If he hadn’t been so focused on the damn bag, he might have looked up. Might have heard the massive crack a heartbeat earlier.

  By the time he heard it, she’d slowed, turning her face up to the ceiling and the chorus of warnings shouted from above. He didn’t follow her gaze, not even when she turned wide eyes on him in what seemed like impossibly slow motion.

  Instead, he ran for her, snatching the bag from her hands and pushing her toward the door with the singular goal of keeping her safe. Miss Singh came forward to catch Imogen as she stumbled over the threshold, even as Tommy dropped the bag and kicked it away, just in time, as a too-large hunk of wood came down on top of him, the jagged edge of it scraping over his arm, leaving a wicked sting in its wake as it sent him to his knees.

  Imogen, the madwoman, was coming back for him. “Tommy! Are you—”

  And then he was mad, too. He pointed to the docks beyond and shouted, “Get the hell out!”

  She blinked at the words, at the wild shout of them. And then she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and said, “Not without you, you lummox.”

  In all his years brawling his way through East London, followed by nine as a Scotland Yardsman and two more as a detective inspector—no one had ever called Tommy Peck a lummox. He didn’t care for it. “What did you say?”

  He struggled to his feet, as she came to help him. “I’ll be happy to repeat it once we get outside and you are safe.”

  “You don’t keep me safe, Imogen Loveless. I keep you safe.”

  “Oh, right. In this play, you act the part of my nursemaid. I forgot.”

  This damn woman. Did she not know how she’d incited him in the last three hours? Did she not understand that such things had repercussions?

  She bloody well would. He would tell her. In great detail. But first, he snatched her bag from where he’d kicked it and pulled her from the building at a clip, passing her friends and his foes, ignoring them as they called out, finally stopping where their lights faded and the shadows began.

  Only then, when they were as far from mayhem as possible, did he risk looking at her. And that was when he realized his mistake. As long as he was near Imogen, mayhem was not far.

  And in moments like this, he would not be able to resist it.

  He set the bag on the ground and pulled her far from it, a flood of emotions coursing through him—fear and fury and frustration and relief, acute and intense.

  And need.

  It was the need he could not deny.

  He pulled her to him, not caring that half the Docklands could see them, not caring that any number of people who could orchestrate the end of his career were in shouting distance.

  All he cared about was having his hands on her.

  She came without hesitation, her own hands sliding to find purchase on his shoulders, fingers threading through his hair as she released a little sigh and turned up to his kiss.

  He searched her face, running his thumb over her rosy cheek, marveling at the softness of the curls that clung to his hand. “I should take you home.”

  “Do you want to take me home?”

  He didn’t. For one, wild moment, it occurred to him that he didn’t want to take her anywhere . . . because here, in this place, surrounded by her friends, no one was interested in separating them.

  But he should.

  “I should bring you home and tuck you into bed,” he said to himself more than to her. “I should see you safe and asleep.”

  And damned if this magnificent woman didn’t flash him the sweetest smile and say, “Whose home?”

  The question thrummed through him—no longer in a bed with fluffy pillows and pristine bedclothes fit for a princess born into her world, but now in his bed in Holborn—big enough for a man of his size, but without the frills and frippery suited to a woman like Imogen.

  Still, they’d make do.

  He closed his eyes against the image, which was a mistake, because the action only clarified it. And when he opened them again, she was looking up at him with those enormous brown eyes rimmed with those impossibly long lashes, and he had no choice but to kiss her.

  Before he could lean down and claim her mouth, however, she stopped a hairsbreadth away from him and whispered, “Thank you.”

  He was too full of her to understand. “For what?”

  She smiled, and he imagined he could taste it, slow and sinful and sweet. “For coming to rescue me.”

  He claimed her mouth, needing the feel of her, the scent of her, the taste of her, the softness of her lips, the sweet way they opened to let him in as though he belonged there, inside her.

