The horses were still running full out, straight down the center of the bridge; whether Miles was driving them, or they were bolting, Henrietta wasn't entirely sure. Head turned to the side, Henrietta counted arches as they whizzed by. They were past the halfway mark, still going strong straight down the middle of the bridge.

A shout made her jerk her head back to the road. Someone screamed. Henrietta wasn't quite sure, but she thought it might have been she.

Smack in the center of a bridge a cart full of cabbages blocked the way. Its owner, wide-eyed with terror, tugged futilely at the mule's head, futilely entreating him to move. The curricle barreled inexorably closer. Three yards… two… The wild-eyed farmer dropped the reins and scrambled for cover. The mule didn't budge.

"Oh, my God," breathed Henrietta.

Next to her, Miles drew in an exultant breath. "Just the thing! Hang on, Hen…"

Henrietta had heard of driving to an inch, but she had never seen it performed quite so literally before. At the last possible moment, Miles swung the horses to the side in a concerted movement that would have been beautiful in its sheer coordination if Henrietta hadn't been trying quite so hard not to fall out the side of the coach. Moving perfectly in tandem, the horses swept around the side of the cart, passing so neatly through the narrow space that Henrietta could hear the wood of the cart whisper along one side of the curricle and the stone of the balustrade on the other.

Miles muttered something under his breath that sounded like, "My varnish," but Henrietta was too busy ushering up fervent thanks to the Almighty to be quite sure.

And then they were clear again, with an unimpeded path to the edge of the bridge. Miles cracked his whip over his head with an uninhibited shout of triumph.

"Watch this, Hen!" he shouted, as the curricle careened off the bridge and veered sharply to the left — just as the carriage behind them, going too fast to stop, and without enough skill to employ Miles's maneuver, slammed right into the farmer's deserted cart with an explosive crash. Cabbages flew everywhere. A hail of green balls descended upon the passersby and plopped into the greedy mouth of the Thames.

Henrietta caught the merest glimpse of their assailant's carriage, piled high with produce, before Miles flicked the reins again and plunged into a shadowed side street just wide enough to admit the curricle. As it was, the scraped sides brushed against lines of laundry, and the overhangs of the upper stories formed a dark canopy above Henrietta's head. Miles took them down an intricate web of back streets, while Henrietta concentrated on coaching air back into her lungs. As the landscape began to appear more familiar, the streets broader, the houses wider, Miles let the lathered horses slow to an exhausted shuffle.

Henrietta forced her gloved hands to unclench from the sides of the seat, finger by finger.

"Are we… safe, do you think?" she asked, blinking unsteadily at their surroundings. She pressed her fingers to her eyes, wondering if it was the twilight that rendered Grosvenor Square so murky and insubstantial, or her vision. The gray-fronted mansions swayed as though they were phantoms composed of fog and might dissolve at any moment, while the trees in the center of the square melded together into an indistinguishable blur of green and brown.

"He won't have followed us here," Miles said, drawing the horses to a stop in front of a wide-fronted mansion, a command the tired horses were only too glad to obey. Miles couldn't stop a satisfied smirk from creeping across his face as he added, "It will take him a while to climb out from under all that cabbage."

"That was quite impressive," said Henrietta shakily. "Especially that bit with the cart."

Miles gave his whip a modest twirl. "There was plenty of room."

"And I hope never to be in a carriage with you when you drive like that ever again." Miles's whip stopped mid-twirl. "I thought I was going to be ill. Or dead," she added as an afterthought.

"Didn't you trust my driving?" Miles asked indignantly.

"Oh. I trust you. It was the man with the gun who worried me. Somehow, I didn't think he would be quite so solicitous of my well-being." Starting to shake, Henrietta raised both her hands to her lips. "Someone just shot at us. Do you realize that someone just shot at us?"

