The two gentlemen who were in their shirt sleeves despite the brisk chill of a spring morning were about to blow each other’s brains out. Or attempt to do so, at least. They were standing on a secluded stretch of dew-wet lawn in London’s Hyde Park, facing in different directions, each ignoring the other’s existence until the moment should come to take aim at each other and shoot to kill.

They were not alone, however, this being a duel of honor in which due process had been followed. A gauntlet had been thrown down, even if not literally, and challenger and challenged had progressed toward this morning’s meeting through the medium of their seconds. Both seconds were now present, as were a surgeon and a gathering of interested spectators, all male, who had risen early from their beds – or had not yet gone to them after the revels of the night before – for the sheer exhilaration of watching two of their peers attempt to put a period to each other’s existence.

One of the duelists, the challenger, the shorter and stockier of the two, was stamping his booted feet, flexing his fingers, and licking his dry lips with a drier tongue. He was almost as pale as his shirt.

‘Yes, you may ask him,’ he told his second through teeth that he tried in vain to keep from chattering. ‘Not that he will do it, mind, but one must be decent about such matters.’

His second strode off smartly to confer with his counterpart, who in his turn approached the other duelist. That tall, elegant gentleman showed to advantage without his coat. His white shirt did nothing to hide the powerful muscles of his arms, shoulders, and chest, as his breeches and top boots only accentuated those of his long legs. He was nonchalantly engaged in smoothing the lace of his cuffs over the backs of his long-fingered, well-manicured hands and holding a desultory conversation with his friends.

‘Oliver is shaking like a leaf in a strong breeze,’ Baron Pottier observed, his quizzing glass to his eye. ‘He could not hit the broad side of a cathedral from thirty paces, Tresham.’

‘His teeth are clacking like trotting hooves too,’ Viscount Kimble added.

‘Are you intending to kill him, Tresham?’ young Mr Maddox asked, drawing to himself a cool, arrogant stare from the duelist.

‘It is the nature of duels, is it not?’ he answered.

‘Breakfast at White’s afterward, Tresh?’ Viscount Kimble suggested. ‘And Tattersall’s after that? I have my eye on a new matched pair of grays for my curricle.’

‘As soon as this little matter has been taken care of.’ But the duelist was distracted both from straightening his cuffs and from his conversation by the approach of his second. ‘Well, Conan?’ he asked, a touch of impatience in his voice. ‘Is there good reason for this delay? I must confess myself eager for my breakfast.’

Sir Conan Brougham was accustomed to the man’s cool nerve. He had served as his second during three previous duels, after all of which his friend had consumed a hearty breakfast, unharmed and perfectly composed, as if he had been engaged for the morning in nothing more lethal than a brisk ride in the park.

‘Lord Oliver is prepared to accept a properly worded apology,’ he said.

There were jeering noises from their acquaintances.

Eyes of such a dark brown that many people mistook their color for black looked back into Sir Conan’s without blinking. The narrow, arrogant, handsome face to which they belonged was expressionless except for one slightly elevated eyebrow.

‘He has challenged me for cuckolding him but is willing to settle for a simple apology?’ he said. ‘Do I need to spell out my answer, Conan? Did you need to consult me?’

‘It might be worth considering,’ his friend advised. ‘I would not be doing my job conscientiously if I did not thus advise you, Tresham. Oliver is a pretty decent shot.’

‘Then let him prove it by killing me,’ the duelist said carelessly. ‘And let that be within minutes rather than hours, my dear fellow. The spectators are displaying distinct signs of boredom.’

Sir Conan shook his head, shrugged, and strode away to inform Viscount Russell, Lord Oliver’s second, that his grace, the Duke of Tresham, did not acknowledge the necessity of any apology to Lord Oliver.

There was nothing for it then but to proceed to business. Viscount Russell in particular was anxious to have the meeting over with. Hyde Park, even this secluded corner of it, was a rashly public place in which to hold a duel, illegal as such meetings were. Wimbledon Common, the more usual venue for affairs of honor, would have been safer. But his friend had insisted on the park.

