Good God, Greg’s head pulsed like the devil. He blinked his eyes open in the darkness. A bit of moonlight spilled into the room What time was it? And where the devil was he? But he knew the answer to that question. His bed at Avery House felt the same as it always had. He was in his chambers. He was definitely in his chambers. But why couldn’t he remember getting there? Had he imbibed too much? Had Tristan or Simon talked him into doing something foolish? Was that why his brain hurt like the dickens?

And then pieces of his memory began to slowly come back. Aylesford had died suddenly and…Damn it all, Chatham had effectively put an end to Greg and Bella’s betrothal. His heart twisted at that memory and he sat bolt upright in a panic, and then he wished he hadn’t moved so quickly. God in heaven, his head felt like he’d run into an anvil. He gingerly touched his brow and a fist-sized lump was unmistakable. That damned Prussian had coshed him over the head. For the love of God, the bastard had ham hocks for fists.

And Hellsburg had tossed Bella to the floor. That memory flashed in his mind, and Greg was on his feet. Oh, dear God, he had to get to her this moment. What if Hellsburg…no, no, no. He wouldn’t think that way. Thinking that way would only hinder him.

He quickly surmised that he was partially dressed. No jacket, no cravat, no boots, but otherwise he was clothed. That would save a bit of time. Greg bellowed, “Tomkins!” for his valet.

And a moment later, his man stumbled into Greg’s chambers with a candle, lighting the room more than the moonlight had done. “My lord, the doctor said you should stay abed.”

The doctor could go hang. “I need my jacket and Hessians, Tomkins, I am in a hurry.”

“Of course, my lord.”

And a pistol. He was going to need one of those too, not that he’d say as much to his valet. The man couldn’t testify to something he didn’t have prior knowledge of, could he? “And have Sanders summon a hack.”

“A hack?” his valet echoed. “But your coach…”

…would be unmistakable with his crest emblazoned on the side. No, no. Greg shook his head, even though doing so made it pulse like the devil. “A hack, Tomkins, and quickly.”

* * *

Blast it, Bella’s half-boots were slippery on the window frame. She’d thought they would be more practical than slippers, but now she was questioning that decision. Although, dangling from her window and stretching her legs as far as they’d go and trying desperately to find purchase on the window frame of the floor below was probably the wrong time to re-question her footwear choices.

Her fingertips gripped the edge of her window ledge and barely kept her from falling to her death. Her foot found the top of the window frame again and she struggled with all of her might to keep from slipping off again.

Her arms shook from her weight and she was certain she was about to die when her foot finally found a bit of ledge large enough to stand. She sagged against the outside of Chatham House, relief washing over her. She wasn’t safe, not yet; but she was much closer than she had been a moment ago. Finding a way down from the first floor was going to be a challenge. If only there had been a way out of her room through the doorway. But that was neither here nor there anymore. She was standing on the top of the window frame on the first floor of Chatham House, and wishing for another route was pointless now.

Oh, she wished her arms weren’t already mush.

Bella glanced on either side of the window, hoping for something she could hold onto in her attempt to make it down one more level. A drop from the window ledge of the ground floor wouldn’t kill her, but a drop from this first floor, she could easily break her leg, which would make escaping to a coaching inn nearly impossible.

* * *

For the love of God! “Stop!” Greg barked at the driver. Was that Bella, all dressed in black, somehow standing atop a window frame on the side of Chatham House?

Before the hack had even come to a complete stop, he’d leapt from the thing and raced across the street and up the walk. At first he’d been so relieved to see her, to see that she was unharmed, but that could end very quickly if she fell to her death.

“Bella!” he called up to her in a loud whisper.

She seemed to gasp and then she looked down on him as she struggled to keep her balance. “Greg?”

“Push away from the wall and I’ll catch you.”

She shook her head stubbornly. “It’s too far.”

It was far, but there was no way in the world he was going to lose her, not now, not ever. Greg stared up at her as he positioned himself in the best possible place to catch her, willing her to believe in him. “I will catch you. Trust me.”

She seemed to steel herself and then she nodded. After all, what other choice did she have?

“On three,” he said, lifting out his arms. “One, two, three.”

