Adelaide was still for an age—minutes, maybe hours—marveling at the feel of his body against hers. Of his warm skin and the rich scent of sun-warmed leather that mixed with the rosemary from his bath. She’d never noticed a man’s scent before. Never reveled in her mark on it.

  Never felt the keen pleasure that came with the knowledge that he was, for however fleeting a moment, hers.

  Never wondered if there might be a way to keep it close. To hold it tight.

  It was the wildness of the experience—the absolute madness of it—that made her whisper to the darkness, “Mine.”

  It was certainly madness that the word gave her even more pleasure aloud than in her thoughts. Pleasure and triumph and a bone-deep something that she knew better than to name, knowing instinctively that if she inspected it . . . if she put words to it . . . she’d never be able to forget it.

  But . . . what if?

  For the first time, Adelaide allowed herself to consider the possibility that she did not need to forget the Duke of Clayborn, in all his untouchable aristocratic divinity. That perhaps there was a way forward for them—unconventional and limited, but a path they could tread . . . together.

  Mistress, he’d said. A jest.

  A word that she’d never considered before, because women like Adelaide were not made for mistressing. She was not pretty enough or droll enough or sultry enough to summon men to her bed. But why not another word? If he would have her? Why not companion? Why not secret keeper?

  Why not partner?

  She caught her breath as the thoughts took shape. Adelaide Frampton, who had spent a lifetime alone, facing down pain and danger and loneliness, who had made a place for herself in the world as a woman with a wicked sense of justice, and a willingness to do anything to mete it out—found herself undone in those moments, in the dark . . . by hope.

  Foreign and unnerving, the feeling twisted, becoming something more familiar. Easier to ignore. Fear. Who was she if she allowed herself to hope for another?

  If she allowed herself to put a name to him? A face?

  If she stole it? For herself?

  The answers were for another day. But that night, for once, Adelaide allowed herself a taste of what it would be to sleep, safe and wanted, in a lover’s arms.

  Chapter Eleven

  Henry woke to a noise beyond the door.

  The room was full of the deep dark that came with the heaviest part of night, the candles having long since burned out, the fire down to glowing embers in the hearth. He’d fallen asleep with Adelaide in his arms, warm and soft and relaxed for the first time since they’d met. The scent of her surrounding him, fresh like rain, the weight and heat of her pressed against him, her fingers playing over his chest in smooth, lush circles, making him want to buy the Hungry Hen and never leave it.

  Making him want to keep her there, in that bed, until she shared every one of her secrets.

  Making him want to tell her all of his.

  Which was madness, of course.

  Wasn’t it?

  She’d offered him a future.

  He’d known since he was fourteen that he would not marry. That he would do best not to tumble into love like other men. He’d built himself a cool, unwavering identity—one that did not recommend him to women. Or anyone else, for that matter. Once others realized that the dukedom was not accessible, they moved on, as there was little reward in staying.

  But somehow, this woman had found her way in with her touch and her kiss and the little glimpses of her that she gifted him, like treasure. A good thing, too—for if she hadn’t gifted them, he might have stolen them, with how well he liked them. Bits of her life, her world, her mind. Her kisses.

  And then, last night, after he held her in his arms and told her that marriage was not his future, how he feared loving another more than she could love him, she had not asked for his secrets.

  Instead, she’d offered a new path.

  To be his mistress.

  Of course, it was impossible. He’d watched Adelaide Frampton for long enough to know there were no half measures for her. She deserved a man who could give her everything. Marriage. A home—a damned palace if she wanted it. Children to fill it with laughter. Honesty. A life without secrets.

  She deserved that full heart.

  But there, in the depths of night, in that dark inn at what felt like the end of the earth, if he closed his eyes, he might believe it could be him.

  Even as he knew he shouldn’t, he tightened his arm around her, pulling her closer. His hand coursed over the soft skin of her back, pausing when it found a raised mark. The hint of another scar. Longer than the one at her side.

