In short, The Place was perfect.

  And it was one of Imogen’s favorite spots in all the world.

  She set her glass down on the scarred table with a thunk and pronounced, “I refuse to be governed! Can you imagine! He actually thought he could marry me off to some . . .”

  “Toff!” Sesily helped.

  Imogen pointed at her friend. “Yes!”

  “Good for you!” Adelaide said.

  “I beg your pardon!” The Duke of Clayborn feigned offense. “You married a toff!”

  “Yes, my love, but there is hope of your reformation,” his wife retorted. Everyone laughed and she leaned into his kiss—a public display of affection that would have shocked the House of Lords down to their well-heeled shoes.

  “How long do you intend to keep your location from your brother?” Sesily asked.

  “My brother,” Imogen spat, “has absolutely no reason to care about my whereabouts as long as I remain undetected.”

  Adelaide adjusted her spectacles and said, dryly, “Well, considering how meek and biddable you are . . . that should not be difficult.”

  Everyone laughed, and Imogen tossed her friend a look. “Well. Let’s say I shall do what I can to steer clear of him,” she said before looking at Duchess. “If Duchess does not mind a tenant . . . at least until I find my own footing.”

  Brows raised around the table. “Find your own footing—” Sesily said, disbelief in her voice.

  “Imogen—” Adelaide began.

  They both stopped, and Duchess finished their thoughts. “I think this is finding your own footing, my friend. Leaving your brother’s house. Deciding to captain your own fate.”

  “Oh,” Imogen said, feeling rather emotional in the wake of her friends’ responses. “That’s a terribly nice thing to say.”

  “Speaking of your footing,” Adelaide began. “How was your trip to Scotland Yard this morning?”

  Unsettling.

  “Productive,” she said, meeting the eyes of the women around the table. “No one stopped me on my way to the uniform room—and I was able to take four samples of fabric that I believe match the same stuff that has been used as a fuse in two of the three explosions. Between that and the common blast patterns and the type of blasting oil, I no longer have any doubts—Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, and Spitalfields were set by the same people.”

  “Truly, Lady Imogen,” the Duke of Clayborn said, “your understanding of explosives would be terrifying if I were not on your side.”

  She flashed him a bright smile. “And who said I was on your side, toff?”

  Everyone around the table laughed, and Imogen finished articulating her plan. “I’m going to take them to O’Dwyer and Leafe’s, and see if someone there can match the weave of the fabric. I’ve a dozen tests to run, but I’d wager the contents of my carpetbag that we’re dealing with skill, means, access, and information.”

  “If you’re right, that sounds like power, and a lot of it,” the Duke of Clayborn interjected, looking to his wife. “I assume you’ve spoken to your father?”

  Adelaide nodded, eyes wide behind her spectacles. “As suspected, it’s not his crew.”

  “Who then?” Clayborn asked.

  The women around the table shared a look, and the duke sat back. “Ah. As usual, the Hell’s Belles are one step ahead.”

  Caleb Calhoun, Sesily’s husband, tipped his ale in salute and said in his dry, American accent, “You get used to it, Duke.” He looked to the table. “Who?”

  “We don’t know,” Imogen said. “Not with certainty.”

  “But Imogen has a hunch,” Adelaide said.

  “I have a hunch.” She looked at Duchess. “But none of the evidence I have is proof. Not yet. And even if it were, we don’t have the important bit.”

  Sesily chimed in. “We don’t know who’s paying them.”

  Someone was absolutely paying them. There was no coincidence involved in three businesses hiding secret, revolutionary activities going up in flames. And even if Scotland Yard was doing the exploding, it was at the behest of others. Far more powerful others.

  “That’s where I come in,” Duchess said, extracting a piece of paper from her pocket and setting it on the table. Everyone leaned in to read the three names on the paper. A marquess and two earls.

  Clayborn shook his head. “Three of the most powerful men in Lords.” He looked up at Duchess. “Can you prove it?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “If it’s true,” Imogen said, looking at her friend, “it’s more dangerous than anything we’ve done before.”

