Chapter One

Culholland Square, Mayfair July 14, 1806

"La, Mr. Fox, if your eyes occasionally strayed above my neckline you might find it easier to guess what I am miming during the game," Charlotte said archly. The redheaded young man, heir to a merchant's vast fortune and as of last Wednesday owning a suspiciously acquired baronetcy, colored violently.

Charlotte took no pity. The bran-faced upstart had been staring at her bosom since he'd arrived in the company of the young people she'd invited to her town house for games and refreshments - her first "at home" since she had taken possession of the fashionable Mayfair address, a scandalous move since she intended to live as a spinster. Alone.

As Lady Welton was chaperoning the occasion, it was all perfectly respectable - even though the baroness had fallen asleep in a patch of sunlight hours before. At least, Charlotte amended with a nod to her conscience, it was supposed to have been respectable. But then nothing she ever did seemed to turn out quite as respectably as her lineage, lofty associations (she was, after all, the sister-in-law of Ramsey Munro, marquis of Cottrell, as well as the renowned Colonel Christian MacNeill) and delightful manners would suggest.

And that, Charlotte fully appreciated, was a great deal of her appeal. Within Charlotte's charmed circle, things could be said that one daren't utter elsewhere, a few steps of the notorious waltz might be demonstrated, the ladies' gowns were more fashionable and less substantial, laughter came more freely, and the verbal ripostes that most unmarried young girls didn't dare serve their potential suitors Charlotte doled out regularly to hers. Thus, Charlotte's set-down of the goggle-eyed Mr. Robinson brokered as many giggles among the females as guffaws from the males.

"Sorry. Don't know what I was thinkin'," Mr. Robinson sputtered.

"I don't think thought entered much into it, do you?" Charlotte asked sweetly, giving rise to another round of scandalized laughter. "Come, my friend, let us practice looking at a lady's face ... no, no, no! Not my lips - the whole of my face. See? Two brows, a pair of oddly colored eyes, an inconsequential nose, a rather too decisive chin. Ah! There. Bravo!"

The young ladies and gentlemen, acknowledged by all to be by far the fastest set of unmarried young people in the ton, clapped appreciatively and Mr. Robinson, as determined to be one of them as he was to charm Miss Nash, found the self-confidence to laugh at himself, bowing in turn to her and the rest of the company.

The byplay ended, her guests began taking turns at charades again and Charlotte, realizing that the punch bowl was growing woefully low, popped out into the corridor to find a maid. She had gotten no further than the kitchen door when a masculine voice hailed her in breathless tones.

Knowing all too well what would follow, she turned around. But it was not Mr. Robinson. It was Lord LeFoy. Tall, sandy-haired Lord LeFoy. Well, here was a surprise. She'd thought he had all but offered for the Henley girl.

"Miss Nash," he breathed, coming toward her with his hands outstretched. She waited politely. His hands, finding none waiting to secure, fell to his sides.

"Yes?"

"I must have a moment of your time."

"Yes."

"Alone."

She glanced tellingly around the short corridor.

"Yes."

He frowned. Apparently this was not going as he'd hoped. Poor Lord LeFoy. Things seldom did where she and gentlemen were concerned. At least, for the gentlemen.

"You had something you wished to impart of a private nature?" she prompted.

"Yes," he said, nodding eagerly. "Yes. I ... I ..."

"Yes?"

"I adore you!"

"Ah."

He reached down and grabbed one of her hands, snatching it to his lips and pressing an ardent kiss to the gloved surface. "I am your slave. Ask me anything, anything, and I shall do it. I am yours to command. I worship you, you angel, you devil!"

"Like Lucifer?" she asked, letting her hand lie like a dead thing in his. Really, to encourage him would be too cruel, and she already had a bit too much of a reputation for heartlessness. Added to which, she rather liked the Henleys. They would be relieved of a great deal of worry with the marriage settlement Lord LeFoy's father would offer.

"Eh?" Lord LeFoy blinked owlishly.

"Angel and devil. If I have my catechism correct, only one being qualifies on both counts and that is Lucifer."

"Ah. Yes. No. I meant that you are an angel but that your angelicness bedevils me." He seemed quite pleased with this explanation. "You must be mine!"

