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Gideon silently took this in, as around them hoards of men going about their business created the music of Bond Street: the jingle of tack and clatter of hooves, voices raised to outdoor volumes. He inhaled deeply and resisted the impulse to yank his hat off again; he half suspected he always allowed his dark hair to grow just a little too long just so he could work his fingers through it in frustration.

“Bloody hell,” Gideon muttered grimly, at last. “All the wagers used to be about me.”

Kilmartin nodded sympathetically. “Used to be.”

“But didn’t you hear Wolford, Laurie?” Gideon could hear desperation creeping into his tone, and it irritated him beyond measure. “Constance’s
father
has mentioned my name in connection with the position in the Treasury. Surely it’s because Constance believes we are close to an… understanding.”

“Wolford said your name was
among
those mentioned. Who knows? Perhaps Jarvis was mentioned, too.”

“I doubt Jarvis has done a day’s work in his life.” Gideon didn’t entirely succeed in keeping the bitterness from his tone.

“I’m not sure the Treasury cares very much whether he has, Gideon.”

This response irritated Gideon all the more because no one knew the truth of it better than he did. As with everything, it was about money and titles. And Jarvis had them: a grand family, and money, and a title. Gideon did not. What he
did
have was rather a knack for making the best of the only truly useful assets bequeathed to him by his father: a charm that was just shy of roguish, and looks that pleased on first glance and riveted on the second. His imposing height usually caused that first glance; his face—dark, dark eyes set into an arresting merger of slopes and angles and hollows that hinted at strength and sensitivity and something slightly more dangerous—did the rest.

But while Gideon’s looks and charm may have opened doors, years of hard work and careful choices, of banishing risk and stifling impulse and using rules as ladder rungs to scale the ranks of the military, the law, in society, had earned him the regard he now enjoyed in the
ton
. And it was a measure of this regard that the idea of an engagement between Lady Constance Clary, the daughter of a wealthy marquis and the uncontested jewel of the season, and Gideon Cole, former soldier and near-penniless barrister, had so far been greeted not with mirth… but with indulgence.

Though the “near penniless” part was a bit of a secret.

And again, was probably his own bloody fault.

Jarvis, on the other hand, need only be
Jarvis
—wealthy and titled—to be considered worthy of Constance and a position in the Treasury. It was simply how things were.

He did it: he yanked off his hat, swept his fingers through his hair again. “All I need is thirty pounds, Laurie, as a first payment on the town house—the solicitor promised. And then I’ll make payments, and—”

“That town house must cost at least a thousand pounds, Gideon. Tell me, exactly how much money do you now have?”

Damnation
. Kilmartin knew him too well.

And when Gideon remained stubbornly silent, it was Kilmartin’s turn to arch a knowing brow. Unfortunately, Kilmartin’s brows were so fair they were nearly invisible, which robbed the gesture of a little of its eloquence.

“I have Aster Park,” Gideon, ever the barrister, countered. “Constance covets Aster Park.”

Everyone
coveted Aster Park. It was one of the grandest estates in England, a veritable ocean of land that gobbled money and managed to create just enough income in the form of beef and wool to justify its own existence. It had been a shock to everyone when Gideon’s uncle had inherited it a few years after Gideon’s parents had died, from a relative so distant he’d hardly been more than a rumor in their family.

“You don’t quite have Aster Park
yet,”
Kilmartin reminded him relentlessly. “Gideon, if you want my advice, you’d best stay in London and go to Lady Gilchrist’s ball, if only to remind Constance why she is so very..
. fond
of you.”

Gideon fell silent again, tracing and retracing the contours of the problem in his mind. His bloody,
bloody
uncle. He
was
fond of the man. And what if he
was
actually dying this time? Dying while Gideon circled a ballroom with a beautiful heiress in his arms…

“You could just hit him,” Kilmartin half jested. “Jarvis. Take him out of the running.”

Gideon gave a short laugh. “I don’t
do
that sort of thing anymore, Laurie.”

He
had
done that sort of thing at one time; that sort of thing was how he’d met Kilmartin: about a decade ago at Oxford, he’d lunged at two large boys who were tormenting a small plump boy. An hour later he’d had two black eyes and a friend for life in Kilmartin (the small plump boy), and all four of them had received demerits for fighting, of which Kilmartin was still rather proud.

