’ Madame said, tugging her to her feet, and undoing her coat buttons, while the other girls in the workroom began to snigger, ‘just because you saw a man running in the street, does not mean he was chasing you. Who on earth would want to chase a scrawny little creature like you, when there are willing, pretty girls for sale on every street corner?’

It should have been reassuring to hear Madame repeat the very fact that had her so bewildered. Except that she knew he had been chasing her. Her.

‘Now, Mary,’ said Madame firmly, shoving her back down on her work stool, and thrusting her spectacles into her hands, ‘I forbid you to have one of your turns. There is no time for it today. Not when you have the bodice for the Countess of Walton’s new gown to finish. Whatever happened outside, you must put it out of your head. Do you hear me?’

‘Yes, Madame.’ In truth, there was nothing she wanted more than to put it out of her mind. She was really glad she had such a complicated piece of work to do today. For concentrating on making something utterly beautiful had always had the power to keep her demons at bay. Even when she had been a little girl…

With a startled cry, Mary dropped her glasses. It always gave her a jolt, when one of these little glimpses of a past that was mostly a complete blank flared across her consciousness without warning.

Hearing Madame’s huff of disapproval, Mary dropped to her knees to grope for them. They would not have slid far along the rough planks of the workroom. She would find them in mere seconds, pick them up, and be quickly able to get on with her work.

Why, she thought in anguish, could her mind not be as nimble as her fingers? Whenever she tried to catch hold of one of these little slivers of light that flashed into her mind, it was just like trying to take hold of a candle flame. There was nothing of any substance to latch on to. Except pain.

Well, only an idiot would keep on putting their hand into a flame, once they had learned that it burned, she thought, hooking her glasses over her ears. Instantly, everything beyond a few feet from her went out of focus, isolating her on her stool, like a shipwrecked mariner, clinging to a lone rock shrouded by fog.

When she had been a little girl, she sighed, unable to silence the echo of that memory straight away. Hastily she picked up a needle, but not fast enough to blot out the feeling that when she had been a little girl…with her head dutifully bent over her needlework…

‘Pay no mind to anything but your sampler,’ she heard a gentle voice telling her. And for a fleeting moment, it was not Madame standing over her, glowering, but a kindly, protective presence that she instinctively recognised as her mother.

‘For the Lord’s sake, keep your head down,’ the voice…her mother…continued as she became aware there had been someone else with them. Looming over them. A man with a loud voice and hard fists…and fear rushed up to swamp her.

Past and present swirled and merged. The child in her bent over her sampler, to blot out the raised voices of the adults, the violence that hovered in the air. And the woman hitched her stool closer to her embroidery frame. She leant so close her nose was practically brushing the cream silk net so that every time she breathed in, her lungs were filled with the sweet, aromatic scent of brand new cloth. With fingers that shook, she threaded a string of tiny crystal droplets on to her bead needle. Then she took a second needle which she would use to couch down the tiny segments of beading. She bent all her powers of concentration on to the intricate work, deliberately pushing away the vague images of violence that had almost stepped fully formed, into the light, just as that dark man had done earlier.

She had become adept at pushing uncomfortable thoughts away since she had arrived in London, bruised, alone and scared. And soon, her world shrank until all she could feel was the texture of the luxurious fabric, all she could hear was the pluck of the needle piercing it, the hiss of the thread as she set each meticulously measured stitch.

Her breathing grew steadier. Her heart beat evenly again. All that was ugly and mean slithered back into the shadows, leaving Mary conscious only of the work that occupied her hands.

She sensed, rather than heard, Madame Pichot step away. They both knew that now Mary’s mind had turned in a new direction, she would soon forget all about the alarming incident in Berkeley Square.

It had been a long time since Lord Matthison had played against the house. The owners of gambling hells, such as this one, had become reluctant to admit him, until he had restricted his play to private games, arranged for him with other gentlemen. Or men who called themselves gentlemen, he corrected himself as he glanced round the table at the flushed faces of Lord Sandiford, Mr Peters, and a young cub by the name of Carpenter who was looking distinctly green about the gills.

Peters fumbled with his cards, reached for a drink, then, seeing his glass was empty, called for a refill from a passing waiter.

Lord Matthison leaned back in his chair with a sneer. Taking yet another drink was not going to alter the fact that once Peters threw down his hand, he would have cleaned them all out.

His mockery turned inwards. Had he not discovered for himself how deceptive strong drink could be? Thinking he had summoned up Cora’s ghost, by muttering something about three times three indeed! As soon as he’d sobered up, he had realised that the vision he’d had of Cora had sprung like a genie from a bottle, formed from a heady mixture of gin fumes and wishful thinking.

He had not been able to bear the thought he might have lost her all over again, that was what it boiled down to. And so he had let the gin steer him down a path of self-delusion.

Just as brandy was steering Peters down the path of self-destruction, he reflected, as the man gulped down what the waiter had just poured.

The man would have done better to stick to coffee, as he had done, he mused, as Peters, with a defiant flourish, finally displayed his hand.

Then slumped back when he saw what Lord Matthison had been holding.

‘One more hand,’ he begged, as Lord Matthison reached for his winnings.

‘You have nothing left to stake,’ Lord Matthison replied coldly.

‘I have a daughter,’ the man interjected, his eyes fastened on the pile of coins, banknotes and hastily scrawled pledges Lord Matthison was sweeping into his capacious pockets.

Lord Matthison regarded him with contempt. ‘Do you expect me to care?’

If Peters had a grain of worth in him, he would have been at home, managing his business, not wasting his substance in a gaming hell like this! He should have considered what it might mean to his daughter before he gambled it all away. It was no use appealing to him now.

His own father had been just the same. When gambling fever gripped him, he forgot all about his wife and son, the dependants who looked to him for their welfare. All that had mattered to him was the next turn of the card, the next roll of the dice.

‘No, no!’ the man gibbered. ‘I am saying that I still have a daughter—’ a nasty look spread across his face ‘—to stake. Just give me one last chance to win something back,’ he begged.

‘Out of the question,’ he replied, despising the man who had just ruined himself.

‘She’s pretty. And still a virgin,’ Peters gabbled, sweat breaking out on his florid face.

Lord Sandiford, who had gone down to the tune of four hundred guineas without batting an eyelid, sniggered. ‘You are wasting your time there, old man. Better sell her outright to me. Lord Matthison has no use for women.’

