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Behind closed lids, her eyes rolled back with pleasure as his teeth found purchase in the skin there. Her head, too, fell back, and hit the wall with a solid thud.

She froze.

He
froze.

The house seemed to go still around them.

“Are you all right?” he whispered.

Caroline cracked open an eye, covering the offended spot on her skull with her fingers. “Yes.” She winced. “And no. That hurt like the devil.”

Her lips felt swollen, and so did her heart. Her eyes must have adjusted to the darkness of closed lids, because she could see Henry, suddenly, like a ghost materialized from the dark. Startled, she drew back; he was enormous, and very close; his one eye glowed, a pale moon that threw no light into the blackness.

For a moment they listened, waiting for the telltale footsteps, waiting to be found out.

And in that moment, Caroline was back in Henry’s bedchamber, and it was their wedding night. How nervous they had been, terrified that his father’s valet would find them entwined on the floor, or that his mother would return home from the ball and come to tuck her youngest son into bed (he was, after all, her favorite). She felt the same elation, the excitement, the thrilling intimacy of a shared secret.

But she was naïve then. She wasn’t this time around.

Henry’s hand moved to cover her fingers on her head. The other was still splayed on the wall beside her face. In the darkness she met his gaze. His touch, this time around, was a bit more gentle. Different, but the same.

“Caroline? Caroline, is that you?”

William’s voice echoed through the gallery on the other side of the door. Heart in her throat, Caroline ducked beneath Henry’s outstretched arm.

“Caroline. I heard something that sounded suspiciously like you banging your head against a wall. Are you there? And are you bleeding this time?”

Henry’s eye went wide. “How did he know?” he hissed.

Caroline looked up from smoothing her skirts. “It happens more often than I care to admit,” she whispered. “There, the window—tonight you don’t have a choice, you’ll go out that way.”

He ran a hand over his hair, the other on his hip as he hobbled toward the window. His limp, it seemed, had come back to haunt him.

He hooked the fingers of both hands into the bottom casement and, with a small grunt, opened the window. Caroline gulped at the sudden rush of cool night air; it prickled against her skin.

Arms above his head, Henry leaned against the casement; Caroline drew up beside him, the breeze playing at her mussed hair. For a moment they stood at the open window, trying—and failing—to catch their breath. Drops of rain pattered softly on the ground below.

She didn’t know what to say after an episode like
that
; heavens, she didn’t know what to
feel
.

Henry couldn’t keep his hands off her. That was good.

He knew what to do with those hands.

That was better.

But he was still Henry Lake, and his expert hands did nothing to change the fact that he’d broken her heart ruthlessly, rottenly, a decade ago.

She should push him out the window, as she’d threatened to do that morning she caught him snooping about William’s house. He deserved it.

Henry leaned into the open window, hands still above his head. From the corner of her eye she watched the muscles of
his arms flex against his coat. Her throat was tight, suddenly, her pulse hard.

“I don’t know what you want me to call you,” he said, looking down at his shoes. “I want to wish you good night.”

She swallowed. “Please, Henry.” Please kiss me again. And again, and again
.
“Please leave me be.”

“I can’t.”

“You must.” For both our sakes. He must know as well as she that nothing good could come of intimacies like this.

That he’d hurt her too badly for her to ever trust him again.

He dropped his arms. Just before he made to jump, he turned back to her. Taking her neck in the palm of his enormous hand, he pulled her to him and planted a kiss on the crown of her head, just where she’d hit it.

She closed her eyes against the hot press of tears.

When she opened them, Henry was gone.

*   *   *

C
aroline stepped out into the hall, giving the door one last tug before it reluctantly
thwump
ed into place behind her.

“Caroline, there you are!” William strode toward her, brow furrowed. “What were you doing in my study?”

“I, um, got lost?”

William crossed his arms over his chest and leaned a shoulder against the wall. “Try again. A better lie this time.”

Caroline cleared her throat. “I was rifling through your papers, stealing your money, and, um, using your secrets to blackmail you. There. Better?”

William smiled. “Much.”

“You played your role as host with appalling good grace, dear Brother.”

“Thank you.” He bowed. “And you were a marvel of a hostess.”

“Well”—Caroline made to move past him—“to bed, then. It’s exhausting, being a marvel.”

“Caroline.” He grabbed her by the elbow. “Where is Mr. Lake?”

She blinked. “Mr. Lake left with Mr. Hope, not a quarter of an hour ago. Didn’t you see him? Or were you too busy fondling Lady Violet?”

“I wasn’t fondling her.” He appeared regretful as he said this.

Caroline attempted to pull away. William only pulled her closer. “Careful with him,” he said, softly. “He’s after me, Caroline. And men like Lake are cruel when it comes to getting what they’re after. I don’t mean to question whatever it is he feels for you—”

“It’s nothing.”

“But if he can, he’ll use you to get to me. I know he’s tall, and eye patches are all the crack this season, but that dashing exterior hides a hound. And he’s caught my scent.”

Caroline waved away his words. “That’s a horrid metaphor, first, and second, you’ve nothing to fear, for I wouldn’t let that man touch me with a ten-foot pole.”

William’s brow shot up. “Is that why your hair looks like that? Because he touched you with a ten-foot pole?”

Caroline turned to the beveled mirror on the far wall. She started at the woman staring back at her. Pink cheeks, pinker lips, a lopsided lock of hair falling across her forehead. Soft eyes.

An obviously well-pleasured woman. One who’d been kissed, and kissed quite thoroughly.

Caroline’s throat tightened all over again. She was embarrassed, yes, that her brother should see her in such a state.

