“Caleb Calhoun,” Adelaide said. Caleb had come for the high-ranking Bully Boy a year earlier for laying hands on Sesily.

  “Yeah, that one. Timmy was one of my best boys, you know. Now ’e’s got a wonky shoulder and likes to whinge about it. I’m still piqued about that one.”

  “I’ll let him know,” Adelaide replied, dryly.

  “—this ain’t about that, though, Addie. This is about you not really being one of them, and you know it. They do too, girl. I see you, livin’ in rooms above that place in Covent Garden and attendin’ balls like they’re fancy dress parties, pretendin’ all the time that you weren’t christened here, in my dirt.”

  “I know exactly where I came from,” she said, lifting one end of the pew and pulling it forward, revealing the panel cut into the floor beneath it, a lock inlaid in the wood. “It’s impossible to forget it.”

  “Good,” he said. “You shouldn’t forget it. I give you the world, and you run the first chance you get? Where’s my gratitude?”

  She looked up from fiddling with the pendant of her necklace, to attach one of her skeleton keys. “Gratitude! For what? For making me work for food, for clothes, for—” Love. She held back the last word. “For selling me to John Scully as a bride?”

  “Come now, Addie. Ye can’t be angry at that. That’s ’ow it works! I was consolidatin’ power!”

  “You went to war on my wedding day!”

  “Turned out he thought he was the one consolidatin’ power,” Alfie said with a shrug. “And what are you complainin’ about? You cut and run that day. Left your poor da all alone. How do you think I felt?”

  Adelaide rolled her eyes and rounded the pew. “I think you were grateful for the newly free room in the house.”

  Alfie shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Well, now. A man does like his space. But the important bit is this—I didn’t bring you home then. I could’ve done. I could’ve made you a proper example—shown people wot they get when they leave me wivvout permission. But I didn’t. I let you join that Duchess who don’t act like any lady toff I’ve ever met, and her feckin’ army.”

  How did he know about Duchess?

  “You surprised? You think I wouldn’t keep tabs on you? My own blood?”

  “I am, as a matter of fact,” she said, turning to crouch over the hatch. “You never showed any interest in me when I lived here.”

  “That’s coz when you lived ’ere, you weren’t a fucking legend.” He waved a hand toward the doors to the chapel. “Half my turf is filled with little girls dreamin’ of bein’ just like Addie Trumbull.”

  “Gone from here.”

  “Do you know how much work I ’ad to do to make it so it sounded like I willed your toff Mayfair life into bein’ for you? Christ, Addie. You owe me. And we was fine, but I can’t have you comin’ back here and makin’ trouble.”

  “Let’s consider my lesson learned, then, Alfie,” she said searching for the proper key to open the hatch.

  He paused, watching her work the necklace. “You’re still the best thief in Lambeth, Addie Trumbull.”

  “I have better tools now,” she said, ignoring the pride in her father’s tone. Knowing it for what it always had been—manipulation. She inserted the key into the lock and pulled open the hatch. Looking into the small room below the sanctuary, she noted a half-dozen crates marked Explosives, and another stack that were likely weapons.

  And there, sitting on the packed-dirt floor along with the munitions, was a young white woman, pretty as a picture in a lovely pink dress, matching bonnet on her wrist. And next to her, a handsome, blond man with a wicked black eye and a swollen cheek. The two of them looked up, eyes wide and worried.

  She looked to Alfie. “Why does this man have a shiner, Alfie?”

  “I can’t be held responsible for what happens when my packages are . . . disagreeable.”

  With a disgusted look to her father, she returned her attention to the hole. “Jack and Helene?”

  The couple nodded, and Jack pushed Helene behind him, or, as much as he could. “Who are you?”

  Protecting her. Just like his brother would.

  “I’m . . .” There were a dozen ways to introduce herself, so why did she choose, “An acquaintance of the Duke of Clayborn’s.”

  His brow furrowed. “Henry?”

