She hadn’t understood before why any woman would let a man touch her. Why any woman would consent to marriage if it meant allowing a man to do what Withernsea had done to her.

She understood now. She turned to look at Jasper, who lay beside her, chest heaving and eyes closed, and she felt a rush of tenderness. He’d been so gentle, so caring, so intent upon her pleasure. Nothing had been rushed or forced or taken. They’d both given freely and taken only what was offered.

“I love you,” she murmured, reaching out to touch his lips. They curved in a half smile.

“That good, was it?” he said, eyes still closed.

“No.”

His eyes opened.

“I mean, yes, but that’s not why I love you.”

“I know. And I know you wanted to forget all about what happened tonight, but do you feel safe enough to talk about it yet?”

She buried her face in his chest, feeling his rough hair brush her cheek and inhaling his familiar scent. He hadn’t told her he loved her back. Surely he did love her back. But he was correct that they had more pressing matters. “He asked me to dance,” she said, looking up at Jasper. “Withernsea. My father had stepped away for a moment, and Withernsea asked me to dance. I told him no, and he became angry. He threatened to ruin my father for breaking the betrothal agreement. I don’t understand, Jasper. Why doesn’t he marry another woman? Why does he want me so much?”

Jasper rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “I’ve known men like Withernsea. I’ve watched them, studied them. Withernsea doesn’t want you. He wants what he’s been told he cannot have. You defied him. You made him look like a fool, and now it’s a matter of pride with him. He’ll have you because he must show the world that no one is out of his reach.”

“My father believes he will ruin us.”

“He may sue you for breaking the betrothal contract. I can’t think that would ruin you.”

She shook her head and swiped at the tears pooling in her eyes. “My father says Withernsea will see us evicted from this town house. We rent it, as do most of those in our circle. Withernsea will make sure no one else will lease to us. The duke will see no one accepts our credit. He’ll make certain our investments go badly. I didn’t think one man could do all of that, but...”

“He’s the Duke of Withernsea.” Jasper’s face darkened. “He has a vast fortune and incredible power. He could do it.”

Olivia felt her heart plummet into her belly. She felt as though she might be sick. “My father says I must marry Withernsea.”

Jasper shot up. “What?”

“He says he needs time to protect our assets, and then when we’re secure, I may run away or divorce the duke or—”

Jasper took her face in his hands. “No. It’s out of the question. How can your father even consider it?”

“I believe it was the plan all along.”

He frowned at her and then his hazel eyes turned dark. “He used me.”

She nodded.

“The bastard used me to get you back, not for your mother’s sake but because Withernsea was pressuring him.” He raked a hand through his hair. “The knife attack makes sense now. Once I’d found you, I was to be disposed of. I should have worked it all out.”

She placed a hand on his back. “It’s not your fault.”

“I should have seen. And to think I made you come back.”

“You didn’t force me. We had no other choice. It wasn’t safe at the cottage anymore.” And she’d wanted to return and give Richard a family. Little chance of that. What a fool she had been.

“You will not marry Withernsea,” he said, turning the full force of his penetrating gaze on her. “I’ll kill him before I allow that.”

“It won’t come to that. I’ll take Richard and run away. Perhaps if I am gone, Withernsea will leave my family alone.” Somehow she doubted it. If not for Richard, she would have married the duke and sacrificed herself for the sake of her parents. As Richard’s mother and protector, she had to think of him first. She could not allow Withernsea to hurt the boy or use him to bend her to his will.

“I have another idea.” Jasper stood, pulled on his breeches and paced the room. Olivia found her robe and donned it as he moved rapidly back and forth before the fire. Finally, he whirled to look at her. “I’ll marry you.”

Her hands froze in the act of tying the sash at her waist. “You want to marry me?” This wasn’t exactly the proposal she’d dreamed of.

“If I’m your husband, I can protect you and your family. I’ll get a special license—”

“Are you forgetting I am already betrothed?”

He waved the impediment away. “I know a few well-placed men who owe me favors. I’ll get the license. Once you and Richard are safe, we’ll move to safeguard your family. The man I served under in the war, Lieutenant Colonel Draven, has the ear of the Prince Regent. The Regent is no friend of Withernsea.”

