William slipped from the low rooftop as Mrs. Smith drew away. He’d come to the borough to assure himself Mrs. Banke was using the resources he’d provided to care for her child, and followed her to the back of the church where food was being dispensed. When she left in the company of the Widow Smith, his interest was well and truly piqued.

He knew Mrs. Smith by reputation. A widow who used her late husband’s money to buy food for the poor. She was new to London, or at least to charity work. The borough was rather taken with her. William had assumed the infatuation sprang from gratitude.

Though the hair under her bonnet was a dusty grey, as was her frumpy garb, and spectacles perched on her nose, she moved with the grace of a young woman. Not just young, but polished. Her long-fingered hands also bespoke of sophistication. When she looked up and down the street, even her dowdy ensemble couldn’t hide a slender, elegant neck.

Most intriguing of all was the unshakable sense that he was acquainted with her. That’s what kept him following her, instead of Mrs. Banke. It was the reason he was determined to catch a real look at the face under the low bonnet and spectacles. Besides, he’d managed to hear enough of their conversation to assure himself on Mrs. Banke’s and her daughter’s accounts.

Normally, dressed in common workman garb and a solid coating of dust, William would have approached the widow and struck up a conversation. Today, he meandered along behind her, keeping his distance. He desired to place her, and couldn’t risk that she might place him.

He followed her to Dr. Carter’s, amusement and curiosity growing. So, she wished to learn more about Lord Lefthook. She wouldn’t glean anything from Carter. He knew nothing. To the doctor, Lefthook was a mysterious figure who communicated only in writing. Women’s writing, to be more precise, since Cecelia penned all of Lefthook’s letters. William couldn’t risk that anyone might recognize his hand, and he and Carter had attended university together. The doctor was a nobleman’s younger son, and a good man.

William purchased a meat pie and lingered across the street from Carter’s, eating slowly as he waited for Mrs. Smith to leave. He was impressed with the length of time the lady remained within. It showed a perseverance he didn’t ascribe to most females.

When she did come stomping out, green eyes hot with frustration, William nearly dropped the remainder of his meal. He did drop his head and used the pie to hide his face, and thanked God he hadn’t taken his usual tact of believing no one who knew him could possibly frequent the poorest part of London. Of all the women in the world, not for a moment had William Greydrake guessed that Mrs. Smith was in truth Lady Lanora Hadler, daughter of the Duke of Solworth.

William turned his back on Lady Lanora as angry strides carried her up the street. He forced his feet to move, returning the way they’d come. Lingering outside Carter’s wasn’t completely safe. In his workman’s garb, William was generally invisible to the gentry, but Carter was of a sympathetic sort. He might actually look at a poor man’s face.

As, apparently, would Lady Lanora. William’s brain fumbled to catch up with the idea. Contributing to charities. Discussing them over tea. That’s what ladies did. They did not don the persona of a greying widow, enter the less savory parts of London alone, and pass out bread. Further, William knew it wasn’t a daring jaunt, a fluke born of the boredom of the leisure class. Mrs. Smith had been assisting the poor for… He nearly missed a step. Mrs. Smith had been assisting the poor since the start of the London season.

Why? He looked back, but the church was streets away. Why would one of London’s most prized jewels secretly spend her days in the back of a ramshackle church in the worst part of town, handing out food?

Did the borough know who she was? He shook his head. They couldn’t, or the boys would have told him. Then, they were less forthcoming about Mrs. Smith than most topics. William had assumed there was little to tell, and the urchins had no interest in an aging do-gooder. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

He shook his head in an effort to press the riddle of Lady Lanora from his mind. He had a second mission that day, after checking on Mrs. Banke, and he’d best see to it before the midday meal was past. His garb and general state of grubbiness marked him as a bricklayer for a purpose other than anonymity.

A few casual conversations later found William at the tavern the foreman in charge of the women’s home, Mr. Finch, was known to patronize. It was clean, as far as such places went, with rushes on the floor no more than a week old. The aroma and number of patrons argued for good fare.

