Mary sat up in her bed, blinking in awareness. She could hear the echo of a clock somewhere down the hallway, outside of her locked door.

She held her breath, counting. Five chimes.

Five o’clock then.

She glanced toward her locked window, the thick air already hinting at the warm day to come. Perhaps she should start sleeping with her window open. After all, she no longer had a need to be afraid of her villain from the garden. He’d delivered her to her front door with her virtue intact. As though he couldn’t wait to be rid of her.

And then through the window, she had watched him saunter off toward the south of Mayfair, in the direction of Madame Xavier’s. Which was really neither here nor there: where he spent his nights should not be her primary concern. But drat the man, last night he’d destroyed any chance they’d had to identify the traitors, with his possessive performance and his ready distractions.

He really was rather good at this business of ruining opportunities. And people.

Not that she was offering up much by way of a hazard to either enterprise.

Confused by her feelings, and irritated with herself for succumbing so easily to his charms, Mary reached over to turn up her low-burning lamp. In truth, she was as irritated with herself as she was at West. The debacle behind the library curtains might be debated as to cause and effect, but the responsibility for last night’s misadventure could be laid at no feet but her own. But, oh, how he’d touched her. The sounds she had made, the things she had felt . . .

She supposed she would now be counted amongst the man’s many conquests.

A number, a notch on his bedpost.

At least she’d accomplished something memorable during this trip to London.

She picked up her diary, intending to relieve some of her frustration in another journal entry, but before she could pick up her pen, something fell out into her lap. Reaching down, she lifted up a folded note with a plain, unmarked wax seal. Curious, she broke the seal and opened it.

The words swam menacingly toward her.

For a moment, Mary sat frozen, one hand over her mouth, her heart tearing a hole through her chest. The words were printed in a hasty scrawl, the very loops of the letters as threatening as a noose. But the shape and meaning of the words themselves seemed almost irrelevant, compared to the inherent threat present in the appearance of the note itself.

Someone had placed it in her journal.

Someone had been in her room, rifling through her personal effects while she slept, intruding on her innermost thoughts.

Panic thickened inside her. She felt powerless. Violated. Vulnerable. It was as if she was once again that terrified, ten-year-old girl, helpless to protect herself against an unseen danger that seemed determined to snuff out the lives of those most dear to her.

But then, with a relieved gasp, she realized who must have left the note. Not just someone. The man ever-most present on her mind.

That damned Westmore.

Just who did he think he was, after everything that had passed between them last night, sneaking a note like that into her private journal? And how had he done it, given that her door—and her window—had been locked tight? Perhaps he had paid a maid with a key to slip it between the pages, though just what he would have paid the servant with, she didn’t want to contemplate. Probably mind-drugging kisses.

It had to be him. She recalled his warnings of the previous evening, his specific choice of words. He claimed she was asking dangerous questions, and she hadn’t believed him.

He’d decided that last night’s threats weren’t enough, and was resorting now to a childish prank to make his point.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, snatching up her wrapper. Well, she wasn’t going to sit here cowering in her room, or allow herself to be bullied. With the note crumpled in her hand, she flew down the stairs and plunged out into the early morning light, aiming for the intimidatingly large manor house three doors down. She rapped on the door knocker, a thousand insults flashing through her mind. But when the door was opened, those insults died on her tongue. An elderly butler stood in the doorway in his night shirt, holding up a candle and looking as surprised to see her as she was to see him.

Drat it all, of course Westmore wouldn’t open his own front door at half past five in the morning. He likely hadn’t even come home from the night before.

She pulled her wrapper more tightly about her. “Is Mr. Westmore home?” she asked in a tight, small voice. She lifted her hand, with its crumpled paper. “I need a word with him.”

The servant opened the door wider. “What has Master Geoffrey done this time?” the man said, shaking his balding head. He motioned her forward. “Please, do come in, miss. If nothing else, you can wait in the drawing room until he stumbles his way home from whatever gutter is occupying his attention at present.”

