Walking through the streets that night was a novel experience.

Forget stalking and prowling down the darkened alleyways. Tonight, Ash was all but skipping. Gamboling.

He didn’t encounter any enraging specimens of human refuse.

He was no longer sexually frustrated to the point of irascibility.

He felt almost . . . human again.

He even strolled across an open square.

“Say!” someone called. “You’re the Monster of Mayfair!”

And with that, Ash’s lightened mood popped like a balloon. So much for feeling human.

A gangly figure jogged across the green to him. Ash pushed back the brim of his hat, revealing his face, and scowled. That always worked on the children.

For it was, in fact, a school-aged boy who’d approached him. One who’d clearly learned to curse this past Michaelmas term at school.

“I’ll be damned.” The boy whistled low. “You truly are as fearsome and ugly as the papers said.”

“Oh, really. And do they say anything about this?” Ash brandished his walking stick. “Now go home. Your nursemaid will be missing you.”

He turned and kept walking. The lad followed.

“I saw you over by Marylebone Mews,” the boy called out. As if they were two old chums holding a conversation at the club. “You thrashed that gin-soused cur. The one who was beating his wife, remember?”

Yes, of course Ash remembered. It was only two days past.

“That was bloody brilliant.” By now the youth was scampering alongside him. “Just capital. And I heard about the footpads in St. James’s, too. All of London has.”

Ash released a long, slow breath. He refused to be baited. The more thoroughly you ignore him, the faster he’ll go away, he told himself. Like a canker sore.

“So where are we off to tonight?” the boy asked.

We?

Now that was too much.

Ash halted in the center of the empty square. “Just what is it you want?”

The boy scratched his ear and shrugged. “To see you thrash someone new. Give some fellow what’s coming to him.”

“Well, then.” Ash lifted his walking stick and gave the lad a shove with the blunt end, sending him arse-first into the shrubbery. “There you have it.”

Several days later, Emma stood before a terraced house faced with white stone and corniced windows, having made the journey across Bloom Square. As short a distance as it was, she seemed to have dropped her bravery somewhere along the way.

She knew she must not indulge her nerves. She needed to start moving in society, and asking the duke to squire her about Town would be a waste of breath. If Davina wanted permission to visit her at Swanlea, Emma must form acquaintances with ladies of impeccable breeding and genteel accomplishment—not as their seamstress, but as their equal. Today was an important first step.

She looked down at the invitation and read it again.

That last line gave Emma hope—and the courage to knock.

“You came!” A young woman with fair hair and rosy cheeks pulled her into the entrance hall. She’d scarcely closed the door before kissing Emma on the cheek in greeting. “I’m Penny.”

“Penny?”

“Oh, yes. I should have said. I’m properly called Penelope, but the name is rather a mouthful, don’t you think?”

Emma was amazed. This was Lady Penelope Campion? She opened her own door and greeted perfect strangers with kisses on the cheek? Apparently her note of invitation hadn’t been an exaggeration: She truly wasn’t like other ladies.

Emma curtsied, probably more deeply than a duchess would—but the habit was ingrained in her. “Delighted to make your acquaintance.”

“Likewise. The others are dying to meet you.”

Lady Penelope took Emma by the wrist and drew her into a parlor. The room was a jumble of unquestionably fine furnishings that seemed to have seen better days.

“This is Miss Teague,” she said, swiveling Emma toward a ginger-haired young woman dusted with freckles . . . and a fine white powder that looked like flour. “Nicola lives on the southern side of the square.”

“The unfashionable side,” Nicola said.

“The exciting side,” Lady Penny corrected. “The one with all the scandalous artists and mad scientists.”

“My father was one of the latter, Your Grace.”

“Don’t listen to her. She’s one of the latter, too.”

“Thank you, Penny,” Nicola said. “I think.”

“And this is Miss Alexandra Mountbatten.” Emma’s hostess turned her to the third occupant of the salon.

Miss Mountbatten was small of stature and dressed in unremarkable gray serge, but her appearance was made stunning by virtue of her hair—an upswept knot of true black, glossy as obsidian.

“Alex sells the time,” Lady Penelope stated.

Emma could not have heard that correctly. “Sells the time?”

“I earn my living setting clocks to Greenwich time,” she explained, curtsying deeply. “It’s an honor to make your acquaintance, Your Grace.”

“Do sit down,” Penny urged.

Emma obeyed, taking the offered seat—a carved chair that must have been rescued from some French chateau, if not the royal palace. The upholstery, however, had been worn to threads—even slashed in places, with tufts of batting peeking through.

A bleating sound came from somewhere toward the rear of the house.

“Oh, that’s Marigold.” Penny lifted the teapot. “Never mind her.”

“Marigold?”

“The goat,” Nicola explained.

“She’s sick in love with Angus, and she’s most displeased about being quarantined. She has the sniffles, you see.”

“You have two goats, then?”

“Oh, no. Angus is a Highland calf. I shouldn’t encourage them, but they’re herd creatures. They each need a companion. Do you take milk and sugar?”

“Both, please,” Emma said, a bit dazed.

Nicola took pity on her. “Penny has a soft spot for wounded animals. She takes them in, ostensibly to heal them, and then never lets them go.”

“I do let them go,” Penny objected. “Sometimes.”

“Once,” Alexandra put in. “You let one go, once. But do let’s try to hold a normal conversation, just for a few minutes. Otherwise we’ll frighten Her Grace away.”

