He ignored the words. “Adelaide?”

  “There’s something else.”

  “What?” He paused, his mind racing. “You were in the house as the Matchbreaker. Not there to end Helene’s marriage to Jack. You don’t care about that.”

  “No. Jack is imperfect, but he is not a monster. I was there to learn more about the whereabouts of Lady Helene.”

  He came forward, irritation flaring. She’d kept something from him. Something important. Something that impacted her safety. That of his brother. “Why? Why does she matter? What do you have? The children in the factories . . . It’s none of it illegal.”

  “Not until you make it so, no.”

  He would. He would do whatever he could to make it so. To make her proud of him. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t growing increasingly frustrated with her.

  “It won’t matter soon enough,” Imogen interjected, which Henry wanted very much to discuss, but the Duchess spoke, then, and everything changed.

  “Lady Helene witnessed Lord Draven’s murder.”

  Draven. Henry’s brow furrowed at the name. The earl had been pushed off a balcony at a ball weeks earlier. A woman had been seen fleeing the crime. A group of them. “They thought it was you lot.”

  “Really, Duke,” Sesily said. “We’ve a name now.”

  “We’ve also more finesse than to toss an earl off a balcony during a ball,” Duchess added.

  “Didn’t you blow up Scotland Yard, as well?” Henry asked.

  “No one can prove that,” Lady Imogen replied happily.

  Pride filled Adelaide’s gaze, as though she’d been hoping he would put it all together. “Lady Helene came directly to us to request help, knowing that if she went anywhere else, she might not be believed. Of course, we agreed. She needed to escape her father’s house and find hiding as quickly as possible, for a long enough time that we could sort out his capture.”

  “Not easy with a peer,” he said.

  “Precisely, so we concocted an elaborate plan—Lady Havistock’s meeting with the Matchbreaker was intended to be a distraction for Lady Helene’s escape. But she and your brother eloped, without apprising us of the plans.

  “It wasn’t what we’d intended, but we decided it could be turned to our advantage. Her father might believe it was the reason she’d disappeared, and she’d be protected by Jack. All we had to do was follow her to the border and collect her. She’d be married and safely out from under her father’s thumb.” Adelaide paused. “We didn’t expect . . .”

  “You didn’t expect me unconscious in your hideout for five days.” He cursed, guilt crashing down around him. “You should have told me.” He was furious. They’d all been in danger. Adelaide, Jack, Lady Helene. “You should have told me why we were headed north. Why it was important that we find them.”

  “I didn’t have to,” Adelaide said, stepping forward, sensing his frustration. “We knew where they were every step of the way . . . until you were hurt. And then . . .” She trailed off.

  She’d stayed for him. Because she cared for him.

  Because she ached for him as much as he ached for her.

  “We were watching them,” Duchess interjected. “We knew where they were. Every overnight. Every horse change. Every stop for food or weather. You did not disappear them, Adelaide. Something went wrong.”

  “Are they dead?” Henry finally voiced the question that had been knocking around in his head since the beginning of the conversation. Had his brother been so caught up in this mess that he’d died for it?

  “We don’t believe so,” Duchess said. “First, any person willing to take money to kill not one, but two aristocrats isn’t smart enough to do it quietly. We are talking about men who cannot cut a purse without regaling half the world with the tales of their great adventure.”

  “And the second?”

  She reached into the pocket of her skirts and extracted a small card. “This.”

  Adelaide’s gaze locked on the ecru square. “What is that?”

  “It was delivered to the Hungry Hen not two hours ago.” She paused. “Addressed to one Adelaide Trumbull.”

  * * *

  Adelaide went cold in the wake of Duchess’s words.

  Trumbull.

  Not Frampton. Not the name she’d used for years as she’d rebuilt herself.

  She reached for it. “What does it say?”

  “I don’t know,” Duchess said.

  Adelaide trembled as she slid her finger beneath the blood red seal there, her heart pounding as she realized the gravity of the moment. As she realized what this small missive meant. How, even before she read it, it returned her, without argument, to the world she’d escaped years earlier.

