She cinched her skirts up between her legs and he did not even blink. He taught her how to find finger holds and how to set her toes at the best spots, all the while glancing up and down the dark alleyway. Every sound she made seemed to echo between the walls. But her bedchamber was only on the second floor.

“How did you come to be such a proficient climber?” he whispered behind her.

Countless flights into the hayloft dragging her sisters behind her, escaping their uncle’s rod, and he always too ale-sodden to follow.

“I grew up on a farm,” she threw over her shoulder, digging her fingertips firmly into the ledge of her windowsill. Stepping up to the final nook, her foot caught in her petticoat.

Abruptly, his hand was encompassing her buttock.

“Steady now,” he said quietly.

How he expected her to remain steady with her behind in his big, strong clasp, she’d no idea. She gripped the sill with one hand and tucked her fingers beneath the sash, which earlier she had left partially open, and forced it wide. Then his hand on her behind was propelling her upward and through.

She tumbled over the sill and onto the floor. As she untangled her skirts, he appeared in the opening.

“I did it! Albeit with help.” Her cheeks were in flames.

“You did it. And fell on your face, yet you are laughing.” It was too dark to make out his features, but he sounded as though he were smiling.

“I feel positively triumphant.” And her behind could still feel the sensation of his hand around it, which they would quite obviously never speak of. “It’s nearly as cold in here as out there.” She climbed to her feet and he passed her cloak to her. “I must shut that window. Are you coming inside?”

“You forbade me from doing so.”

“So I did.” A wise precaution. Minutes ago on the street below she had considered grabbing him and kissing him. As an experiment. To see what it would be like to kiss him unaccompanied by the shock of simultaneously discovering he was alive.

“Seven o’clock tomorrow at the Hart and Rose,” he said.

“I will be there. You should cut your hair and whiskers. And buy a coat. The police would not recognize you so easily.”

“You are taking to this life of crime with remarkable ease.”

“In for a penny.”

“I daresay.” He reached up to the sash and the moonlight behind illumined muscles straining the thin linen sleeve. A delicious fluttering took up a dance in her abdomen.

“You asked how I did it.” His voice had changed. It was no longer smiling.

“Yes.”

“Do you remember the day the performing troupe passed along Gracechurch Street, and everyone went outside to watch?”

She remembered every detail of that day. It was the last time she had seen him, the day before the worst weeks of her life, when every hour it seemed more certain that he had perished.

“Yes.”

“The first time I set sail,” he said, “as I watched the land disappear, I remembered your words from that day.”

“My words?”

“Sprout had never before seen a fire-eater. He was astonished. He asked how the fellow had the courage to do it.”

“I remember.”

“You replied that courage is no more than surviving fear from one moment to the next. Then you told him how three years earlier, without any knowledge or experience of the world beyond the farm, you had set off to London, and of how terrified you were. You said that as you walked you gave yourself markers on the horizon ahead, and that each time you reached each marker, yet had not yet swooned of fright, you accounted it a triumph.”

“I did not know you were listening,” she whispered.

“I thought of those words that first time I sailed, and every time I left land behind after that.”

“Did you give yourself markers on the horizon?”

“At sea there are no markers that remain still. I used clouds and pretended they did not move. At night I used the stars.” He lifted his other arm to grasp the sash. “Good night, Esme.”

He pulled it shut.

When she had fastened the faulty latch, drew the curtain closed, and removed her boots, she changed into her nightgown, curled up beneath the thin blanket and her cloak for warmth, and closed her eyes. It had been an astonishing day. Yet, unremarkably, sleep was some time in coming.

The light carriage that Charlie drove up to the Hart and Rose was not the finest equipage Esme had ever seen. But it was not the shabbiest either. And the horse looked capable.

“I did not know you knew how to drive,” she said as he extended his hand to assist her onto the box. She took it and the shock of pleasure in feeling his strength went straight through her.

“I have all sorts of unexpected talents.” The glint in his eyes was thoroughly suggestive. Gone was the pensive man from the night before. The light of early evening cast his features into a perfect semblance of handsome roguery.