‘Not living ones,’ he agreed, shooting a pointed look at the hell’s newest hostess, who had been hovering by his shoulder all night. At one point, he had found her perfume so cloying that he had told her quite brusquely to move further off. She had pouted, and looked up at him from under half-closed lids, purring that she would await his pleasure later.

‘What do you mean by that?’ demanded Peters.

Everyone at the table fell silent. Very few people had ever dared ask Lord Matthison whether there was any truth in the rumours circulating about him.

Mr Carpenter shot Lord Sandiford a look of disgust, which turned to loathing as his eyes swept past Lord Matthison, got up so quickly his chair overturned, and made hastily for the exit.

‘The only woman I am interested in, Mr Peters,’ Lord Matthison replied, choosing his words very carefully, ‘is Miss Cora Montague.’ He felt a ripple of shock go round the room as he finally spoke her name aloud in public. Several men at nearby tables twisted round in their seats, hoping to hear some new titbit about the scandal that had rocked society seven years earlier.

‘In her case, I was willing to stake my very soul on just one throw of the dice,’ he said enigmatically. ‘And I lost it.’He got to his feet, wondering whether proclaiming his allegiance to her ghost in a hell-hole like this would be enough to entice her back to his side.

What had he got to lose?

‘She has my soul, Mr Peters.’And then, considering the massive amount he had just won tonight, his breath quickened. Even though he had not felt her presence, his luck had definitely turned. ‘Or perhaps,’ he added, feeling as though a great weight had rolled from his shoulders, ‘I have hers.’

The girl who had been trying to get his attention all night was standing by the door. The owner of the hell was holding her by the arm, and talking to her in an urgent undertone.

Lord Matthison pulled out a banknote and waved it under her nose.

‘Still think you’d like to earn this?’ he taunted her.

She shrank back, her face turning pale as the owner of the hell moved away, leaving her alone with him. Lord Matthison put the money back in his pocket.

‘Clearly not,’ he drawled. ‘Very wise of you.’

It was a relief to get out into the street, and breathe air not tainted by cigar fumes and desperation. ‘Did you see that, Cora?’ he asked of the black-velvet shadows of the alleyway. ‘Did you hear me tell them?’

But there was no reply. She did not come skipping to his side, to keep him company on the long walk home. Instead, he had a fleeting image of what that nameless daughter would feel like when Peters went home and told her he was going to sell her to Sandiford. Swiftly followed by the horrified look on the face of that woman he had mistaken for Cora two days before.

‘It is not my fault Peters tried to sell his daughter to me,’ he growled as he set off through the dark, damp streets. ‘I only went to the tables to find you.’

But she had not been there. And so the money that was making his coat pockets bulge meant nothing to him. He had no use for it.

When he reached his rooms, he drew out all the banknotes that had formed part of the winning pot and thrust them into his manservant’s hands.

‘I ruined a man named Peters tonight,’ he bit out. ‘Take this money, and hand it over into the keeping of his daughter. Tell her she is not to let her father get hold of it. Or she will have me to answer to.’

‘Sir.’ Ephraims’s eyebrows rose a fraction, but he went straight out, without asking any questions.

Until tonight, Lord Matthison had felt not one ounce of pity towards any of the men from whom he’d won money. To his knowledge, he had ruined three.

But tonight, he could not bear to keep one penny of that money. He had only gone to the tables to find Cora. Not to bring more misery to the child of a compulsive gambler.

He went to his room, and shrugged off his jacket, the coins spilling from his pockets and rattling across the boards.

‘I did not want that money for myself, Cora,’ he explained, sitting on a chair by the bed to tug off his boots. ‘You know I don’t need it. I’ve invested wisely these last few years.’ Somehow that admission only made this evening’s work seem worse.

‘I have ensured the girl will be safe,’ he protested, untying his neckcloth and letting it slither to the floor.

‘Does that please you, Cora?’ he addressed the shadowed corners of his room. But there was no answer.

With a groan of despair, he lay down on top of the bed, still fully clothed, and flung his arm over his eyes. If she was not going to come back, he did not know how he could bear to go on.

There was no satisfaction to be had in ruining one man, or bestowing largesse on another.

Not when she wasn’t there to see it.

He needed her.

God, how he needed her!

He felt as though he had barely closed his eyes, when he was woken by the sound of somebody knocking on the door.

Persistently.

Ephraims must still be out, he thought, sitting up and running his fingers through his disordered hair. He would have to deal with whoever was visiting himself. Probably one of the men from whom he had taken promissory notes the night before, he decided as he padded barefoot to the outer door.

However, it was not a shamefaced gambler who stood on his doorstep, but the grubby street sweeper from the night of the vision on Curzon Street.

‘Grit,’ he observed, opening the door wider to admit the rather scared-looking boy. ‘You had better come into my sitting room.’

‘Her name is Mary,’ the boy announced without preamble, the moment Lord Matthison sank wearily on to the sofa. He did not really want to hear anything the lad had to say. But he might as well let him earn his tip, since he had plucked up the courage to walk into the devil’s lair.

‘The red-head you was after. She come to Lunnon about six or so years ago as an apprentice, and has been working her way up. Well, not that she’s indentured regular, like, on account of her being a charity case.’

Lord Matthison brushed aside the apparent coincidence of that female appearing on the scene about the time Cora had disappeared. Hundreds of working girls came up to London from the country every year.

‘No one can match the stuff she turns out now,’ Grit added, staring round Lord Matthison’s study with apprehensive eyes, as though half-expecting to see a human skull perched on one of the shelves. ‘The nobs fight to get a dress wot she’s had a hand in.’

Cora had been exceptionally fond of sewing, he recalled. But then, so were lots of gently reared girls. It meant nothing. Nothing!

‘If you want to meet her,’ the boy said, after a slight pause, ‘she’ll be in the Flash of Lightning Friday night. Her friend, see, has an understanding with a jarvey wot drinks in there.And they mean to sneak out and meet him. ’Bout seven,’he finished, sticking out his hand hopefully.

‘Go into my room,’ said Lord Matthison, jerking his head in that direction, ‘and you can pick up whatever you find on the floor.’ There had been several crown pieces amongst the coinage he had won last night. Grit was welcome to them.

He sat forwards on the sofa, his head in his hands. Last night, he had thought he had got it all clear in his mind. The woman he had seen on Curzon Street could not have been Cora. He had just been drunk, and had imagined the likeness.