Finch sat alone at a table near the middle of the floor. He was bent over a gravy-slathered pie, mug of ale close at hand. A powerfully built man who still had all his teeth, which marked him as well fed and likely good in a fight.

William strode to the table where Finch sat and snagged an empty chair. He settled into it at the foreman’s table. “By your leave?” he said, slipping into an accent learned in ten years of living in the borough.

“Seems you’re already sitting.” Finch took a swig of ale, washing down the food that obstructed his words, then shoved in more.

“I hear you’re the man to talk to for work.”

“Guess so.”

“Need a bricklayer?”

“When the work starts back up I could use you,” Finch said around a fatty bite of what William assumed was horse.

“Works not going? I heard tell it had begun again.”

Finch turned his head and spat. “So did I, but the money didn’t come. I passed on another job for this. Said that famous Darington fellow, always making talk for his exploring, put up the funds. Thought for sure it’d be a good year for me. Now, I got workers I can’t pay, piles of supplies attracting thieves, and no funds coming in.”

William took in the man’s well-fed state again. He didn’t look to be in need of coin. “Rich folk,” he grumbled. “Likely forgot he wanted it built.”

“Well, he’d best remember soon.”

“I’ll leave you to it.” William stood. He would have to ask the boys for more on this man. Finch ate well for someone with unpaid workers hounding him. Could he have pocketed Darington’s money, thinking a man in Egypt would have little recourse in London?

“Check back in a week,” Finch said. He took another swig. “Can always use a bricklayer.”

William tipped his cap, then left. Darington had not forgotten about the funds. His last letter stipulated they’d been requested. If Darington said it, William knew it to be true.

He headed into an alleyway and donned the scarf he used to cover his face. Identity better hidden, he found a group of street urchins and put out the word he would pay for the location of Finch’s lodgings.

That done, he set out for one of the shadier clubs in London. Lord William often let the marquess’s men follow him there. They would wait outside for hours, never knowing he rented a private room on the top floor where Lord Lefthook came and went via the window.

William had been both pleased and surprised when Darington sent word he was funding the building for displaced women. A longtime dream of William’s, a safe place for women who found themselves with a child but no man, he’d thought the building would need to wait until the marquess died. It was doubly satisfying to have the funds come from the man the marquess had paid off to explain William’s ten-year absence from society. William preferred to imagine Darington using that exact payment, in essence turning the marquess’s money into a place of safety for those he was apt to mistreat.

William didn’t know the nature of the relationship shared by Darington and the marquess. At first, he’d been suspicious of the archaeologist. The marquess had supplied the man with an unknown sum to convince the world William was in Egypt from age four to fourteen, having been sent there upon the death of his brother. It would never do for society to know William had, in fact, grown up in the poorest part of London, the only place his mother could find refuge for them.

Near the club, William ducked into an alley, ignoring the acrid smell. A glance revealed him to be unobserved. A rough stone wall and a slight excursion of strength brought him to a rooftop. Keeping to the back sides of the buildings, he angled toward the short jump that would take him through the window of the club.

William was at home on the streets and rooftops of London, and with the gravely cadence of the poor Londoner’s speech. It was a hard life. It made a man strong, but aged him quickly. There was rarely assurance, or even hope, of a better tomorrow.

Yet there was a realness to this life, a sense of being alive, that was absent in the higher echelons. A ballroom could be only so invigorating. He could muster only so much concern for whether Lady So-and-So had been seen in the park with Lord Such-and-Such, her gloves in her lap instead of encasing her fingers. Even gambling and boxing held only a hint of the veracity of life in the borough.

He came to the edge of the roof. It was less than a four-foot jump across a narrow alley to the window, which remained open. He stared into that dark rectangle, thinking of the girl inside. She never asked where he went, or why he changed into workmen’s garb. She took as payment a small amount of coin and this time to herself, when her master thought she was pleasing him. That was more than enough to buy her loyalty, her silence.

That was part of the darker side, the sharp edge to life gifted by the street. Any freedom was a myth, and life was vivid only because it balanced so nearly with death. William knew he was blessed to be able to look back at his time there, seen through the eyes of youth, with any longing. The truth was, poverty was an indominable weight that stole life and crushed all hope.