“You shaved off the whiskers! And cut your hair. And it is black!”

He snapped the reins and the horse started off. “You required a change in appearance.”

“And you bought a coat.”

“Stole a coat.”

“You stole it?”

“Pirate.”

“Yes, but you needn’t—that is—Do you intend to return it? Someday?”

He offered a quick sideways smile. “I do now.”

“Did you steal the horse and carriage as well?”

“Borrowed.”

A mound of earth connecting old Edinburgh to newer suburbs had been constructed across the marshy loch that had once divided them. At dusk as in daylight it was a beautiful city. Esme had already posted a letter to her sisters and mother describing it and the Society meeting, and of course Charlie’s miraculous appearance.

She stole another glance at him.

“Why are you still smiling?” she said.

“I wish you had spoken more often in London.”

“I don’t know what you mean. I spoke plenty in London.”

“Not to me.”

“Perhaps I did, yet you simply did not notice it.”

“I would have noticed.”

As he had noticed—memorized—her words to Sprout that day. Nerves raced around her belly.

He had been in love with Gabrielle. For eight years. That day the troupe came by, Adela mentioned how Gabrielle would have been happy to see it, and he had said he suspected Gabrielle was sufficiently happy already with her naval captain. He had seemed so somber, and Esme’s heart had hurt for him.

Then she had gotten angry, at herself for holding out the tiniest hope that now that Gabrielle was gone he would see her. Finally.

The next day he had disappeared and she had forgotten about her anger and instead mourned.

“What is our plan tonight?” she said.

“Young Rory is to meet us. He’ll have arranged what you need to gain entrance into the party.”

“Am I to wear a ball gown and pretend to be a lady?”

“Would you enjoy that?”

“Oh, yes. I adore dancing.”

“Do you?” The smile returned.

“Dancing at fairs and such.” They were sitting very close. If she shifted her thigh even the slightest bit, it would touch his. “I have never before attended an actual ball.” She could reach out her hand and stroke that muscular thigh . . .

“Tell me about Argos,” she forced through her lips and turned her gaze forward.

He glanced at her briefly. “Argos?”

“You must know something of the dog itself since you know nothing of the man who now possesses it. How else will you be certain which dog to steal?”

The muscles in his jaw contracted. Esme was obliged to concentrate so intently on restraining herself from extending her hand and stroking her fingertips over those muscles that she started when he spoke again.

“It is small. And white.”

“How do you know that?”

“The fewer questions, Miss Astell, the better.”

She pinned her lips together and faced forward for the remainder of the journey.

Shortly, standing in the alley behind the enormous Assembly Rooms building, Rory did not produce a ball gown. Instead he proffered a black dress, cap, and apron.

“A maidservant?” Charlie said with a frown.

“I tried to nab a lady’s turnout, sir,” the boy said with an earnest pleat in his grubby brow. “Got the stockings and dress. Come to find out, a lady wears a whole mess o’ fripperies ‘neath her skirts! Who knew?”

“Who knew, indeed?” Esme smiled.

“When ol’ Pickle offered me this instead,” Rory continued, “I supposed it’d be easier to slip into them here in the alley anyway. Right, miss?”

“Much easier.” She accepted the garments and glanced about. Except for some empty crates by the assembly hall’s rear door, the alley was bare from end to end. “But where, here, precisely?”

Charlie moved behind her. “Here.” His hands came around her neck and he was unfastening the clasp of her cloak before she knew what he was about. He withdrew it from her shoulders. “Boys,” he said, “make a circle and turn your backs. And if any one of you peeks, I’ll string you up by your thumbs to that lamppost. Understood?”

A chorus of “Aye, sir!” responded.

Charlie lifted the cloak between them.

Esme had never before undressed and dressed again so swiftly. When she finished, she pushed the cloak aside.

“How do I look?”

“Like a proper serving maid!” Rory chirped. The other boys nodded.

“Lads,” Charlie said. “Take the gig and find a safe location to wait. We’ll see you back here in two hours.”