To West’s mind, the early morning sun peeking over Grosvenor Square seemed clearer than usual. Or perhaps that clarity was owed to his unfortunate sobriety?

After seeing Mary home, he’d made his way to White’s, keeping the earlier promise he’d made to Grant. He’d spent several hours with an untouched drink in one hand, ears tuned to the room’s surrounding conversation, watching his friend fall ever deeper into his cups. When Grant had suggested a visit to Madame Xavier’s, he’d declined.

What would be the point? Vivian was gone, and there were more important matters holding his attention at present. Scarlet and her dubious charms were not chief among them.

As Grant had staggered off in search of a splendid frolic, he’d pulled out Mary’s list of dukes, running through each one in his mind. Most were far too old—the whispered voice in his head almost certainly belonged to someone young and arrogant. But there were enough possibilities to leave him stumped. It looked like Mary was right, in her approach, if not her enthusiasm. He needed a more methodical way of sorting through the list than lurking in shadows and trying to match voices to the one in his memory.

Not that he would ever admit such a thing to her.

Finally, when the staff at White’s began straightening the chairs and collecting empty glasses, he’d picked himself up and headed home, the need for sleep muddying his thoughts. But even as he fit his key to the lock, West dreaded the thought of finding his bed and the nightmares he knew would await him there. His gaze drifted down the street, three houses to the left. No. 29 Grosvenor Square. Perhaps he ought to find her bed instead.

He suspected his dreams would be more pleasant, at any rate.

Unexpectedly, the front door jerked open, carrying his key with it. “Nice of you to finally come home this evening, Master Geoffrey.” Wilson loomed in the doorway, his wrinkled face seemingly more in focus than usual. Of course, there was no whisky involved to take off the sting of the servant’s disapproval this morning. “Though, evening no longer seems the appropriate term.”

West pushed past the butler, the idea of sneaking into Mary’s room withering to nothing but a twitch of want. More than likely, she’d greet him by whacking a bloody book over his head, and then produce a list she’d written of all the reasons why their continued flirtation was a very poor idea. “Not now, Wilson, I’ve had a hell of a night.” He pulled a weary hand across his face. “I am not in the mood for another one of your lectures.”

“Though it appears you are in the mood for a visitor,” Wilson replied calmly. “I’ve placed her in the drawing room. Though, given her state of undress, I suppose your bedroom might have been just as appropriate.”

West stared at the old servant. He’d never, not once in his life, brought a woman home to Cardwell House. This was where his demons lived, where his nightmares stalked him. “Who on earth are you talking about?” he demanded.

“Your paramour did not provide her name. I took the liberty of not informing your parents.”

“But I don’t have a—” West’s protest that he didn’t have a paramour trailed away. In fact, he hadn’t had a single woman since that mouse of a virgin had snuck her way into his life.

Which meant it could be only one woman who was waiting for him.

He pushed open the door to the drawing room, his heart thumping its eagerness, though just a few hours before he’d berated himself for touching her. She was standing by the front window, her hands clutching the thin white muslin of her night wrapper. Seeing her virginal image, so at odds with the siren she had been in his coach last night, he felt a bit as if someone had kicked him in the stomach.

Or the very stones she had accused him of lacking.

“Miss Channing,” he said, deciding that formality was as good a defense as any. “To what do I owe the pleasure this morning?” Though, it might be more correct to say she owed him the pleasure, after last night.

She regarded him with an intensity he couldn’t quite define. “I watched you come up the steps. You seem quite steady. You . . . ah . . . haven’t been out drinking?”

“No.” He shook his head. More’s the pity.

She hesitated. “Have you been to see Scarlet?”

“No. I haven’t seen Scarlet since our visit to the brothel last Sunday.” He took a step toward her, shattering his resolve to keep his distance. “You should know that Wilson is under the impression that you are my chosen diversion for the evening.” He loosened a low chuckle. “Or the morning, as the case may be.”