  How this cold reminder of her past—of where she’d come from and who she had once been—highlighted all the reasons she would never settle into this new world. This new life. How she had spent the past five years living half a life. For fear of this—of becoming too tied to the world north of the river, and still, being nothing but a girl from the South Bank.

  Opening the parchment, she read, recognizing the jagged writing on the paper. The creative spelling of a man with a head for numbers who had taught himself to read and write.

  Received yer package. Well done, Addie.

  I’ve the boy and his gel.

  Time to come home. Bring that duke yer tupping.

  Adelaide went cold at the words, refolding the paper into a crisp square. Hating it, she looked to Clayborn, already pulling her into his arms, warm and firm and safe. For a heartbeat, Adelaide let him do it. Even as she knew the truth. That this was the end.

  He tilted her face up to his. Searching her gaze. “Tell me.”

  “Jack and Helene are alive. For now.”

  He exhaled, and she could hear the relief there. He didn’t realize there was no cause for relief. “Where?”

  Oh, no. She shook her head. She could not tell him. Couldn’t bear the idea of him with her in Lambeth, his tall frame ducking through narrow, dark alleyways, his shining boots on the filthy cobblestones where she’d grown up.

  “Adelaide,” he said firmly, the words pulling her gaze to his as though she were tethered to him. “Whatever it is,” he began, reaching for her, his touch sure and true, and she barely stopped herself from leaning into his warm palm and turning herself over to him, “we shall face it together. You and I. And your league of terrifying women.”

  Her attention flickered to the women in question at that. Not terrifying. Wonderful. Dear. And strong as steel, a line of warriors watching, waiting, ready to do whatever it took to keep Adelaide safe. But at what cost? Too much.

  Not the Belles, who had a bolder, broader battle at hand.

  And not Henry; beautiful, strong Henry, honorable and good and powerful enough to bend so much of the world to his will.

  Not this world, though.

  This world abided by different rules. Different power.

  And if Henry walked into it . . . if any of them did—it would destroy them.

  But Adelaide had been forged in its fire, and so, this fight was hers.

  It was time for her to go home.

  * * *

  Together, they made a plan. Spent most of the evening sorting out what was to come and how they were going to fight. They decided to leave at first light, so they could move as fast as possible in the carriages they had.

  They worked out the places for food and safety and fast horses on a nonstop ride to London, using a map spread wide on the scarred kitchen table where she and Lucia had saved Henry’s life.

  And the whole time, as the people she loved planned to go to war for her, Adelaide made her own plan . . . to keep them all safe.

  Because if she allowed this magnificent crew into her father’s lair and surrounded them with her father’s men, they’d never leave alive.

  That night, they took to their beds, and Henry tugged her into his own, making slow, quiet love to her, whispering his love at her ear, to the tip of her breast, to the swell of her stomach and the hot, aching core of her. He gave her one final night of imagining they were possible. Of loving her.

  Of letting her love him, even as she did all she could not to speak it, fearing that if she let it out, she might never be able to put it back.

  When he slept, Adelaide slid from his arms, ignoring the ache that came at the loss of him. Snatching up her bag, she stepped into the hallway beyond, making quick work of dressing before creeping down the stairs, planning to be miles away before anyone in the house noticed she was gone.

  Slipping out the back door and into the cool night, she made for the stables, hitching the horses and tossing her bag into the carriage—nearly making it before Duchess spoke from the darkness. “Stealing off in the dead of night is something of a cliché, don’t you think?”

  Adelaide stopped, somehow not at all surprised that she’d been found out.

  Duchess had found her once before, had she not? On her wedding day, as street gangs in Lambeth fought for position and power. She’d offered Adelaide a new life, and hadn’t blinked for a moment when Adelaide had threatened her with a Bible. She was the kind of woman who would always find what she was looking for.