Bella pushed away from the stone façade and dropped…

Greg’s arms closed around her as they both tumbled to the ground. God in heaven, he couldn’t breathe as the wind had been knocked from him; but she was safe; and that was all that truly mattered.

* * *

Bella clung to Greg as though her life depended upon it, and a moment ago it had. She didn’t know what she would have done if he hadn’t shown up. But it sounded like he couldn’t breathe, so she released her hold on him and scrambled from atop him.

“Greg, are you all right? Did I hurt you?” Bella’s heart hammered in her chest.

“The…hack…” he seemed to choke out.

The hack? Bella glanced across the square and there was indeed a hack. “Can you stand?” Goodness, what if she’d broken his leg in the fall?

Greg nodded, though he still looked to be in a lot of pain.

Bella pushed up to her feet and lifted her hand to him. Honestly, she didn’t have a prayer of pulling him to his feet, however. He was so much larger than her. Something he realized too as he shook his head.

“Get to the hack. I’ll be right behind you.” He was starting to sound more like himself, which Bella took as a good sign.

But she wasn’t going to leave him, not until he was on his feet. “Can you really stand?”

To prove he could, Greg pushed up to his knees and then all the way to his feet. And though the two of them should have run for the hired coach, he pulled her into his arms and held her. “I was so worried about you.”

And she’d been worried about him too. She hugged him tighter, so relieved that he was whole and hale.

But then Greg dropped his arms from her, took her hand in his and said, “We have to go, Bella. We have to go right now.”

He was right. She knew he was. Heaven help them if anyone came upon them right now. So together they rushed across the street to the awaiting hack.

As Bella climbed inside, Greg said to the driver, “Park Street, please. Thurlstone House.”

Thurlstone House? Why in the world were they going there?

Greg settled onto the bench beside her and slid his arm around her shoulders as the hack lurched forward. “My God, Bella, you took ten years off my life just now,” he said with a shake of his head.

She rather thought she’d taken ten years off her own life, but she hadn’t had any other choice. Just as she didn’t now. “Greg, I need to get to a coaching inn.” Some place where she could buy passage north, somewhere her grandf – goodness, it was so strange not to think of Chatham as her grandfather – but she needed to go somewhere the duke wouldn’t think to look for her.

“I’m sure we’ll find several on the way,” he said, squeezing her hand. “But I’ll need to get my coach first, and in case your grandfather arrives at Avery House while I’m there, it would be best if you’re somewhere else.”

“Thurlstone House,” she guessed.

Greg nodded. “I think he’d look for you at Cordie’s. But Thurlstone’s should be safe for a bit.”

Bella didn’t even know Lord Thurlstone. She’d heard of him though, and he didn’t have the most pristine name to recommend him, but then…she was a bastard and the last person who should be casting stones. But nothing else Greg said made sense. “Why are you getting your coach?”

“Do you have to ask?” He smiled down at her. “Your grandfather may refuse to let me marry you here, but a blacksmith in Gretna Green won’t care in the least.”

He wanted to elope, like his sister and his brother had done. Bella sighed. How she wanted that too, she wanted it more than anything in the world. But she couldn’t marry Greg, not now that she knew the truth. It wouldn’t be fair to him, especially after everything he’d done for her. The duke was right about that.

“Greg,” she began softly, her heart breaking in her chest. Oh, goodness, how could she tell him? She had no idea how to explain her unfortunate situation to him, but one thing was very clear. “We can’t be married.”

He frowned at those words. “It’s not the way we wanted to do so, but…”

“I’m a bastard,” she blurted out before she lost her nerve, because he was owed an explanation, he was owed the truth.

Greg simply blinked at her. “I beg your pardon?”

“My mother and I don’t know who.” Bella winced at the truth of it all. “His Grace told me all of it this evening. It’s why he wants me gone and now that Papa is gone…”

* * *

And she thought Greg would want her gone? She didn’t know him at all if she thought that. Though he had kept that part of himself hidden from her, hadn’t he? He was not, after all, as honest as she was. It was one of his many faults. “I don’t care which side of the blanket you were born on, Bella. I love you and nothing will change that.”

