Inspector Simon Spaulding raced his horse through the crumbling alleyways in search of the villain who had assaulted the two ladies.

Surely his Bow Street companions would shake their heads if they could see him now. Simon worked at least days a week, taking the shift through the night, and this was how he chose to spend his off-duty hours?

But Simon had never been interested in helping some people. He was committed to serving and protecting all people. Especially the young lady who had begged for his help, even though the bleakness in her eyes that indicated she had learned never to expect anyone’s help at all.

That was the sort of person who needed it most. The sort who was most unfairly preyed upon by people like…what had she called after him? Big hands, scarred chin, lost his hat in the struggle.

Simon smiled despite the circumstances. That was the sort of information one investigator might provide another to aid in a case. Not the sort of details one would expect a young girl to note in the midst of a struggle, nor to have the presence of mind to convey to a Runner before he gave chase.

Especially since Simon hadn’t even mentioned his occupation. There hadn’t been time to do more than—

“Halt!” he shouted as he glimpsed a large man trying to sneak into the crevice between two buildings.

“Ain’t done nothing!” When the man turned to snarl up at Simon, moonlight fell upon a gnarled scar on his chin. He wore no hat, and kept his burly hands curled into fists at his sides.

Simon pulled his horse alongside. “A pair of young ladies a few hundred yards back beg to differ.”

“Then they’re liars. Can’t prove anything.”

“What about the marks on her?” Simon asked coldly. Neither woman had mentioned any marks, but there were bound to be bruises in any struggle.

“Marks on her?” the man repeated in disbelief. “What about the marks on me? The older one came at me with a broom. Bloody near knocked out half of my teeth!”

“Then you admit it.” Simon reached for his iron handcuffs. “Come with me. You are fortunate it was a broom to the head, and not a brick.”

“She’s the lucky one. If you hadn’t stuck your nose in our business, I’d a—”

“You’d have done what, exactly?” The ice in Simon’s voice more than sharp enough to kill.

Rather than answer, the man turned and sprinted toward the next alley.

Simon leapt from his horse and gave chase, tackling the man into the closest brick wall. “My name is Mr. Spaulding. I am an investigator at Bow Street. You are coming with me.”

“Bloody hell,” the man muttered.

Simon secured his wrists in iron shackles, then walked him back to Simon’s horse, where a pouch contained a rope for leading criminals to the closest watchtower.

The watchtower, however, was empty. The night watchman was nowhere in sight.

With a sigh, Simon headed back toward the Magistrates’ Court.

Luckily for the handcuffed man swearing under his breath as he stumbled beside the horse, Bow Street was less than a mile from where they’d begun.

Too bad. Anyone who accosted a woman deserved far worse than an uncomfortable twenty-minute walk.

When they arrived at Bow Street, the daytime inspectors had long since gone home to their wives or to the closest alehouse. Simon locked the malefactor in a cell with a tin of water, and sat down to write up his notes for the first officer to arrive in the morning.

He liked being thorough. Performing his duties the way they were supposed to be done was what he did best. Some might say, it was the only thing Simon did.

When they called him “lone wolf,” he took no offense. They were right. He was wed not to his job, but to this city.

Idle and disorderly, Simon wrote at the top of the paper. It was a catch-all crime that encompassed everything from prostitution to public drunkenness. Although its punishment didn’t come close to atoning for the innumerable assaults this villain had likely perpetrated on countless young women over the years, the law could only prosecute what it could prove.

At the very least, this man had not gone free. A month in prison may not cause him to mend his ways, but it would keep him off the streets for now. Small consolation, perhaps, to the women who would have liked to see him rot in gaol forever.

Simon frowned and put down his pen. No one should believe their city had forgotten them. Not the young or the women or the poor or anyone at all. Everyone shared the basic human right to feel safe.

Starting with having an active night watchman on duty. Simon made another note to look into the missing guard, although it wasn’t much of a mystery. Even though recent reforms meant that watchmen were now paid, in the poorer areas of town this often meant a coin was passed to some elderly gentleman to mind the post while the watchman on duty spent the rest of his pay on Blue Ruin.

Anger skated along Simon’s skin. Everything about that situation infuriated. Leaving innocents unprotected. Shirking duties. Cheating the system. Visiting the public house instead of attending to one’s responsibilities.

He would see to it that the watchman on duty was immediately sacked, and an alternate appointed. There would be no second chances. Simon had no pity for a man who left his post.

Just like he had no pity for the would-be debaucher rattling the iron bars of his cell. The rules applied to everyone. The world was black and white. Simon stayed on the good side and did his part to rid London of the bad.

After finishing the last of his paperwork, he locked the main door and remounted his horse. He could have hired a hack. He could even afford a carriage.

He preferred to ride a horse.

Ever since he’d joined the force, Simon’s habit was to take a different path to and from work each day. If he had taken the direct route home, he would not have been present to interrupt tonight’s attempted assault.

He had no doubt that the ruffian would still have run away from the intrepid young lady who had corked him with a broom.

Simon smiled at the image. He couldn’t imagine what anybody would be doing with a broom in the midst of a moonlit rookery—he doubted the St. Giles streets were often swept even in the daytime—but the young woman who had wielded her impromptu weapon had been courageous indeed.

Since he had promised to return, he would stop by quickly. If everyone at the school appeared to be asleep, he would continue on without awakening them.

Everyone at the school was not asleep.

The headmistress from the alley answered the door on the first knock.

“Good evening,” Simon said, his pulse quickening. Just when he’d thought he had concluded the last of the day’s mysteries, here was another. Standing right before him.

The slender fingers holding the candle were encased in gloves of extraordinarily fine silk, which would normally be so much of an anomaly that one could be forgiven for thinking the wearer wasn’t from a rookery at all.