The boys leaped into the carriage and drove it away.

“They are far too sweet to string up by their thumbs,” she said.

“You haven’t seen what else they are capable of.” He was obviously restraining a smile. “Are you ready?”

“Perfectly.”

“I am sorry you will be obliged to actually work.”

“Aha, so you think. But you haven’t seen what I’m capable of.” As she pulled open the door, she winked.

They entered a kitchen, a large chamber filled with people dressed in livery like hers, all pouring champagne and ladling out punch and washing glasses. It was a beehive of activity.

The moment she closed the door, an elderly man in black livery said, “You there! The main chamber at once.” He took up a tray laden with full champagne glasses and thrust it at her.

She accepted it and he turned to another.

First hurdle crossed.

Balancing the tray carefully, she went from the kitchen and through a little antechamber.

And into paradise.

High-ceilinged and painted a glorious buttery yellow, the ballroom was lined with mirrors that made the whole place sparkle with candlelight from crystal chandeliers. A festival of scents spun in her nostrils—beeswax, floral perfumes, musky colognes, sweet wine, and bodies—so many scents Esme felt dizzy. And every soul present was more beautiful than the next. Women glided by in gowns of light, shimmery fabrics, their hair dressed with tiny flowers and silk ribbons and even jewels, and gems twinkled on their necks and ears and around their gloved wrists as well. The gentlemen were equally resplendent: many wore black from shoulder to calf, which according to Minnie was popular evening dress lately, and their neck cloths gleamed white, some even decorated with jewels or gold pins.

And the dancing! Esme had only ever dreamed such a vision: the lightness of the ladies’ feet, their skirts swirling and swishing, and the elegance of the gentlemen’s movements, the masculine hand on a lower back here to support his partner, or there grasping delicately gloved fingers . . .

Magnificent.

It was like a fairy tale.

“Try not to spill, Cinderella,” she heard at her shoulder, then Charlie moved past her and into the crowd. He carried a tray of beverages as well and wore footman’s livery, including a short coat that perfectly revealed his tight bum.

Steadying the tray upon which the champagne was now washing back and forth in time to her swaying, she set off into the crowd.

Cinderella.

Cinderella actually got to dance, and she had not been looking for a man who smelled like a dog among dozens of men. But she had made a bargain. And watching the dancers was a treat. She could not wait to write to Mary and Colleen all about it.

Circulating through the room, Charlie kept his eye on her. It was not difficult. Among the beautiful women present, she was the only one wearing servants’ garb. No wise employer would actually hire a maid with such speaking blue eyes and an enticing figure that moved fluidly, gracefully, as though she needn’t even a partner to dance. Enough male eyes followed her progress through the crowd that Charlie knew other men were thinking the same.

Men being what they were, he suspected it would not be long before some scoundrel too far into his cups insulted her.

From across the room he watched her head swivel, then to the other side, then her sweet body turn slowly. Then her gaze came to him.

Charlie had been punched in the gut on many occasions, and in the face, and on one shoulder shortly after being shot in that shoulder, and in the knees as well. Seamen weren’t much for teaching lessons with verbal chastisements.

Meeting her gaze now he felt punched, beneath his ribs, deep in his organs, the breath shooting out of him and pain radiating. Everything was muffled—the music, conversations, laughter—as though in a dream.

Then he was again at the edge of the ballroom, staring at her and trying to understand why his heart was beating so swiftly and so hard.

“You there” came a voice beside him. “Give me one of those, do.”

Shaking his head to clear it, he turned and offered a glass of champagne to the woman.

“By golly,” said the man beside her, looking past Charlie. “If it’s no’ the Duke o’ Loch Irvine come out o’ his lair.”

The noise in the ballroom had fallen to a hush, only the musicians still piping and fiddling as everyone’s attention turned in one direction. Even the dancers craned their necks.

From the base of the stairs, a man was making his way along the length of the ballroom. Tall, dark, and dressed in equally dark evening attire, he had the shoulders of a stevedore and he walked across the ballroom like a captain walked across his deck: like he owned the place and everyone in it.