  Duchess nodded. “And we can’t use your man.”

  Her man.

  Tommy.

  Duchess’s meaning was not lost. As helpful as he’d been in the past—arresting a handful of aristocrats after the Belles had provided him with unimpeachable proof of their crimes—Tommy Peck was first and foremost a detective inspector at Scotland Yard. And as such, he could not be trusted to help should they produce proof of corruption at Whitehall.

  Which made Imogen’s already inconvenient fascination with him all the more bothersome.

  “So if we cannot go to Scotland Yard . . .” Adelaide began.

  “. . . then we shall have no choice but to go higher,” Duchess replied. “But we’ll need as much proof as we can find.”

  “We need to get into their houses,” Sesily said simply, as though it were a perfectly normal course of action. “If they’re making payments to Scotland Yard . . . there will be proof. Who can get us invitations to dinner?” Her husband groaned beside her, and she patted his leg. “Don’t worry, Caleb darling. You won’t have to dine with aristocrats.”

  “No one is dining with aristocrats in January,” Duchess said. “Parliament isn’t back in session until March. No Parliament, no season. No season, no balls, no dinners, no teas, none of it.”

  “We can’t wait until March,” Adelaide said. “These places—the people who use them—who need them—they are in danger tonight. Right now.”

  Duchess nodded. “But not even I can manufacture a social season.”

  “You can’t,” Imogen said, staring down at the list of names—names she knew from six years in society, and twenty-four as Charles Loveless, Earl Dorring’s sister. “But my brother can.”

  Everyone looked at her, a collection of confusion and curiosity on their faces. She looked to Duchess and set her finger on the first name. “Unmarried.” The second. “Youngest son, unmarried.” The third. “Brother, unmarried.”

  She pointed to herself. “Are we not lucky that my brother has an unmarried sister and is willing to call in virtually every chit he has to cure her of the affliction? And quickly?”

  Understanding dawned around the table. “Imogen Loveless,” Sesily said. “Are you suggesting that you fabricate a search for a groom?”

  She looked to Sesily. “I’m certainly not suggesting I search for a groom in earnest. But I can tolerate a few balls if it means we can get to the bottom of whatever is happening in the East End.”

  “And so?” Duchess asked.

  Imogen met her friend’s expectant gaze. “And so . . . I think you should throw me a ball.”

  “Wonderful,” Duchess said, as though she’d lived her whole life dreaming of just that. “Let’s get you married, Imogen Loveless.”

  “Or at least let’s get the unmarried men of London panting after you,” Sesily retorted. “That’s the fun part!”

  “Hang on,” Adelaide interjected. “What of captaining your own fate? What of charting a new course?”

  The course could wait. Imogen looked to Duchess. “May I come and stay again, Your Grace? At a later date? When I’ve fully aggravated my brother into never wanting to eat lamb at the same table again?”

  “Whenever you like, for as long as you like. You know that,” Duchess said, all certainty. “In the meantime, I believe you continue to require a place for your experiments? You are welcome to explode my cellars all you like, whenever you like.”

  Imogen grinned. “Your husband might feel differently.”

  “What my husband does not know, he cannot protest. What was it you said?” Duchess lifted her glass, fizzing with champagne. “To freedom!”

  “To freedom!” the others cheered, turning heads nearby as Duchess downed her drink.

  “As though it isn’t loud enough in here!” Maggie O’Tiernen arrived, a twinkle in her dark eyes as she settled a hand on Caleb’s shoulder and leaned in to top up Duchess’s champagne.

  A Black woman who’d left Ireland for London the moment she was able, Maggie had arrived with the clothes on her back to build a new life, where she could live freely as a woman, embodying her true self. Knowing what the world could do to those who wished to live authentically, she’d built a safe haven here, on the edges of Covent Garden. The rules were simple: If you were looking for a place to live out loud, and you could find it, The Place would have you, however you came, whomever you loved.