  Pleasure thrummed through him, pooling hot and deep, and he was instantly hard with the wildness of the evening—the memory of her coming around his fingers crashing into the knowledge that she’d been inside a burning building and could have been hurt. Desire was a wild riot inside him . . . a need to claim her. To mark her safe. To mark her his.

  Madness.

  He’d never felt this way. Never wanted anything the way he wanted this woman in this moment. It was unsettling and infuriating and terrifying.

  And irresistible.

  And he didn’t care. God knew he should. God knew he was on the cusp of ruining this glorious woman—of making it impossible for her to live the life for which she was born.

  But she’d been in danger, and he’d been out of control, and now he had his hands on her, and, Christ, he could feel how much she liked it in the way her hands trembled at his skin as they slid over his shoulders, and her tongue slid over his, and he wondered if he’d ever be able to stop.

  She gripped his arm, using his strength to press herself closer. To kiss him properly, and he reveled in it—in being strength for her use.

  Until pain lanced down his arm, a lick of fire that had him ending the kiss on a gasp. Her eyes went wide and she released him, turning her palm up, revealing fingers dark with blood. His blood.

  “Dammit, Tommy!”

  He shook his head and tried to pull away. “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s absolutely not nothing,” she said, taking his hand in a firm grip and tugging him toward the light once more. “Frances! Help!”

  The woman who’d been in conversation with the Duchess of Trevescan turned at the urgent cry, already moving toward them.

  “Imogen, it’s fine.” He’d had worse. Like having to let her go.

  Ignoring him, she said, “He’s been hurt.”

  Embarrassment coursed through Tommy. “I’m fine.”

  “Where?” the woman named Frances asked Imogen.

  “His arm.” Imogen held out her hand. “He’s bleeding.”

  “Best get him out of that shirt,” Frances said.

  “I’m perfectly able to hear you both,” he cut in.

  Frances looked to him. “Excellent. Then please remove your shirt, Mr. Peck.”

  He absolutely wasn’t doing that. “I don’t think—”

  Before he could finish refusing politely, a tear sounded in the darkness, and he stared down at Imogen, the wicked blade he’d found beneath her skirts earlier in the evening now in her hand . . . and the sleeve of his shirt now hanging in pieces at the shoulder.

  “Something fell on him,” Imogen said to the other woman, who was already turning him to inspect his arm in the light from a nearby lantern.

  “Mmm,” Frances said thoughtfully. “You’ll need stitching, I’m afraid.”

  “I can do it myself,” he said. It wasn’t the first time he did such a thing, nor would it be the last.

  “And no doubt that would be pretty indeed,” she replied, already reaching into the heavy black satchel that hung across her body.

  Tommy had the clear sense that he was not being given a choice as she extracted a brown glass bottle and a handkerchief. Uncorking the bottle, she announced, “Water,” and then poured a liberal amount of the liquid on his arm and the handkerchief, soaking it through. “Let’s get a good look at this wound.” He hissed as she poked and prodded at him.

  “Really, Tommy,” Imogen said, sounding altogether too happy. “You are making a meal of it.”

  “All men make a meal of it,” Frances replied. “Why do you think I choose to work with women?”

  “I think most women would dislike someone rooting around in their wounds,” he said through gritted teeth. “Ow!” he said as she squeezed the edges together.

  “Well!” The Duchess of Trevescan clapped her hands as she approached, something close to joy in her voice. “The fire is contained, and though it will take a bit of time, Mithra won’t lose everything.”

  Imogen let out a sound that was close to delight, and he couldn’t help but look to her, and revel in the relieved, bright eyes she turned on her friend. “We win,” she said.

  I would like very much for them to lose tonight.

  Imogen’s words from earlier.

  “Tonight,” the Duchess said, the words rich and warm and triumphant in her Mayfair accent. “What’s happening here? Are you hurt, Detective Inspector?”

  “Yes,” Imogen said, as he replied, “No.”

  Duchess looked to Frances. “There appears to be some confusion.”

  “No confusion. He’s a nasty slice on his arm.”