"Oh, dear. Are you declaring yourself, Lord LeFoy? Because I would rather think not, if you wouldn't mind. I like you, you see. And I should lead you a merry chase if we were to wed." At his blank expression she gave a little sigh.

"Allow me to enumerate my shortcomings," she said kindly. "I haven't it in me to be faithful. I detest jealousy and possessiveness in any degree and should react strongly and in a possibly scandalous fashion if presented with either. I should think I would be deuced expensive to keep. Added to which I have no desire now, or in the near future, to produce offspring." She smiled pleasantly.

Lord LeFoy's round eyes grew rounder. She could almost see Reason trying to assert itself in that beleaguered expression. But then Reason was not a man's strong suit when he had decided he must have something.

"I don't care. I adore you!"

"Of course you do," she answered, patting the hand still clutching hers. "The point isn't what you feel. It is what is best. I should hate for your adoration to turn to misery. I dislike being around miserable people. They are tiresome. And it would turn to misery. Your father ...?" She laughed at the thought of the lecherous Earl of Mallestrough as her father-in-law. "I suspect I should have to lock the bedroom door against him whenever you left the house. Not a very winning prescription for matrimonial harmony, now is it?"

At the mention of his father, Lord LeFoy went quite still. At least he respected her enough not to challenge her estimation of his sire.

"No, no," she said. "We are far better off as we are now with you adoring me and me wallowing in it. Very romantic. And more civil, too, because this way neither your adoration nor my wallowing in it need interfere with our lives. You will wed Maura Henley, who will make a lovely bride and a fine mother for your children and who will never throw your things from her room or cause a scene at Almacks. You shall be very happy. Except that for my vanity's sake, might you occasionally be gentleman enough to sigh wistfully when we meet in public so that I might happily hear it?"

"You would make a scene at Almack's?" he breathed in horrified wonder.

"Oh, I should think eventually it will become inevitable, don't you?" she asked sweetly, tilting her head.

He dropped her hand. "Begad, yes. You would. You will."

"Now, before some of the others decide that this little conversation amounts to your having compromised me, you had best return while I see to the punch bowl," she said brightly.

He gulped, turned, hesitated, and turned back. "Ah. Thank you, Miss Nash. You are a very ... levelheaded woman."

She leaned forward and whispered, "Don't tell anyone."

Lord Lefoy nodded, just as eager to leave as he had been to press his suit five minutes ago, and all but trotted back to the parlor, leaving Charlotte to raise her eyes heavenward with a mumbled word of thanks.

She had no sooner begun down the corridor once more when her maid, a pert, sharp-eyed girl named Lizette, appeared. "I beg your pardon, Miss Nash, but there's a ... man here that insists on seeing you."

A man. Not a gentleman. And not a tradesman or Lizette would have dealt with him herself. Charlotte's curiosity was piqued.

"Who is this man?"

"He says he's a thief taker, Miss Nash, and come with word of some jewels he's recovered." Lizette's pretty, round face scrunched in consternation as she scoured her mind for memory of missing jewels. She wouldn't find any. Probably because Charlotte wasn't missing any jewels. Charlotte's heart began beating faster and a shiver ran along her skin.

"Where is he?"

"I didn't know where to put him, so I put him in the morning room, miss."

"Very well," Charlotte said. "Please explain to my guests that I may be a while."

Without waiting to see that her orders were obeyed, Charlotte followed the hall to the morning room and entered.

Her heart was still racing.

"Thief taker?" Amused, Charlotte slowly circled her favorite chair where Dand Ross slouched, legs straight out, his shoddy boot heels crossed on the clean surface of her favorite inlaid table. His unannounced appearance filled her with excitement. Not that she would tell him that. He would preen, or worse, be amused. And it was only because he always brought with him an air of tantalizing danger that she reacted thus.

She hadn't known she would find danger so ... appealing when she'd entered Dand Ross's shadowy world. But she could not deny it, any more than she could resist it. Though she was loath to let Dand know the degree to which she looked forward to his unheralded arrivals.

She tapped one perfectly manicured nail pensively against her lips as if pondering a conundrum before leaning forward and sniffing delicately. Her face alit with sudden inspiration. "I have it ... Lizette misheard you. You must have said rat taker!"

He looked up at her through thick chocolate brown lashes. "You know, Lottie, me love," he said thoughtfully, "they are actually wearing bodices in Paris these days instead of just admitting to the concept."