Around Charlie, people were whispering.

“—returned—”

“—the nerve o’ the villain!”

“—in plain sight—”

“—never imagined—”

“It seems the rumors are true,” the woman behind Charlie whispered to her companion. “The Devil’s Duke has returned to society.”

“Big fellow, ain’t he?” the man said. “Believe the rumors o’ abducted maidens and whatnot, do you?”

“Of course! He is notorious, never mind that he is a duke.”

At this moment the notorious duke was walking straight toward Esme.

Everybody had begun to talk again, still throwing glances at the duke as he paused at the door before the beautiful serving maid who was, in fact, a talented perfumer.

The hairs on the back of Charlie’s neck bristled.

Shoving his tray of glasses at a passing footman, he made his way through the crowd, his attention pinned to the pair.

The duke took a glass of champagne from Esme’s tray, drank it in one gulp, and spoke directly to her. She laughed, her eyes like violets in the candlelight and her rosy lips curving. Red washed across Charlie’s sight.

In another moment he was beside her and the shadowy duke was gone into the foyer beyond.

“There you are,” she said. Her eyes were full of sparkles. Charlie wanted to make them light up like that. He wanted to make her laugh. He wanted to put that pink flush on her cheeks.

“I see you’ve spoken with the Devil’s Duke,” he heard himself say roughly—too roughly.

What in the hell was happening to him?

“The who?”

“That man who just left. The Duke of Loch Irvine. You spoke to him.”

“He was a duke?”

“A notorious duke, apparently.”

“How wonderful! I have never spoken to a duke before. Once I sold a bottle of Violets of the Glen to a marchioness. And Lord Witherspoon regularly comes into the shop, but I don’t think he is an actual peer, rather the son of a real lord or something. Adela and Minnie know a lot more about lords and such than I do. Was that man really a duke? And notorious? He seemed a bit bemused, perhaps, but otherwise entirely normal.”

“Normal?” He smiled. “Esme Astell, you are a remarkable woman.”

“If by remarkable you mean remarkably talented, it is true. For I have already discovered no fewer than seven men who most certainly have spent time with a dog since last they bathed.”

“Have you?”

“Of course I have. Charlie, have you been drinking that champagne instead of giving it to the guests? You look peculiar. And you are behaving oddly.”

He was. And standing so close to her with the heat of irrational jealousy in his blood was not helping matters.

“Seven?” he managed to say.

“Yes. There,” she said, looking pointedly at a tall man nearby. “That man with the military medals on his coat. And that man with the lavender pantaloons. Lavender: can you fathom it? That florid one with the red waistcoat. And that man with the shirt points up to his nose is another. And the man with the plaid across his shoulder. And the man speaking to that young lady wearing that unfortunate gown with five rows of lace. Minneola would split something internal if she saw that gown, I think.”

“That was six.”

“And the duke that just walked by. But he is well under forty. I like systematical studies, so I began with the eldest gentlemen in the room and had only just gotten through those who seemed above the age of forty. Oh, and the duke’s dog must be very clean. I barely smelled it, and only because he was standing so close.”

Charlie’s collar felt twelve sizes too tight. And not two yards away a young fellow in a fashionable rig was eyeing her as though he’d something on his mind other than a glass of champagne.

He took the tray from her hands and set it aside.

“It is time to leave.”

Her brows perked high. “But I haven’t sniffed any man below the age of forty or so.”

“You needn’t.” He would let her get close to the young men over his dead body. “This is a good start.”

“But what if he is not one of the men I identified? Aren’t you short of time?”

“It will be fine.” It wouldn’t. But that hardly mattered. He should not have embroiled her in this. “Can you give the boys now the details as you have just described the seven men to me?”

“Of course. But what will they do, prowl about the carriages asking questions?”

“Something like that. Now, best to leave before anyone finds us out.” And before he did something irrational, like invent further uses for her nose so that when he returned her to the boardinghouse he would not have to say goodbye to her forever.