The pistols had been loaded and carefully inspected by both seconds. While an expectant hush fell over the spectators, the protagonists each picked up a weapon without looking at the other. They took up their positions back to back and at the agreed-upon signal paced out the regulation number of steps before turning. They took careful aim, each standing sideways in order to offer as narrow a target as possible to the other. They waited for Viscount Russell to drop the white handkerchief he held aloft, the signal to fire.

The hush became an almost tangible thing.

And then two things happened simultaneously.

The handkerchief was released.

And someone shrieked.

‘Stop!’ the voice cried. ‘Stop!’

It was a female voice, and it came from the direction of a grove of trees some distance away. An indignant buzz arose from the spectators, who had held themselves properly silent and motionless so that the protagonists would have no distraction.

The Duke of Tresham, startled and furious, lowered his right arm and turned in order to glare in the direction of the person who had dared interrupt such a meeting at such a moment.

Lord Oliver, who had also wavered for a moment, recovered fast, corrected his aim, and fired his pistol.

The female screamed.

His grace did not go down. Indeed at first it did not appear that he had even been hit. But a bright red spot appeared on his calf, an inch or two above the top of one perfectly polished leather boot, just as if suddenly painted there by an invisible hand with a long-handled brush.

‘Shame!’ Baron Pottier called from the sidelines. ‘For shame, Oliver!’

His voice was joined by others, all censuring the man who had taken unfair advantage of his opponent’s distraction.

Sir Conan began to stride toward the duke while the crimson spot increased in diameter and the surgeon bent over his bag. But his grace held up his left hand in a firm staying gesture before raising his right arm again and taking aim with his pistol. It did not waver. Neither did his face show any expression except intense, narrow-eyed concentration on his target, who had no choice now but to stand and await his death.

Lord Oliver, to his credit, stood very still, though the hand that held his pistol to his side was trembling noticeably.

The spectators were silent again. So was the unidentified woman. There was an air of almost unbearable tension.

And then the Duke of Tresham, as he had done at every previous duel in which he had been engaged, bent his arm at the elbow and shot into the air.

The red spot on his breeches spread outward in rapidly expanding concentric circles.

It had taken iron willpower to remain standing when it felt as if a thousand needles had exploded in his leg. But even though incensed with Lord Oliver for firing his pistol when any true gentleman would have waited for the duel to be reorganized, Jocelyn Dudley, Duke of Tresham, had never had any intention of killing or even wounding him. Only of making him sweat awhile, of giving him time to watch his life flash before his eyes and wonder if this would be the one occasion when the duke, famed as a deadly shot but also known as a man who contemptuously wasted his bullet on the air during duels, would act untrue to form.

The needle points had taken over his whole person by the time he had finished and tossed the pistol onto the wet grass. He felt like agony personified and remained upright only because he would be damned before giving Oliver the satisfaction of being able to claim that he had been felled.

He was also still angry. An understatement. He was in a white-hot fury that might have been directed against Oliver had there not been a more obvious target.

He turned his head and looked with narrowed gaze to the spot at the edge of the trees where she had been standing a few moments ago, shrieking like a banshee. A serving girl, running an early-morning errand, no doubt, and forgetting one of the primary rules of service – that one minded one’s own business and left one’s betters to mind theirs. A girl who needed to be taught a lesson she would never forget.

She was still there, staring as if transfixed, both hands pressed to her mouth, though she had stopped her caterwauling. It was a pity she was a woman. It would have given him intense satisfaction to set a horsewhip whistling about her hide before being carted away to have his leg attended to. Deuce take it, but he was engulfed in pain.

Only a few moments had passed since he had fired his pistol and tossed it down. Both Brougham and the surgeon were hurrying toward him. The spectators were buzzing with excitement. He heard one voice distinctly.

‘Well done, by Jove, Tresh,’ Viscount Kimble called. ‘You would have contaminated your bullet by shooting it into the bastard.’

