Mrs. Tessa Chance had embarked upon her new life in London by devising two lists. The first list outlined all the ways she would no longer behave. It covered affectations such as eyelash batting, pouting, playful, lingering taps with her fan, and the long, slow controlled fall she affected when a gentleman lifted her from a horse.

The second list comprised all the things she would do. She would be serious, she would be reserved, she would be discreet and detached. She would be all the things that would never invite a man to attack her against a tree. Or marry her because she was tricking him into doing it.

In short, the lists were meant to repel men who might betray her and keep her away from men that she, herself, might betray.

She had worked many days devising the lists and even more days, weeks, and months adhering to them. She had made such progress.

Until.

Until her estranged husband stepped before her in West Halkin Street and called her name, setting off a jolt of reactions that were the opposite of progress.

“Tessa?” Joseph Chance said, Tessa looked up, and there he was.

Or rather, there was an (unbelievably) more rugged and handsome version of him. His skin was as tan as the pelt of a buck. His shoulders were broader—work-muscled shoulders—his waist leaner. His hair was streaked with shades of white-blond. He must not have shaved for a week.

The sight of him set off the cold tingle of shock, as if all the blood had been drained from her veins. She stopped breathing. She somehow managed to stop her beating heart.

Joseph is home.

Home, standing before her, tanned skin and dusty clothes and all the rest. After ten months.

She struggled to catch her breath. Blood and heat rushed quickly back in a rolling wave. She clung to her packages like buoys in the surf.

“You’ve returned,” she heard herself say. Her voice was an airy little gasp, winded, absolutely nothing like she had planned.

“Well, I’m endeavoring to return.” He raised his eyebrows. He waited. He sounded . . . sardonic? His voice was as flat and cool as the surface of a brick.

Tessa was confused. She’d prepared herself for him to return when she least expected it, and she’d prepared for his residual anger. But she did not expect him to stand in the road, raise his eyebrows, and speak to her as if he was throwing down a gauntlet.

A small wagon pulled between them, and she held her breath, waiting for it to pass. She tried to think of what reserved, measured thing she would say next. She took a step toward him.

“But have you all come?” she asked. “Cassin and Stoker, too? You’ve sailed the brig back to England?”

“Yes,” Joseph said, “back to England.” He frowned as the tail of the wagon rumbled past. He moved around it and stepped closer, but not close. It was a cautious distance, an uncivil, suspicious distance. She stared at the four feet of gravel between them. It seemed as wide as the Atlantic.

“Look,” he said, crossing his arms, “you’ll have to forgive my directness, but what the bloody hell have you done to the slip I arranged at the West India Docks?”

She blinked. She had anticipated a great many things, but she had not prepared for him to accuse her. If she was being honest, she had not been prepared for him to fail to say hello.

He went on, “The mooring officer has turned me away, naming my wife as the reason. We’ve dropped anchor in the estuary, but we can hardly remain there. I hope you can tell me why I have sailed for five weeks across the bloody Atlantic, carrying a fortune in cargo, only to reach London and have nowhere to dock the brig?”

“But did the steam tug not give you my letter?” she said, trying to catch up.

He sucked in a breath and held it, an exaggerated gesture of irritation. “What. Letter? I would be a rich man if I had a shilling for each time I’ve been forced to repeat something about this day that makes no sense.”

I thought you were already a rich man, she thought, but she did not say it. The last thing she wished to appear was greedy. He would not cooperate with her plan for a house and modest income if she came off as greedy. And besides—she was not greedy. She did not want his money, she wanted only to survive.

Her second instinct was to laugh. He’d made a joke and it was marginally clever. But she had worked very hard to purge herself from laughing at the jokes of men. She was a serious woman of business now, not to mention someone’s mother. There was no place in this conversation for laughter.

Ultimately, a passing gentleman saved her from any reaction at all.

“I beg your pardon, miss,” said a tall, fashionably dressed man drawing up beside her. “May I offer my assistance with your parcels?”

Tessa smiled immediately (smiling at polite gentlemen was one habit she could not break), and she said, “How very kind you are, sir, but that won’t be necessary. I—”

Suddenly the distance between herself and Joseph was not so great. He was beside her, his hand on her lower back. Tessa blinked at the warm pressure of his palm.

Joseph told the man, “I’ve got them, thank you very much.”

“I’ve asked the young lady,” said the gentleman.

“Bugger off,” Joseph growled, jerking his chin in the direction of the street. He took Tessa by the elbow and began to hustle her along. “What letter?” he repeated.

“I can walk unassisted, thank you very much,” she said, jerking her arm free.

He grumbled an apology, but he was glaring at the other man over his shoulder.

