He had a path to recovering Papa’s ring.
And he saw another path, too, one that ran alongside it.
A path toward earning Miss Birdwell’s respect.
A path he just thought he would pursue.
7
Jane Street, London, Four days later
Tilly alighted from the hired hackney cab, faced the plain, red-brick exterior of Hope House, and not for the first time, experienced a smattering of surprise at finding herself here.
Well, not surprise at finding herself at Hope House in general.
She’d been here before to lend a helping hand. Several times, in fact.
Today, however, she wasn’t here to offer help.
She was here to observe.
That was what had her surprised.
The reason for her presence here—in the specific.
The first surprise had been that the letter had come at all.
But yesterday, there it had been in tidy black and white—Lord Rhys Osborne requesting her presence at Hope House at two in the afternoon to bear witness to his first noble deed.
Until then, she’d figured Lord Rhys wasn’t as reformed as he claimed and would deem the price for getting his pa’s ring back too high.
That was the conclusion most lordly wasters would have reached. Most lords, the wasters and the righteous alike, didn’t appreciate having to work for that which they wanted.
In fact, Tilly hadn’t believed those black-and-white words the first time she’d read them.
The second pass hadn’t yielded much more belief.
Upon the third read, those words finally communicated themselves as fact.
And with that acceptance came a feeling.
A light, little feeling that whissed through her that she thought it best not to examine closely.
The thing was, she’d come away from her afternoon with Lord Rhys Osborne with an altogether different feeling from the one that had begun it.
By the end, she’d been enjoying it.
There.
She’d enjoyed herself.
A few reasons why presented themselves.
First, she wasn’t so above the superficialities not to take a measure of delight from having the upper hand over the handsome son of an earl.
Well, once he realized he couldn’t bully her.
Or had he tried to bully her?
