Shemustbe saved.
“I love you, Mama. It will be better soon.” She squeezed her mother’s hand.
Forgive me, God, for what I am about to do.
Night smelled like clean rain that had not yet fallen. Gwen left through the servants’ door, with a cloak pulled up to her chin and a plain bonnet that hid the gleam of her hair. She kept to side streets and hackneys whose drivers would not meet a lady’s eye.
The city watched from shuttered windows and narrow alleys, curious as any neighbor and almost as talkative.
Greystone House rose like a quiet omen above the square. The lamps on either side of the door spilled gold puddles into the darkness.
Gwen’s heart was battering at her ribs. She told it to behave. Fear did not help a woman spend what little courage she possessed.
She mounted the steps and rang the bell.
The butler answered as if strangers called at midnight every day. He was discreet to the point of banishment. His eyes took in her cloak, her covered hair, the quality of her shoes, and the steadiness of her chin. “Yes, Ma’am.”
“I would speak to the Duke of Greystone,” she declared, forcing her voice into a lower register that sounded older and less likely to swoon.
“Of course,” he said, neither surprised nor disapproving. “May I ask for your name?”
“You may not,” she said. “But you may tell His Grace that a lady would be obliged if he granted her a few minutes in his study.”
The butler studied her. She could feel him weighing his options. Then, he stepped aside with perfect calm. “If you will wait here.”
She stood in a square of darkness and polished floor. The house smelled of beeswax and leather, and of something like cedar that made her think of trunks filled with secrets. A clock ticked. Somewhere, a door closed.
“Ma’am,” the butler called. “This way, if you please.”
He led her down a quiet corridor to a cracked door. The lamplight within was soft and welcoming.
The butler tapped on the door, opened it, and then bowed her through.
The Duke’s study was tidy yet disorderly in a way typical of a busy gentleman. Papers were scattered on his desk. A decanter stood half full. The fire had dwindled to embers that looked like the heart of a ruby.
And there was the Duke himself.
He had discarded his coat. His cravat lay on a chair like a silk serpent. The first buttons of his shirt had been undone, and the column of his throat was a sin a woman could fall into. His sleeves were rolled up to his forearms.
He looked like work and indulgence in equal measure.
Gwen stood very straight. She hated herself for looking, then hated herself for hating it. She needed her wits. She did not need to admire the enemy.
He was surprised. She saw it in the slight stiffening of his back, before his shoulders relaxed. His gaze flickered to the hood of her cloak, then to her hands, then back to her face.
“How may I serve you, Madam?”
She had rehearsed a sentence that began with his title and ended with a request for five hundred pounds. It deserted her like a cowardly ally.
For a moment, she could not speak.
He drew closer a step, not quite courteous, not quite intimate. “A chair, if you prefer. Wine, if you require it. Words, if you have them.”
She lifted her chin. The memory of his thumb on her mouth burned like shame and a warning. “You are careless, Your Grace.”
“Am I? I am often told the opposite.”
“You were careless last night.” She was grateful for the steadiness of her tone. “A lady in a garden. No mask. A face that would sell a thousand copies of the morning papers. Quite careless.”