“Not at all,” Emma assured her. “I’m happy to be here.” The elegant, imposing ladies would wait for another day. “How did you know to invite me?”

“Oh, it’s a small square. Everyone knows everything. The cook tells the costermonger, who tells the maid down the street . . . so on and so forth.” She handed Emma a cup of tea. “They’re saying you were a seamstress until only last week.”

Oh, dear. Emma deflated. She supposed it was unrealistic to hope she could hide it.

Penny clasped her hands together in her lap. “Tell us everything. How did you meet? Was your courtship terribly romantic?”

“I don’t know that one could call it romantic.” In fact, one could call it just about anything else.

“Well, for a duke to marry a seamstress is an extraordinary thing. It’s like a fairy tale, isn’t it? He must have fallen desperately in love with you.”

That wasn’t the truth at all, of course. But how could Emma tell them that he’d married her chiefly because hers was the first convenient womb to appear in his library?

She was saved from answering when a pincushion nestled in a nearby darning basket unfurled itself and toddled away. “Was that a hedgehog?”

Penny’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Yes, but the poor dear’s terribly shy. On account of her traumatic youth, you see. Do have a biscuit. Nicola made them. They’re heavenly.”

Emma reached for one and took a bite. She’d given up on trying to understand anything in this house. She was a barnacle on the hull of the HMS Penelope—she’d no idea of their destination, but she was along for the ride.

Goodness. The biscuit was heavenly. Buttery sweetness melted on her tongue.

“Please don’t think we’re mining you for gossip,” Miss Mountbatten—Alexandra, was it?—said. “Penny’s only curious. We wouldn’t tell anyone else.”

“We scarcely talk to anyone else,” Nicola said. “We’ve a tight little club, the three of us.”

Penny smiled and reached for Emma’s hand. “With room for a fourth, of course.”

“In that case . . .” Emma thoughtfully chewed her last bite of biscuit, washing it down with a swallow of tea. “May I be so bold as to ask for some advice?”

In a unanimous, unspoken yes, Penny, Alexandra, and Nicola leaned forward in their chairs.

“It’s about . . .” She lost her nerve for honesty. “It’s about my cat. I took him in from the streets, and he hasn’t a proper name. Will you help me make a list of possibilities?”

Ash. That’s what his friends called him, he’d said. It felt like progress to be admitted to that inner circle, but Emma wasn’t certain she liked that name, either. For man who’d survived severe burns, Ash sounded ironic at best. At worst, it felt cruel.

Besides, she was having too much fun with the others.

She needed to draw him out. Gain his respect. If luck was with her, a pregnancy would take root, but could it be assured in time to help Davina? Doubtful. She must convince him to change his mind, if it didn’t.

In the days since their first night together—their first successful night together, at any rate—he’d made every effort to assure her pleasure. A man who cared for her satisfaction in bed could be convinced to honor her wishes outside it, couldn’t he? She had begun to care about him, however unwillingly.

“If it’s pet names you want, you’ve certainly come to the right place,” Penny said.

Nicola took a tiny pencil from the notebook hanging about her neck on a silver chain. “I’ll keep a list.”

“It must be something affectionate,” Emma said. “For the cat. He’s rather untrusting and prickly, and I can’t seem to draw him out.”

“Well, if it’s a sweet little name you want, there are all the delightful words for new creatures,” Penny said. “Puppy, kitten, piglet, foal, fawn, calf, polliwog . . .”

Alexandra reached for her teacup. “Oh, dear. She’ll go on forever now.”

“That’s just the beginning,” Penny went on. “There are the birds. Duckling, eaglet, gosling, cygnet, poult . . .”

Nicola looked up from her scribbling. “Poult?”

“A turkey hatchling, fresh from the egg.”

Emma laughed. “As tempting as calling him a turkey might be, I think it’s polliwog, duckling, and piglet that are my favorites thus far.”

“I can contribute a few astronomical ones, I suppose,” Alexandra said. “Bright star, twinkles, moonbeam, sunshine . . .”

“Oh, Lord.” Emma could just imagine the duke’s reaction to “Twinkles.” “Those are perfection. What do you think, Nicola?”

“I don’t know. I’m surrounded by gears and levers, for the most part. Pet names aren’t my forte.” Her eye fell on the biscuits. “I suppose there are the sweet things. Sugar, honeycomb, tartlet.”

“I’m afraid I’ve tried most of those already.”

“Sweetmeat?” she suggested in perfect innocence.

After a moment’s pause, the rest of them dissolved into laughter.

“Oh, dear heavens.” Alexandra dashed a tear from her eye.

Nicola looked at the three of them. “What?”

“Nothing,” Emma said. “You truly do have a brilliant mind.” She nodded at the notebook. “You must most definitely add sweetmeat to the list.”

A half hour later, she left Lady Penelope Campion’s house with a packet of leftover biscuits and a quiver full of verbal arrows. Hopefully one or two of them would pierce the reserve of laughter in his chest. She knew better than to aim for his heart.

Penny embraced her in farewell. “Do keep trying with your cat. The creatures most difficult to reach make the most loving companions in the end.”

Emma felt a sharp twinge of irony. She had no doubt in Penny’s ability to tame not only cats, but pups and goats and Highland calves and even traumatized hedgehogs.

But the duke she’d married was a different sort of beast.