But now he was beginning to wonder all over again.

Take the way Grit had described her as a red-head. The woman he had chased had been wearing a poke bonnet that covered her hair completely. So how had he been so sure it was red?

As Cora’s was red.

And what about the way the bleak chill that usually hung round him like a mantle had lifted the second he saw the early morning sun brush the curve of her cheek? The way his heart had raced. As though he was really alive, and not just a damned soul, trapped in a living body.

He was not going to find a moment’s peace, he realised, until he had looked the seamstress in the face, and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that she bore no more than a passing resemblance to Cora.

‘Stop worrying, Mary,’ Molly cajoled. ‘Madame Pennypincher won’t know nothing about it unless we tells her.’

‘She’ll know it shouldn’t take us so long to make a delivery.’

Ever since Mary had come back from the Curzon Street errand with her nerves in shreds, Madame Pichot had sent Molly with her on her daily walks.

Molly had been cock-a-hoop at escaping their relentless drudgery, shamelessly making use of their daily excursions to arrange this clandestine meeting with Joe Higgis, who worked out of a hackney cab stand on the corner of Conduit Street.

Mary did not begrudge Molly her snatched moments of happiness, she just did not see how they would manage to get away with taking a detour to a gin shop in Covent Garden.

‘All we have to do is think up a story and stick to it,’ Molly persisted. ‘We’ll tell her the housekeeper asked us to take tea in the kitchen, or the lady had some query about the bill.’

‘I don’t…I can’t…’ Mary felt her face growing hot. The very thought of telling her employer a barefaced lie was making her insides churn.

Molly clicked her tongue and sighed. ‘Just leave the talking to me, then, when we get back. You can keep yer mouth shut, can’t yer?’ She gripped Mary’s arm quite hard. ‘Ye understand it ain’t right to snitch on yer friends, don’t yer?’

‘I would never snitch on you, Molly,’ said Mary, meaning it.

When she had first come to work for Madame Pichot, she had existed in an almost constant state of sickening fear. London was so confusingly crowded, so nerve-jarringly noisy. She had found it hard to understand what Madame’s other girls were saying at first, so peculiar did their accent sound, and so foreign the words they used. But Molly had always been patient with her, explaining her work slowly enough so she could understand, even putting a stop to the acts of petty spite some of the others had seemed to find hilarious.

‘Anyhow, Madame ought to let us have an hour or two off, once in a while, and then we wouldn’t have to sneak off on the sly!’

No, she would not say one word to Madame about where they had been.

She would not need to.

She looked round uneasily as Molly towed her into the overheated and evil-smelling den in which her Joe liked to take a heavy wet of an evening, with the other drivers who worked for the same firm as him. Madame would only have to breathe in as they walked past to know exactly where they had been.

Molly soon spotted her beau, who got his pals to make room for the two of them at the table where they were sitting. A slovenly-looking girl deposited two beakers on the sticky tabletop in front of them, and Joe flipped her a coin.

Molly dug Mary in the ribs.

‘Say thank you to Joe for buying us both a draught of jacky, girl. Ever so generous of him, ain’t it?’ Molly beamed at him, and his eyes lit up. Sliding closer to her, he slid his arm round her waist, and gave her a squeeze. Molly giggled, turning pink with pleasure. Mary might as well not have existed for all the notice he took of her.

She reached for her beaker, and bent her eyes resolutely on the liquid it contained, feeling slightly nauseous. She could not understand what Mary saw in Joe Higgis. He had sloping shoulders and a thick neck. His fingernails were dirty, and, given the nature of his job, he probably smelt of horses. How could Molly let such a man paw at her like that, never mind encourage it?

Molly had explained that he made her laugh, and that in this miserable world, you didn’t turn your nose up at a man who could make you laugh, no matter what.

For Molly’s sake, and to avoid hurting Joe’s feelings, she supposed she ought to try to look as though she was grateful for the drink he had bought her. Besides, she thought, glancing about her nervously, if she appeared to be concentrating on her drink, she would not look so out of place as she felt.

Tentatively, she tasted it, and was surprised to find it had a lightly perfumed flavour. Gin was not unpleasant, she grudgingly admitted, taking another sip.

‘Friend of Molly’s, are yer?’ asked the man beside her, who had been eyeing her speculatively ever since she had sat down.

Mary bit down a scathing retort. She had come in with Molly. She was sitting next to Molly. What else would she be, but a friend of Molly’s?

‘Now, none of your cheek, Fred!’ Molly suddenly stirred herself to say. ‘Nor none of you others, neither,’ she addressed the other men who were sitting at their table. ‘I won’t have none of you taking advantage of Mary, just coz she’s too simple to do it for herself. I’ll darken the daylights of anyone who so much as lays a finger on her!’ she declared belligerently.

Fred raised his hands in surrender. ‘I was just being friendly,’ he protested.

‘Well, stop it!’ snapped Molly. ‘She don’t like men. They make her…’She paused, considering her choice of words. Mary stared fixedly into the depths of her drink, torn between gratitude to Molly for defending her, and sickening dread at what she might be about to reveal.

‘Jumpy!Yes,’Molly declared, ‘that’s what she is round men what don’t mind their manners. So just watch it!’

Having settled the point to her satisfaction, Molly climbed on to Joe’s lap, and took up where she had left off.

Mary felt like a coin that had been tossed in the air, unsure whether she was going to come down heads, humiliated at having her deficiencies broadcast, or tails, grateful for Molly’s spirited defence. Though Molly had only spoken the truth. Men did make her jumpy. She had not wanted Fred to speak to her, and she certainly did not want to have to answer him. In fact, she wished she could just shrink down into her coat and disappear. To conceal her confusion, she took another, longer pull at her drink.

Once it had gone down, she found her initial surge of contrasting emotions had settled down into a sort of dull resentment.

Molly had just told all these people that she was simple, and she did not think she was, not really. It was true that when she first came to London she had been confused about a lot of things. But she had been ill. She had still been getting the headaches for months after Madame took her in.

But now she wondered if some of those headaches had been due to the fact she had slept so poorly back then. For one thing, the streets were so noisy, at all hours of the day and night, and for another, she was not used to sharing a bed…

Though how she was so sure of that, when so many other things that other people took for granted were complete mysteries to her…She sighed despondently. Perhaps Madame and Molly and the others were right about her. Perhaps she was a simpleton.