  “Alright, ladies?” Maggie asked, before turning to Clayborn and Caleb where they sat, looking bemused. “Lads?”

  The duke and Mr. Calhoun were the rare exception to the rule that The Place was largely for women, but Caleb Calhoun had won Maggie’s heart when he’d taken down a handful of thugs who’d tried to burn it to the ground fourteen months earlier, and the duke and Adelaide paid handsome rent to keep the apartments abovestairs where she once lived, so Maggie looked the other way as long as they stayed quiet and didn’t upset the customers.

  Imogen was also fairly certain Maggie had required the two men to take a blood vow that they’d enter the fray if anyone ever threatened The Place while they were there . . . so that helped as well. Though, truthfully, no blood vow was necessary, as there was no doubt that both men would happily put themselves in front of a bullet to keep their wives safe.

  It was very sweet, really.

  Sweet enough to make a woman wonder what it might be to have a man worried about her safety. Not that Imogen needed it. And definitely not that she ever dwelled on it. Late at night. When the world was quiet and thoughts were loud.

  As she attempted to recall the exact feeling of being carried out of a building as it collapsed around her, cradled close to a broad, warm chest.

  “Alright, Maggie.” Duchess’s response rose from the back corner of the table, where she was tucked into enough darkness that it would be difficult to identify her. “Packed to the gills tonight, I see.”

  “Aye. Have been every night for the last two weeks. Had to ask The Bastards to loan me three of their bruisers—they’re on every door.” The Bareknuckle Bastards ran Covent Garden—protecting its people and keeping out anyone who wished them ill . . . all while running contraband beneath the eyes of the aristocracy and doing their best to fleece the worst of it. If Maggie’s security had come courtesy of them, it was the best there was.

  Which was why Duchess asked, “Is there a worry?” It wouldn’t be the first time Maggie had required security—The Place had been knocked over several times since it had opened. Imogen thought of the explosion of O’Dwyer and Leafe’s. Men in power did not care for places beyond their control.

  There was always a worry.

  “Nothing specific,” Maggie agreed, sounding less than pleased. “The city appears to have discovered that the ale here at The Place is better than the ale anywhere else in town.”

  “Mithra must be thrilled,” Duchess offered.

  “So thrilled, she’s increasing her prices,” Maggie said, looking over her shoulder at the Punjabi brewmistress holding court at the bar, and shouted the next. “As though we haven’t been carrying her swill from the start!”

  Mithra turned with a bright smile and shouted, “Don’t seem like swill now, does it, Mags?”

  “You’ll have to make The Place members-only if this goes on, Maggie,” Caleb said.

  “You’d best hope not, Calhoun,” the tavern mistress retorted. “I’m not sure you’ll make the list.”

  “Ah, but my wife will,” he said. “And then you’ll have no choice but to have me.”

  “You’re lucky to have married so high above your station,” Maggie replied, already returning to the bar.

  “I am, indeed,” Calhoun said, now looking directly at Sesily. Imogen ignored the little twinge of envy that came with the portrait the two of them made.

  “Before the two of you decide to rush home to bed,” Adelaide said dryly, “I’ve something I’d like to discuss.” Everyone turned attention to her as she held her newspaper up like a trophy. “Have we all seen today’s News?” Before anyone could answer, she set the paper on the table and pointed one long, slim finger at the illustration there. “It seems our friend is famous.”

  Confused, Imogen leaned in along with everyone else, tilting her head to make sense of the drawing. The enormous man. The woman in his arms. Their clothing’s mutual state of disarray. And the building behind, reduced to rubble. Was that—

  Her face was instantly hot. “Oh . . .”

  “Oh, my!” Sesily turned the paper on the table to get a better look. She burst out laughing and repeated, “Oh, my!”

  “Really, Sesily,” Duchess admonished, snatching the paper from its place, looking down at it for a long moment before saying, “This clearly isn’t you, Imogen. The woman the detective inspector is carrying from the building is unconscious.”