  Duchess looked to him. “That’s what you get when you take off your expensive coat, Mr. Peck.”

  Tommy gritted his teeth as Imogen laughed. “Don’t needle him, Duchess. I hear he was hauling water.”

  “He was indeed. It was difficult to miss,” Duchess said, looking at him. “Making Scotland Yard look like a worthy endeavor tonight.”

  He didn’t care what Scotland Yard seemed like that night, if he were honest, but he did not reply.

  “You shall have to tell me all about it in great detail,” Imogen quipped, and Tommy thanked his Maker for the beard that hid the heat that spread across his cheeks at the words. “Just as soon as Frances sews him up.”

  As if on cue, Frances reached into her bag for a second bottle and looked to him. “You’re not going to like this bit.”

  “Because men make a meal of things?”

  “No, because it’s going to hurt.” Frances looked to Imogen. “Perhaps you ought to distract him.”

  Imogen nodded and stood directly in front of him, setting one warm hand to his cheek, tipping his face up to look at her, her black curls blowing wild around her face, cheeks red with the cold wind coming off the river.

  Christ, she was pretty.

  He resisted the urge to put his hand over hers on his cheek.

  “You did very well on the water line, Tommy,” she said softly.

  Why did that make him want to preen?

  He didn’t have time to think through the answer, because Frances took that moment to pour the liquid over his wound. He cursed, low and foul, and said, “What is that?”

  “Gin,” she said with a shrug. “There is a growing belief that alcohol on a wound aids healing.”

  “I would have preferred to drink it,” he grumbled, rolling his shoulder in an attempt to shake off the pain.

  “I feel the same, truly,” Frances said. “But my partner is legions smarter than me, and I do what she says. Now, let’s get you stitched.”

  “I’m afraid you won’t be stitching Mr. Peck, Frances,” Duchess said. “We’ve a few men with burns from the fire who need tending, and they take precedence over the Inspector.”

  Imogen patted Tommy’s cheek. “Duchess doesn’t mean to insult, Tommy.”

  “Of course not,” Duchess agreed. “I’m leaving you in more than capable hands, Mr. Peck.”

  She meant Imogen’s hands. Hands that Tommy knew were more than capable. Hands he’d experienced earlier that evening. Hands to which he would happily turn himself over if given another opportunity.

  Except the opportunity that presented itself didn’t seem pleasurable.

  Indeed, as he looked at the women, considering him with a collection of suspicious smiles, he realized the opportunity that presented itself involved Imogen taking a needle to him.

  He shook his head. “No.”

  Frances was already turning away—heading to patients in more serious circumstances. But he heard her as she tossed over her shoulder, “I wouldn’t fret. Imogen is excellent with a needle.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Was that O’Dwyer or Leafe?”

  Imogen did not flinch at the question, and he saw the surprise that came on the heels of it. She hadn’t expected him to so easily sort through the identity of the doctor.

  Without answering, she adjusted his arm on the table between them, inside the captain’s cabin of one of the Sedley-Whittington ships docked for the night. Even as Beast had blustered and balked at the idea of a Peeler inside one of his boats, his wife had recognized Imogen’s predicament—Tommy needed stitching, and driving anywhere to do it was out of the question.

  And so, here they were, in one of the lushest cabins he’d ever seen, adorned with silks and fabrics and leather and mahogany and a table full of maps that rivaled Magellan’s.

  She continued threading the needle Frances had given her, grateful for the excuse not to meet his eyes. “O’Dwyer.”

  “Frances O’Dwyer, seamstress, hmm?”

  Imogen met his eyes then, lifting the needle in her hand. “Does she not do a fair amount of stitching?”

  He eyed the gleaming silver weapon and said, “I could do with some of that gin she wasted before you start.”

  Imogen stood and crossed the room to the captain’s decanter filled with amber liquid, and he couldn’t resist watching her hips, swaying beneath her skirts. She poured it into a glass and walked it back to him. “Will whisky do?”

