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At precisely half past seven, according to his watch, the front parlour door whispered open and footsteps passed toward the front door which opened and softly closed.

April must have left the money. Run, my darling, run...

Easing his hip aside, he reached for the rope beneath his blanket. It was time to go, time to observe...

This time, he had no warning before the first bolt on his door shot back. He froze, his fingers clutching the rope.

***

APRIL AGAIN USED THE area door to slip out of the house unobserved. She wondered if Darcy were watching her and thought it likely. She was early. He still had time to get to Seven Dials ahead of her. But she did not so much as glance toward his house, merely hurried out of the square toward Park Lane.

She took a hackney, because they would expect it, and because she was suddenly too pathetically tired to walk all the way. She got the hackney to drop her at the corner of Castle Street and St. Martin’s Lane, then she turned into White Lion Street, her bag of money hidden beneath her cloak.

Her neck, her whole body prickled as though with the stares of a thousand eyes. Even in her darkest, least fashionable clothes, she stood out here. A lone young woman faced particular dangers in places like this—which was why, all these years ago, she had turned herself into the boy Ape. But in these clothes, worn to satisfy Piers’s captors, she could not stride with brash purpose, like Ape. Nor, for her own safety should she appear too frightened. Someone called to her from a doorway she’d thought was closed. Someone else walked directly toward her, no doubt with robbery or abduction in mind. She wanted to swear at him to scare him off. Instead, she swerved around him at the last moment, without so much as looking at him, and hurried on.

Though she listened out for him following her, she could not let herself be distracted from the other dangers all around her. The kidnappers had chosen their time well. It was still light enough to find her way, gloomy enough to blur what was ahead. A couple of dogs were snarling over some scrap. A nearby crying baby almost undid her when she thought of her own.

A drunken altercation was crashing around behind the half-open door of an alehouse. A group of men at the corner were playing pitch and toss. She gave them a wide berth too and heard them laughing over unsavoury comments. But at least they left her alone.

Her nerves screamed because if anything happened to her, what would happen to Piers?

Surely, his abductors must have thought of that? Was someone already following her, to make sure she got to her destination? She doubted they would care enough to conduct her out of Seven Dials again once they had the money. In fact, she was counting on that.

Saracen Street. She was almost there. Ignoring a child with old eyes who wanted to sell her a bruised orange—while a much larger figure lurked in the shadows—she hurried on toward the waste ground and the ruins. This was where she would most definitely be watched.

It was quieter here, just as this morning, curiously isolated from the noise and chaos of the streets she had just walked through. She allowed herself one quick glance at the cottage on her left. That was natural. But no light shone there.

Since she had already been here, she knew exactly where she was supposed to leave the money. But she wasted some time looking at the watch pinned beneath her cloak—it was only twenty minutes past seven—and taking the ransom note from her pocket to consult the map. They probably expected her to do that, to dither with fear and nerves.

She did not have to act much.

The whole place was eerily silent. From where she stood, she could not even hear voices from the grotty Blue Ruin at the far end. But they were watching her, the men who held Piers to rob him. She felt their observation like a heavy weight on her shoulders. In Darcy’s case, like a knife in the back.

She shoved the note back into her cloak pocket—beneath the little dagger—and walked purposefully toward the wall, where she was supposed to leave the money. She took the bag from beneath her cloak and set it down against the wall. Then she straightened, and bolted back to the road, hurrying the way she had just come as though all the fiends of hell were after her.

According to Piers’s plan, she should now leave the scene, make her way as fast as possible to the hackney Stewart should have brought to Covent Garden, and rush home to wait for Piers.

She had refined the plan. For she seemed to be physically incapable of walking away and leaving him there a second time.

As soon as she was out of sight of the cottage, she ducked into the empty passage she had noticed each time she’d passed. Once there, she set about cramming her skirts and her cloak inside the breeches she wore beneath. Abandoning the respectable lady’s bonnet, she wrestled Ape’s cap out her pocket and crammed it onto her head instead. Now, even if the kidnappers saw her, they shouldn’t connect her with Lady Petteril.

Ape slouched out of the passage and swaggered back toward the waste ground, this time keeping to the other side of it, as though he were heading for the alehouse.

But already someone was by the ruined wall, picking up the bag. She saw him look inside it, imagined him leering over it. Then he closed it and marched off the waste ground—away from the cottage.

At first April thought he had seen her and was coming for her. But he hadn’t even noticed her—and if he had, he would have seen no threat in the ill-dressed youth in the short cloak like a shawl, loafing along with his hands in his pockets. Instead, clutching the bag of Piers’s money, he stepped off onto the filthy track only a few yards ahead of her, and marched toward the alehouse.

But that was not what threw April. She got a clear look at his face before he turned ahead of her, and she most certainly knew him.

It was not James Darcy.

***

THE USUAL WARNING TO stay back came just after the first bolt was drawn. A sign of sloppiness creeping into this captor’s military precision? Distraction because they already had the money or soon would?

Certainly, whoever had left by the front door had not returned. He was as sure as he could be of that.

Piers just had time to tug the blanket back over the rope before the third bolt withdrew and the pistol appeared as usual, followed by the jailer. Such light as there was had faded too much for Piers to make out his features until he set down the tray and came closer with the mug of beer. One ear stuck out. Thick neck. Jailer number two again.