  “Trumbull!” The shout came from a distance outside the church, and Adelaide closed her eyes, recognizing Henry’s voice, deep and loud and angry, reverberating off the stones of the narrow lane at the end of which sat St. Stephen’s Chapel.

  She closed her eyes. No. He couldn’t be there. Once he was here, Alfie had all the power.

  “Sounds like he’s here!” Jack said, looking to Helene, who smiled for the first time since Adelaide had opened the hatch. “I told you he’d come. And if I were to wager, he’s furious.”

  “I would not take that wager,” Adelaide said, adjusting her spectacles, willing her heart to cease its pounding. He was there.

  Infuriating man.

  Wonderful man.

  Keeping her attention on the newlyweds, she said, “Are you hurt? More than the . . .” She waved a hand at her eye. When they shook their heads, she said, “Stay there; Trumbull has guards everywhere. You’ll be safe soon enough.”

  “Alfred Trumbull!” Another shout from outside, sounding like an elocution professor from Oxford had arrived.

  She straightened and turned toward it, as her father raised his brows. “Oho! Alfred he calls me! Just like a toff.”

  Making a show of checking his pistol in its holster, Alfie tugged the waist of his trousers up and made for the doorway of the church, leaving Adelaide no choice but to follow, but not before she slipped her own blade from where it was strapped at her thigh.

  Had Henry come alone? Into this place? Onto enemy turf?

  Of course he had. Because for Henry, Duke of Clayborn, there was no such thing as enemy turf. He’d been born into a world where he could walk wherever he liked, without repercussions.

  Not here, though. Here, there were repercussions. “Let’s have a look at your boy, shall we?”

  “He’s not a boy,” she said, regretting the words even as they escaped her lips and made her sound like a petulant child.

  “’Course he is. He’s never had cause to grow up and be a man, ’as he? He’s had everything given to him, along with that silver spoon that was down ’is gullet when ’e was born.” He stood in the door, looking down the lane, and Adelaide joined him, her heart beating in a chaotic rhythm as she stared down the empty alleyway. Of course, it wasn’t empty. It was full to the brim with bystanders and onlookers and a half-dozen brutes who were paid to linger near Alfie and keep him safe. The only reason that Adelaide got close—the only reason that Henry would—was that they had been requested. Otherwise, they would have been knocked cold long before they reached this place.

  Alfie hefted his club, making a show of adjusting his grip. Reminding her that Henry might still be knocked cold if he didn’t behave.

  She tightened her grip on the hilt of the blade she had hidden in her skirts, and held her breath, hating that she couldn’t be certain her father and his thugs wouldn’t take him in hand and rough him up. Or worse. Maybe this was all a ruse for Havistock to get everything he wished. His daughter, her groom, and his nemesis all gone in one fell swoop.

  But she couldn’t ask her father to keep him safe. Revealing that she cared about Henry’s safety would ensure that her father mistreated him, simply to toy with Adelaide. So instead of begging for his safety, she willed him safe, watching him without moving—barely even breathing.

  A shield-maiden, watching her warrior.

  And he looked like a warrior, dusk having fallen over the city, casting long shadows down the alleyway, turning it into a battlefield. Ready to fight, with his broken nose and bruised face and bandaged knuckles, straight shoulders and strong, bearded jaw—he hadn’t shaved on the journey—and stiff hat and the billow of his greatcoat behind him.

  He saw her immediately, the moment she appeared in the doorway, his gaze sharpening on her as his stride lengthened and his pace increased. The rest of the world was beyond his focus, and Adelaide held her breath, hating that he did not look to the rooftops where a sniper would be stationed. To the stairways and upper walkways, where others watched, weapons out.

  He didn’t care about any of that.

  Her heart thundered in her chest.

  He only cared for her.

  He’d come for her.

  The realization shattered through her, sending pain and frustration and pleasure and a thread of foolish hope through her even as she knew she did not deserve to feel the last two. Even as she knew this might be the last she ever saw of him.

  She ached with gratitude for this—one last moment, like fresh water.

  And then she reminded herself that he did not belong here.

  She hated him in Lambeth.