Tessa stopped walking. Joseph tried to unburden her of the boxes, but she clutched them to her. She took a deep breath. Even before the lists, she could not tolerate being rushed or bullied. When she explained what she’d done, she’d wanted the tone to be exactly, perfectly right. She’d wanted to be proficient and useful. She’d not planned to be defending herself.

She shuffled her parcels and said, “You’ve been misinformed, Joseph. And I’m sorry. There has been no effective way to communicate with you in Barbadoes, as you well know. I’ve written you several times and left word at both the West India dock office and Waterman’s Steam Packet Company, which, as you know, operates the steam tug. The cancellations at the West India Docks could not be avoided. I’ve made new arrangements to salvage what I could of an efficient return to London.”

He blinked down at her, almost as if he was seeing her, really seeing her, for the first time.

Good, she thought, he is seeing me for the first time. And I am changed.

She cleared her throat and imbued her voice with a rehearsed businesslike clip. “But I refuse to hash it out in the street. You will have to accompany me home to discuss it.”

The old Tessa would have turned her nose in the air, spun on her heel, and marched away. The old Tessa would have expected him to rush after her. Now she simply waited.

Joseph hesitated, and for a moment she thought he might refuse.

“Right,” he finally said. His voice came out in a huff. “Home. To discuss it.”

The exchange sounded like a concession, a concession between very formal, very irritated strangers, and Tessa supposed that was exactly what it was. Unfortunately, there were so many more formalities and irritations and concessions to come. But she had new priorities now, her infant son chief among them. If it had been only her, she would have joined a convent and retreated from society forever, carved out some safe place of solitude. But it had not been only herself. Christian was the center of her world now, and his future was all that mattered.

They reached No. 22, the house in which she, her friends, and now her son lived with Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Boyd. The Boyds were the aunt and uncle of her friend Willow, and they had generously taken them in when all three girls came to London, newly married with husbands sailing across the Atlantic.

The townhome was small but fashionable, one of the very first built in Belgravia. Tessa was nearly as grateful to Mary and Arthur for taking her in as she was to Joseph for marrying her. But despite the Boyds’ seemingly endless generosity, she could not impose forever. Her friend Willow had already moved to Yorkshire to be with her husband’s family. Willow’s aunt and uncle were dear, generous souls, but Tessa arrived on their doorstep as one person, and now she was a mother with a baby and a nursemaid. By springtime at latest, she and the baby must move on.

“Mary and Arthur are calling on clients at the moment,” Tessa told Joseph, clipping up the steps and knocking for the butler to admit them. And the baby is napping, she added silently in her head. Joseph would eventually have to meet the child who bore his name, but good lord, one thing at a time.

The butler admitted them and signaled for a footman to relieve her of her shopping. She unpinned her hat. Her hands shook, the movement appearing tense and jerky. Her heart raced like she’d sprinted home from the shops.

She said, “Sabine is out—she’s always out—so we should be able to sit alone in the parlor, ring for tea, and discuss what’s happened.”

“Forget tea,” Joseph sighed impatiently. “I prefer to get right to it, if you don’t mind.”

Or, she thought, we will get right to it.

The butler hovered discreetly, and she handed him her hat and pelisse and dismissed him. She turned back to Joseph. He looked prepared to shout, You did what? regardless of how she explained the new situation. She would not be intimidated by him, but she was a little saddened. She never meant for his return to be combative. She took a deep breath and resigned herself.

“My parents traveled to London in late spring to call on me,” she said. It felt strange to tell this story while they hovered in the entryway, but she couldn’t force him to sit down. She’d forced him enough already.

She continued, “By that time—this would have been May, I suppose—the baby had just arrived. Their visit took me completely by surprise.”

She glanced up, hoping for reaction. Of course he had not yet inquired about the baby, about her lying or her life as a mother. He hadn’t asked anything about her except how he might dock his brig.

She went on, “My parents were . . . shocked to discover a grandchild so soon after my marriage. As you know, you left the country within days of the wedding. It took very little time for them to count the months and conclude that there was no way that you could be the baby’s father.”

And now he gave some reaction. It was not a generous reaction, no concern revealed, but at least the blank stoicism fell away. He had the look of a horseman who had come upon a dead tree in the road. Jump over it or rein in? Panic mingled with indecision. Finally, he said hoarsely, “What happened?”

“I’ve been disowned,” she said. “That’s what happened. I’ve been evicted from the family.”

“I beg your pardon?”

She shook her head. “I wish there was a more pleasant way to say it, but ‘disowned’ seems to sum things up nicely. They will not receive me, support me, or acknowledge me. Or my son.” She took a deep breath. “Now will you sit down?”