up a red-carpeted stair; she never once looked back, even when he stumbled. She wore a thin lavender percale, inexpertly embroidered with seed pearls. Its single muslin petticoat revealed every angle of her legs—or would have if he could have taken his eyes off the stairs long enough to see much above her ankles. They were neat ankles.
The gown was stylish and becoming, but second-rate, he decided as they went down a dimly lit corridor. The muslin was not quite of the best quality. It wasn’t well-fitted either, but maybe she’d lost weight. She was very thin. His mother would want to feed her, give her bread with extra cheese and bowls of clotted cream the way she’d done to Solomon and Elijah when they were younger, “to put meat on their bones”—oh Lord, why was he thinking about his mother now?
She went through an open door into an unoccupied room. The fire lit an enormous bed with hangings the color of red lead. He pressed his hand against the door frame, trying to stop his head from spinning. “It’s very warm downstairs.” It was warmer here. Only the girl’s cold face and the cool of the corridor against his back steadied him. There was a tiny round birthmark above her left eyebrow. He wanted to touch it.
“It’s nearly October. Gentlemen don’t like gooseflesh. Just take off your coat.”
He nodded. “Of course.” She met his eyes then. Hers were gray, gray and still empty. He was fairly sure she hated him. “We really needn’t—”
There was a flash of scorn in her face. “Come in.” She wrapped her pale fingers around his arm and pulled him into the room. Her breasts pressed against the front of his coat as she reached behind him to pull the door shut.
A tremor ran through him, a tremor that was all heat. This wasn’t how he’d imagined his first time with a woman, but maybe—
She went backward, and he followed—but the bed took up most of the room, and he didn’t notice when she stopped moving. Suddenly he was pressed up hard against her, the busk of her stays jabbing into his stomach and her legs trapped between his own and the bed. They both grabbed at the bedpost for balance; his fingers meshed accidentally with hers and she kissed him. Her lips were warm and soft. She smelled like almonds and cheap perfume.
She leaned back. Dazed, he tried to follow, but she’d brought her arm up between them to pop the buttons at her shoulders. Her bodice fell away entirely, revealing bare shoulders and arms and the tops of her breasts swelling above her stays. There was a little round birthmark there, too.
The curtains were imperfectly drawn; a beam of moonlight fell starkly across her skin. That strip of moonlit flesh stood out like the mark of a whip. It shone with the faint bluish-white sheen of arsenic.
Everything came to a head—the brandy and the sickening stench of roses, her distaste and his nerves, and most of all his uneasy guilt at trafficking in human flesh. He was in hell, and she was a damned soul sent to tempt him. Solomon stumbled back, his gorge rising. Hardly knowing what he did, he tugged his purse out of his greatcoat pocket. His entire quarterly allowance was in it, one hundred and twenty-five pounds lovingly counted out that morning at his uncle’s solicitor’s, and he held it out like a beggar with his alms cup.
“Take it. Please, I’m sorry, take it.” He’d regret it in the morning, he knew that, but at the moment there didn’t seem to be much choice. Maybe if she took it, she’d forgive him. Forgive him for coming here, for whatever sins Ashton and Braithwaite were even now visiting upon some poor girl—and most of all, for wanting to push her back onto the bed and stare into her gray eyes and fuck her.
He groped behind him for the doorknob. It was difficult, because his hands were shaking.
She didn’t take the money, only watched him with her unreadable eyes. He dropped it on the floor and fled the room, covering his mouth with one hand.
Chapter 1
June 7, 1815
“There’s a man to see you,” Sophy said, sticking her head through Serena’s office door. “He says he needs your help locating a missing object. What should I tell him?”
Serena, up to her eyeballs in ledgers, opened her mouth to say no. Right now it was hard enough looking after her own people. She