Her eyes widened. “But . . . why would he think that of me?”

“Probably because he would believe it of me.” West stepped closer, until she was standing within an arm’s length. He gave his eyes permission to drift over her body. “And you dressed the part.” The gentle scent of lemons tickled his nose. He shook his head, trying to clear the buzz she always seemed to cause out of his brain. “What do you want, Mouse?” he asked, abandoning both his stiff formality and his predatory march. “It’s been a long, tiring night and I need to find my bed.” And, if he was lucky, a dreamless sort of sleep.

Her hand pushed forward, a piece of crumpled paper clasped in it. “Not so long or tiring you couldn’t find the time to do this, it seems.”

He eyed the bit of paper in her hand, wondering why her voice sounded so strained. “Another list?” He took it from her hand. “You might wait until I’ve had a chance to finish investigating your first three lists.”

“It’s not a list,” she said, her voice a hard knot. “As you well know.”

He unfolded it and stared down at the paper. His gut clenched as he read the words. “Where did you get this?” he demanded, finding it hard to breathe.

“You placed it in my journal.”

“No. I didn’t. Why would you think I would do such a thing?”

“And after you lectured me last night about the danger in asking questions, I thought . . . perhaps . . . you were trying to teach me a lesson.” Her voice trailed off, and her chin started to tremble a bit. “It has to have been you, West. You are joking with me now.”

“You just received it? Last night?” The blood pounded in his ears, very near the same feeling he’d once felt in battle. A battle where men had died, in spite of his best efforts.

He wasn’t properly armed. Not for this.

“It can’t have been me,” he said tersely. “You saw me come in. When would I have had time to do such a thing?”

“I . . . that is . . .” She trailed off, uncertain.

To hammer home this point—and because God knew he had a trickster’s reputation to overcome—he strode to the writing desk on the far side of the drawing room. Opening a drawer with an angry rattle, he pulled out a sheet of paper, scribbled something on it, and then stalked back, shoving it at her. “This is my handwriting. See? It doesn’t match.”

The color drained from her face. “But if not you,” she whispered, “then—”

“You said you found it in your journal?” he snarled, grateful that at last she was starting to believe him. “Where do you keep it?”

“By my bed!” she cried, losing her composure now. “I wrote a journal entry before I went to bed last night, and I know it wasn’t there then. That meant someone came into my room while I was sleeping.” She swallowed. “My locked room, West.” She began to pant, small beads of perspiration shining against her forehead. “The window was locked, too.”

West crushed the paper in his hand. “That means someone used a key.” He hesitated. “Or else picked the lock.”

“What am I going to do?” she cried.

West wanted to smash a fist against the wall. Instead, he pulled her into the cage of his arms, determined to protect her, even from herself. He’d told her she was behaving dangerously, but the warning had come too late. He burrowed his nose in the citrus scent of her hair, and his gut clenched with the need to keep her safe. He thought back to last night, how he’d watched her from the hallway, envy making his skin itch. He’d watched her speak to a dozen different people before he’d whisked her home. The traitor must have been one of them.

“I think the more appropriate question,” he said, worry thickening his voice, “is what are we going to do? I would not leave you to face this alone.” He held her tightly, unwilling to loosen his grip, though his body was responding to such closeness in a very instinctive way, no matter the danger lurking outside their door.

He wanted her.

But wanting her and having her were not the same thing. And the thought he might lose her to an assassin’s bullet made him break out in a cold sweat.

Through the pounding of her ears, it occurred to Mary that her face was pressed against an evening jacket that smelled faintly of smoke and spirits.

The scent reminded her he was a scoundrel.

Not to be trusted. And yet, somehow, with his arms around her, she felt . . . safer.

Though she wanted to burrow closer, climb inside him and curl into a ball, she forced herself to pull back. “I am so, so sorry, West,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I imagined you were just playing another prank. But you were right all along. If I hadn’t barged about the ballroom last night, asking those awful questions—”

“Stop,” he interrupted, his face darker than she’d ever seen it. In a book, a man who looked like that . . . well, a heroine ought to run fast and furious in the other direction. But the knowledge that his anger was not directed toward her made her want to dive back into the shelter of his arms.