In an effort to distract herself from the perplexing muddle of her thoughts, she applied herself to her gin. Gradually she felt the knot of anxiety that was normally lodged somewhere beneath her breastbone melt away. What did it matter, really, if there was something wrong with her mind? She had a good position, where the skills she did have were put to good use. And she had friends.

Joe’s friends, too, she realised, raising her head to look about the table, were not such a bad bunch, for all that they were so repulsive looking. She felt a giggle rising up inside as it occurred to her that if she had to come into a dirty, smelly drinking den, she could not have better companions than a group of hackney-cab drivers. Experienced as they were with handling highly strung creatures for a living, they had taken Molly’s words to heart, and acted on them. Oh, not overtly. But they were not speaking so loudly now as they had been doing before. They were not crowding her with their big, male bodies, and they seemed to be trying not to make any sudden movements, that might startle her.

It was…quite touching.

London, she mused, cradling her cup of gin to her chest, was turning out not to be such a dreadful place at all. It had taken her a long time, but she was slowly growing accustomed to it. The more she explored its alleys and byways, the more familiar it became, the fewer terrors it held.

She would be all right.

One day, she would…

‘Why did you do it, Cora?’ A man’s harsh voice rudely interrupted her reverie.

She looked up to see a gentleman standing over her. The gentleman. The one who had chased her clear across Berkeley Square. Same dark clothes, same forbidding expression, same angry voice.

She sucked in a sharp breath, waiting to feel the onset of that fear that usually surged through her whenever she felt threatened by something unfamiliar.

It did not materialise.

She peered into her beaker, wondering if this was why so many women grew so fond of gin. It seemed to be making her uncharacteristically brave.

Or maybe, she pondered, it was knowing that this man was outnumbered by Joe’s pals. That she was, in effect, surrounded by a burly, bewhiskered, badly dressed cohort of bodyguards.

And so she didn’t tremble. She did not shrink away. She just sat there, calmly looking up at him.

His face grew darker.

‘You have to make me understand it, Cora,’ he grated. ‘Why did you run away?’

Cora? Ah, so that was it! She must resemble…her. That was why he had chased her, shouting so angrily. He must have been waiting for…Cora…and been completely perplexed when she had taken fright and run away.

‘You have mistaken me for someone else, I think, sir,’she said gently. For she could see that he was really upset, and had no wish to add to his distress.

Yet he looked at her as though she had slapped his face.

If he had been mistaken in her, it had been seven years ago, not seven days!

She had said she loved him so much she did not care if they had to live in a bothy, whatever that was. Yet one afternoon, when nobody was watching, she had sneaked out on him. Without warning. Without excuse. Without reason. And started a new life. Here in London. Not half a mile away from his own lodgings. He might have passed her in the street countless times and not known…

Sheer rage gripped him at the magnitude of her deception. His whole existence, for the past seven years, had been based on a tissue of lies. She had lied to him. Robbie had lied about him. He had been lying to himself.

‘You are supposed to be dead,’ he hissed between gritted teeth. That she wasn’t made him feel like a complete fool. What kind of an idiot would harbour the maudlin, pathetic sentiment that a woman could ever be true, let alone from beyond the grave! Since the day she had…no, not died. Left him, was what she had done. Left him with an accusation of murder hanging over his head. But since that day, he might as well have been dead. For nothing had mattered any more.

But what irked him most was the fact that he had still wanted to carry on believing all that claptrap after he had seen her in Curzon Street. When he had sobered up, after a few fitful hours of sleep, he had been determined to deny the evidence of his own eyes, preferring to believe alcohol had fuddled his senses so much that he had imagined the resemblance, rather than let go of his insane delusion she was haunting him.

And if Grit had not been heartless enough to sell information to a man of his reputation, he would probably not be standing here now.

He had only come here to get confirmation that he had imagined the woman’s resemblance to Cora.

He had never expected to find himself looking at Cora herself.

A slightly older, careworn version of Cora, but Cora none the less.

Her voice had changed. Her accent was now almost indistinguishable from that of the other girls who lived and worked in this area. But there was still an unmistakably soft Scottish burr underlying the sharper vowel sounds, and a cadence to her speech that proclaimed her origins. The rest of her had hardly altered at all. Same fair skin that would break out in freckles at the most fleeting exposure to sunlight, same delicate features that made her face look all eyes, same mannerisms. The way she held her cup, the way she tilted her head as she looked up at him, though those green eyes, that had once blazed at him with what he had believed was the sort of love poets wrote sonnets about, were cold now. Blank.

Empty.

The enormity of her betrayal, her sheer deceitfulness, struck him all over again. There was no consolation in knowing she was not dead after all! He slumped down on to the bench beside her, in the gap that had opened up when her co-worker had climbed into the hackney-cab driver’s lap and sucked in a sharp pain. Why had he not seen how deceitful she was back then? Look at her now, calmly sipping her gin after colluding in a clandestine meeting between her co-worker and her fancy man. Abusing the comparative freedom of her trusted position without so much as a qualm! His upper lip curled into a sneer. This woman was not trustworthy! She had waltzed off with his heart and his ring…

His ring! How could he have forgotten that? That ring had been in his family for generations. It was the only item of jewellery his mother had managed to prevent his father from selling. It was extremely valuable. Far too valuable to waste on a deceitful, brazen…He grabbed her hand, determined to take it back.

Her ring finger was bare.

‘You sold my ring!’

How had she managed that? He had put up a reward, which he had been ill able to afford at first, in the hope that if it turned up, it would lead back to her. The antique ring, a blood-red ruby surrounded by tiny pearls, was such an unusual piece that he had been sure he would have heard if it had come on to the market.

She had somehow outwitted him, even in that. She must have sold it and used the proceeds to fund her flight to London. He scoffed at his own naïvety in thinking the paltry reward he had put up would have tempted a fence to turn in his supplier!

‘Why, Cora?’ he asked her again. That was what he simply could not comprehend. ‘At least, tell me why you ran away.’

If she had changed her mind about wanting to marry him, why had she not just told him, broken off the engagement and gone home? There was no need to have gone to such lengths to disappear so completely.

Mary’s heart went out to the poor gentleman who looked so bleakly baffled. For she knew exactly how he felt. At one point, her world had frequently seemed to make no sense at all. And that in turn left her feeling scared and lonely and confused.

And when she had felt like that, a few kind words, or a smile, had helped her get back on an even keel. Summoning up a smile that she hoped conveyed her sympathy for his state of mind, she gently explained, ‘I really am not who you think I am, sir. My name is Mary.’