  “Someone was unconscious?” Caleb looked to his wife. “Sesily—”

  She waved a hand. “No one was unconscious, Caleb. That’s the point.”

  “But someone did carry Imogen from the building?” the Duke of Clayborn prompted.

  “Detective Inspector Peck,” Adelaide said. “But it wasn’t really a carry. More of a . . .” She paused, considering. “. . . running lift. He had no choice really.”

  “Oh?” asked the duke. “And why not?”

  “Well, it was falling down.”

  “The building.” This from Calhoun.

  “Yes,” Sesily said.

  “Fucking hell, Sesily—”

  “Dammit, Adelaide—” The curses came in unison.

  “It wasn’t me in the building!” Sesily.

  “I was in the carriage! It was Imogen!” Adelaide.

  The two men turned on her, looking simultaneously concerned and outraged. “Fucking hell, Imogen!”

  “Dammit, Imogen!”

  Imogen looked to her friends. “Traitors!”

  Sesily and Adelaide had the grace to look chagrined.

  Imogen extended her hands to the two men who, very sweetly, had claimed her as one of their own after marrying into the crew. “For what it’s worth, you two . . . this is why we don’t tell you everything.”

  “What in hell—” Caleb.

  “I would like to bring this conversation back to what is important,” Duchess interjected, summoning everyone’s attention to where she was holding the paper in their direction. “Leaving aside the fact that Imogen is unconscious here—an absolute insult, if you ask me—”

  “Thank you,” Imogen replied. She’d been perfectly conscious. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for her, it was the inspector who would have been knocked out by the falling staircase.

  “You’re welcome,” Duchess said, a twinkle in her blue eyes. “I will say this: I am quite impressed with how well they portrayed the detective inspector’s muscles.”

  A chorus of feminine laughter was met with masculine groans, and Imogen wondered if she would be missed if she crawled beneath the table.

  She covered her face. “Do you think he’s seen it?”

  If he’d seen it, what did he think?

  Did he remember the feel of her in his arms as well as she remembered the feel of his arms around her?

  No doubt he was not remembering anything of the sort. Instead, he was likely imagining how much easier his life might be without Imogen skulking about in burned out buildings and Scotland Yard uniform rooms. He was probably furious about the caricature and, by extension, with her.

  She really couldn’t blame him.

  Though, she didn’t want him furious with her.

  She wanted him, full stop.

  Of course, she would never admit it. Never in a million years would she tell anyone—not even her friends—how, late at night, when she lay awake in her bed, thinking about all that might be and all that she might have, she sometimes allowed herself to imagine the very ridiculous and absolutely impossible possibility that she might, one day, have Detective Inspector Thomas Peck.

  Thighs and all.

  “Maybe the sketch isn’t the worst thing to have happened,” Duchess said.

  “It isn’t?” Imogen looked up.

  “Maybe . . . if we are correct about the explosions . . . about who is setting them . . .”

  Detective Inspector, Scotland Yard.

  Adelaide understood at the same time. “Enemies closer.”

  The words ran through Imogen, a little blast. A tiny whooom.

  Tommy Peck . . . close. Tommy Peck, in the dark, his beard against her cheek, his broad chest warm at her hand, his voice low and dark at her ear. Coming for her. Claiming her.

  Kissing her.

  “Imogen?” She looked up to find Duchess’s icy blue gaze on hers.

  “Yes?”

  “You said no one stopped you on the way into Scotland Yard.”

  Imogen held back her wince. “Yes.”

  “How did things go on the way out?”

  She cleared her throat. She’d been too much.

  I didn’t attempt to kiss you.

  She’d been so sure he was going to kiss her. It was all so embarrassing.

  Sesily leaned forward. “Lady Imogen! What are you hiding from us?”

  Imogen shook her head, her heart beating a tapatap in her chest. “Nothing happened.”

  It was the truth. And also a lie.

  Adelaide’s brows rose. “In my experience that is precisely the kind of thing people say when something absolutely happened, Imogen.”