Her mouth fell open in surprise and she blinked up at him. “But you said…”

That he was too scarred. He had said that, idiot that he was. “A great many foolish things in my life, but saying I love you isn’t one of them.” He tipped her chin up to meet her gaze directly. “And I will not lose you, my dear. And certainly not because of that.”

“You love me?” She blinked some tears away. “Truly?”

“Completely,” he assured her, though they were words he’d never imagined he’d say to anyone again. “As soon as Chatham said we couldn’t marry, I thought my heart would break at the thought of losing you. If I hadn’t known it before, I knew in that moment that I do love you. I love every single thing about you. The sound of your voice, the sweetness in your eyes, every pretty hair on your head.”

And then she started to cry and Greg smoothed the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. His poor, sweet Bella. He wished he could wrap her in his arms and make all the awfulness she’d suffered disappear. He could only imagine how terrible it had been for her growing up under Chatham’s roof. A spineless father, a vanished mother, a tortured brother and a tyrant, overseeing it all.

“He will ruin you, Greg,” she said, worrying her hands in her lap. “He’ll tell everyone what I really am and…”

Was that what she was worried about? Greg threaded his fingers with hers, hoping to soothe her fears “In the first place, I don’t believe he’ll do that. He’d have to publicly cast shame upon his own family to do so. But if he does spread that tale—” he released a sigh “—I never leave Rufford Hall, as it is, my dear. We can stay there forever and nothing he could say or do will ever matter to us, not there.”

“Oh, Greg!” She threw her arms around his neck, and he held her close. They were a long way from where they needed to be, but for the first time in many hours he breathed a sigh of relief.

* * *

Greg prayed Simon would be awake and at home. He wasn’t sure where else he could take Bella if his friend wasn’t around. The hack pulled to a stop and Greg opened the door of the hired conveyance. He hopped to the ground, helped Bella do the same and then retrieved his pistol from the opposite bench before paying the driver for his services.

Bella’s eyes rounded in surprise when she noticed the pistol.

Greg shrugged, just relieved he hadn’t needed to use it. “I wasn’t sure what sort of reception I would receive at Chatham House, and I wasn’t going to be turned away.” He led her up the stoop to Simon’s townhouse. “I never expected to see you climbing down the front of the house like an acrobat.”

“The furthest thing from an acrobat,” she said.

Greg tucked the pistol into his jacket pocket and pounded on the Thurlstone door, silently willing someone to be awake at this hour, and he was pleasantly surprised when a middle-aged butler opened the door a moment later. Either Simon was awake or his servant was still waiting up for him to return.

“I need to see Lord Thurlstone,” Greg said, stepping over the threshold and towing Bella with him before the butler could turn them away. After all, Bella needed to be off the street and safely hidden away before anyone spotted her.

The butler scowled slightly, probably from Greg barging his way into the home. “His lordship is hardly receiving visitors at this hour.”

But a light down the corridor and a set of voices coming from an open doorway said differently. “I’ll just announce myself,” Greg said, tightening his hold on Bella’s hand and leading her down the corridor.

And then an irritated voice filtered into the hallway. “And that is why Staveley never should have left his goddamned library.”

“It’s tragic,” Simon’s voice flowed from the parlor.

“She will never forgive me. Not now. Not for this.”

“Yes, well—”

And then Greg and Bella stood right in the threshold as Simon’s butler came up from behind them and said loudly, “My lord, you have an insistent guest.”

Simon’s gaze flashed toward them, and upon seeing Bella, he pushed out of his seat. “Avery, what a surprise.”

But it was the other man who held Greg’s attention. Damned Haversham again. Twice in one day? Damn it all. What the devil was he doing there?

“And Lady Arabella,” Simon continued smoothly. “You are even more surprising, I must say.”

“Simon, we need your help,” Greg began because time was of the essence. “If you don’t mind granting me a moment.”

“You can have more than one,” Simon returned and gestured to the settee across from him and the malevolent marquess. Then he glanced at his butler and said, “That will be all, Turner.”

The last thing in the world Greg wanted to do was discuss this particular situation in front of Haversham of all the goddamned scoundrels in the world. “In private?” he added.

His friend’s gaze flashed from Greg to Bella and back, then he heaved a sigh. “If you’re in trouble, Greg, and by the looks of it you are—” he tipped his head in Haversham’s direction “—having a Machiavellian mind in the mix can only help. And he is trustworthy, more so than most.”

