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“Douglas?”

Joan laughed. “No, Lord Burke! Douglas wouldn’t recognize a rosebud if it fell on his head. Besides, he prefers tavern girls, who don’t require flowers.” Mariah’s eyes went wide. Joan looked quite smug for a moment. “Really, Mariah, since when has Douglas been able to keep any secrets from me?”

“I did think he might try to keep that a secret,” she managed to say. Douglas and Joan had always been rather open with each other, and Joan heard the most shocking things from him. Mariah, with no brothers or sisters of her own, had envied her cousins her entire childhood for that. “But enough about Douglas. I shall have to be more circumspect. You’ve been in London for the Season before. What do you think I ought to do?”

Joan pursed her lips. “I suppose if you simply accept a great many invitations, you’ll be able to meet all the gentlemen eventually. It will take a while, mind, and you’ll be bored out of your head at times, but most of the acceptable gentlemen go out sooner or later.”

“Only most?”

“Some are almost never seen—the odd reclusive duke, you know, or the most scandalous rakes who simply aren’t received.”

“Hmm.” Mariah thought for a moment. “I shall have to think about that. Mama won’t let me accept every invitation.” She paused, then slowly confessed, “He came to see me again last night.”

Joan bolted upright. “Really? And you wasted all this time telling me about bouquets? What happened?”

Mariah bit her lip. “He just appeared in the window. I never heard a thing until he said good evening.”

“And then?”

She spread her hands and studied her fingers. “I— We argued, a bit. I was trying to discover more about him, and he was refusing so calmly, and then...”

“Then... what?” Joan looked puzzled at her halting description.

“I said it wasn’t right for me to call him Harry when he addressed me as Lady Mariah—for he always had, Joan—and then he began calling me Mariah, and then I said I wanted to know what he looked like, and then I—then he⁠—”

“What did you do?” Joan whispered, aghast.

“Nothing,” cried Mariah, feeling a guilty blush steal up her cheeks nonetheless. “He— I touched his face. That’s all.” Her cousin’s horrified expression didn’t change. “And he kissed my hand.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound so bad...” Joan said slowly.

“No! It wasn’t. But after he had gone, I felt... Well, I felt different.”

“Like you wished he had touched you?” Joan leaned so far forward, she almost fell off her chair.

Mariah’s eyes widened. “Yes! That’s what I mean. But—” She blushed again. “Have you ever felt that about a man?”

Joan’s face turned bright pink and she sat back with a jerk. “Oh! Well, once or twice. I never did anything, of course.”

“Of course not,” Mariah quickly agreed. They looked at each other for a wary moment, then away.

“How was it?” Joan asked a moment later, very softly. “When he kissed your hand?”

Mariah sighed, curling her hand into a fist as she remembered the feel of his fingers on her cheek, his thumb on her lips, his grip on her wrist as he kissed her palm. “Heavenly.”

Chapter Nine

The girl was making quiet squeaks of discomfort as Bethwell grunted and panted against her. Harry slouched lower into his dirty longshoreman’s coat, trying to shut out the sounds while not breathing too deeply of the coat’s odor of dead fish and sweat. The alley where Bethwell was taking his pleasure smelled even worse, so he was skulking just outside it, near enough to be at the ready but as far away as he could manage.

He hated this part of his job, he truly did. Apparently recovered from the heart palpitations that had kept him chastely at home the last several nights, Bethwell was making up for it tonight on a debauched spree through Whitechapel, drinking and gambling and now rutting, and Harry had drawn the short straw to follow him.

No; that wasn’t fair. Angelique couldn’t possibly do it. Not because she couldn’t take care of herself, but the only women out on the streets now were whores and slatterns. Angelique would stand out just for her sobriety, and Bethwell might recognize her.

Not that he wished this job on anyone. Angelique had warned him about Bethwell’s tastes, but it still turned his stomach. The fight had been bad enough, a vicious bare-knuckle brawl between two hulking brutes who looked ready to kill each other—and might have. One man was coughing up pints of blood when the marquis left. Bethwell enjoyed it greatly, roaring with approval at every blow and wagering with a very dangerous-looking character who looked quite capable of cutting a man’s throat. Harry had watched with his teeth gritted and his hand on his dagger, certain he would be required to intervene sooner rather than later, but to his relief Bethwell lost with dignity, paid his wager, and the Captain Sharp left him alone.

The girl, though... Harry hadn’t liked the business with the prostitute from the start. On his way out of the pub which had hosted the illicit boxing match, Bethwell had summoned her with a snap of his fingers. Harry had noticed the women lurking outside the door, but Bethwell had chosen the youngest of the lot. Little more than a child. She’d kept her head down as she followed the marquis into a nearby alley, and Harry had had no choice but to go, too.

He shifted his weight, searching for a more comfortable patch of brick wall at his back. He didn’t like Whitechapel in general, but particularly not on a dank, cold night when the fog seemed to swallow every sound of warning and every glimmer of light. He felt blind and deaf tonight, and in Whitechapel those were dangerous things to be.