Making a muffled noise of concern, Miles dragged Henrietta into his arms. Henrietta went without argument, burying her head in Miles's cravat while a series of nightmare images flashed through her head, faster than the scenery they had charged through on their heedless flight. That dark, faceless carriage pounding after them. The long muzzle of a gun, glinting in the last rays of the sunlight. The sound of bullets, sending up puffs of dust in the road behind them, and chipping at the sides of the curricle. Henrietta's unregenerate imagination presented her with the image of Miles jerking back as a bullet thudded into him, stiffening, and tumbling over the side of the curricle into the wayside dust, his brown eyes open in an unseeing stare. Henrietta realized she was shaking, and couldn't make herself stop. If any one of those bullets had been just a little closer…

Henrietta gazed at Miles with anguished eyes. "You could have died!" She thought for a moment, and frowned. "I could have died."

"But we didn't," Miles said soothingly. "See? We're both alive. No bullet holes." He raised an arm to demonstrate, and saw that there was, in fact, a neat round hole in the folded canopy behind him. Miles hastily leaned back against the offending awning, hoping Henrietta hadn't noticed. That had been closer than he'd thought. Whoever it had been in the carriage behind them — and Miles had a damned good idea — was a devil of a shot.

"Oh, goodness," whispered Henrietta, staring at a long furrow along the side of the curricle, right next to Miles's arm.

"Don't." Miles squished her head into his chest. "Don't think about it. Think about" — he was seized by sudden inspiration — "cabbages!"

That won him a startled giggle.

"How many French spies do you think are brought down by vegetables?" he continued, expanding on his theme. "We could make a career of it! Next time onions, then carrots, maybe a few lima beans…"

"Don't forget the turnips." Henrietta tipped her head up at him and drew a shaky breath. "Thank you."

"Think nothing of it," said Miles, smoothing a strand of hair off her face.

"I'm all right now," Henrietta said resolutely, pulling away and sitting up straight. "Really, I am. I'm sorry to behave like such a…"

"Girl?" grinned Miles.

"That," said Henrietta sternly, "was unnecessary." For a moment, they smiled at each other in complete accord, wrapped in the comfortable familiarity of old patterns. It was unclear how long they might have sat like that, had a groom not appeared, asking Miles if he wished his horses to be led away to the stables.

Henrietta's smile faded, and she looked up at the house and back at Miles with some confusion. The house was virtually indistinguishable from many of the others in the Square, a vast, classical pile with a rusticated foundation, and wide pilasters supporting a triangular pediment. Flambeaux blazed on either side of the door, but the windows above stairs were all dark, the dark of a house long shut up. All the drapes were drawn, and the front door had an unused air. The only sign of habitation came from below stairs, where a faint light gleamed from the sunken windows.

It wasn't Uppington House, and it certainly was not Miles's bachelor lodgings in Jermyn Street.

Yet, the groom knew Miles, had greeted him by name. Henrietta's tired mind absolutely refused to grapple with this latest puzzle. She allowed herself to be helped down from the curricle, looking to Miles in bewilderment. "Where are we?"

"Loring House," announced Miles, tossinga coin to the groom, and offering Henrietta his arm.

"Loring House?" echoed Henrietta.

"You know, the ancestral home? Well, not that ancestral. There used to be a house on the Strand, but we lost that one in the Civil War."

"But…" Henrietta fumbled for words, fearing that being jounced around in the carriage had done permanent damage to her mental capacities, because she was having a great deal of trouble making sense of the situation. She stopped just before the front steps. "Aren't we going to your lodgings?"

"I thought about it" — Miles stuck his hands in his pockets — "but I couldn't take you there." Henrietta's heart sunk.

"You couldn't?" she said neutrally, wondering if it might not have been better just to have been shot back at Streatham Common and have done with it. At least then, Miles could have borne her broken body in his manly arms. Hmph. Henrietta abandoned the image. Knowing her, she would probably have contrived only to be wounded, and would have been cranky and in pain, and there would have been nothing the least bit romantic about it.

Miles squared his shoulders, which, given the breadth of his shoulders, was an impressive sight to behold, and one to which Henrietta, even in her state of confusion, could not be completely immune.

"They're not bad as bachelor lodgings go, and Downey keeps things tiptop, but — you would be out of place. They're not what you're used to."

"But — " began Henrietta, and then checked herself, biting down on the impulse to protest that wherever he was would be a home to her. If he was looking for excuses, reasons to be rid of her, it would be far more graceful just to accede and let him take her home. But why hadn't he taken her to Uppington House?