A ghost of a smile tipped the wicked marquess’s lips as he too pushed to his feet. “If I had to guess, Avery, I’d say you’ve escaped Chatham House and are headed…for Gretna Green.”

Greg barely knew the bastard, but if Haversham had already figured him out… “Chatham will look for her at Avery House and then Clayworth’s. But I can’t imagine he would look for her here.” Greg led Bella further into the parlor. “And I need a bit of time to prepare things. You’re the only friend I’ve got in Town. Would you please hide her for me until I return?”

Simon’s eyes had rounded in surprise at all of that, and Greg suspected no one had ever asked him to hide a girl before. “Of course. Whatever you need.”

“Might I make a suggestion?” Haversham began, his shrewd eyes level on Greg.

The last thing Greg wanted was to hear anything that particular blackguard had to say, but as he was Simon’s guest… “You have one to make?”

“The longer you delay, the more chance you give Chatham of catching up to you.”

Which was true, but Greg hadn’t intended any of this. They were going to need a few things before they could leave, like his coach. That couldn’t be helped.

“Send your carriage empty to Scotland. Do so now. Let Chatham chase that if he’s of a mind, and if he catches it, then at least you won’t be on board.”

Greg frowned at the man. That sounded like a horrible plan. “No? Then where shall I be?”

Haversham gestured to Simon and said, “On one of Thurlstone’s ships.” Then he glanced at their mutual friend. “Don’t you have something in port?”

“The Magnanime is in dry dock for maintenance, but she’s seaworthy.”

“Perfect.” Haversham smiled. “Send Avery and his love to Edinburgh. Chatham won’t have a chance of catching them because he’ll be chasing an empty coach.” He glanced back at Greg. “It’s not Gretna, and you won’t find any blacksmiths ready to marry you just over the border. They much prefer for the banns to be read, but it’s not necessary for an irregular wedding. So when you get there, head for Morningside. There’s a pub, the Maiden and the Doe. Ask for McCloskey. His brother’s a vicar. Tell him Kirkburn sent you.”

“Kirkburn?” Greg echoed as his mind tried to sort through all of that information. Morningside. The Maiden and the Doe. McCloskey. What in the world?

“He knew me a long time ago, before I came into the marquessate,” Haversham explained as he shook his head. “But McCloskey will help you. He owes me a favor. You can remind him of that, if it comes to it.”

Greg released a breath, a bit in shock at the man’s quick plan and readiness to be of assistance. Twice he’d come to their aid now. There had to be some reason for it because he doubted it was out of the goodness of the man’s black heart. “Why are you helping us?” Neither Greg nor his brothers had ever been even remotely pleasant to the marquess, not after the situation with Cordie.

Haversham smiled again. “I am fortunate to count your sister amongst my most loyal of friends. She and Clayworth both. If she knew I had the chance to help you and did not…” He shrugged. “Well, I’d hate to be me should she ever find out. Besides, I do have a penance to pay, as it were. This may not right things in the karmic world, but every little bit will help.”

Whatever he meant by that.

“And then, of course, you will owe me a favor sometime in the future.”

There it was. And that statement sent a chill down Greg’s spine. How many people owed the man one favor or another? It was like making a deal with the devil, but Greg didn’t really have a choice, and Haversham’s plan did sound like it was solid. “Of course.”

“What did I tell you?” Simon asked. “Machiavellian mind. Never play chess against him.”

Something Greg would never do, not that Simon needed to warn him of that.

Then his friend started for the corridor. “I’d better rouse Captain Bellamy from whatever bed he’s found himself in. He’ll need to gather his crew.”

“Thank you,” Greg called after him.

Simon glanced back over his shoulder and flashed Greg an old familiar grin. “Just glad to see that adventurous side of you return, Avery. You had me worried for a while.”

Hopping a merchant ship and sailing away for an elopement. A month ago the suggestion would have been more than laughable. But now nothing would ever be the same. Not for him, not for Bella. She had to be terrified. Perhaps…

“Simon, one more favor, if you don’t mind,” Greg said, squeezing Bella’s hand before heading after his friend.