  What had the world done to this woman? Anger threaded through him, hot and impatient, chased by a heady desire to find those who had wronged her and to destroy them. To avenge her. To protect her.

  I don’t need protection, she’d said downstairs, after he’d gone for the brute. Called her his wife.

  And she didn’t. Not all the time. He’d seen her do plenty of protecting herself. He’d seen her go head-to-head with aristocrats and bruisers alike. Christ, he’d seen her leap onto a moving boat, as though a drop into the Thames wouldn’t take the life of anyone who had the misfortune to suffer it.

  She didn’t need protection. And still, he needed to protect her.

  The thought clarified in the darkness, and the door to the room splintered open, slamming back into the wall with the force of a heavy boot.

  And then, there was no needing to protect her; there was only doing it.

  Adelaide shot up from her slumber, the bedclothes falling to her waist, and Henry shouted, “Stay!” even as he was out of the bed, already reaching for his blade.

  “Oh, there’s no way I’m doing that,” she said as he stepped up onto the bed and crossing it, leaping down at its foot to face the intruders, putting himself between them and her.

  In the lantern light from the hallway beyond, Henry could make out two of them, one tall and slim, the other big and broad and stinking of ale—recognizable by his slow lumber. It was the brute from below. “Ah, Billy,” Henry said as he came forward. “You should have stayed gone.”

  “I won’t be bested by a toff, I won’t,” Billy said, his ham-sized fists raised in the shadows. “And it just so happens that this here man needed my ’elp bringing you down to size.”

  Henry looked to the other man, standing back, in the shadows . . . and recognized him. The rider from the road. Who had slowed. Leered like a proper predator, as though he’d known what he was hunting . . . and had found it.

  Good of him to make it easy for Henry to take him out, too.

  A flint struck behind them and a candle flared to life. Billy’s eyes went wide as he looked to Adelaide, his meaty lips curving in a disgusting smile. “I didn’t expect the view, I’ll say. Yer wife don’t look like much when she’s wearin’ clothes.”

  And that was all Henry needed to hear. “It is clear you didn’t learn your lesson,” he said with cold certainty. “The one where you treat women with respect.”

  Billy looked to him. “I’ll treat ’em with respect when they ain’t bare-assed. Turns out even a lady can look a whore.”

  And when he turned his leering gaze back on Adelaide, Henry’s mind went blank, and he knocked Billy back with a sharp, wicked blow. The other man cried out, stumbling in the wake of it, but Henry gave him no quarter. “You—don’t—look—at her,” he said, cold fury in the words, each one punctuated with another jab, another advance. “You don’t think of her.”

  He delivered a final blow and the brute went down again, out cold. Before Clayborn could consider his handiwork, however, something rattled on the bedside table behind him. A candlestick, a pitcher of water, he’d never know. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it, and when he spun around to face it without hesitation, he knew why.

  He’d made a mistake. While he’d been exacting his vengeance on a man too prideful and genuinely too stupid to be of real danger, the other man—the silent one, the one he would soon discover was far more dangerous—had gone for Adelaide.

  And instead of screaming for help as one would expect, she faced him, tall and straight-spined, as though she were a warrior in full armor and not draped in a bedsheet that threatened to tumble to the floor.

  She was naked. He’d stripped her bare and taken her to bed, ignoring the fact that he’d made them an enemy below. Ignoring the fact that a handful of hours earlier, he’d leapt from a fast-moving carriage, an action that had left him worse for wear.

  They should have dressed before they slept, but he’d wanted to feel her skin against his, all while believing that he could keep her safe from whatever might come their way. And in his selfishness—in his hubris—he’d put her in danger.

  He lunged toward them, but stilled when he took in the whole scene.

  Draped in nothing but a bedsheet, looking for all the world like a goddess, Adelaide held a sharp silver blade to her would-be attacker’s neck.

  When she spoke, it was with the calm ease of someone who had certainly threatened a throat cutting before. “Don’t come any closer, Duke. I wouldn’t want my hand to slip.”