But he didn’t do that sort of thing anymore. Largely because it was precisely the sort of thing his father would have done.

Kilmartin was no longer either small or plump, but he still had to tilt his head back to look Gideon in the eye. Which he did now, his pale eyes squinting in the sun despite the shelter of his hat. “Well, look at it this way, old man. Even if Constance is taken off the marriage mart, you would probably still have your pick of young ladies.”

“Yes,” Gideon said, because he hadn’t the strength for false modesty today. “But I want Constance.”

Kilmartin made an exasperated noise. “Why
do
this to yourself, Gideon? Why choose the most difficult female of them all?”

“Oh, come now, Laurie. You should know by now, no matter what, I
always
choose the most difficult of all.” He grinned, an attempt to make Kilmartin grin.

But Kilmartin was having none of it. He studied Gideon shrewdly instead. And then his shoulders slumped as realization set in. “Bloody hell, Gideon. This is about your Master Plan, isn’t it?”

Gideon paused again. Sometimes it was deucedly inconvenient to be known as well as Kilmartin knew him.

“I want Constance, Laurie,” he said softly. “I
need
Constance.” He’d
earned
Constance, he wanted to add, but didn’t, because he wasn’t certain Kilmartin would understand. Laurie was heir to a viscount; his family was ancient, his fortune seemingly permanent. Unlike Gideon, he’d never watched his father bring his humble family to untold social altitudes with a roll of the dice, only to bring them crashing down again in precisely the same way; he’d never watched his mother and his sister hold their heads high amidst the losses and whispers; he’d never received word that the ship carrying his parents to India—Gideon’s father, the eternal gambler, the eternal optimist, had dragged his mother off in search of new fortune to replace the lost one— had been dashed to pieces in a storm.

Gideon had been just eighteen and still at Oxford when his parents died, his sister seventeen, and they’d been left nearly penniless. They’d sold the family home; Helen married a wealthy Yorkshire farmer who’d offered for her. It had seemed a sound decision at the time. Gideon knew better now.

Gideon had told Kilmartin about his Master Plan one night at Oxford after too much wine—and regretted it ever since, really. He wasn’t sure Laurie fully understood the need to ensure his future was nothing—
nothing
—like the life his father had provided for his family, with its constant vertigo of fluctuating fortune, the pride and the shame.

But Laurie was a good friend. And after a moment, he shrugged in resignation. “Well, perhaps you can persuade your uncle to die when Constance goes off to visit her cousins in the country—isn’t their house party in a day or so? And when she returns for the Braxton ball, she will find you a baron and master of Aster Park and Jarvis will lose all appeal.”

In spite of himself, Gideon laughed. “Oh, Uncle Edward would never be so obliging. He would—”

Gideon could not have told anyone what made him spin around at just that moment. Perhaps it was the same instinct that had enabled him to dodge musket balls at Waterloo and come home with senses and limbs intact. But spin he did.

And that’s how he saw the girl just as she was dipping a slim hand into his coat pocket.

Gideon seized her wrist. Frozen in shock, breathing hard, they glared at each other.

The impressions came at him swiftly. Her wrist, thin as a child’s, her skin almost shockingly silky, her pulse speeding with terror beneath his thumb. A high pale forehead, luminous in the afternoon sun, a pink mouth nearly the shape of a heart, a pair of extraordinary aquamarine eyes ablaze with panic and outrage. And freckles, a collection of tiny asymmetrical splashes of gold, across her nose. Almost unconsciously, he began to count them. One, two, three, four—

“Oof!”

Gideon dropped to his knees, gagging for breath. While he had been counting her freckles, her knee had come up between his legs with brutal accuracy.

And she was gone, absorbed into the crowd as though she had never been anything more than a shadow.

* * *

Lily ran. Her skirt clutched in both hands, her bare feet slapping down hard on the dirt street, she expertly weaved and dodged through the crowds of men and women and horses and the piles the horses left behind. She ran until her lungs were as hot as a blacksmith’s forge, until her heart was a hammer in her chest, until, at last, she was in St. Giles again.

