had already let down the step, and her heart almost stopped as the door to the jeweler’s opened and Harland strode out.
In sudden panic, she lowered her chin so her parasol shielded her face. She grabbed Camille’s elbow and swung them both away, feigning a rapt fascination in an enameled snuff box in the window. From the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of blue, caught a waft of masculine scent that made her stomach clench in agitation, before Harland jumped inside the waiting carriage and rapped on the roof to signal he was ready.
Her heart assumed an unnaturally fast rhythm.
What was she doing? She should be running away from the man, not trying to get closer. She had, after all, perfected the skill of walking away.
In a heist, there was always a moment when one had to commit past the point of no return. No matter how well-planned, every job contained an element of the unknown: a random passerby, an unexpected delivery, a servant who suddenly changed their routine. Every job was different, with its own personality, and Emmy had learned to trust her instincts when it came to assessing risk. Luck was as important as skill. There was nothing cowardly in retreating, in living to steal another day. On several occasions she’d abandoned a theft because something didn’t feel right.
Everything about Alexander Harland warned her to run. Instinct told her that here was a man who would bring her nothing but trouble, not least because of the dangerous frisson of attraction that drew her to him utterly against her will. It was a matter of self-preservation, the very reason she’d walked away from him four years ago.
The day she heard he’d returned from Waterloo had been one of the happiest of her life. She was fiercely glad that he was alive, saddened to learn that he’d been injured. She’d managed to glimpse him across a crowded ballroom. Apart from a small scar by his right temple, there seemed to be very little physical evidence of his injury, but rumor said he’d lost a degree of peripheral vision in his right eye due to a cannon blast. That, at least, was the excuse he used for his current refusal to dance.
The Alexander Harland she’d kissed had been a cheeky, confident, young man. The Alexander Harland who’d returned looked older, wiser. He smiled less frequently. And he’d acquired a new cynicism, a certain hardness to his chiseled features. He had a bleak, weary look in his eyes, as if he’d seen far more of life than he’d ever desired.
His opening of a gambling club in St. James’s had come as no surprise to her. Such a scandalous profession, skirting the very edges of what was socially acceptable yet pandering to the aristocracy’s never-ending desire for novelty and entertainment, seemed entirely fitting with his character.
A few months ago he and his fellow club owners, Benedict Wylde and Sebastien Wolff, has been awarded earldoms by the Prince Regent for “services to the crown.” Rumors had circulated in the ton for weeks that they were working for Bow Street, and those rumors had been echoed by Sally’s network of friends and informants amongst London’s criminal fraternity.
They were truly on opposite sides of the law now, the Runner and the thief. And despite her undeniable attraction to the man, the more distance she put between them the better.
Emmy sighed. A Welsh acquaintance of hers had introduced her to the word hiraeth. It had no direct translation in English, but it seemed wholly appropriate to describe her feelings about Harland. The word expressed a bittersweet sense of missing something or someone that you’d loved, while still being grateful for their existence. A longing for home, or a time that felt like home.
Four years ago, at nineteen, she’d felt at home in Harland’s arms. She’d imagined herself in love with him, but it had been a childish infatuation. She hadn’t known the real Alex Harland. She’d loved an illusion, the handsome paragon she’d made up in her mind. Their dance, their kiss, was frozen in time like a perfect vision, a moment that would never be repeated.
She was older now, and wiser. A little more cynical about life and men. A little more realistic about fairy-tale princes.
The snap of a whip and the shout of Harland’s carriage driver jolted Emmy back to the present. Amazed at her own inattention, she caught Camille’s elbow, turned her back on Harland’s conveyance, and marched them both swiftly