That didn’t surprise her. Withernsea had deep pockets and the Regent was a notorious profligate. Withernsea had refused to loan the Regent funds and denounced his spending in the Lords, going so far as to propose legislation designed to limit the Regent’s funds.

“That feud is common knowledge.”

“What’s not common knowledge is what Withernsea did to you. If the Regent were to be present when you accused—no, that’s simply your word against his. I’d have to find a way to make the duke admit what he’s done in public. Then the prince will have cause to publicly denounce Withernsea. The duke will be ruined.”

Olivia considered. “It’s a good plan.” The problem was, of course, that Withernsea would never admit what he’d done to Olivia to Jasper. But they would face that obstacle when they came to it. There was another larger issue. “I can’t ask you to marry me, though. I am grateful you wish to help me and Richard, but that’s too much to ask.”

Again, he waved his hand. “It’s not a concern. The marriage is the easy part.”

She stared at him, uncertain how to interpret his statement. She hoped it meant he cared for her as much as she did him. “What is the hard part?” she asked.

“It will take some preparation to get the special license. I’d better start immediately.” He released her and bent to retrieve his shirt.

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“For the people I need to see, the day has just begun.” He pulled the shirt over his head then yanked on his coat and shoes. “I’ll have to leave Town to fetch the license.”

“No!” She grasped his hand. “I don’t feel safe.”

He took her face in his hands. “The attacker was after me, not you. I believe your father and Withernsea will want to give you a few days to adjust to the idea of marrying the duke. Put off going out or seeing anyone until I return. I’ll be back as fast as possible. Never doubt that I will come back for you.”

“And Richard.” She wanted to remind him she had a son, that this thing he planned would involve a child as well.

“And Richard.” His tone gave no indication her son was an afterthought. “If anything should happen while I’m away, I want you to take Richard and go to my friends. They will protect you. You can find them at The Draven Club on King Street. Knock on the door and tell Porter I told you to come and you need help. You can trust the men there with your life. I have.” Finally, he tied on his mask and started for the door.

“How will you get out?” she asked, realizing she had no idea how he’d managed to get in.

“The front door,” he said. “How else?” He kissed her hard and then cracked her door. After looking right and left, he glanced back at her. “As soon as I’m out the door, lock it. And Olivia?”

Her gaze fastened on his, the breath catching in her throat.

He paused. “Be careful.” And he was gone.

She stood rooted in place for a long moment. She’d been so certain he would tell her he loved her. But perhaps that was one more dream that would never come true.

***

JASPER WOVE THROUGH the alleys of Seven Dials with a practiced efficiency. He knew it well, every rat-infested hovel, every grimy corner, every dingy doorway. He rather enjoyed Seven Dials. Few people gave him a second look. It could be dangerous to take too much notice of anyone or anything here, even a masked man ducking into a gin house at four in the morning.

Rusty bells tinkled when he opened the door, and the barkeep raised his head from a table. “Off ta yer crib!” he said, voice groggy. His eyes widened when he saw Jasper. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Hello, Elias.”

Elias Johnson squinted bloodshot eyes at him. They’d been blue once but the blue was hardly noticeable when surrounded by puffiness and red. His hair was a brown with gray mixed in and it stood like a boar’s bristles on the top of his head. His jaw was haphazardly shaven, showing patches of gray and brown there too. “Yer the only one what calls me Elias anymore,” he said, kicking the other chair at the table toward Jasper. “Everyone else calls me Johnny Gin.”

“I never did care for alliteration.”

Elias squinted. “Wot?”

“I need a favor.” Jasper sat and crossed his arms over his chest after noting the sticky surface of the table.

“I didn’t think you come for the Blue Ruin, even if it is the best in London.”

Jasper didn’t argue, not because it was true, but because he did need a favor. Elias owed him several favors. His wife had lost a ring her mother had given to her. It was only tin and paste, but Jasper had felt sorry for the weeping woman and tracked it down in the hands of a young thief-in-training. He’d only had to hold out his hand and the little girl had dropped it into his glove without fuss. He’d tossed her a penny because even thieves had to eat. Jasper had done other jobs for Elias as well, such as warning him when the excise man might be coming his way. It was extraordinary how quickly a gin shop might be turned into coffee house.

