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Miranda dipped a curtsy in the big man’s direction.

“Nicely done, Miss Kirby. Very cool under fire.” Goldsworthy offered the girl one of his rare smiles. His glance took in the broken window and the stone in Hazelwood’s hand. “Close call, was it?”

“Did Miss Fawkener see you, sir?” Hazelwood asked. “I’m trying to puzzle out why she chose to enter this shop of all the shops on Old Bond?”

The big man turned to Miranda. “When did she come in, Miss Kirby?”

“Right on your heels, sir. Just as you went through the curtain.”

Goldsworthy frowned, but he shook his great head. “A near miss then. No reason for her to recognize me. I met the father in Koron, but not the daughter. Concentrate on the book, lad. Crack that code and report to me. Only days until the investiture ceremony.” With that he dropped the curtain. His heavy footsteps faded down the hall.

Miranda began to sweep the shop floor. “I’ll get Papa to board up that window.”

Hazelwood cleared his throat. “Miranda, I owe you an apology. I’m afraid I allowed Miss Fawkener to make an assumption about our connection that does neither of us any credit.”

Miranda did not look up from her sweeping. “I’m sure you did it for the case, my lord.”

“That doesn’t quite excuse me. I’ll set the record straight the next time I see Miss Fawkener.”

“There’s no need on my account, my lord.” The girl colored prettily.

“There’s every need, Miranda. I won’t have you pay for my faults.”

He went out through the back of the shop and across the frozen patch of garden. In the club he hesitated once at the foot of the stairs. He could settle down to figure out George Fawkener’s code, or he could get back to Jane Fawkener’s side. He hefted the piece of paving stone in his hand and took the stairs two at a time. In his room, he tossed the little book on the bed. He would tackle the code later, once he knew that Fawkener’s enemies couldn’t get at his daughter.

* * * *

Jane stood in the marble-tiled entry of her grandmother’s townhouse. She had refused to return to the hotel where Hazelwood could find her, and she’d convinced Clive and Allegra to leave her here in spite of their reproaches for her behavior in entering the chemist’s shop. She did not know whether the window breaking or Hazelwood’s embrace shocked them more. She suspected the latter.

As she lifted her bag to find the soap she’d purchased, she realized the bag was open. She reached in and found the soap and her few coins, but not her book. She looked at once at the floor and at the footman holding her coat and gloves, but there was no book in her grandmother’s foyer. Her mind made a quick scramble back through the carriage ride to the moment she’d last opened the bag to pay for her purchase when she’d fumbled with the coins. She was sure she had not dropped the book in the shop in spite of the shock of finding Hazelwood there.

Her thoughts settled on the distracted moments on the steps outside the little shop, and she took the time apart, moment by moment—Hazelwood wrapping her in his great coat, shielding her from some object that had hurtled past them shattering glass, assisting her into the barouche. She had been lifting her skirts, watching her footing, and trying to attend to her cousins’ reproaches. That was the moment he’d done it.

It was not enough for him to steal a kiss. He had to steal her book, too. She had not cursed him in days, but now a curse rose to her lips.

She sent it into the air. She wished him clumsy and awkward and confused. She wished him ragged and tattered and muddied. She wished him stuttering and tongue-tied and speechless, and she wished that whenever he tried to kiss a maiden, toads would fall from his mouth.

Her voice rang in the entry. Her grandmother’s butler listened in silence until she stopped.

“Are you ready to ascend now, Miss?” he asked.

She begged his pardon, and he unbent so far as to acknowledge that he suspected she was seriously vexed. She followed him up to her grandmother’s drawing room.

She remembered how she’d felt in Hazelwood’s carriage, how eagerly she had returned his kiss, how he must have known how lost she was in his embrace, how she had relished his strength, his arms tightening around her as if he, too, were helpless to do anything less than surrender to that kiss. Now it occurred to her that the kiss was a pretense from start to finish. It was nothing but an attempt to steal her book.

She slowed her steps and lifted a hand to her burning cheeks. She had come to her grandmother’s house to escape him, but she did not have to worry. She would probably never see him again now that he had the book.

The thought led to a still more lowering realization. She had considered herself above the common reader of the book. She did not need the writer’s advice. She could be amused by its passages on bonnets and balls. Her only use for the book had been to further her search for her father. And yet she had failed to heed its wisdom and suffered for it like the least sensible ninny whoever hunted a husband.

She was guilty of folly, deceived into thinking a man sincere, not by succumbing to his words, which she could easily dismiss, but succumbing to the flattery of his attention. And, if she were wholly honest with herself, flaming cheeks honest, to the flattery of a man’s body pressed eagerly to hers. He had probably deceived Miranda, the shopgirl, in just the same way. The girl had been jealous, needlessly so, but jealous nonetheless.

It was not just Hazelwood’s perfidy fueling her frustration. Her cousins, too, had foiled her. She had wished to linger discreetly nearby the shop to follow the big man when he emerged, but she had been unable to even broach the matter with her cousins. She could not pursue the big man at the moment, but she could get her book back.

She found her grandmother dozing in the overheated room while her companion read aloud. Jane offered her grandmother the lemony soap and persuaded her to take a drive in spite of the cold that afflicted London. As soon as they were settled in the carriage, her grandmother confessed. “You rescued me, miss, and I know you know it. I could not have endured another chapter of that dreadful Raby novel Margaret is reading.”

Jane laughed. “Then perhaps I may ask for a favor, grandmother.”

Her grandmother frowned.