  He stilled, considering the situation. “I haven’t decided how I feel about your hand slipping, honestly. I should have taken care of him on the road.”

  She didn’t look to him—good girl, stay focused on your enemy—but she did smile at the other man. “The duke suggests I kill you, Danny. What do you think about that?”

  The man called Danny answered with ease, as though he didn’t have a blade to his throat. “You ain’t never had it in you, Addie.”

  And there, in the familiarity of the diminutive, Henry realized the two did not just recognize each other; they had a history.

  He stayed rigid, watching the play of emotions over her face. Frustration. Disappointment. Anger. And something else. Something like shame. Henry clenched a fist at his side, barely feeling the sting of the welts there for his rage at the man for making Adelaide feel anything like shame.

  Danny, several inches taller and easily two stone heavier than she, spread his arms wide and lifted his chin, baring his neck boldly, as though they were downstairs drinking ale, rather than here in the dark, with a blade to his throat. “It don’t matter what you call yourself now that you run with Mayfair, you’ll always be Lambeth, Addie Trumbull.” He leveled Clayborn with a combative stare. “Even when yer tuppin’ a duke.” He grinned. “But maybe he likes it down in the gutter like toffs often do.”

  That was when Henry decided he was going to destroy this man.

  “Alright, Danny, so you found me. Now what?”

  She knew she was being chased? Why in hell was she being chased? And by this . . . lizard?

  The man smiled. “Alfie wants to talk to you. He ain’t happy you walked into his joint and took what weren’t yours.”

  She nodded. “I’ve suffered Alfie’s punishments before.”

  He tilted his head in Clayborn’s direction. “Now ’im . . . I weren’t expectin’ him. There’s a price on his head. Imagine my surprise when the duke’s carriage turns up wrecked on the road as I’m on my way to fetch you, Addie? The duke, who’s travelin’ with the Matchbreaker? Now, that’s a lucky day, I’d say.” He sniffed. “’Course, it’s the duke’s own fault for ridin’ with a seal on the door like a real ponce. And a set of wheels made for money and not muscle.” He tsked. “Not the smartest of choices, Addie. Your da won’t be happy.”

  Her da?

  “Who’s got money on the duke?” Adelaide asked.

  “Havistock don’t like loose ends, and is payin’ handsome for a few dead bodies.” He sniffed. “I intend to deliver ’em.”

  Havistock. Henry knew Havistock wanted him ruined, but, “Why does Havistock want me dead?”

  Danny shrugged, but didn’t even look at him. “Don’t matter to us—money spends for good reasons and bad.”

  “Alfie took a job killing a duke?”

  The man cut her an arrogant look. “Alfie takes whatever jobs I tell him to take now.”

  “Well, you ought to send him direct to Bedlam for takin’ this one,” she said, her tone gone full South London. “Killin’ a duke will ’ave you swingin’ from a rope faster than you can gut a man, Dan-o.”

  “I’ll take my chances. Now my only question is this—do I return you to your da, as requested, only a bit worse for wear, or do I bring you back to London as the Matchbreaker? There are enough rich bastards lookin’ to see you dead that we could sell tickets and set ourselves up for life.”

  She sucked in a breath at the words, and Clayborn stiffened at the harshness in the sound. The concern in it. Her secret—the one he knew because he seemed to be the only person in London who could not miss Adelaide Frampton’s light—out, and in the wrong hands.

  While he considered what it would take to keep her enemy silent, Adelaide said, “So, what, you think I’ll pay for your silence?”

  “I think you haven’t got a choice,” the man replied. “But let’s be honest—you can’t pay me near what the rest of Mayfair will pay to get revenge for the way you’ve ruined them already. Not even if your girls empty their coffers.” He looked to Clayborn again. “Not even if your duke tosses in a coin or two. Mayfair hates you that much.”

  “Is that supposed to sting?” she asked.

  He grinned. “It ain’t supposed to feel good, kitten.”