‘How can you sit there and lie to me?’he snarled. ‘To my face! You got on your horse and rode off without a backward glance…’

‘A horse?’ Mary’s eyebrows rose in surprise. If this man thought she was capable of climbing right up on top of a horse, when she was far too timid to even bring herself to pat one—no matter how earnestly Joe promised it was quite safe—then that just proved how badly mistaken he was about her identity! The very prospect of touching one brought on waves of uncontrollable panic. Panic so strong she could smell it. The smell came flooding to her nostrils right now. She swallowed down hastily, but her heart was already pounding in her chest. And she could smell damp leaves, mixed in with the scent of horse and leather, and taste that horrid, metallic tang of blood…

‘…leaving me to pick up the pieces! Now you will not even do me the courtesy of explaining your outrageous behaviour! You said you loved me…’

His face dark with rage, he suddenly seized Mary’s shoulders, and kissed her hard on the mouth.

Mary was so surprised, she had no time to react. He had not looked in the least like a man who was about to kiss a woman.

But before she could do more than gasp, all hell broke loose.

With an inarticulate bellow of rage, Fred rose up, reached over her, seized the poor, deranged gentleman by the lapels of his very expensive coat, and hauled him to his feet.

His sudden action caused the bench on which they were all sitting to topple over, sending Mary flying backwards in a tangle of skirts. Joe, whose reactions were lightning fast, had managed to leap to his feet as the bench slid out from beneath him, but Molly had tumbled to the floor alongside Mary.

‘Quick, this way!’ Molly shrieked, grabbing her by the arm even as she herself started to scramble on all fours out of the reach of the flailing boots of the three men now struggling together where, just a moment before, they had been sitting quietly drinking their porter.

By the time they reached the door, everyone in the place seemed to have been sucked into the brawl. Glancing over her shoulder as Molly hustled her out, she saw one of the serving girls bringing her tray down on the head of a coal-heaver who had a bespectacled clerk in a bear hug, while one of Joe’s pals accidentally elbowed Fred in the face as he drew back his fist to punch a man in naval uniform. But she could not make out the dark gentleman anywhere amidst the sea of struggling combatants.

‘What a night!’ Molly gasped as they made it to the safety of the street, her face alight with excitement.

‘Are you not worried about Joe?’

From inside the gin shop Mary could hear the sounds of furniture breaking, and men cursing and yelling.

‘Sounds like—’she broke off briefly at a tremendous crash of breaking glass ‘—he’s having a smashing time.’Molly giggled as she straightened Mary’s skewed bonnet. ‘Did you see how fast he was?’ she added, dancing on the spot, and throwing a few punches at imaginary opponents for good measure.

‘I scarcely knew what was happening,’ Mary admitted. ‘It all happened so fast. One minute that man was kissing me, and then…Oh dear—’ she paused, casting an anxious glance over her shoulder ‘—I hope they are not hurting him.’

‘Well, strike me!’ Molly looked at Mary as though she had never seen her before. ‘Here was I thinking you’d be all of a quake, and all you can think of is whether Joe and the lads are hurting your beau!’

‘He’s not my beau! I just feel…sorry for him, that’s all. He seemed to think I was someone he had known once, someone who said she loved him, but then left him. That must have been why he followed me the other day, I must look very like her.’ Even sitting face to face with her, in the glaring light of the tavern’s lanterns, he seemed convinced she was his lost love. It was so sad.

Molly tucked Mary’s hand in the crook of her arm, and stepped out briskly, muttering, ‘I done the right thing, then. I weren’t sure,’ she said a little louder, darting Mary a sidelong glance, ‘but the thing is, Mary, girls like us don’t have a lot of choice.’

‘What do you mean? What have you done?’

‘It’s for your own good,’ she replied, puzzling Mary still further. ‘And it’s not as if you’re scared of him now, are you? Not like you was the other day?’

‘No,’ Mary confessed, shamefaced. ‘I was just being silly that day. He startled me, that was all, leaping out of the shadows like that…’

‘There, you see. It will be fine!’

‘What will be fine? Molly,’ Mary panted, ‘do we have to walk this fast? Nobody is chasing us now.’

‘Sorry,’ said Molly, moderating her stride to accommodate Mary’s. ‘You know I’ve always watched out for you, haven’t I?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that’s what I’m doing now. When Grit came to ask me what he oughter do about the questions Lord Matthison was asking about you, I told him to tell the gentleman whatever he wanted to know. Coz I don’t think he’ll do you any harm, Mary. There’s places what cater to gentlemen of that sort, and he don’t go to them. Not that I’ve heard…’

‘Molly, I don’t understand what you are talking about!’

‘No, I don’t s’pose you do. Look,’she said earnestly, ‘how long do you think Madame will keep you on, once your health goes completely? She puts up with you now, because the kind of beading you do is all the rage. But there’ll be a new fashion next season. Or your eyesight might go. Or…or anything could happen! And then, out you’ll go!’

Mary shook her head. ‘Madame took a risk, taking me in and giving me a job. She’s always been good to me.’

‘I’ve worked for her a damn sight longer than you, girl, and I’m telling you, she’s like an old spider, she is, sucking all the life out of us, and then throwing away the husks what ain’t no good no more! Mary, she don’t even pay you!Yougetyourbed andboard, while she’smakingher fortune out of what your clever fingers bring in. Do you know how much she charges the Earl of Walton for those gowns you embroider for his wife? And do you see a penny piece of it? No! Coz you’re too simple to stand up for yourself. Well, I’m doing it for you!You’ve caught the eye of a real live lord, girl. One of the wealthiest in town.’

‘Well, yes, but only because I look like someone he used to know.’

‘Makes no difference why he wants you. It only matters that he does want you. Gents like him can be very generous, if you give them what they want. And when he tires of you, he won’t just chuck you out on the street. Point of pride with men like him, to leave their ladybirds comfortably off.’

‘L…ladybird?’ Mary echoed in appalled disbelief.

‘Oh, yes! I reckon he’ll be making you an offer quite soon. And when he does, you take it! You hear? Play your cards right, and this could be the making of you.’

‘The making of me?’ Mary gasped. ‘The ruining of me, you mean!’

‘Lord, Mary, don’t be any dafter than you have to be. You don’t dislike him, do you?’