  Adelaide turned and closed the door to face Duchess, leaning against the door of the carriage, arms folded tight to ward off the chill.

  “Why did you choose me?” Adelaide said, finally. “It wasn’t my age or my station.”

  “No,” the other woman agreed.

  “Not who I was, nor where I came from.”

  Blue eyes glittered in the lanternlight. “It had nothing to do with where you came from, no . . . but, Adelaide, it had everything to do with who you were.”

  “Alfie Trumbull’s daughter.” She paused. “But you never asked me to go back. In five years, the only time you sent me to Lambeth was this time.”

  Duchess nodded. “A mistake.”

  No. It was perfect. “It wasn’t.”

  The other woman’s lips curved. “Because of Clayborn.”

  Because of Henry. She’d have returned to Lambeth. Spent the rest of her life on the South Bank if it meant a day with him. An hour.

  She was to do just that.

  Duchess nodded and moved toward the horses at the front of the carriage, checking harnesses and bridles. “I did not invite you to join me because you were Alfie Trumbull’s daughter. Alfie could have had a dozen daughters, and I wouldn’t have invited them to join me.” She paused. “Or, rather, I might have, but only if they’d had your taste for justice.”

  Adelaide gave a little laugh. “I was many things, but a servant to justice was not one of them.”

  “Were you not?” Duchess asked casually.

  “I was a nipper from Lambeth; I saw the inside of more than one London jail.”

  “Well, there’s justice and there’s justice, don’t you think? The kind of justice that makes a man build a jail, and the kind that lands a girl inside it.” Duchess was quiet for a moment, her blond hair gleaming in the light of the single lantern. “You do yourself a disservice, Adelaide. You weren’t simply a cutpurse; you were a genius. You could see coin in a pocket at twenty yards. But more than that, you could read the marks. And in the two years that I watched you there, on the South Bank, I never saw you take a purse from anyone who didn’t hold power north of the river.” She stroked a hand down the side of one grey’s neck. “I am not wrong.”

  “You are not.”

  “So tell me, Adelaide Trumbull”—the old name shattered through her—“why is it that the one time you’ve a duke offering up his fortune freely, you’re too afraid to take it?”

  The words, softer and gentler than Duchess ever appeared, summoned Adelaide’s tears. She shook her head. “He’ll regret it. In the end.”

  “Why, because you were born one thing and became another?” The Duchess shook her head. “My friend—is that not the story of everyone worth loving?”

  Adelaide shrugged. “He’s a duke and I’m a thief.”

  “All that tells me is that one of you has had to work for what you have, and the other was born with the world in his grasp.”

  Adelaide refrained from pointing out that her work wasn’t exactly honest. Or that Henry had lived his life knowing he didn’t deserve what he’d been given at birth. Though she suspected that Duchess would happily tell her that no aristocrat deserved what they were given at birth.

  “He was worth it,” she confessed on a whisper. “Staying with him. Mending him. It was worth it.”

  There was no censure in Duchess’s eyes when she nodded. “Inside, you said you could not afford him.”

  “I am not what he requires.”

  “Why not?”

  For a while, she had thought she might have a chance at it. At being partner and perhaps even love. A quiet, secret affair beyond the edges of society or family or friends.

  Private.

  But now, as her past caught up with her, Adelaide realized that life—the one conceived here in the middle of nowhere—would never be theirs. He would always be a duke, education and money and power, and she would always be . . . “I’m a girl summoned home to Lambeth.”

  It had been a beautiful dream, the two of them together sharing bits of their lives and their selves and pretending they had a future with no name.

  But the dream was over now.

  It was time for her to wake.

  Duchess watched her for a long moment before sighing, and approaching. “Adelaide, don’t you see? You’re not a girl summoned home. You’re a hero headed to battle. And someday, you will learn that you never have to fight alone.”

  They were pretty words. But that night, as she climbed onto the driving block, she knew the truth. This was her battle. And alone was the only way to win it.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “I told you to bring your duke.”

