Boots splashed in the street. A lantern swung past the window, throwing a harsh slice of light into the compartment. Shapes—two, three—clustered near the door.
“Bow Street,” a man called, voice practiced. “We have orders to search conveyances traveling from Lady Mordaunt’s.”
Graham’s expression went flat.
Eleanor felt it at once. The wrong cadence. Too eager. Too sure.
Graham leaned close, mouth near her temple, his voice a rough whisper meant for her alone. “Do exactly what I say. Do not argue. If they take you, you make them believe you are afraid.”
He took her hand and gave one tight squeeze, a promise and a warning braided together.
Then he opened the door.
The night rushed in cold and wet, stinking of coal smoke and horse.
A man in a plain coat stood there with a lantern raised. The seal on his paper too crisp. His boots too clean.
Graham spoke smoothly, all peer and privilege. “You have mistaken your authority. I will see your warrant by proper light.”
The man smiled.
And that was the moment Eleanor knew.
A second figure moved from the shadows—fast, brutal—driving a cudgel into Graham’s shoulder. Graham staggered, caught the blow with a grunt, and lunged anyway.
Eleanor rose, her instincts screaming to help, and a hand clamped over her mouth from behind. She tried to fight, to scream, but only tasted leather and rain. Another arm hooked around her waist, hauling her backward out of the carriage as if she weighed nothing at all.
“Quiet, miss,” a voice murmured at her ear. “Be sensible.”
Sensible. The word rang through her. Sensible! As if this were a drawing room correction. The devil she would.
Eleanor fought, twisting and driving her elbow back. She struck something soft and the man hissed.
Graham’s voice cut through the chaos sharp and furious. “Eleanor!”
She caught a glimpse of him in the lantern light. His coat torn at the shoulder, eyes bright with lethal intent, moving like a man who had forgotten the meaning of restraint.
Then another blow landed.
The world lurched.
Eleanor’s reticule was ripped from her wrist. A cloth—damp, sharp-smelling—was pressed to her face. The street tilted. The lanterns smeared into gold.
Then the dark took her.
* * *
When Eleanor came around her wrists were lashed to a chair. The room was not a cell, but it was the anteroom to one. Her gaze swept the space. Dismal, with corners full of secrets, two oil lamps cast a pale, wavering light across cracked plaster and a forest of desks, each encumbered by paper, ribbon, and old ink peppered the room. A clock ticked slowly, every second a weight.
Graham would already be hunting.
The thought came uninvited, warm and painful in the same breath, because the last thing she remembered clearly before the hands seized her was the rough promise in his voice: Only if you do the same.
She did not have the luxury of failing him, or herself. For all she knew, he had been captured, too.
The man at the desk, she refused to think of him as a guard, was hunched over triplicate forms, his pen gnawing at each line. His hands were bureaucratic: able to sort, collate, and stamp in the same motion. She recognized his type. Her father had once observed that men who kept ‘permanent records’ never looked at you directly, preferring paper.
This man fit the profile.