‘It’s not that. I do feel sorry for him, but…’

‘Well, there you are. No harm in offering the poor man a spot of comfort, is there?’

No harm? She did not know where to begin to explain the sheer magnitude of the harm that would come to her if she sold her body to a man! She could never regard becoming a man’s mistress as a step up in the world. It was all very well for Molly to describe it as a chance to gain the kind of financial security she could never hope for, not if she sewed for Madame for a hundred years, but as far as she was concerned, it would be the ultimate degradation!

But there was no point even trying to explain all that to Molly. She would just see her scruples as further proof of her stupidity.

She hunched her shoulders against her friend’s well-meaning meddling, and walked back to the shop in Conduit Street feeling like the loneliest, most misunderstood girl in London.

Chapter Three

Mary was standing on the edge of a cliff. She could hear waves pounding the shore far below, but it was too dark to see them. It was too dark to see anything. One false move, and she might go tumbling down to her doom.

Her heart started to race. Her legs shook. And, just as she had somehow known it would, the ground beneath her feet crumbled away and she was falling, falling, her mouth open wide in a soundless scream…

She landed with a bump, in the bottom of a small boat, winded, but unharmed. The dark gentleman had been there, waiting to catch her. His arms broke her fall.

It was not dark down here in the boat with him. The sun was shining. She felt warm and secure lying in the dark gentleman’s arms, being gently rocked as the waves lapped against the boat. She could hear gulls keening. She looked up into a vast, cloudless sky, the kind of sky you never saw in London, fettered as it was by rooftops rank with smoking chimneys.

He smiled down at her as she relaxed into his hold with a sigh.

‘I know you want me to kiss you,’ he said, and lowered his head…

With a jolt, Mary woke with the blankets twisted round her legs. The feeling of tranquillity dissipated under a sharp blast of shame. How could she be dreaming about kissing a man? That man! She could not seriously be considering Molly’s suggestion she become his mistress!

Could she?

Sick with self-disgust, Mary pulled her nightgown out from under Molly’s leg, and wriggled out of the bed she shared with her and Kitty, one of the other seamstresses who lived with them over the shop.

She pulled her wrapper round her shoulders, and padded barefoot up to the workroom. The sun was not yet up, so she lit one of the lamps Madame Pichot kept available when her girls had to work beyond the hours of natural daylight, and settled onto her stool by her embroidery frame.

She had intended to distract herself from the disturbing feelings the dream had unleashed, by getting on with some work. But her mind stayed stubbornly focussed on the dark gentleman, like a stray dog gnawing at a stolen bone.

She had woken just before his mouth had touched hers, but she already knew what it would feel like. Though in the dream he would not have kissed her as he had done in the gin shop, with frustrated anger. No, he would have kissed her tenderly, lovingly, exactly as she would want him to…

No! She did not want him to kiss her! She was not that sort of girl! She did not want to snuggle up to him, and put her arms round him, and…and…comfort him with her own kisses…why that would make her no better than a harlot!

She could not understand the person she had become in the Flash of Lightning. Before last night, she would have sworn that she feared and reviled men. All men. She had never wanted to receive the sort of lewd advances that other girls found flattering.

So why had she not felt the slightest inclination to jerk her hand out of his when he had grasped it? Why had she not wanted to struggle away from him when he had crushed her to his chest and kissed her?

She supposed she could argue that she would have been glad of anything that distracted her from sliding down into one of her panics. And she had certainly not been able to think about horses once he had swept her into his arms.

He had overwhelmed every one of her senses. His breath had been warm against her face, his hands strong and determined, yet they had not bruised her shoulders when he had pulled her against the hard wall of his chest, where her nostrils had filled with the scents of him. Expensive linen and fine milled soap and warm, clean man…

She sucked in a sharp, shocked breath. There she went again, savouring an experience that should by rights have scared her. Why had the feel of his arms closing round her felt like…she forced herself to admit it…like coming home? She rubbed at a dull, nagging ache that was thrumming at the base of her skull. It was ridiculous! He was a complete stranger to her.

A stranger who had managed to breach all her defences with one kiss!

One kiss, she sighed, and she could not stop thinking about him.

Oh, she pressed her palms against her flushed cheeks, she hoped she never saw him again!

If Molly was right, and he was about to make her a dishonourable offer, she did not rightly know how she would answer. She knew what she ought to answer. Of course she did. But would she be strong enough to say no? If he spoke to her again, kissed her again, this time gently, persuasively, as he had been about to kiss her in her dream, would she have the courage to stand firm in her beliefs?

Because, for one blissfully sinful moment, until Fred had come to her rescue, she had felt as though there was nowhere else she would rather be.

She, who had felt alone amongst strangers for as long as she could remember, had felt a connection with him that defied explanation.

Surely she had the moral strength to resist the temptation to go away with the first person who had ever made her feel as though she belonged somewhere?

No wonder, she sighed, so many women abandoned honest, hard toil, and took to a life of vice. If she could feel this torn after one fleeting encounter with a man she knew practically nothing about…She shivered. Perhaps her first instinctive reaction to his advent in her life had been the right one. To run far, far away to a place where he could never find her. Because he was dangerous. Dangerous to her.

‘Heavens, girl, what’s to do with you now?’

Mary started, discovering Madame Pichot hovering over her, her lips pursed with disapproval. She had not heard her come into the workroom. Not that that was so unusual in itself. She was often so immersed in her work that hours passed without her being conscious of anything else that went on in the room around her.

What was unusual was that Madame had caught her staring into space, her hands idle.

No wonder Madame looked displeased. Mary had not been herself since the day she had come running home in a panic from her errand to Curzon Street. Her nights were full of disturbing dreams of the dark man. And all day long her thoughts kept straying in his direction. She had to keep yanking them back to her work by force of will. She hung her head, embarrassed to have to acknowledge that for the first time ever, she was behind with her work.

Madame reached down, took hold of Mary’s chin in her strong, capable fingers, and jerked her face up.

‘Stars in your eyes,’ she muttered angrily. ‘You’ve come back from wherever Molly took you last night with stars in your eyes.’ Her fingers squeezed more tightly as Mary squirmed guiltily. She had known Madame would see through Molly’s excuses for taking so long over what should have been a straightforward errand. She had sent the girls straight up to their room without comment, and Molly seemed to think they had got away with it. But Madame’s next words chilled Mary to the bone.