“You had a moll working here a few years ago who claimed to know the Archbishop.”

“Susie, you mean? She were a rum piece, that Susie.”

She was a blowsy prostitute who could swear like a sailor, but Jasper had no reason to doubt the stories she told. And as a young girl, dear Susie had lived in Canterbury. “Where is she?”

“Caught her taking a wee nip once too often and sent her on her way. Most of my customers want to drink, not rut. They can find a girl or a boy just outside the door if that’s what they’re after. Besides, the whither-go-ye were always accusing me of leering at Susie, so the mort caused more harm than good.”

Jasper listened to the monologue patiently, and when Elias wound down, he asked again, “Where is the mort now?”

“I don’t rightly know. The missus wouldn’t like it if I knew something like that. I don’t need no more curtain lectures.”

Jasper narrowed his eyes. “Looks to me as though Mrs. Johnson whipped off for the moment. You’re free to talk.”

Elias leaned close. “That’s what you think, and that’s what she wants you to think. But she’s always here or there.” He pointed to the bar and then under a table. “You ought to hire her to work for you. She knows what mischief I have planned before even I do.”

Jasper sighed, heavily. “Then might we step outside for a breath of air.” He’d almost said fresh but nothing in Seven Dials could be described as fresh.

“No, we mightn’t not,” Elias said, beginning to sound exasperated. “You think she don’t have spies out there?”

“Help me here, Elias. Where wouldn’t Mrs. Johnson have eyes and ears?”

“I don’t think it would be wise of me to answer that. And I don’t know where Susie might be.” He said the last few words loudly, which Jasper assumed was for his wife’s benefit.

“I know where that jilt be,” came a woman’s voice from the other side of the bar. Jasper wasn’t easily startled, but he hadn’t expected Mrs. Johnson to be awake. She rose slowly from the floor behind the bar, first an arm on the bar, then the top of her frizzy red hair, then another arm. Finally, she pulled herself up. She was thin, too thin, and her face was all green eyes and freckles surrounded by a shock of that red hair. “And I’ll tell you because you found me ring for me.” She touched her finger where the cheap bauble resided.

“I appreciate that, Mrs. Johnson. I have a few questions for her. I’m not after nabbing her.”

“That’s too bad, but don’t think I don’t know what sort of questions you’ll be asking. You want to know about her and that black-coat. She’ll tell you, but she’ll want a ha’penny.”

Jasper understood the system in the rookeries. One paid for information, the more valuable, the more expensive. But Susie wouldn’t consider this information valuable. She risked nothing by telling him since she didn’t have to snitch on someone who might later stab her in the back. “Where might I find her?”

“That queer-mort went to Mrs. Pepper’s flop house. She likes it because she doesn’t always have to spread her legs to earn her keep, though she never seemed to mind doing that when she were here.” She gave her husband a hard look. He, in turn, seemed very interested in the wood grain on the table.

Jasper tipped his hat. “Thank you, Mrs. Johnson. Elias. You’ve been most helpful.”

She flicked her wrist. “Good bye then, Lord Jasper. I don’t expect we’ll see you again.”

He stood. “Why do you say that?”

She shrugged. “Elias told you I have spies. I even hear a little of what happens in Mayfair. You won’t be back. Now off with ye. I want to sleep a few hours before the first customer pounds on the door.”

Jasper walked out, eyes alert for danger, but part of his mind wondering if Mrs. Johnson could possibly know about Olivia.

He made his way to Mrs. Pepper’s. It was a good choice for a girl like Susie, who was charming and talkative. A man might go to Mrs. Pepper’s for a bed for the night, but then he’d meet a girl like Susie, who would buy him a drink and go to his room with him. When he passed out from whatever she’d put in the drink, Susie would empty his pockets and purse. And when the mark woke the next morning, Mrs. Pepper would claim she never saw or heard of any Susie, all the while counting the mark’s money and paying Susie her share. It was a common enough racket.

All was quiet at Mrs. Pepper’s house, a coal-blackened structure that listed to one side. He entered through the unlocked door, and the boy sleeping in front of it jolted awake. “We’re full,” he said. Then he got a better look at Jasper’s clothing and scrambled up. “But we could make room for one more. We have a special room if you have coin.” He opened the door wide to admit Jasper.