  He knocked it back and coughed, screwing up his face. “Not whisky. Rum.”

  “The risk one takes when one drinks stolen spirits,” she replied with a laugh.

  He nodded to his arm. “Go on then.”

  She adjusted the light and leaned over his arm, her deep focus making it easy to watch her. He wondered at her stillness—this woman who knew the ins and outs of explosives and raucous taverns and who carried a blade at her thigh and a bag full of danger at her side and who turned up wherever chaos threatened and who was always moving.

  But now . . . as she investigated the slice on his arm, a little furrow at her brow where a curtain of perfect curls fell, tempting him with the idea of pushing them aside and letting them twine around his fingers, she was still, and he drank her in.

  Sensing his attention, she met his gaze. “This won’t be pleasant.”

  “Have you done it before?”

  “Many times.”

  Somehow, he simultaneously hated the answer and loved it. Hated that she’d many times been in proximity to the kind of danger that required a skill for stitching a wound. Loved that she was able to do the stitching—that for this moment, she would turn her skills to him. That they were somehow, for a heartbeat, partners.

  Partners who held a single breath in anticipation of the first stitch.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, the words barely there as she began her work, and the softness of them, the truth in them, made him ache.

  “Go on,” he urged her, and she followed the instruction, placing the first stitch with a smooth, clean motion that proved her earlier claim. She’d done it before. “Who else have you stitched, Imogen Loveless?”

  “Enough that I know the score,” she said, looking up through her curls. “Do you want names?”

  Yes. He wanted names. He wanted to know whose skin she’d touched. Who she’d studied without shirts, or trousers. Or more.

  “Would it help to know that your arm is one of the more impressive ones I’ve stitched?”

  Yes. Yes, that helped very much. Though it shouldn’t.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” he said, willing them both to hear the words. “Your brother will come looking for you.”

  She shook her head. “He never comes home after events in society. He goes to his club, or to his mistress, to wash off the scent of matchmaking mamas.” A pause and then, “Ironic, that, isn’t it? That he is more than willing to play the part of matchmaking mama for me, and refuses to offer himself up to them.”

  A pause, silence heavy in the room. And then Tommy asked, “Why don’t you wish to marry?”

  She placed another stitch before she spoke to her work. “In my experience, husbands come in two flavors. The first is the kind my brother seeks for me. Full of bluster and power, lord of the manor, with a desire for a wife as a broodmare and a hostess and, at best, a pile of money.”

  Tommy did not reply, even as the idea of Imogen in such a marriage—set high upon a shelf and brought out only when she was required—unsettled him, and he could not deny the instant relief that coursed through him when she wrinkled her nose and said, “The roasted lamb of men.”

  He rumbled his amusement, urging her on.

  “The second flavor,” she said, “I did not believe existed outside of storybooks.”

  “Until your friends,” he replied, understanding instantly. “Lady Sesily. Miss Frampton.”

  “Mrs. Calhoun. The Duchess of Clayborn.” She smiled. “They neither of them intended marriage, and then . . .” She paused and collected her thoughts before finishing, the words incredulous. “And then they met husbands who wished to stand by their side. Partners. Who believed in them. Who wanted them to . . .”

  He waited what seemed like an eternity as she sought the word. When she found it, her eyes lit with satisfaction, gleaming deep and brown in the lantern light. “. . . to thrive.”

  He couldn’t help repeating her. “To thrive.”

  She nodded. “It is beautiful.”

  More beautiful than he’d ever admit. “You mean husbands who love them.”

  Another slow, methodical stitch. “A rare quality for husbands, these days.”

  “It shouldn’t be.”

  Her brows shot up.

  Why had he said that?

  Why was he suddenly imagining how it would be to stand by a woman the way the Duke of Clayborn had done on the water line earlier in the evening? How it would be to pull a woman he loved close and press a kiss to her temple, the way he’d seen Caleb Calhoun do a dozen times inside his Covent Garden tavern?