“It is done,” he ground out, “and so now we need to focus on removing you from harm’s way. Someone within Ashington’s household staff must have placed that note, which means you cannot stay there, not anymore.” He looked toward the door, as if mulling over a decision. “You will stay here at Cardwell House until I can sort out who sent this note.”

It was not posed as a question.

But no matter the impropriety of it, his words brought an awareness that heretofore had been lacking. “Eleanor!” Mary gasped. She lifted a fist to her mouth, thinking of Dr. Merial’s warnings and servants sneaking into locked rooms to leave threatening notes. “Oh, West . . . my sister. She is not in the best health, and Lord Ashington isn’t due back for two more weeks.” Her knees threatened to buckle. “I will never forgive myself if I have brought harm to her or the baby.”

His jaw tightened. “Then Lady Ashington will stay here as well.”

Mary’s heart lurched. He was promising her the impossible. Safety. Shelter. “But—”

“No buts, Mary. I need to know you are safe, in order to focus my efforts to track down the traitors. I can’t do that with you there, unprotected.”

“You . . . are trying to track them down?” She gulped, trying to understand. “But last night, at the ball, you said . . . that you didn’t care any longer. That we should forget what we heard in the library.”

“I only said that because I didn’t want you to do anything rash,” he growled. “I’ve been working this trail as hard as I can, trying to get enough evidence that Scotland Yard would have to believe me. For God’s sake, I even visited Bedlam! And in the evenings, I have been attending every possible social event where a duke might be present, listening for that whisper of a voice I can’t get out of my head.” He exhaled slowly. “Why else do you think I have been out so late at night?”

“I had thought, perhaps, you’d been visiting Madame Xavier’s.”

“No. What would be the point of returning to the brothel when the trail there has gone cold?” He reached toward the bell rope. “There is no time to waste. I will send Wilson over to collect your sister.”

“Wait!” she cried out, panicked. She clutched at his arm, pulling him away. “We can’t stay here.”

“Well, you aren’t staying there, not with a lunatic on staff in that house.”

“We don’t know he is a lunatic.” She offered him a tremulous smile. “After all, it could still be the Fenians.”

“Be serious,” he barked down at her.

“All right. Let’s be serious, then. The rumors are already rife thanks to our unfortunate incident at the literary salon, and if this morning’s gossip rags really do include mention of our dance, it will be even worse. My sister doesn’t trust you, West. She will never agree to let me stay here.”

“Tell her the truth, then.”

She heaved out a frustrated breath. It was all too tangled, too complicated, and—as her sister grew ever larger—too dangerous. “I wasn’t lying in the coach last night. Telling Eleanor about the plot we overheard and the fact that someone on her staff is involved might well send her into a disastrous, early labor. Dr. Merial said she is to avoid undue excitement.” She pressed her hand against her throat, knowing that whatever she did, she was posing a danger to her sister. The only question was, which was the least dangerous course? “I would do anything to protect her, to shield her from that.”

“Even die?”

She sucked in a startled breath. “I . . . that is . . .”

“This isn’t a prank, Mary. It is a threat, and a very explicit one at that. You can’t stay there, not until we uncover the traitors and link them to whoever left this.”

It was hard to understand why this was even a discussion they were having.

Mary was in danger, and she needed to find a safer place to stay.

Why was she being so bleeding obstinate about this?

“Would you consider returning home to Yorkshire?” West asked, though he was beginning to think anywhere other than Cardwell House was too dangerous.

