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CHAPTER 1

London

December 1814

Thirty-year-old Noel Davenant, the Viscount Cokesbury, stared into the shop window at the print he’d been searching for all morning. He’d hoped he might find it if he ventured beyond Mayfair, and his persistence had been rewarded.

Every bit as evocative as the others engraved by a Mr. Beasley, this latest Beasley-engraved print showed a girl hard at work at her sampler. Noel meant it to be for his mother as a Christmas gift, to take her mind off the death of his sister Natalie. The girl even looked like Natalie at that age.

Lately, Mother’s needlework seemed the only thing that brought her out of her grief. It had been two years, yet Mother mourned his sister as if it had been only two days. So did he.

He leaned forward to see if he could make out a price, then felt a hand slip into and out of the coat pocket that held his wallet. What the devil?

As he patted his now empty pocket, he whirled around just in time to see a poorly dressed lad race off down the crowded road. With a muttered curse, he ran after the thief. Clearly, the boy was a very bad pickpocket, or Noel wouldn’t have felt his hand. That was the only reason he didn’t call, “Stop, thief!” He doubted the lad was yet a hardened criminal.

Still, a few boys were warily watching the chase, wise enough to stay well out of it. By the time Noel caught up to the guttersnipe and grabbed him by the arm, he realized the lad was no more than eight or nine, well-groomed and clean, despite his shabby clothes.

Nonetheless …

“Give me my property!” Noel growled.

“Dunno what you mean, you blasted gentry cove!” the boy had the audacity to say. “I ain’t got naught of yours!”

“Then why were you running?”

“Uh … to … uh … I gots to meet a gentry mort.”

“A gentry mort?” He snorted. This child wasn’t meeting any woman, that was for damned sure. “Then you won’t mind if I search you.” He began digging in the lad’s capacious coat pockets.

“Leave off, you bloody whoreson!” the boy cried, trying to wriggle away.

“James William Archer!” a female voice cried from a slight distance ahead of them. She coughed for a moment, as if the very effort of pronouncing his name hurt her throat. “I don’t want to hear you using such language ever again! What in heaven’s name is wrong with you?”

Instantly curious, Noel lifted his gaze to the woman, only to be arrested by the sight of the most beautiful, auburn-haired creature he’d ever seen. Granted, her flamboyantly embroidered green pelisse was patched and her flimsy green bonnet too thin for the weather, but otherwise she reminded him of the three red-haired young sisters whom everyone called the Mistletoe Maidens. When those impudent lasses appeared in Covent Garden with their green cloaks and mistletoe wares each year in December, everyone knew Christmas was just around the corner.

Unlike those freckled and ruddy-cheeked maidens, however, this one had creamy skin and angelic features, even with the frown marring her perfect brow. She looked to be in her twenties, although younger than he by a good measure, and a thick scarf of red wool engulfed her neck.

“Well, Jimmy?” She coughed once more, then cleared her throat. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Don’t be angry, sis. The other lads tease me something awful if I talk the way you want me to.”

Another amazement. The boy spoke the purest English now, without an ounce of guttersnipe in his accent. What the devil?

“The other lads?” She glanced about as she gave another cough, but the older boys he’d seen earlier had melted into the alley across the street. “Those miscreants you call friends, you mean? Where are they? I assume they’re lurking about here somewhere.”

Then she seemed to realize that Noel still held her brother fast, and she fixed her irate glance on him. “And who are you, sir, to be manhandling my brother so?”

He wondered if the pair did this dance often, a sister and brother pickpocket team, but she simply didn’t look—or sound—like a woman of that sort. Perhaps that was what made her so effective.

Somehow, he found his voice. “Your brother just stole my wallet, madam. I am merely trying to get it back.”

“Oh, Jimmy!” she cried, a fetching blush spreading over her cheeks. “How could you? Return the man’s wallet to him at once!”

Noel waited to see if the boy would continue to protest his innocence to his sister’s face.

“We need the money!” young James cried. “You know we do!”

“Not badly enough for you to turn thief. Papa must be turning over in his grave.”