‘Once the gentry start going back to their summer homes, I’m turning that girl off for last night’s work.’ She looked right through Mary as she voiced her thoughts aloud, treating her, as she had done from the first, as though she was a half-wit. Mary could understand how that attitude had originated. She had been in a terrible state on the day she had arrived. Almost beside herself after the rigours of the journey, and what had happened to her before setting out. For weeks, the slightest thing had triggered debilitating episodes of blind panic, which had meant she hardly got any work done.

The other workers had soon learned it was not safe to ask her questions about where she came from. Whenever she had tried to provide explanations, groping back into the unrelenting blackness where the knowledge should have been, she was overwhelmed by such a devastating sense of loss that it brought her actual, physical pain. So severe she could scarcely breathe through it. It was like…drowning.

Pretty soon, the girls stopped asking her. And Mary stopped trying to probe into that maelstrom of darkness and pain. It was a bit like coming to an uneasy truce with herself. She did not deliberately try to provoke her memory, and for the most part, it left her alone.

And Madame, discovering that when Mary was calm she could do far more than merely sew a seam, that she was in fact far more highly skilled with her needle than any of her other workers, had begun to treat her like a pet dog. A dog that could perform amazing tricks, and was therefore worth cosseting, but not quite on a par with a real person.

‘I can get another such as her for the crooking of my finger,’ Madame continued relentlessly. ‘Girls who can sew fall over themselves to work in an establishment such as mine, Mary, where they can get fair wages for an honest day’s work.’

Most girls, yes, but not her. Madame had only agreed to take her on as a favour to the friend who had sent her to London. Mary had her board and food. She got nice clothes, which she made for herself during the winter months, when custom was slack. She had sturdy boots, and attractive bonnets and warm gloves, for Madame insisted her girls looked well turned out when they went to church.

But hard coin never came into her hands.

‘I trusted you to go out and take your prescribed exercise, because I thought you were different from the other girls. That you were so scared of men that you would never idle away my time flirting with footmen in the houses I send you to, or loitering on the streets to see if you can catch the eye of some Bond Street buck. And then you come back here, reeking of the tavern, with stars in your eyes!’

She let go of Mary’s chin then, as though she was disgusted by the prolonged physical contact.

‘I thought all you needed to keep you happy was a piece of satin, and a dish of beads! The longer you worked for me, the calmer you seemed to become. Are you not happy working for me?’

Mary heard the threat implicit in Madame’s question and went cold inside. What would become of her if Madame turned her off? She had no family, no friends outside this workroom. Nor did she possess the survival skills of Molly and her ilk.

Mary stared at her, aghast. She no longer looked like the patient benefactress who tolerated her deficiencies because she had a charitable nature, but like a hardheaded businesswoman who had risen to the top of her profession by sheer determination. With her slightly protuberant eyes, her dark, wispy hair coiled round her head in a plait, and the way she had held Mary’s chin with fingers that felt like steel pincers, she could see exactly how Molly could liken her to a spider, grasping hold of a fly she had caught in her web. Molly and the other girls had always seen this side of her. Because they had their wits about them.

Now she, too, saw how precarious her position was. How totally dependant she was on this woman’s good will.

‘Please don’t turn me off when the Season is over,’ Mary pleaded. ‘I promise I won’t go into a tavern ever again! Indeed, I did not like it!’

Madame glared at her for a few seconds, before apparently coming to a decision.

‘I cannot go on pampering you as I have done, if this is how you repay me,’ she said coldly. ‘A daily walk, indeed! None of the other girls are granted such indulgence.’

None of the other girls worked quite so hard as she did, though, Mary surprised herself by thinking mutinously. They did not get so caught up in their task that they forgot to eat. They chattered, and got up to stretch and peer out of the window, or peek at the titled customers that came into the downstairs showrooms, while Mary kept her head down, and worked relentlessly, exhausting herself so that when she was finally permitted to leave her station, she hoped she would fall into bed and sleep dreamlessly.

‘Well, I shall certainly not permit you to leave these premises again until I can be certain I can trust you not to go making assignations. And no more sitting about, mooning over whoever it was you dallied with last night either. No man ever brought a woman anything but trouble. You must forget him! Do I make myself plain?’

‘Yes, Madame,’ said Mary with heartfelt relief. She was not, apparently, going to lose her job, and her home along with it, for the foreseeable future. Nor was she going to be going outside where she might risk running into the disturbingly seductive dark gentleman, either. And by the time Madame’s temper had cooled down, so would his ardour. People of his class, from her experience of the spoilt débutantes and titled ladies who came into the shop downstairs, did not possess a scrap of patience. They all wanted their whims satisfied quickly, or they grew petulant. And he was a lord, she recalled. Molly had mentioned his title. It was something like Harrison. Something with a lot of ‘s’ s in it, anyway. And a lord would not hanker after one particular seamstress for very long, if she knew anything about it. By the time she next ventured out of doors, he would have tracked down someone else who reminded him of his lost lady, and forgotten all about her.

‘Well, then, go and get some clothes on,’ Madame snapped. ‘And do not even think about getting any breakfast. You have wasted enough of my time today as it is!’

It was a fitting penance. Every time her stomach rumbled, Mary would remember how tempted she had been by the deceptive kisses of a stranger.

‘Thank you, Madame,’ Mary breathed, thankful the entire episode was over. She only hoped she would soon stop feeling guilty. It was not as if she had invited the man to accost her. No, he had rudely invaded, and taken up residence in her thoughts without the slightest bit of encouragement from her.

She would just have to turn her back on thoughts of him, just as she shut out the other shadows that tried to creep up and menace her hard-won sense of tranquillity.

That was all she really wanted.

To be at peace.

Lord Matthison winced as Ephraims applied a fresh piece of raw steak to his rapidly blackening eye. His knuckles were grazed, and it hurt to breathe too deeply, but by God, it had felt good to hit someone. Several someones. Seven years of holding back his grief, his anger and despair, had erupted last night in the Flash of Lightning, he realised.

But the satisfaction in inflicting as much pain upon everyone around him as he bore within himself had only brought temporary relief. By the time he had limped home, his mind had been in complete turmoil over the red-head.

One minute he was convinced she was Cora. Then his whole being would revolt at the very notion.

Because if that woman was Cora, then what the hell had been going on for the last seven years? He certainly had not imagined the extraordinary success her shade had brought him at the tables.