  Yes, she’d seen him there before, on the South Bank the day she’d stolen his box, but that had somehow been different, perhaps because she hadn’t expected him there, and perhaps because she hadn’t known him and how good and decent and wrong he was in this place, so when he’d turned up, it had felt less horrific and more like . . . a gift of some kind. Like finding a blade of bright green grass growing between alleyway cobblestones.

  Except blades of grass didn’t belong in London alleyways, and the Duke of Clayborn didn’t belong in Lambeth, and that night, as he stalked his way through the cobblestone streets toward St. Stephen’s, he did not feel like a gift. He felt like a liability.

  The memories of her youth there, in the night, when nippers and pickpockets and cutpurses and thieves came out of the woodwork to fill their coffers, shouted through her, and even as she told herself there was nothing shameful about where she’d come from, she knew it wasn’t true.

  Her father put voice to her thoughts. “You think he’ll have you? A nipper from Lambeth? Aw, Addie. Ye never could stop dreamin’ of Mayfair. Remember—thievin’ from toffs never won you anyfin’ but trouble.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels before adding, “Well, let’s see, shall we?”

  A chill ran though Adelaide at the casual curiosity in the words, as though this were a game and not her whole life approaching. But that was how Alfie had made his fortune and built this sooty kingdom full of criminals—by treating every moment like a game. Nothing important. Nothing that couldn’t be cut loose or tossed out or traded.

  Which made playing the game impossible for someone who cared.

  Like Henry.

  I love you, he’d whispered to her the other night. Be with me. Stay with me.

  Adelaide swallowed the memory as he approached, strong and furious, knowing that whatever was to come—whatever test her father had devised—it would trade on Henry’s emotions. His decency. His goodness. His honor. And because of that, he would not pass. She drew tight as a string, preparing for it. To save Jack and Helene. To save him.

  This was the only way she could love him, this man who deserved the wide world. This was what she could give him.

  “Why didn’t you ever come after me?” she asked, not taking her eyes off Henry.

  “You chose North over South. What was I to do? Fetch you from those rooms you let above O’Tiernen’s place? Bring you back? A traitor to your home? To your da?”

  She narrowed her gaze on him at his reference to The Place, the tavern that gave safe haven to any women who needed it. “You’ve sent your thugs to knock over The Place a dozen times since I’ve lived there.” She’d fought Bully Boys herself inside the taproom on more than one occasion.

  “Och. ’Tweren’t personal, gel. I take the job when it comes.”

  “I’m to believe you didn’t enjoy taking those jobs?”

  “Enjoyin’ it ain’t the same as orderin’ it. You ought to thank me, honestly, for not taking the lot of you out. There’s more than enough money in that job.”

  “Then why not do it?”

  He sniffed and looked over her shoulder, down the fast-darkening alleyway. “Don’t feel right, offin’ your own.”

  “That, and we’re better fighters than you expected.”

  He tilted his head, his lips turning down in silent acknowledgement that she might be right. Another day, she might have enjoyed the revelation. “So I’m not here to be punished or made an example of.” She turned to face her father. “Then why summon me? Why summon him?”

  “Because, Addie, there’s more to life than punishment. Why not trust your ol’ da?” The words struck fear deep inside her, but she could not ask for clarification. Alfie was already shouting over her shoulder to the street below. “Your Grace, my boy! Good of you to come!”

  Sucking in a breath, she turned around to face Henry, to look down upon him from where she stood on the steps of the church. For a wild moment, her mind played a trick on her, and she imagined another scenario, another lifetime, when she might be on church steps looking down at him with hope and happiness and joy at their future, spread out before them.

  The vision disappeared like smoke before she could toy with it, and she caught her breath at the ferocity of his gaze and the steel set of his jaw. At the way he didn’t look at her. Didn’t meet her eyes. Didn’t look anywhere but at her father. “You won’t think it’s good when I put you into the dirt, Trumbull.”

  Behind him, the shadows shifted. Alfie’s guards.

