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Henry ran a hand through his hair for the thirtieth time that night. No, he would stay behind, and protect Caroline from whatever—whomever—lurked in the darkness. He was not
willing to risk her life, not for the diamond, not for what the diamond meant to him.

Because Caroline Townshend meant more. And so Henry stood down.

Lady Violet did not. Stealing a glance at the earl, she stepped forward, a bit more steady on her feet than she’d been at the house.

“Lord Harclay and I will go with the king,” she said firmly.

Hope, of course, cried out in protest, and fought to accompany King Louis and Artois to Eliason’s ship. The diamond had technically belonged to Hope when it was stolen, and Hope stood to lose just as much as Henry—that was to say, everything—should the jewel be lost.

Nevertheless, Violet won the argument, swearing to Hope that she would return the French Blue to him. While she spoke with convincing sincerity, Henry didn’t exactly share her conviction.

Looping her arm through the earl’s, Violet followed the King and Artois. Henry watched the night swallow them. He should follow them, see Harclay’s inane plan through, reclaim the diamond for England. There was so much at stake: his future, Caroline’s, his men and his country, and all he had worked for these past twelve years.

The weight of this knowledge suffocated him. And yet he did not follow Violet and the earl, and stood instead by Caroline’s side.

Caroline
.

He could smell her perfume, and sense her rising panic; she was shaking and trying to hide it. Henry swallowed his own; he had to calm her down. He turned to Sophia and Thomas Hope, who stood in a tangled huddle behind him.

Hope was drawing a shawl about Sophia’s shoulders; the debutante looked up at the banker with eyes that glittered in the darkness. The way she was looking at him—it was an invitation, a provocation, even.

And Thomas Hope appeared all too happy to be provoked.

Henry cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, rocking back on his heels. “Jolly good of Lady Violet and Harclay to do the heavy lifting for us, eh? Come, let’s have a nip in the hack while we wait.”

Without turning from Sophia, Hope untangled a silver flask from his waistcoat pocket and handed it to Lake.

Henry looked down at the flask, fighting a smile. It was as subtle an admonishment to leave Thomas and Sophia alone as a spoken “shoo, off with you!” would have been.

Henry tucked the flask into his coat and placed his hand on the small of Caroline’s back. Her trembling lessened, slightly. “We’ll just, er, meet you . . . there, back at the hackney. Do take your time”—here he would’ve wiggled his eyebrows, if Hope had been watching—“we have all night.”

Lake pressed Caroline into motion beside him.

After a beat, she released a stifled giggle. “Good Lord!” she wheezed. “No mystery as to what they’ll get up to. I wonder where they’ll do it.”

Henry snorted. “Right there, if I had to hazard a guess. Luckily we escaped before the show began.”

They made for the hackney in silence, the only sound Henry’s footfalls on the uneven cobbles. Caroline’s slippers made barely a whisper as she moved beside him. Through the gauze of her gown, her skin warmed his palm.

“We should have gone,” she murmured at last. “I know this whole mess was William’s plan, but you and I—we should be meeting that jeweler, and buying back the diamond.”

Henry guided her closer, so that she walked in the cradle of his arm. “You’re worried about him. Your brother.”

“Of course I’m worried,” she replied. “That’s all I do anymore, is worry. About him. About you.”

Inside his chest, Henry’s heart skipped a beat. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

He could practically hear Caroline roll her eyes. “I know, I know, you can take care of yourself, all that rubbish. But it can’t be helped. I think about y—”

She stopped herself. Henry swallowed, hard, and tried not to dwell on what it meant that she
thought about him
.

Caroline refused him, hadn’t she? And even if her feelings had changed, and she felt a fraction of what he felt for her, it didn’t matter. Whether they won back the French Blue tonight, Henry was leaving, bound by duty and honor to return to Paris. They could never be together, Henry and Caroline. There was no place for such a match in the worlds they had
chosen, no time or tolerance for a repeat of the heartbreak they each had suffered twelve years ago.

And yet.

The insistent beat of Henry’s desire for her would not be ignored. It was immediate, and overwhelming, the heat from his palm pulsing up his arm to land in his chest, between his legs, in his temples. A million sensations sprang forth from this place where he touched her, where mere layers of muslin and whalebone and gauze separated flesh from flesh.

God, but he could not get past how much he wanted her. How much he loved her.

It could have been his imagination—overeager, as usual, in her presence—but Caroline seemed to curl farther into his touch, pressing her body against his.

She’s just frightened, he told himself. Tired.

Still, Henry liked the sense of peace it brought him, surrounding her with his body. Knowing he could protect her, in this moment at least, even if protection wasn’t what she was looking for.

When they reached the hackney, waiting just beyond the wharf’s edge, Henry nodded at the driver; the man tipped his hat and studiously averted his gaze.

“Find someplace safe,” Henry told him. “Out of the way. We’re sitting ducks here.”

Henry opened the door, and his fingers slid from Caroline’s back to her hand. Her fingers felt naked and cold in his palm. Without thinking, he gave them a squeeze as he helped her climb into the vehicle.

He followed her inside, closing the door quietly behind him. It was cool, and dark in here; the hackney’s lamps, distorted through the grimy window, offered little in the way of illumination. He took a seat on the thinly cushioned bench across from Caroline. The hackney began to move, slowly, the wheels clapping an uneven beat over the cobblestones.

Henry removed the flask from his coat, unscrewed its top. She turned her head to look out the window, the skin on her swanlike neck burnished gold in the low light. She held her hands in a tight knot on her lap.

“Care for a nip?” Henry held out the flask.

With trembling fingers she took it, and gave it a sniff. She wrinkled her nose. “What is it?”

“Single malt Scotch whiskey. You’re not going to like it.”

