If Dahlia had learned anything after her near-disaster at Phineas Mapleton’s house, it was that sneaking back inside after the guests had gone home erased all hope of deniability. As well as opened up an entire host of new complications.

Being caught on the wrong floor while the festivities were still underway, however, left more options open. She might have a bad sense of direction. She might have a wicked megrim and need to lie down. Actually, yes. That was the perfect excuse. Especially now that she knew the bedchambers—including the guest quarters—were on the floor above the library.

If she just happened to pass through on her way to an emergency lie-down, one could hardly find evil in that, could they?

The first trick had been convincing her mother to go on ahead to the next party. This had been accomplished by Dahlia insisting she needed to ride with an old friend in order to catch up on past news in the carriage. And by promising to consider some gentleman her mother had dug up, who professed a willingness to entertain the idea of allowing his wife to run a charity from afar…so long as it benefitted the right kind of people. Obviously a school for indigents wouldn’t do.

Dahlia would rather stab herself in the eye than be trapped in a thirty-minute waltz with a paragon like that.

The second step had been actually going to the second floor and spending an hour writhing on a fainting couch until one of the maids chanced upon her.

Dahlia hadn’t given her name, but she’d mentioned the phantom megrim and heavily implied that Lady Pettibone had kindly offered the use of her guest chambers to any soul in need.

Plan A was not getting caught. Plan B was setting up her innocence.

After the maid left, Dahlia waited another hour before sneaking back down to the library. The twilight hour between when a party was winding down and when the guests had actually left was the perfect time to be somewhere one wasn’t expected. The carriages would be queueing out front. Lady Pettibone would be bidding her adieus.

Dahlia would nicking an expensive reading primer.

She tiptoed down the marble staircase and slipped through the library door. Her mouth fell open at the sea of shelves that awaited her.

Row after row of books covered every surface from floor to vaulted ceiling. Twin balconies flanked each side of the long hall, accessible only via a mahogany ladder with thick black wheels at the base of one balcony.

Dahlia stared up at those mouthwatering, out-of-reach shelves. She knew she should grab the closest book and go. Of course she knew it. But those out of reach books could only be one thing: Lady Pettibone’s collection of too-shocking-to-glimpse illustrated etching.

Not only was Dahlia filled with a sudden urge to flip through every one of those pages, those tomes were inherently far more valuable.

Even if the one she grabbed didn’t turn out to be one-of-a-kind or of unique literary merit, it would still be a salacious etching. Any pawnbroker in London would be more than happy to take an item like that off her hands. No matter what price she set, the pawnbroker would double his investment by teatime.

How many boxes of cheap used books might she purchase with the sale of a single such tome? How many pinafores, and pairs of shoes, and tallow candles, and bars of soap, and loaves of bread?

She was up the ladder before her mind could finish calculating sums.

The top row of books was mildly titillating. Depicted therein were more than a few acts she’d imagined performing with her favorite inspector. The bottom row, however, contained scenes so shocking that the first book she opened fell from her fingers to the floor.

She froze. The book had only fallen a few inches. No harm had come. The balcony’s carpeted landing had both muffled the sound and protected the book from injury. She herself was hidden from view, crouched as she was between the balcony’s twin shelves.

And yet something didn’t feel quite right.

A creak in one of the center floorboards indicated she was no longer alone in the library.

Her heart skipped, then doubled its furious pace.

Who could be down there? A servant? Another guest? Lady Pettibone? Nothing more than Dahlia’s overactive imagination?

Another floorboard creaked. Slowly. Methodically.

Whoever was down there was making the rounds of the entire library. Walking the perimeter. Checking each aisle.

Checking for what? Dahlia clutched the pocket-sized book of etchings to her thudding chest. Looking for her?

The footsteps plodded through the maze of shelves and came to rest right beneath her small balcony.

Dahlia was too scared to move, every shaking limb frozen in fear.

As she watched in panic, the mahogany ladder resting against her balcony rail began to roll along its oiled track until it reached the opposite balcony on the other side of the open hall.

Thirty feet of empty air stretched between the end of her railing and the first rung of the ladder.

It might as well be an ocean.

Please don’t climb up the ladder, she repeated in her mind. Please don’t climb up the ladder. Please don’t find me. Please go away.

After a long, excruciating moment, the footsteps retreated from the balcony and made their way through the maze of shelves to the exit at the front of the room.

The library was safe.

Dahlia still didn’t dare breathe. Her limbs trembled too much to withstand her weight. Sliding one of her half-boots forward so much as an inch sent a wave of pins-and-needles up her cramping legs so painful she thought she would scream.

She did not scream. She was too panicked to scream. Whoever had come to check the library could return at any moment. She had to get out. She had to get out now.

Dahlia pushed to her feet despite the fiery pain rippling up her numb legs from crouching too long on the floor. She could massage her over-exerted muscles later.

Right now, she had to find a way out.

Flying across the library to the ladder on the opposite balcony was out of the question. As was leaping from her railing to one of the freestanding bookshelves. With her luck, the force of her landing would push it off balance and each mahogany bookshelf would knock into the other like the most expensive set of library dominoes on the planet.

Her only choice was to drop down twelve feet to the Axminster carpet below and pray she didn’t break an ankle in the process.

The next question was how.

She shoved the little book of etchings into her bosom behind her fichu and reached down to gather her hems. There was no practical way of climbing the railing without flashing her bare buttocks to the entire world, but waiting for Lady Pettibone to stumble upon her was hardly a better option.

This was tumbling, she told herself. She’d done far more dangerous acrobatics with her brother Heath as a child. To be sure, they hadn’t involved her vaulting bare-arsed over the railing of a high society balcony. Heath had no doubt had to vault over his fair share of balconies in his time. Why not Dahlia?

This would simply become a funny story to tell her brother someday over lemon cakes.

She scooped up her skirts and hiked her legs up onto the balcony railing.

Please don’t break, she begged in her mind. Please don’t break loose before I can let go and float safely to the carpet below.

With a deep breath, she launched herself off the railing, twisting so that her back would take the brunt of the fall.

It wasn’t going to work. Her legs went one way. The book flew another.

Every bone was about to—

A pair of warm, strong arms caught her before she could crash to the library floor. Warm, strong arms that should not have been anywhere near there. She’d heard the footsteps exit, blast it all. Silently doubling back to catch a criminal red-handed was the worst kind of deductive brilliance. The sort that meant she’d fallen straight into the arms of celebrated Bow Street Runner, Inspector Simon Spaulding.

Who was finally due that promotion.