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“Then why are you inside?” Mrs. Wark asked.

“I wanted this to end without bloodshed,” she said, thinking fast. “I told them to let me try to speak to you.”

“Too late,” growled Mrs. Wark, thrusting all of her body weight backward and knocking Lavinia off-balance. Lavinia’s pin sank into the side of the woman’s neck. Mrs. Wark gave an unladylike bellow and, clutching at her wound, lunged for Lavinia as Douglas scrambled up, but Andrew’s rope finally gave way. He punched Douglas hard across the jaw, knocking him back to the ground just as Lavinia managed to elbow Mrs. Wark in the stomach. Her elbow connected painfully with the steel frame of the woman’s corset, but the blow was enough to knock Mrs. Wark to the ground.

Lavinia lunged for the closest discarded gun, but Mrs. Wark grasped her by the foot, trying to pull her down. Andrew threw himself on the woman, wrenching her hands away from Lavinia’s foot. Mrs. Wark reared back and then clamped her teeth around Andrew’s arm.

“Bloody hell!” he shouted, trying to shake the woman off.

Lavinia scrambled up, two hands gripping the gun. She slid back, raising her arm up and hitting Mrs. Wark roundly on the back of the head with the butt of the weapon. The woman dropped in a heap, Andrew partially sprawled across her back.

Oh Lord. She’d just knocked a fellow woman out with a wicked-looking gun. She looked down at her hand gripping the weapon, but instead of the horror that she expected to feel, she felt something else. Pride. Fierce and righteous, it burned at the center of her. She’d saved the man she loved without firing a shot.

She looked up and they stared at each other for a moment before a grin cracked over his bloodied face. “Have I ever told you you’re magnificent?”

Something between a sob and a laugh bubbled up in her throat, and she hauled him to his feet before throwing her arms around him and kissing him. And instantly everything fell away. The shock and the worry were all secondary to this. Being back with Andrew . . . it felt like home.

But the kiss didn’t last. Andrew pulled away, his expression grim. “We need to find the prince.”

She nodded, but then another voice cut through the warehouse. “No need. I took care of all of that while you two were kissing and making up.”

They turned and Gillie was standing in the doorway, elbow on her hip, gun pointed up in the air. If she didn’t know any better, Lavinia might’ve sworn it was smoking.

“All of them?” Andrew asked.

“All,” said Gillie with a grin. “The prince and the duke aren’t quite as grateful as one would think they might be, but I suspect they don’t particularly like the idea of being rescued by a woman.”

Behind them, Douglas groaned. In a flash, Gillie pointed and shot him in the foot. The man howled and clutched at the wound.

“Oh, don’t be such a child,” the young lady said. “It’s just so you won’t run away. Be grateful I didn’t shoot you in the knee. Far more damage.”

“Gillie, you’re a wonder,” Andrew said, pulling his liaison to him in a side hug.

Gillie squirmed a little. “Save the affection for her.”

Andrew cast his gaze back at Lavinia. He was, she noted, still smiling.

“Oh, I plan to.”

It took until four that morning for Andrew to make good on his promise. Even though it had been a bluff on Lavinia’s part, it turned out that Mr. Noble had a good nose for trouble and had taken it upon himself to hail a pair of constables on their nightly rounds. One of the officers ran back to his station, gathered up as many free men as he could, and stormed back to the warehouse. It was all Gillie could do to discreetly stuff the Prince of Wales into Mr. Noble’s cab and spirit him away before everyone could see him.

Lavinia stayed on, giving a statement several times over sans some details about the prince’s involvement. Suddenly, the kidnapping and possible near-regicide of a prince became a kidnapping and ransom of a duke for a mountain of gold a dragon would be proud of. Whether the constables believed her or not didn’t matter. She and Andrew stuck to their stories as close as could be, and soon even the most suspicious threw up their hands and decided to call it a lucky break that everyone was relatively unharmed.

At some point in the night, Andrew had drifted over and draped a blanket he’d found in Mr. Noble’s cab around Lavinia’s shoulders. She’d sunk back into the reassurance of his touch but then he’d been pulled away again to be questioned by a rather stern man with a heavy mustache.

It wasn’t until the sky had taken on the faintest purple tint that predicted the day that Andrew made his way to her again. Lavinia was sitting on a low wall, clutching a cup of tea that a kind constable had brought her, when he dropped down next to her with a sigh.

“Are they finished?” she asked.

“For now. There will be reports and paperwork to fill out, and I’ll likely be called down to London for a briefing as well. My retirement seems doomed to be chronically delayed.”

The adrenaline that had been pulsing through her veins for hours had drained away, and hearing him speak of his retirement and his plans to disappear chipped away at the confident resolve that had sent her racing across town to save him.

“You’ll be able to take that house on the shore and not tell anyone where you’re living soon enough.”

You’ll be able to leave me without a second thought.

But it had been worth it.