  “Now, now. Is that ’ow they teach you to treat your elders in Mayfair?” Alfie held his hands out. “We’ve never even met! How is it you think me deservin’ of a brawl today?”

  “Not only today,” Henry said, his hand flexing at his side. “You were deserving of a brawl when you took my brother and his wife from their wedding holiday to use them as bait.”

  “Can’t blame me for that, Duke. It’s no’ as though you and Addie would have come round for tea. They’re perfectly fine and just inside.” He waved at the church.

  “That’s true,” Adelaide added, wanting him to look at her. Aching for it.

  He didn’t, that muscle in his cheek twitching with anger at her father. And maybe, just a bit, for her. “You’re deserving of a brawl for the lifetime of crimes you’ve committed. The weapons you’ve run. The fathers you’ve taken from children. The husbands from wives. The scores of terrible men you’ve lent muscle to.”

  “A man’s got to eat, Duke. We ain’t all born rich and titled.”

  “And tell me, do men who have to eat often land their eight-year-old daughters in prison?” Adelaide went cold, then hot with recognition at the words, at the fury in them. At the way his fist curled, ready to fly.

  “Oh, it’s that, is it?” Disdain crept into Alfie’s tone. “You’re horrified by my treatment of my daughter? I taught her how to survive. You lightweight toffs teach your girls nuffin’, then throw them to the fuckin’ wolves, and I know it, because then you hire my boys to do the dirty work of coverin’ up your mistakes.

  “I taught my girl the truth about the world. And look at her. Now she tells you lot the truth. And you pay her for the privilege of hearin’ it.” He paused and looked to Adelaide, a gleam some might think was pride in his eye. “What do they call you, Addie? The Matchbreaker?” She didn’t nod, but he carried on. “A whole lot of ’em want your head, gel. But you’ve forgotten the most important bit of truth. That world, over the river? It ain’t yours. And this”—he looked at Henry with disgust—“duke ain’t for you on the best day, is he?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Adelaide . . .” Henry said, and it was her turn not to look at him.

  “’Course he ain’t. But what’s the first rule I taught you? Everyone has a price. And this one—his is mighty high. He and his brother know things they shouldn’t. And the young lady inside? She’s seen things she shouldn’t. Pity, that, as that filth, Havistock, is willing to pay good money to see ’er dispatched.” He looked to Henry. “And I’m the bad father.”

  Duchess had been right from the start. Havistock didn’t just want Helene returned, he wanted her dead. And he’d asked The Bully Boys to do it.

  Alfie was still talking. “Now. While I think that’s some dirty business that will send the man straight to hell when he finally meets his maker, that ain’t my problem, and money is money.”

  “So it’s to be a double cross,” Adelaide said. Alfie Trumbull didn’t waste time if there wasn’t a trade in the offing. “You’ll let Helene and Jack go free.”

  “You see?” He spread his arms wide and looked to Henry. “There’s my smart girl. Brain in her head direct from her da.”

  Henry did not move. “You said there’s a price.”

  Alfie showed his full grin. “’Course there is, duke. As there should be. Addie knows. Anything done out of the goodness of the heart is dangerous expensive.”

  He had taught her that. That everything in life was a transaction. A good or service to be bought and sold. But it wasn’t true. She’d seen goodness of heart a thousand times over the last five years. She’d seen what the Belles could do out of the goodness of their hearts. She’d seen what Henry could do. What Jack had done to protect Helene. What his father had done—loving his wife. His sons. Raising decent honorable men, who did decent honorable things . . . out of the goodness of their hearts.

  But maybe Adelaide didn’t get the luxury of such things. There wasn’t room for it on the South Bank, where the poor scraped and fought for everything they had, and to rise . . . to win . . . there wasn’t space for good.

  “Get on with it, Alfie. Name it. The price to free them all?” She’d pay it. Whatever it was. Even as she knew, without question, that it would be outrageous. That it would take more from her than she’d ever given before.

  “Addie, my girl, we’re consolidatin’ power.” A cold thread whipped through her, and she instantly saw it. The whole plan. The enormous price.