Unless…he sat forwards, clutching the steak to his eye as Ephraims gathered his bloodied shirt up from the floor. Supposing winning on those horses had just been a fluke. One of those lucky streaks that happen to gamblers from time to time. He had been barely twenty years old, half out of his mind with grief, spurned by his family and friends at a time when he needed them most. Had he just clung to the idea there was still one person who would not turn her back on him?

And his subsequent successes—could they have more to do with the fact that he never played but when he was stone-cold sober? And that he knew when to stop?

He shot to his feet, flinging the steak on to the dish on the table, dismissing it and Ephraims with a peremptory wave of his hand.

‘Don’t be angry with me, Cora,’ he pleaded, terrified lest she be offended by this lack of faith in her. ‘I still believe in you. I do!’

He refused to believe that red-headed woman could possibly be Cora! Why, she’d had no idea who he was or what he was talking about. He paced across the room, running his fingers through his hair. Cora would never have forgotten him! They had been everything to each other! Besides, the woman he had mistaken for Cora had looked completely at home amongst the denizens of that gin shop. Whereas Cora had been shy. And opposed to strong drink. It was unthinkable that she could have changed so much!

And Cora had no reason to flee to London. Not one that made any sense.

He paced the room for several minutes, torturing himself with an imaginary lover, with whom she had eloped. Of an illicit pregnancy, which she dared not confess to her brother.

He went cold inside. Robbie’s temper was formidable. She might have been afraid of what Robbie might do. But surely, he groaned, she could have confided in him?

He went to the washstand, where he bowed over the basin, and dashed a jug of cold water over his head. And was flooded with relief at the recollection that there had been no mention of a child of any sort in Grit’s report.

Of course not.

Cora had not taken a lover. Or been pregnant. She had loved him!

The woman was not Cora, that was all there was to it!

But what if she was? a persistent little voice nagged at him.

‘Dammit all to hell!’he growled, reaching for a towel and burying his face in it. If the woman he had seen in the gin shop was Cora, then she owed him an explanation for the suffering he had endured on her account! And if not…he tossed the soiled towel to the floor.

Well, he was not going to break faith with Cora. He might have kissed the woman, but that was only because he had been so sure, in that instant…

He was just going to have to establish, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she was not Cora, that was all.

And the quickest way to do that, he suspected, would be to walk back into that gin shop, and start to make enquiries amongst the people she associated with.

But not straight away.

He deliberately waited the few days it took him to regain his sense of equilibrium before returning to the gin shop where he had caught her carousing with…no, not scum. The men she had been with were at least honest and hard working. He paused on the threshold of the Flash of Lightning, scanning the room until he spied the men she had been with the night he had seen her, held her, kissed her…

Muttering a curse, he stalked across the room to the very same table where he had committed that act of gross folly. And stood there, calmly letting the conversation dry up as the men, one by one, became aware of his presence.

The one who had been sitting next to Cora, the one who had been so eager to rush to her defence, rose slowly to his feet.

‘Thought we’d seen you off for good on Friday,’ he growled. ‘You got no right coming back here.’

The other men around the table growled their agreement.

Rather than argue that he had a perfect right to enter any drinking den in London, or anywhere else he chose, Lord Matthison kept his expression neutral as he replied, ‘I have returned to compensate the landlord for any breakages that occurred. And to offer my apologies for poaching on your territory,’ he addressed Cora’s defender directly. ‘She bears such a remarkable resemblance to my late fiancée, that for a moment or two…’ He tailed off, with a slight shrug of his shoulders. ‘I hope you will believe me when I tell you I intended no insult to your…wife.’

He had no idea what connection the red-head had to these men. But he had seen them all leap to her defence from what they interpreted as his assault, as if she was one of their own. If he wanted to find out more about her, this was the place to start.

‘Mary’s not my wife!’ Fred protested, turning red as a couple of the other men at the table sniggered. ‘But nor could I just sit there and let someone grab her like that. No, not if he was a royal Duke I couldn’t!’

‘Scurvy thing to do,’ said another of the group. ‘Taking advantage of a simpleton in that way.’

‘It was as well it was Fred as saw you trying to steal a kiss,’ said another, ‘after what Molly threatened not five minutes before you walked in.’ There was a moment’s thoughtful silence, then the entire group burst out laughing.

‘She’d have torn you limb from limb!’ declared the one who had been cuddling Cora’s female companion, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. ‘You couldn’t have employed that right hook against her!’

Taking advantage of the relaxation in the atmosphere, Lord Matthison took a place at the table, and clicked his fingers for service. After he had ordered a round of drinks, Fred clapped him on the shoulder, admitting,

‘If it hadn’t been you, it’d uv bin someone else. There’s nearly always a fight in here of a Friday night.’

‘Usually a woman what starts it, too, one way or another,’ bitterly asserted a man on the other side of the table whose fists, Lord Matthison recalled ruefully, had made such an indelible impression on his ribs.

When he told him as much, the man’s scowl turned to a grin of pride. ‘For a gent, you pack quite a punch yourself. Spar with Gentleman Jackson, I suppose?’

He allowed the conversation to dwell for some time on the merits of the science that could be learned at such establishments, compared to the tricks learned in less salubrious surroundings.

There was a slight lull when the serving girl brought their tray of drinks, and once they had all toasted his punishing right, he turned to the topic he had really come in to investigate.

‘What did you mean when you referred to…Mary,’ he forced himself to call her, though he was by no means certain it was her real name, ‘as a simpleton?’

They had spoken of her that way several times, and attributed their defence of her largely to that cause.

‘Just that,’replied the one who had reminded him his name was Joe. His jaw, Lord Matthison noted with grim pride, was still rather swollen. ‘She ain’t all there. My Molly looks out for her at work, but…’ He raised his tankard, and took a long pull.

‘And she don’t like men,’ pointed out Fred, sympathetically. ‘No disrespect to you, sir, but she’s jumpier than an unbroke filly round men she don’t know well. Couldn’t let you go a scaring of a poor maid like that.’

‘Molly reckons,’ said Joe, setting down his tankard and aligning the handle with great precision, ‘she’s been took advantage of, before she come to London.’ There was a murmur of assent from the other men. ‘Not that she’s ever spoke of it. Says she don’t remember much of anything before she fetched up in town. Molly said she was a lot worse back then even than she is now. Headaches, and sort of fits, and that.’

Lord Matthison went cold. The girl had no memory of the time before she came to London? Six years ago? Could that account for the blank look in her eyes?

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