  Adelaide didn’t flinch when her father addressed her, club in hand, from the doorway of St. Stephen’s Chapel, still a stronghold of The Bully Boys, five years after her life had changed course forever inside its walls.

  She’d ridden through the night, paying handsomely for a driver at the first place she’d changed horses, which had given her the opportunity to stop only for new mounts on the way back to London. She’d had to ride fast, as she knew that the moment Henry discovered her gone, he would follow—and he’d have the Belles in tow.

  Sleep had come in fitful starts and stops on the journey, until they’d entered the city at dusk on the second night, and she’d let the driver off with enough coin to get him to wherever he’d like to be. She knew better than to bring a stranger to her father’s turf, and didn’t want anyone tangled up in whatever mess she was about to walk into.

  Adelaide lifted her chin and met her father’s brown eyes as he stared down at her, his craggy face made craggier by the late-day shadows. He wouldn’t like it—the defiance in her look. He wouldn’t like that she’d come alone. His gaze narrowed on her, scanning her pinned hair and her lined cloak and deep purple skirts and the leather boots she wore that hadn’t been stolen from another.

  “You look like one of them.”

  It was the worst of insults. The kind that would come before a good pounding on the streets—a disdain for anyone who thought to get above themselves and this place. And if she’d been twelve or sixteen or even twenty, the words might have struck like a blow.

  Cor, if it had been three weeks earlier, they might have.

  But things had changed, and Adelaide Frampton, née Trumbull, had no plans to be intimidated by her father that day. “Where are they?”

  Alfie Trumbull didn’t like insolence, and he didn’t like being treated like just anyone—self-made kings rarely did. He narrowed his gaze on the only child he’d ever claimed and said, “Yer duke, Addie. I specifically told you to bring ’im.”

  Not her duke.

  It was a lie, of course. He’d always be her duke. Even when he married a lovely highborn woman and had a passel of lovely highborn children . . . to Adelaide, he’d always be hers.

  “Why? This isn’t about him.” This was young Addie, come home to the turf that had raised her, to fight.

  “Jaysus, Addie. Every time I have a plan, you turn up to send it south.” He paused. “’Salright. We’ll go get the man.” He shouted up the street. “Find me that feckin’ toff.” He looked back at Adelaide. “Danny tells me he’s after you like a hound in heat, so it won’t be difficult.”

  Fear whispered through her, and she pushed it out of the way. “Where are Jack and Helene?”

  “Inside,” Alfie said, pointing over his shoulder at the chapel. “Thought it was time to let the place have some newlyweds who can stomach each other.”

  Pushing past him, she stepped into the chapel, half expecting to find it upended—untouched since the day her wedding had devolved into a turf war with however many men dead, including the groom. Of course, there was no evidence of the past—that night, the chapel was tidy. A handful of candles burning in the sacristy on one side of the room, the sting of incense in her nose, a light dim enough that she had trouble adjusting to it. She stood for a moment, letting the space wash over her. And then, “Where?”

  “Now, now, Addie, is that any way for you to treat your old da? We haven’t seen each other in years!”

  “I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed that we’ve ended our streak,” she retorted, moving swiftly into the space—empty except for them. She marched down the center aisle, searching the floors, the pews. All empty. “Risky, being here alone, Alfie.”

  He smirked. “You think you’d get three paces beyond this church if you harmed me?”

  She watched him for a moment. “I think I’d do alright. People ’round here always thought I was the best of you.”

  A beat. Something in his eyes that she’d never seen before. Something strangely like . . . nerves? Before she could be sure, he laughed, big and brash. “Ah, I like that. Mayfair ’asn’t cleared me out of you, ’as it, girl?”

  She didn’t reply as she approached the front pew.

  “But you don’t live in Mayfair, do you?” her father continued from his place at the back of the church. “You’ve never been welcome there, ’ave you? Och, you’ve got your ladies, and now that American brute who put poor Timmy Crouch into retirement—”