“It would be too dangerous for Eleanor to travel all the way to Yorkshire in her advanced state, and I can’t leave my sister behind, not when whoever did this is still in the house.” She rubbed a finger against her forehead, looking distraught. “Could I stay at your sister’s house? Dr. Merial was my family’s physician when I was younger. Surely they would be willing to take me in, and while not strictly proper—”

“We cannot ask them.” West shook his head. “They have three small children, and I don’t want to put my niece and nephews in harm’s way.” He tossed about for other possibilities. His sister Lucy’s London house was similarly bursting with children, the youngest not yet even six months old, and Lydia lived in Lincolnshire now, a similarly impossible journey. “Is there some reason you are afraid to stay at Cardwell House? Beyond the issue of what people may say or think? Because truly, they already think the worst of us.”

“Can’t you see?” She looked close to crying. “I can’t stay here with you, not with your reputation. And my . . . weakness.” She buried her face in her hands.

He stared down at her, agape. Weakness? She was quite possibly the strongest woman he’d ever met—that single, uncharacteristic fainting spell notwithstanding. But at least now he understood the reasons for her hesitancy. She was afraid of whoever placed that note, but she was also afraid to stay here.

With him.

This thing between them . . . it was dangerous. But not as dangerous as leaving her to fend for herself. Almost two weeks ago, he’d had to drag himself up the steps of No. 29 Grosvenor Square to offer for her, feeling as if he was staring down the barrel of a loaded rifle. But things were different now. She’d received a note threatening her life, and she was worried more about her sister’s health than her own life. He respected that.

And he would not do this in a way that marred her reputation any further.

He reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “I imagine this would help your sister come around. She couldn’t say ‘no’ to the notion of you staying here, at any rate.”

She gasped, looking down. “But . . . this is a special license!”

He nodded. It was the very one he’d obtained the morning after the literary salon. He’d taken to carrying it around in his pocket as a reminder to stay far away from her, though the reminder had gotten harder and harder as the days had dragged by. “A wedding ceremony would permit us to place an announcement in the Times, let the world know you have my protection. That should send a stern message to whoever did this.”

“Surely there is another way,” she protested, her voice close to a squeak.

“I cannot see one.” And he wanted to make her lean this way, with a ferocity that had only partly to do with the danger. Whatever the reasons, the direction felt right. Little else did at the moment. “I swear, Mary, I will do everything in my power to protect you.” He stepped closer, taking up her hand. “You did say you would do anything to keep your sister safe.”

“But . . . that is . . . I would be nothing but a burden to you.” Her eyes searched his. “You don’t want to marry me.” She swallowed. “Do you?”

He stepped toward her. “Don’t I?” He turned himself over to the truth he’d been running from since that moment when she’d first told him “no”. “Even if there wasn’t an assassin’s plot, or the danger to your sister . . . I would want this.” He lowered his head, until his lips were brushing against her temple. “I would want you,” he murmured against her skin.

“Oh,” she breathed, and as he pulled back, he could see that his gesture had brought a welcome bit of color to her cheeks. But had it convinced her?

“I . . . that is . . .” Her brow pinched, and he didn’t—couldn’t—say anything, even though his breath was close to bursting from his chest as he waited for her answer. “I suppose,” she said, her chin lifting up and then down, “my answer would be yes, then.”

West wanted to pull her into his arms, to kiss her senseless and make short work of the thin cotton that lay between them. Instead, he yanked on the bell pull.

There was no time to waste, and a dozen things to do.

“But what if Eleanor still refuses to come here?” she asked, wrapping her slender arms about her body. “She thinks you are a degenerate.”

“Well then, we can invent a reason. Something unlikely to cause her harm, but dire enough to force her to seek temporary shelter here at Cardwell House.”

“I suppose we might let loose a few rats in the foyer?”

Though it was a brilliant suggestion, a shudder worked its way down West’s spine. “God, no,” he choked out. “Not rats. Perhaps an infestation of fleas instead. If she is worried about the health of her unborn child, she will do what she must.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward Wilson, who had materialized at the drawing room door.

If he could keep her close, he could keep her safe.

She would not die, not on his watch.

And he would willingly kill any man—or woman—who thought otherwise.