The difference between St. Giles and Bond Street was like noon and twilight. Prone bodies reeking of gin, prostitutes leaning against walls and out of windows, street urchins skulking, buildings sagging under the weight of their years. Raucous laughter and arguments, competing vendors calling their wares.
Home. Thank God
. On the heels of her alarming near-capture, it was all strangely comforting.

It was his hair that had caught her eye—longer than most fashionable gentlemen wore it, and dark, but with red hiding in it: when he’d yanked off his hat, it had briefly glowed like a coal burned almost all the way down to ashes. She’d seen the gleam of gold in his pocket when he’d thrust his hands into his very fine coat;
a watch
, she’d thought. He was very tall, taller than most of the crowd, but he’d seemed so restless, so absorbed in his conversation with his friend, a man with the pale, open face of someone who’d known little of worry or care… so oblivious…

She’d been
so
wrong.

And his
eyes
…

Later. She’d think of his eyes later.

As she rounded a corner into the alley where McBride kept his shop, a hand fumbled out to grip her shoulder. “Oi, Lily, give us a kiss, luv—”

Lily threw her elbow back sharply; she heard a grunt and a torrent of good-natured curses as the hand dropped away.

“
Always
wi‘ the elbow, Lily Masters! Just one kiss, is that too much t’ ask, I ask ye—”

“Ah, but yer too slow, Tom,” she tossed over her shoulder, grinning. Lily had deadly sharp little elbows. They made splendid weapons. Nearly as good as knees.

They tried, the boys did, but none of them could catch her—unless she wanted to be caught. And she
had
wanted to be caught—once. It was partially McBride’s fault: he’d given her a copy of
Pride and Prejudice
and—unwittingly, as McBride could not read—a collection of erotic stories written entirely in French, and though Lily was fairly certain this wasn’t exactly how Mama would have wanted her to apply the little bit of French she’d insisted Lily acquire, she’d found the book riveting. Both books made the goings-on between men and women sound so much more complicated and elegant than the sort of tiring that went on in alleys all over St. Giles, or what Fanny did upstairs for money at the lodging house, and Lily had wanted to discover the truth of it for herself.

Nick, the boy’s name was. Blue eyes and a clever wit, lips more clever still; he’d known what he was about. The kiss, brief though it was, had been like a match touched to a rush light: the sweet warmth wicking through her, the beginnings of weakness, of
want
, had taken her quite by surprise. She’d put a stop to it immediately, pushing Nick away; she’d seen the lodging rooms filled with starving women and children and screaming sickly babies. She wasn’t about to allow curiosity, or an occasional yearning to touch and be touched, to trap her forever into a life of squalor.
Never willingly put yourself at the mercy of a man, Lily
, Mama had once said.

Besides, Nick was no Mr. Darcy.

But she was glad to have done it; it was good to know that something as seemingly simple as a kiss could draw the will straight out of you. And she thought she now understood how Mama, who had been a lady longer ago than anyone could remember, could have come to marry a man like Papa and stay with him even through the loss of everything.

When Lily reached McBride’s shop, she stopped and waited a moment to allow her indignant heart to slow its pumping before she pushed open the door.

McBride was vigorously scrubbing at something on the counter with a cloth; the movement made what was left of his gray hair spin out from his head like streamers on a maypole. He looked up when he heard the door open, and when he saw Lily his face split into a delighted open-mouthed smile, revealing teeth and gaps where teeth used to be in equal measure.

“Oi, Lily me love, and when oh when will ye be me bride?”

“Oi, McBride, I’m assemblin‘ me trousseau even now.”

“Yer
troo-sew
!” He cackled appreciatively. “Ah, Lily, ye’ve a wit about ye, ye do. Say more things to me in that voice of yers. Like smoke from a fine cigar, it is. A man could forget ‘is troubles jus’ listenin’ to ye speak.”

“And ‘ow would ye know any thin of fine cigars, McBride?” Lily teased. “Or troubles?” He always made a great fuss about her low, distinctive voice, insisting it belonged in the body of an expensive courtesan and not a mere slip of a girl.

“Ah, Lily, the things I once knew…” His eyes went dreamy for a moment from memories, or perhaps from the bottle of gin he’d had with his midday meal. “Well, and what have ye brung me today? Nay, dinna touch the wood here,” he said hurriedly, when Lily moved to rest her elbows upon the counter. “I’ve spilt summat what will take yer skin right off.”