A special room where he’d be robbed blind. “I need to talk to one of your wenches.”

The boy, who didn’t even have whiskers yet, blinked. “No wenches work here, sir.”

“Yes, they do, and I want to talk to one of them—Susie.”

“I don’t know a Susie.”

Jasper stepped forward, towering over the lad. “Yes, you do. You can fetch her for me or I’ll search the place. If you fetch her, I’ll pay you a ha’penny. If I search, I’ll make sure to wake half the rogues so you’re sure to get an earful.”

The lad stared at him, looking like he might start to cry. “I’ll fetch her. You stay right here.”

“I won’t move.” Jasper planted his feet. “But if you take more than three minutes, I’ll come looking for you.”

The lad blew out an angry breath and ran into the bowels of the house. Jasper crossed his arms over his chest. The house was quiet enough. Somewhere someone murmured softly and a fair number of snores floated into the vestibule. Outside a cat yowled and another cat answered. Jasper was about to start after Susie himself when the lad returned, pulling Susie behind him. She was dressed in only her shift, her large breasts swinging freely under the thin material. She was scowling, but as soon as she saw Jasper, her face brightened, and she threw back her shoulders and pushed out her chest. “I know you,” she said, pointing her finger at him. “Yer the bounty hunter, you is.”

“Perhaps we can find somewhere a bit more private to speak.”

“If it’s privacy you want, it will cost you. Even a whore like me ‘as standards. I ‘ear tell that face of yourn is ‘orrible enough to make children scream.”

Jasper checked his temper. Barely. “I’ll pay for the information, and that’s all I want. Information.”

“Fine. Yer the one who loses.” She gestured toward a door off to the side. “We can jabber in the parlor.”

Jasper flipped the serving lad a ha’penny and followed Susie into a dark room. Susie moved to light a lamp.

“Leave it,” Jasper told her. “This won’t take long.” He moved around the room, making sure they were alone.

“I can’t see to pour.”

“I’m not thirsty, and forgive me for saying so, but even if I were, I wouldn’t drink anything you handed me.”

He’d expected an outraged gasp or fierce denial, but she only laughed. “Yer a wily one. Out with it then. What do you want to know?”

Jasper came to stand beside her, having finished his perusal of the room. “Tell me about the Archbishop.”

Susie looked at him throughout the long pause. He could barely see her face in the dim light, but he could have sworn her eyes glittered. “What makes you think I know anything about the likes of that black-coat?”

Jasper rolled his eyes. “Perhaps because every time I was in Elias’s gin shop you mentioned how the Archbishop used to pinch your arse and look down your blouse when you were a serving girl in The Old Palace in Canterbury.”

She tossed her hair. “Seeing as how you know everything, why come to me now?”

“I think there’s more to the story, and I want details.”

“Why?”

“What does it matter? I’ll pay you a shilling.”

“Five.”

Jasper laughed. “Highway robbery. One.”

“Four then.”

“Two.”

“Three and any less and I might forget some of the details. Like the mole on his—” She held out her hand. Jasper dropped three shillings into her palm, and he barely had time to let the last go before her hand closed and darted away.

“Listen close, Bounty Hunter. I’m only saying this once. I went to work for the Arsebishop—that’s what I call him—when I was ten. I was proud to be chosen at such a young age. I shouldn’t have been. He were a clinker and I was fat headed.”

Twenty minutes later, Jasper left Mrs. Peppers’s wanting a bath. Susie’s story had been exactly what he’d expected, but the man’s abuse of power disgusted him nonetheless. It would be easy to look down his nose at Susie and her ilk, but that attitude ignored the systems that led to women prostituting themselves. She’d tried honest work and been abused and prostituted by the man who should have protected her and the others in his household. She’d escaped, only to find she had few other choices. At least now she’d made her own choices.

Olivia had had the advantage of education and upper class breeding to pave her way when she ran into trouble. She’d also been lucky enough to find a remote place to hide and to spend what little money she had wisely. But one misstep and she might have found herself in Susie’s position. Now Jasper would make certain that never happened.

He’d make certain Withernsea never touched her again either.