Caroline tilted back her head, taking a goodly pull. At once her face screwed up in a grimace, tongue emerging from between her lips as if she could banish the taste from her mouth. “You’re right. That’s awful. I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself—drinking whatever it is you’re offering me inside a coach. Why can’t anyone keep a nice sherry beneath the cushions?”

Henry grinned. “Have another sip. It’ll help.”

Even as she held the back of her hand to her lips, a look of distaste darkening her features, she did as he bid her.

“You’re getting better at it,” he said, taking the flask she held out to him. “You didn’t spit half of it out this time.”

Caroline let out a sputtering sigh. “You forget William Townshend is my brother. Debauchery runs in my family. It’s only a matter of time before I can drink you under the table.”

Henry took a sip, sucked a breath through his teeth. Heavens, but that was a potent brew; no doubt Hope was in need of so vibrant a libation, considering he was nearly bankrupt, his bank teetering on the edge of ruin.

Henry could certainly relate.

He took another pull, a long ribbon of fire trailing down his throat, before screwing the cap back on the flask. He replaced it in his breast pocket, and met Caroline’s eyes across the coach. She held her arms tightly about her chest.

The air between them tightened; it was always charged, magnetic, Henry realized, but at this moment the pull was acute, as unavoidable as the past they shared.

“So,” she said.

“So,” he said.

“Alone again.”

“If I didn’t know better, Lady Caroline, I’d accuse you of planning this—absconding with me to a darkened corner. Be honest. Do you mean to seduce me?”

Caroline scoffed, glancing once more out the window. He’d asked her that same question twelve years ago, on their wedding night.

He hoped her answer tonight was the same as it had been then.

The hackney had come to a halt; as far as Henry could tell, the driver had led them to a dim, damp alleyway. “That would prove a compelling distraction, wouldn’t it?”

He grinned. “I would not be opposed.”

“No,” she said, turning to look at him once more. His heart rose when he saw she, too, was grinning. “I didn’t think you would be.”

She looked down at her hands, tangled in her lap. “You don’t think they’re going to find it, do you? The diamond.”

Henry didn’t answer. His fingers itched for the flask.

“What are we going to do,” she asked, softly, “if they don’t?”

“I’ll take care of it.”
Of you
, he wanted to say. But he didn’t.

“This old argument,” she said. “Let’s not have it again.”

Henry watched the working of her throat as she swallowed. “William is going to be fine, Caroline. If he can make it out of Hope’s ballroom with a priceless gem shoved in his smalls, he’ll make it out of this. And Mr. Moon—he’s been through worse. He’ll be fine.”

Her eyes flashed to meet his. She was shaking again; he could see the trail of goose bumps along her bare arms and chest.

Of course; why didn’t he notice it sooner? In their rush to leave Mayfair, Caroline hadn’t had a chance to gather a pelisse, a shawl, anything to keep her warm.

Cursing himself, Henry shrugged out of his coat.

“You don’t have—”

“I want to,” he said, crouching as he leaned across the hackney. She leaned forward, allowing him to hook his jacket across the yoke of her shoulders. He tugged the lapels closer about her breast, wrapping her tightly in a sea of fabric.

“Henry,” she said. He could feel her looking up at him.

“Just a minute, are the sleeves all right? Are you better?”

“Henry.” The way she said it this time made him pause. His pulse drummed as he looked down.

Caroline’s eyes were wet. The space between them crackled with longing, with unspoken things. Henry was glad to have shed his coat; he felt warm under his collar.

Her arm emerged from between the lapels of his coat;
carefully, she dug her fingers into the buttons of his shirtfront, just beneath his cravat. Of its own volition his head ducked into her pull, his mouth hovering an inch above hers. He could see the pearlescent glow of her teeth peeking through her parted lips.

The way she was looking at him—it made his entire being ring with
everything.
Hurt and desire and regret and lust and love.

“Distract me,” she said. “Please, Henry, distract me.”

And then she pulled him down on her mouth, her lips moving over his hungrily, desperately, as if the world were ending, and this was their last night together.

Thirty-seven

H
enry reached across the hackney and tugged the curtains closed, his mouth never leaving Caroline’s. She moaned against his lips as his arm brushed against her breasts; desire, liquid and hot, arrowed through her.

“Shh,” he whispered. “I won’t share your sounds—I won’t share you with the driver.”

His admonition only heightened her excitement. She couldn’t ignore it, this desire. She didn’t want to.

It was enormously foolish, of course, to give in; how many times now had she sworn not to do exactly that? A hundred, a thousand?

And still she could not ignore it. Her body felt wild with heavy things: worry, fear, a growing dread that this was all going to end badly, that Mr. Moon would end up dead. Nothing could make her forget, she knew, except Henry’s hands. His touch drowned all that she didn’t want to feel. She liked how she felt in his arms, beneath the assault of his passion.

How much longer would she have him, besides? He was leaving, whether or not William and Violet managed to pry the French Blue from this jeweler’s grasp. God, Henry was
leaving
, and Caroline would be a devoted widow again, and
she would never be able to touch him like this. He would never touch
her
like this.

The loneliness of that knowledge—it was too much to bear.

In the space of a single heartbeat she pushed him back onto the squabs and climbed onto his lap, straddling his legs. He dug a hand into the hair at the back of her neck, his fingers gliding past pins and braids to work free her curls, which fell heavily about her shoulders.

Caroline held his face as he met her stroke for stroke. It was the kind of kiss she felt everywhere. She burrowed against him, his heart working against her breasts as she plied his lips with her own. He held her close against him, one hand in her hair, the other on the small of her back.

Henry sat up, settling Caroline farther onto his lap. She felt his arousal prodding against the throb between her legs. As she kissed him she inhaled his scent, long, heady draughts of spice and sandalwood, of his skin. She wanted to bite him; she couldn’t get close enough.