Jocelyn held up his left hand again without looking away from the woman by the trees. With his right hand he beckoned imperiously to her.

If she had been wise, she would have turned and run. He was hardly in a position to go chasing after her, and he doubted that anyone else present would be interested in running to earth on his behalf an unappealing, gray-clad slip of a servant girl.

She was not wise. She took a few tentative steps toward him and then hurried the rest of the way until she was standing almost toe to toe with him.

‘You fool!’ she cried with angry disregard for her place on the social scale and the consequences of talking thus to a peer of the realm. ‘What an utterly idiotic thing to do. Have you no more respect for your life than to become embroiled in a stupid duel? And now you have been hurt. I would have to say it serves you right.’

His eyes narrowed further as he determinedly ignored the pulsing pain in his leg and the near impossibility of standing any longer on it.

‘Silence, wench!’ he commanded coldly. ‘If I had died here this morning, you would as like as not have hanged for murder. Have you no more respect for your life than to interfere in what is no concern of yours?’

Her cheeks had been flushed with anger. They paled at his words, and she stared at him wide-eyed, her lips compressed in a hard line.

‘Tresham,’ Sir Conan said from close by, ‘we had better get that leg attended to, old chap. You are losing blood. Let me carry you with Kimble here over to the blanket the surgeon has spread out.’

‘Carry?’ Jocelyn laughed derisively. He had not taken his eyes off the serving girl. ‘You, girl. Give me your shoulder.’

‘Tresham –’ Sir Conan sounded exasperated.

‘I am on my way to work,’ the girl said. ‘I will be late if I do not hurry.’

But Jocelyn had already availed himself of her shoulder. He leaned heavily on it, more heavily than he had intended. Moving at last, shifting the weight off his injured leg, he found that the wave of agony made a mockery of the pain hitherto.

‘You are the cause of this, my girl,’ he said grimly, taking one tentative step toward the surgeon, who suddenly seemed an impossible distance away. ‘You will, by God, lend me your assistance and keep your impertinent tongue safely housed behind your teeth.’

Lord Oliver was pulling his waistcoat and coat back on while Viscount Russell packed away his pistol and came striding past Jocelyn to retrieve the other one.

‘You would do better,’ the girl said, ‘to swallow your pride and allow your friends to carry you.’

Her shoulder did not bow beneath his weight. She was rather tall and slender, but she was no weakling. She was doubtless accustomed to hard manual labor. She was probably equally accustomed to cuffings and beatings for impudence. He had never heard the like from a servant girl.

He was well-nigh swooning by the time he reached the blanket the surgeon had spread on the grass beneath an oak tree.

‘Lie down, your grace,’ he instructed, ‘and I will see what damage has been done. I do not like the look of the positioning of that wound, I must confess. Or all the blood. I daresay the leg will need to come off.’

He spoke as if he were a barber who had discovered a tuft of hair that did not blend well with the rest of the head. He was a retired army sawbones, supplied by Lord Oliver. Bloodletting and amputation were probably his answer to every physical ailment.

Jocelyn swore eloquently.

‘You cannot possibly know that from a single glance,’ the serving girl had the temerity to observe, addressing the surgeon, ‘or make such a dire prediction.’

‘Conan,’ Jocelyn said, his teeth clamping tightly now in a vain attempt to control the pain, ‘fetch my horse.’ It was tethered not far away.

There was a chorus of protests from his friends who had gathered around him.

‘Fetch his horse? He is as mad as ever.’

‘I have my carriage here, Tresham. Ride in that. I’ll go and have it brought up.’

‘Stay where you are, Brougham. He is out of his mind.’

‘That’s the fellow, Tresham. You show them what you are made of, old sport.’

‘Fetch my damned horse!’ Jocelyn spoke from between his teeth. He had a death grip on the girl’s shoulder.

‘I am going to be very late,’ she scolded. ‘I will lose my employment for sure.’

‘And serve you right too,’ Jocelyn said, throwing her own words back at her, his voice devoid of all sympathy as his friend strode away to bring his horse and the surgeon launched into a protest.