  She pressed the tip of her blade deeper, and a droplet of blood trickled down the side of his neck. When he inhaled sharply and the grin fell from his face, she said, “I think you’ll find it takes more than the collective opinion of mediocre men to upset me, Danny.”

  “You’re still a bitch, ain’t you?”

  Before Clayborn could tear him to shreds for the insult, the man condemned himself to hell, catching her blade hand in his, yanking it around to her back and using his strength and speed to pull Adelaide close, running his filthy hands over her body, grinning his mouthful of rotten teeth at her.

  Henry went wild.

  “Get your hands off her,” he growled, the words coming from a place he rarely acknowledged—somewhere out of control. They both turned to the sound, and the intruder moved with lightning speed, the moon gleaming off his blade.

  Adelaide sucked in a breath as it kissed her neck and Henry stopped instantly, vibrating with frustrated fury.

  “Now ain’t that divertin’,” said the man, his eyes gleaming with perverse delight. “Look at how quickly he stopped. Like a child’s toy run out of string.” He slid a hand over Adelaide’s torso, fisting the bedsheet in one filthy hand. “I always wondered if you were any good in the sheets. Looks like you’re good enough.”

  Henry growled, low and dangerous. “Let her go.”

  “No, I don’t think I will,” the man said. “You see—I was wondering how it was that we were going to collect you. It ain’t every day you get a chance to catch a duke, you know.” The blade tightened against Adelaide’s throat and she closed her eyes. “But here you are, willing to do anything to keep our Addie safe, ain’t you?”

  That our was another infraction for which this man would pay. Henry was keeping track.

  “You will pay for every second you touch her,” Henry said, the words raw with furious control. She was still and unmoved, her face revealing nothing of her thoughts. But there, in her eyes as she met his—there was something he didn’t like.

  “Aww . . . it weren’t nothing,” Danny said. “We go back, don’t we, gel? Painted with the soot of the South Bank. No hard feelings, right, Addie?”

  “No more than usual,” she hissed.

  “I’d almost think he cared for you. But that can’t be right—no one cares for you. You ain’t nobody. Ain’t nothin’. Not even your da cared when you left. He just turned the whole thing over to me.”

  Adelaide stilled at the words, barely, but enough for Clayborn to notice, and hate it. He moved, heading directly for the pair, prepared to knock away the blade and do whatever necessary to free her. To keep her safe.

  Except Billy had woken up.

  Before Henry could reach her, the drunken lout felled him, tackling him with a lack of finesse matched only by his lack of sense. Using the momentum of the attack, Clayborn spun as he landed on the ground to meet his previous foe. “Goddammit, Billy. You’re an automaton.”

  “Is that someone who’s going to cut you to ribbons?” Billy asked, aiming his massive fist at Henry’s face.

  “No, as a matter of fact,” he said, twisting away at the last moment, as Billy set his fist into the floorboards. Henry rolled to get up, but his opponent recovered, catching him by the waist, taking him to the ground, and landing several strong blows before he got the upper hand, reversing their positions and dispatching Billy with ease once more.

  “I’ll say this for you, Addie. You’ve found yourself a pretty fighter. He does it dirty, too. No Queensberry rules for him.”

  “Six years at school,” Henry said, coming to his feet, slower than before.

  “What school?” Danny asked.

  “The one that ensured that you’d better have a plan to kill me, because after the threats you’ve delivered to her, if you leave me alive, I will not rest until I have made your life pure hell.”

  “Such threats!” Danny said. “Everything’s perfectly normal. I’m just havin’ a chat with our Adelaide.”

  My Adelaide. The words crashed through Henry, loud enough that he had to clench his teeth to keep from bellowing them into the darkness. Mine.

  “I’ll come with you,” she said.

  The room stilled. The entirety of Britain stilled. And Henry could not stop his roar of outrage. “What?”

  “I’m listening,” said Danny.

  “I’ll come with you. You bring me to my father, you reveal me as the Matchbreaker, whatever you like.”

  One of Billy’s blows had clearly been harder than Henry had noticed. “Over my decaying corpse.”