A weight that, apparently, Lady Lanora sought to alleviate. Seeing her attempts to blend into the world of the borough evoked painful memories of his mother. As a boy of four, he’d adapted, but his mother never had. She tried, desperately. She never wished to attract attention. All she wanted was the job she took as a washwoman, food for them, and a bit of time in the evenings to teach William.

He conjured up a vision of her long, yellow hair tied back. He could hear her nearly flawless Italian, her French. He spoke both with the accent she’d taught him, a lingering memory of her in each word. He remembered learning his letters, penmanship practiced in charcoal on a slate, and figures.

William had done his part. He’d quickly learned to beg with the other boys, then moved on to fetching and carrying. He’d done odd jobs for a baker, and an innkeeper. His greatest skill, though, was fighting for money.

His mother repeatedly begged him not to. As with many boy, he believed he knew better than she did, and he did it regardless. He recalled her tears the night he stumbled home with both eyes swelling shut, a fat purse of pennies clutched in his hands.

Then she fell ill. It was a cough. It seemed like little, but grew worse. Always thin, she was soon frail. When delirium overtook her and the tonics he could afford didn’t help, William sought out the marquess.

William found him at Whites, and held the man’s horse until he came out. There was never any doubt in the marquess’s eyes. He knew William on sight. If the welcome was cold, William attributed it to the marquess’s shock.

Shocking to William was his young sister, and his stepmother. They believed the same story as the rest of the ton. William’s mother went mad, murdered his brother Charles, then was locked up and died. William, too distressing to look upon, was sent away. The marquess told William the tale when he brought him to the Westlock family home.

It was the first time William heard the lie. The new addition to the deception, created to explain William’s return, was that William had returned from Egypt, where he’d been these ten years. That explained his oddities. No one dared ask the marquess why he hadn’t told the world where he’d sent his son until after William reappeared.

After securing William in the Westlock townhouse, the marquess went to William’s mother. Instead of helping her, he had her jailed. William, allowed to see her after much pleading, found her nearly dead, but lucid.

“Do whatever your father asks,” she’d whispered.

She’d lain on a cot, her face turned toward the bars. The guard who’d left William to speak with her hadn’t opened the cell. William had no way to reach her.

“I don’t understand. Why are you locked in here? Where are the doctors?” William had worked hard not to cry, feeling himself too grown at fourteen to do so.

“Do you know why we left your father?” Her voice was soft.

William leaned his forehead into the bars. “You never said.”

“Do you remember Charlie? Your brother?”

He nodded, the marquess’s words about his mother murdering Charles loud in his head. He couldn’t believe it of her, didn’t wish to hear her confess it.

“Your father beat him to death. Charlie was afraid of horses. Your father swore that no son of his would have any weakness in him.”

William closed his eyes as he’d done twelve years ago, when he’d learned the truth. He’d turned his mother over to a man who beat his son to death. William hadn’t saved her.

“William,” he heard her gentle voice in his head, “I’m dying. You did not do this to me. You must live with him now. Be what he wishes you to be. Remember Charlie.” She’d let out a long sigh and turned her face away. “Remember me.”

He had cried then. He couldn’t restrain himself. Soon, the guard reappeared. William never saw his mother again.

The marquess’s second marriage remained a legal bond. Madelina’s mother never knew her husband was a bigamist, their marriage never legal. They’d had the semblance of a happy family for a year, during which William exchanged letters with Darington and learned about his imagined time in Egypt. Then William’s stepmother had her accident, and little Madalina was sent to a boarding school.

William opened his eyes and scanned for the lowering sun through the London haze. Even the marquess’s depraved men wouldn’t imagine he could amuse himself with a cheap doxy for much longer tonight. He’d wallowed in memories long enough. Doing so did him no good, only fueled anguish.

He must press the past back into its place. He had to go in and change, then return to the world of the ton. He had a ball to attend. One where he would, for the first time, seek out a dance with one of the women on Lethbridge’s list, the intriguing Lady Lanora Hadler.