‘Silence, sir!’ Jocelyn instructed him. ‘I will have my own physician summoned to Dudley House. He will have more regard for his future than to suggest sawing off my leg. Help me to my horse, girl.’

But Lord Oliver appeared in front of him before he could turn away.

‘I am not satisfied, I would have you know, Tresham,’ he said, his voice breathless and trembling as if he were the one who had suffered injury. ‘You will doubtless use the distraction with the girl to throw dishonor on my name. And everyone will laugh at me when it is known that you contemptuously shot into the air.’

‘You would rather be dead, then?’ Death was seeming to be a rather desirable state to Jocelyn at that particular moment. He was going to black out if he did not concentrate hard.

‘You will stay away from my wife in the future if you know what is good for you,’ Lord Oliver said. ‘Next time I may not accord you the dignity of a challenge. I may shoot you down like the dog you are.’

He strode away without waiting for an answer, while another chorus of ‘Shame!’ came from the gallery, some of whose members were doubtless disappointed that they were not about to witness the sawbones plying his trade on the grass of Hyde Park.

‘My horse, girl.’ Jocelyn tightened his hold on her shoulder again and moved the few steps to Cavalier, whose head Conan was holding.

Mounting was a daunting task, and would have been quite impossible if his pride had not been at stake – and if he had not had the assistance of his silent but disapproving friend. It amazed Jocelyn that one small wound could cause such agony. And there was worse to look forward to. The bullet was lodged in his calf. And despite his words to the surgeon, he was not quite confident that the leg could be saved. He gritted his teeth and took the horse’s reins from Conan’s hands.

‘I’ll ride with you, Tresham,’ his friend said curtly. ‘You bloody idiot!’

‘I’ll ride on your other side,’ Viscount Kimble offered cheerfully. ‘And then you will have someone to catch you whichever side you choose to slide off. Well done, Tresh, old chap. You gave that old sawbones a right setdown.’

The serving girl stood looking up at Jocelyn.

‘I must be at least half an hour late by now,’ she said. ‘All because of you and your foolish quarreling and more than foolish dueling.’

Jocelyn reached for one of the pockets of his coat, only to be reminded that he was still wearing just his shirt and breeches and top boots.

‘Conan,’ he said testily, ‘oblige me by finding a sovereign in my coat pocket and tossing it to this wench, will you? It will more than compensate her for the loss of half an hour’s wages.’

But she had turned on her heel and was striding away over the grass, her back bristling with indignation.

‘It is a good thing,’ Baron Pottier said, looking after her, his quizzing glass to his eye, ‘that shopgirls do not challenge dukes to duels, Tresham. You would be out here tomorrow morning again for sure.’ He chuckled. ‘And I would not wager against her.’

Jocelyn did not spare her another thought. Every thought, every sense, every instinct became focused inward on himself – on his pain and on the necessity of riding home to Grosvenor Square and Dudley House before he disgraced himself and fell off his horse in a dead faint.

For two weeks Jane Ingleby had searched for employment. As soon as she had accepted the fact that there was no one in London to whom to turn for help and no going back where she had come from, and as soon as she had realized that the little money she had brought to town with her would not keep her for longer than one month even if she were very careful, she had started searching, going from one shop to another, one agency to another.

Finally, when depleted resources had been adding anxiety to the almost paralyzing fear she had already been feeling for other reasons, she had found employment as a milliner’s assistant. It involved long hours of dreary work for a fussy, bad-tempered employer who did business as Madame de Laurent complete with French accent and expressive hands, but whose accent became pure cockney when she was in the workroom at the back of her shop with her girls. The pay was abysmal.

But at least it was a job. At least there would be wages enough each week to hold body and soul together and pay the rent of the small room Jane had found in a shabby neighborhood.

She had had the job for two days. This was her third. And she was late. She dreaded to think what that would mean even though she had a good enough excuse. She was not sure Madame de Laurent would be sympathetic to excuses.

She was not. Five minutes after arriving at the shop, Jane was hurrying away from it again.

