small pocketknife in her hand. She’d changed her mind. Cut him loose.
To capture her. To resume the kiss.
As she’d warned, however, the lady had other plans.
Before he could touch her, the carriage slowed to take a corner, and she opened the door at his back. “Good-bye.”
Instinct had Whit turning as he fell, tucking his chin, protecting his head, and propelling himself into a roll, even as a single thought thundered through him.
She’s getting away.
He came to a stop against the wall of a nearby tavern, scattering the collection of men outside.
“Oy!” one called out, coming for him. “All right, bruv?”
Whit came to his feet, shaking out his arms, rolling his shoulders back, shifting his weight back and forth to test muscle and bone—ensuring all was in working order before extracting two watches from his pocket and checking their clockwork. Half-nine.
“Cor! I ain’t never seen anyone right ’imself from such a thing so fast,” the man said, reaching out to clap Whit on the shoulder. The hand stilled before it settled, however, as eyes set on Whit’s face, immediately widening in recognition. Warmth turned to fear as the man took a step back. “Beast.”
Whit lifted his chin in acknowledgment of the name, even as awareness threaded through him. If this man knew him—knew his name—
He turned, his gaze narrowing on the curve in the dark cobblestone street where the carriage had disappeared, along with its passenger, deep into the maze of tangled streets that marked Covent Garden.
Satisfaction thrummed through him.
She wasn’t getting away after all.
Chapter Three
“You pushed him out?” Nora’s shock was clear as she peeked inside the empty carriage after Hattie had descended. “I thought we didn’t wish for his death?”
Hattie ran her fingers over the silk of the mask she’d donned before exiting the carriage. “He’s not dead.”
She’d hung out the door of the carriage long enough to make sure of it—long enough to marvel at the way he’d launched himself into a roll before springing to his feet, as though he were frequently dispatched from carriages.
She supposed that, since she’d discovered him bound in her carriage that very evening, he might well be tossed from conveyances regularly. She’d watched him nonetheless, holding her breath until he’d come to his feet, unharmed.
“He woke, then?” Nora asked.
Hattie nodded, her fingers coming to her lips, the feel of his firm, smooth kiss a lingering echo there, along with the taste of something . . . lemon?
“And?”
She looked to her friend. “And what?”
Nora rolled her eyes. “Who is he?”
“He didn’t say.”
A pause. “No, I don’t suppose he would.”
No. Not that I wouldn’t give a great deal to know.
“You should ask Augie.” Hattie’s gaze shot to her friend. Had she spoken aloud? Nora grinned. “Do you forget that I know your mind as well as my own?”
Nora and Hattie had been friends for a lifetime—more than one, Nora’s mother used to say, watching the two of them play beneath the table in her back garden, telling secrets. Elisabeth Madewell, Duchess of Holymoor, and Hattie’s mother had existed together on the outskirts of the aristocracy. Neither had received a warm welcome, fate having intervened to make an Irish actress and a shop girl from Bristol into a duchess and countess, respectively. They’d been destined to be friends long before Hattie’s father had received his life peerage, two inseparable souls who did everything together, including birth daughters—Nora and Hattie, born within weeks of each other, raised as close as sisters, never given a chance not to love one another as such.
“I’ll say two things,” Nora added.
“Only two?”
“All right. Two for now. I shall reserve the right to say more,” Nora amended. “First, you’d better hope you are right and we didn’t accidentally murder the man.”
“We didn’t,” Hattie said.
“And second . . .” Nora continued without pause. “The next time I suggest we leave the unconscious man in the carriage and take my curricle, we take the damn curricle.”
“If we’d taken the curricle, we might have died,” Hattie scoffed. “You drive that thing far too quickly.”
“I’m in complete control the whole time.”
When their mothers had died within months of each other—sisters even in that—Nora had come searching for comfort she could not find with her father and older brother, men too aristocratic to allow themselves the luxury of grief. But the Sedleys, born common and now the kind of aristocrats who weren’t considered at all aristocratic, had no such trouble. They’d made space for Nora in their home and at their table, and it wasn’t long