But more than that she was afraid. Fear gripped her heart, like ice-cold fingers giving that overworked organ a savage twist. The woman staring back at her wasn’t the placid, self-possessed dowager Caroline imagined herself to be. She wasn’t the twenty-nine-year-old woman who had learned her lesson about love, and knew better than to allow it to destroy her again.

This
woman, the one with the traitorous high color, the one who’d agreed to help Henry Lake find the French Blue, was a fool.

Caroline wrangled her elbow from William’s grasp and, excusing herself, darted up the stairs.

She sent Nicks away and, closing the bedroom door softly behind her, brought her hands to her face. Her skin burned.

She did not see the figure separate from shadow until it was too late.

Fourteen

H
enry paced across the room, each footfall like a clap of thunder. The floorboards shook and moaned beneath his stride.

Mr. Moon jumped back at a particularly vengeful step.

“I swear, you’re worse than that black-toothed Genoese opium eater,” Moon said, straightening the vials he’d overturned. “It’s been, what, an hour since you saw her last?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Henry growled, clasping his hands behind his back to keep them from shaking. His lips smarted and stung, alive with the memory of Caroline’s kiss.

What a fool he was, careless, to succumb to the desire he’d worked so hard to suppress. All those years of sacrifice, of keeping her safe, far from the violence of the life he’d chosen—all that work, dashed in a single instant, by a single touch.

He shattered everything he touched.

He had no right to touch her.

But he couldn’t help it. The desire to see her, touch her, possess her was overwhelming. That kiss, that embrace that was supposed to slake his desire for her, merely stoked it to unbearable heights.

She’d felt it, too. He’d known she had. He also sensed her frustration, her anger. He understood why she asked him to stay away.

And yet.

“For the love of God,” Moon said, “go back to her already! There’s nothing wrong with missing the woman you love—”

“She’s not my woman. And I am most certainly not in love.”

How is she feeling, he wondered. How is her head?

Moon rolled his eyes. “Right. But would you just go back to her, and leave me in peace? You might continue your search for the jewel, too.”

“I’ve searched the house.” Lake turned on Mr. Moon. “And she doesn’t want me to go back to her. She doesn’t want me, period. She said so herself.”

“And you believe her?” Moon cocked a brow.

“Of course I believe her!” Lake said. “What else am I supposed to do?”

Moon smiled. “Call her bluff, and kiss her soundly.”

Henry placed his palms on the windowsill. He’d kissed her, all right. Soundly, passionately, stupidly.

“I’m too busy,” Henry said gruffly. “If you’ve forgotten, that bloody diamond is still missing, and Napoleon’s still winning the war. I’ve a rather busy schedule.”

Moon sighed noisily. “Go see her.”

“I can’t.”

“If I may take a moment to applaud my powers of persuasion, sir—have I ever been wrong about members of the female sex?”

“Yes,” Henry said.

“You know I’m right.” Moon sighed. “Have it your way, but don’t blame me when you wake up in hell tomorrow morning. If you don’t get some sleep, and soon, you’re going to end up dead. And the only way you’re going to be able to sleep is if you go to her already!”

Henry growled once more and rolled his eyes and shouted his denials. But as he paced away the minutes, he felt a growing terror at the prospect of spending another sleepless night in this room.

And so, like any insomniac experiencing a bout of unrequited affection, he got desperate.

He got stupid.

He got on his horse, and rode for Hanover Square. He told himself he went to make sure she was all right.

To make sure she was sleeping soundly, and safe.

But the burn in his lips, the stretch inside his chest, told a different story.

Caroline’s window was open, glowing with the light of candles and lamps within. His stomach clenched; she was still awake.

It was quiet in the narrow lane that ran alongside the house to the mews. Later Henry would recognize it was too quiet, and strange he didn’t hear voices floating down from Caroline’s window.

But he was too distracted by the prospect of speaking with her again, too excited, to notice the silence that surrounded Harclay’s house.

Without a backward glance, Henry mounted the gate and tore through the mews, scaling the wall in record time. Despite the morbid exhaustion that weighted down his limbs, he landed with hardly a thump inside the warm dimness of Caroline’s chamber.

A chamber that was empty.

“Caroline?” he called, softly. “It’s me, Henry—Henry Lake.”

As if there were other Henrys who climbed through her window, uninvited, at all hours of the night.

He cringed.

The bed was made, the counterpane tucked in immaculate angles around the corners of the mattress. There, on the escritoire by the opposite window, a neat stack of letters was ready for the post; a ream of clean-edged paper sat beside it.

All was where it should be.

Only, it wasn’t.

The gilded cut glass inkwell hung precariously over the edge of the escritoire, leaking droplets of blood-black indigo onto the Persian carpet. Beside the growing puddle rested a swan feather quill, mangled about the middle as if someone had stepped on it.

His nostrils recoiled at that vaguely familiar scent. It was stronger now. Labdanum—pungent, unmistakable.

Henry’s blood went cold; the back of his skull prickled
with terror. In a searing rush the memory came back to him. He’d smelled it that morning in the woods, twelve years ago.

The morning he’d defied orders, and made a mistake.

A mistake that cost the life of a young woman.

A mistake that changed the course of his life, and had him running from England, from everything he loved and held dear.

From Caroline.

Caroline
.

He tucked his hand inside his jacket, fingers curling around his pistol.

The door to Caroline’s dressing room was slightly ajar, maybe an inch or two; a beam of light cut a widening yellow lane across the floor.

Slowly Henry approached, heart drumming. He fitted the trigger into the crease of his first knuckle. Pain shot up his leg. He ignored it.

He edged his boot against the door, and was about to kick it back when it opened suddenly, sending him stumbling back into the room. Henry tore his loose hair away from his face, righting himself as his eye fell on a man, tall, black-haired, dressed in an exquisitely tailored evening kit.