‘Two gents fighting a duel,’ Madame had said, hands planted on hips, after Jane had told her story. ‘I was not born yesterday, dearie. Gents don’t fight duels in Hyde Park no longer. They go to Wimbledon Common.’

Jane had been unable to supply the full names of the two gentlemen. All she knew was that the one who had been wounded – the dark, arrogant, bad-tempered one – had been called Tresham. And that he lived at Dudley House.

‘On Grosvenor Square? Oh, Tresham!’ Madame had exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air. ‘Well, that explains everything. A more reckless, more dangerous gent than Tresham it would be impossible to find. He is the very devil himself.’

For one moment Jane had breathed a sigh of relief. She was going to be believed after all. But Madame had tipped back her head suddenly and laughed scornfully. And then she had looked around the workshop at the other girls, and they, sycophants that they were, had all laughed scornfully too.

‘And you would have me believe that the Duke of Tresham needed the help of a milliner’s assistant after taking a bullet through the leg?’ Madame had asked. The question was clearly rhetorical. She had not paused for a reply. ‘You cannot take me for a fool, dearie. You saw some excitement and stayed around to have a gawk, did you? Did they take his breeches down to tend to his leg? I can hardly blame you for stopping to gawk at that sight. There is no padding in them breeches, I would have you know.’

The other girls had tittered again while Jane had felt herself blush – partly with embarrassment, partly with anger.

‘Are you calling me a liar, then?’ she had asked incautiously.

Madame de Laurent had looked at her, transfixed. ‘Yes, Miss Hoity Toity,’ she had said at last. ‘That I am. And I have no further need of your services. Not unless—’ She had paused to look about at the girls again, smirking. ‘Not unless you can bring me a note signed by the Duke of Tresham himself to bear out your story.’

The girls had dissolved in convulsions of giggles as Jane had turned and left the workshop. As she strode away, she remembered she had not even asked for the two days’ wages she had earned.

And what now? Return to the agency that had found her this job? After working for only two days? Part of the problem before had been that she had no references, no previous experience at anything. Surely worse than no references and no experience would be two days of work ended with dismissal for tardiness and lying.

She had spent the last of her money three days ago on enough food to last her until payday and on the cheap, serviceable dress she was wearing.

Jane stopped on the pavement suddenly, her legs weak with panic. What could she do? Where could she go? She had no money left even if she did decide belatedly that she wanted to go in search of Charles. She had no money even with which to send a letter. And perhaps even now she was being hunted. She had been in London for longer than two weeks, after all, and she had done nothing to mask her trail here. Someone might well have followed her, especially if …

But she blanched as her mind shied away from that particular possibility.

At any moment she might see a familiar face and see the truth in that face – that she was indeed being pursued. Yet she was now being denied the chance to disappear into the relatively anonymous world of the working class.

Should she find another agency and neglect to mention the experience of the past few days? Were there any agencies she had not already visited at least half a dozen times?

And then a portly, hurrying gentleman collided painfully with her and cursed her before moving on. Jane rubbed one sore shoulder and felt anger rising again – a familiar feeling today. She had been angry with the bad-tempered duelist – apparently the Duke of Tresham. He had treated her like a thing, whose only function in life was to serve him. And then she had been angry with Madame, who had called her a liar and made her an object of sport.

Were women of the lower classes so utterly powerless, so totally without any right to respect?

That man needed to be told that he had been the means of her losing her employment. He needed to know what a job meant to her – survival! And Madame needed to know that she could not call her a liar without any proof whatsoever. What had she said just a few minutes ago? That Jane could keep her job if she brought a note signed by the duke attesting to the truth of her story?

Well then, she would have her note.

And he would sign it.

Jane knew where he lived. On Grosvenor Square. She knew where that was too. During her first days in London, before she had understood how frighteningly alone she was, before fear had caught her in its grip and sent her scurrying for cover like the fugitive she now was, she had walked all over Mayfair. He lived at Dudley House on Grosvenor Square.

Jane went striding off along the pavement.