His gaze fell on her daring decolletage before lifting to meet hers. She returned it calmly. If he expected to raise a blush in her cheeks, he was doomed to disappointment. More men than she could easily count had ogled her not-all- that-bountiful bounty without so much as warming her cheeks.

Besides, in the years since they'd met and in dozens of meetings since, he had sometimes teased her with a feigned sexual interest, but he had never acted on his bold words. He was the consummate professional: detached, cynical, uninvolved.

She studied him as he tipped a glass of claret into his mouth. The years had broadened him and lengthened him and hardened him, too, but he still had that loose-knit, damn- your-eyes sort of grace one saw in the more successful tomcats.

Dusky brown hair, hooded smoky brown eyes, a lean face with a wide mouth and thin lips and a square jaw that currently hid beneath a thick beard along with a piratical scar. Though he cheerfully admitted that mark had been the result of falling off a ladder while stealing apples and not the dueling wound she had once imagined.

She wasn't certain she believed him. She wasn't certain of what she really knew about Dand and what he wanted her to believe she knew. He kept his own counsel, his feelings - if he had any - well hidden.

"Really?" she drawled sweetly. "Well, we are at war and there are embargos on and I consider it my duty to see that my dressmaker doesn't stress the economy overmuch by any extravagant use of material."

"Such patriotism, Charlotte," he rejoined dryly. "I am struck dumb by your sacrifices. Or should I say sacrifice in the singular? It doesn't look as if you are denying yourself too much in the way of creature comforts."

His ironic gaze traveled about the exquisitely decorated sitting room, touching on the slate blue walls accented by the clean lines of white painted woodwork and on to the furniture: the settees with their beautifully fluted legs upholstered in bishop's blue watered silk, the open-backed chairs carved into elegant lyres, the pillows and cushions fitted in expensive jonquil-colored brocade. At a japanned side table his perusal checked on a riot of yellow roses and waxy white gardenias that spilled from an enormous Chinese urn.

"Are those yellow roses?"

"You recognize them."

"Oh, yes." His voice was quiet. "I nourished them with my blood. Where did you get them?"

"They came from the plant you and your companions gave us so many years ago. I brought cuttings with me from York. First to the Welton's town house and now here," she said, "to remind me of the good old days. You should see the sensation I cause when I dress them in my hair or use them to decorate what I think of - apparently erroneously - as my bodice." She grinned. "I do so like causing a sensation. Besides, they suit the decor," she added, surveying the room with satisfaction.

"New address. New paint. New furniture," Dand was murmuring as he too, looked around. "One must ask oneself: Is it quite respectable, though? A young woman living alone?"

"Oh, I don't think so," she answered glibly. "But then ... what do I care for respectability when it only ties my hands and prevents me from being as useful to you and your associates as I am here, alone?"

"So practical, Lottie. You've become rather a tough little article, haven't you?"

"I should like to think so."

"I know you would," he said with a lazy smile. "How many hearts have you broken this week, cruel little Miss Nash?"

"Hearts?" She pondered. "None. Pride? A few."

"Poor bastards." He set the goblet by his feet and tipped his chair back, balancing on the back legs and crossing his hands across the hard, flat plane of his belly.

After all these months, she still could not get over the wonder that he was one of England's premier secret agents. It seemed so improbable. Disreputable, devious, and dangerous - she couldn't believe that her first impression of him emerging from the shadows in Father Tarkin's library had been so off the mark.

There had been an instance then, before a word had even been spoken between them, when their eyes had met and her breath and heart had stilled. Time had disappeared and she'd felt she could live there, held forever in his bright, fierce gaze. Except then he had spoken - dismissing her, dismissing that instant of communion. Ah, well. It was all fantastical anyway. There were no sacred bonds, no deeper union. There was purpose and duty. And that was more than enough to anchor a life.

"Still. Something must have prompted your change of address," Dand persisted. "What happened, Lottie? Did you finally perpetrate some social crime even the Baron and Lady Welton couldn't overlook? Did you wear diamonds before noon? Don the same gown twice in a month?" he asked. "Tell me. What did you do that made the Weltons hide the front door keys so you couldn't run tame about their house?"

"Nothing at all. It is simply that Maggie Welton had the audacity to get married," she answered airily. "And her husband, poor creature that he is, refused to invite me to live with them.