These particular gloves, however, were stained at the tips and frayed at the edges. Making them more, rather than less, of a mystery. They were not the sort of gloves one purchased for manual labor, and yet clearly they had been used for just that task. Anyone who could not afford silk gloves would never allow the sole pair in their possession to be treated so badly.

The gown the headmistress was clothed in was exactly that—a gown—rather than the sort of dress one might expect the inhabitants of a rookery to possess.

Like the gloves, the gown fit beautifully and was treated shabbily. Hems were noticeably torn and stained with ash, as if frequently caught against protruding nails or brushed up against buckets of coal or scullery hearths.

The young lady’s thick hair was swept up off her neck. Most of the dark locks were hidden not in a simple mobcap, but rather beneath a lovely bonnet—that appeared to have been worn to the Battle of Waterloo, so full of stains and holes was the fabric.

Fascinating headmistress.

Perhaps she had once been a lady’s maid, and had subsequently fallen on hard times. A previous position in a wealthy home would explain the gloves and the gown and the bonnet. Losing that position would explain the rest.

Mostly.

Her porcelain skin was smooth and untouched by the bronzing rays of the sun. Her cheekbones were defined enough to give her face a quite attractive shape, but not so stark as to imply bouts of hunger or malnutrition, as was so often found in poverty-stricken areas. Her dark brown eyes were long-lashed and so luminous in the candlelight that he almost didn’t notice the purple smudges beneath them, indicating it had been a long time since last she got a restful night’s sleep.

As he watched, the edges of her perfect lips quirked and her eyes seemed to sparkle. “Well? Have you figured me out yet?”

“Not yet,” he admitted. “But I think I’d like to.”

Her smile widened. “My name is Miss Grenville. I am the headmistress of this school. I owe you my deepest gratitude for attempting to catch tonight’s villain.”

“Attempting to?” he asked drolly.

“No one could blame you for losing him in the maze of alleys,” she assured him. “To be honest, I didn’t expect you to return at all.”

“Then it is you who have not yet figured me out,” he informed her, “for I did catch him. He will not return for some time. Nor will your current watchman, I’m afraid.”

“Oh?” She raised an eyebrow wryly. “Did St. Giles ever have a watchman?”

He bit back a sigh. Her cynicism was well-founded.

“You will tomorrow,” he promised. “I shall see to it myself.”

“How is it you have so much power?” The appraising look she gave him was skeptical at best. “Are you someone I should recognize?”

“It pains me to admit that in this neighborhood, you are unlikely to have seen many of us at all. Allow me to present myself.” He tipped his hat. “I am Mr. Spaulding. I work as an inspector at Bow Street. And I am at your service.”

“At my service?” she asked in a teasing tone. “Does this mean I will see you again, Mr. Spaulding?”

“I am at everyone’s service,” he clarified. “I work for the City of London, and my first duty is to its constituents. All of them.”

She arched a brow. “Does that mean yes, I will see you again, or no, you can now cross us off your list?”

An impertinent question…deserving of an honest reply.

This time, Simon took an extra moment to consider his answer. Miss Grenville was clever enough not to accept platitudes, and to see through Simon’s heartfelt declaration to a superficial layer he hadn’t even known he possessed.

No, he had not planned on seeing Miss Grenville again. If she happened to be in the street when he happened to ride by once or twice a month when his purposefully random route to or from work happened to include this neighborhood, then yes. They would cross paths.

Otherwise, no. Simon did not give preferential treatment. Nor did he allow distractions of any time to clutter up the orderliness of his life. He worked. And then he slept. And then he returned to work the next evening. Nights were when he was most alive.

When any of the myriad Quality ladies who called upon Bow Street had asked if they could see him again with the same arch look in their eyes, Simon’s stock answer was that they knew where to find the magistrate’s court, which was staffed with any number of officers more than qualified to investigate crimes.

But Miss Grenville was different.

For one, despite being geographically closer to his office than the fine houses in Mayfair, it was far easier for the Beau Monde to dispatch one of their many coaches with one of their many footmen to drop a note off with the secretary.

For two, unlike the high society wives who thought it would be amusing to have a flirtation with a Runner, Miss Grenville had not asked if she would see him again because she believed there was a chance she might. Miss Grenville had asked if she would see him again because she assumed she would not.

She wanted him to admit the truth.

He would simply create another.

“Yes,” he said firmly. “It is quite possible you will see me again, because I plan to take this route home every morning this week. Once I am certain the new watchman is performing his duty, I will resume my regular rotation. But for this week at least, if you happen to be out-of-doors when I pass by… I shall be certain to tip my hat.”

“You should knock.” Miss Grenville glanced over her shoulder. “I sent Molly to bed early tonight for obvious reasons, but I am certain she, too, would like an opportunity to thank you. Especially when I tell her you’ve caught the blackguard who attacked her.”

“Nothing special,” he said, shifting his weight to deflect the compliment. “I was just doing my duty.”

“It was very special,” she corrected with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “No one in Molly’s life had ever once stood up to protect her. Today would have been no different. Except tonight, she had me…and you.”

He opened his mouth, but couldn’t quite wrestle the words from his heart to his tongue.

“Good night, Mr. Spaulding.” With a wink, Miss Grenville blew out her candle and shut the door.

Simon remounted his horse in somewhat of a daze. He hadn’t promised to call upon the school tomorrow, but after that speech about no one ever having protected Molly before, how could he not?

Just one week, he told himself. He’d call tomorrow and ride by the next day without stopping. Once the new watchman was in position, Simon’s protection would no longer be needed.

He need never have uncomfortable conversations with Miss Grenville again.