Lord, she was coming to hate that moniker.

“He’s not a killer.” The words were out before Mara could stop them—before she could realize that they were a tacit admission that she knew the man in question.

She pressed her lips together in a thin line as Lydia’s eyes went wide with interest. “Isn’t he?”

Mara considered her next words carefully. She settled on “No.”

Lydia waited for Mara to continue for a long moment, her blond curls wild and unruly, barely contained by the two dozen pins shoved into the nest. When Mara said nothing more, her first employee and the closest thing she could call a friend sat back in her own chair, crossed her legs, rested her hands in her lap, and said, “He wasn’t here to deliver a child.”

It was not unheard of for men of the aristocracy to arrive toting their illegitimate sons. “No.”

Lydia nodded. “He was not here to retrieve one.”

Mara set her pen into its holder. “No.”

“And he was not here to make a generous, exorbitantly summed donation to the orphanage.”

One side of Mara’s mouth kicked up. “No.”

Lydia cocked her head. “Do you think you might convince him to do so?”

Mara laughed. “He is not in a generous spirit when I am near, sadly.”

“Ah. So he was not here for anything relating to the orphanage.”

“No.”

“Which means he was here because of your second visitor of the day.”

Alarm shot through Mara as she met her friend’s eyes. “I don’t understand.”

“Liar,” Lydia replied. “Your second caller was Mr. Christopher Lowe. Very wealthy, as I understand it, having inherited a glorious fortune from his dead father.”

Mara pressed her lips into a thin line. “Not wealthy anymore.”

Lydia cocked her head. “No. I hear he’s lost everything to the man who killed his sister.”

“He didn’t kill—” Mara stopped. Lydia knew.

“Mmm.” Lydia brushed a speck of lint from her skirt. “You seem very sure of that.”

“I am.”

Lydia nodded. “How long have you known the Duke of Lamont?”

There it was—the question that would change everything. The question that would bring her out of hiding and reveal her to the world.

She was going to have to start telling the truth at some point. She should consider it a gift of sorts that she could begin with Lydia. Except telling her closest friend, who had trusted her for seven long years, that she had been lying all that time was about the most difficult thing she’d ever done.

Mara took a breath. Let it out. “Twelve years.”

Lydia nodded slowly. “Since he killed Lowe’s sister?”

Since he supposedly killed me.

It should have been easy to say it. Lydia knew more about Mara than anyone in the world. She knew about Mara’s life, her work, her thoughts, her plans. She had come to work for Mara as a young, untried governess to a motley group of boys, sent from a large estate in Yorkshire—the one where Mara had herself hidden all those years ago.

Lydia lowered her voice, her tone gentle. Accepting. Filled with friendship. “We all have secrets, Margaret.”

“That’s not my name,” Mara whispered.

“Of course it isn’t,” Lydia said, and the simple words proved to be Mara’s undoing. Tears sprang to her eyes and Lydia smiled, leaning forward. “You no more grew up on a farm in Shropshire than Lavender will.”

Mara huffed a little laugh in the direction of the pig, who snorted in her sleep. “A farm in Shropshire would quite suit her.”

Lydia grinned. “Nonsense. She is a spoiled little porker who sleeps on a stuffed pillow and is fed from the table. She would care for neither the weather, nor the slop.” Her eyes grew large and filled with sympathy. “If not Shropshire, then where?”

Mara looked to the desk where she’d worked for seven years, every day hoping that these questions would never come. She spoke to the papers there. “Bristol.”

Lydia nodded. “You don’t sound like you were raised on the Bristol docks.”

A vision of the enormous house where she’d spent her youth flashed. Her father used to say that he could buy Britain if he’d wanted to, and he’d built a house to prove that fact to the rest of the world. The house had been gilded and painted, filled with oils and marbles that made the Elgins look minuscule. He’d been particularly fond of portraits, filling every inch of wall with the faces of strangers. Someday, I’ll replace them with my own family, he used to say every time he hung a new one.

The house had been exorbitant at best, outrageous at worst.

And it had been the only thing he’d loved.

“I wasn’t.”

“And the duke?” Lydia knew. No doubt.

“I . . .” Mara paused, chose her next words carefully. “I met him. Once.”

Not false, and yet somehow not true. Met wasn’t precisely the word she would use to describe her interactions with him. The hour had been late, the night dark, the situation desperate. And she’d taken advantage of him. Briefly.

Long enough.

“On the eve of your wedding.”

She had dreaded this moment for twelve years—had feared that it would destroy her. And yet, as she stood on the precipice of admitting the truth for the first time in twelve years—of being honest with her friend and, somehow, with the universe, she did not hesitate. “Yes.”

Lydia nodded. “He didn’t kill you.”

“No.”

Lydia waited.

Mara shook her head, rubbing her forearm absently. “I never meant for it to look so . . . dire.” She’d meant to bloody her sheets. To make it look like she’d been ruined. Like she’d run off with a man. He was to have escaped before anyone saw what had happened. But there’d been too much laudanum. And too much blood.

There was a long moment while Lydia considered the words. She turned the envelope in her hand over and over, and Mara could not help but watch the small ecru rectangle flip again and again. “I can’t remember your name.”

“Mara.”

“Mara.” Lydia repeated, testing the name. “Mara.”

Mara nodded, pleasure coursing through her at the sound of her name on someone’s lips. Pleasure and not a little bit of fear.

No going back now.

Finally, Lydia smiled, bright and honest. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

Mara caught her breath at the words, at the way they flooded her with relief. “When he gets his way, I shall be found out.”

Lydia met her gaze evenly, knowing what the words meant. Knowing that Mara would be run out of London. That the orphanage would lose everything if she were linked to it. Knowing that she would have to leave. “And will he get his way?”

Retribution.

The man would not stop until he did so. But she had plans as well. This life she’d built might be over, but she would not leave without ensuring the boys’ security. “Not without my getting a way of my own as well.”

Lydia’s lips kicked up in a wry smile. “Just as I expected.”

“I understand if you want away from here. If you want to leave.”

Lydia shook her head. “I don’t wish to leave.”

Mara smiled. “Good. As this place will need you when I am gone.”

Lydia nodded. “I will be here.”

The clock in the hallway beyond chimed, as if marking the moment’s importance. The sound shook them from the moment. “Now that that’s done,” Lydia said, extending the envelopes she held to Mara, “perhaps you’d like to tell me why you are receiving missives from a gaming hell?”

Mara’s eyes went wide as she took the offered envelope, and turned it over in her hands. On the front, in deep black, close-to-illegible scrawl, was her name and direction. On the back, a stunning silver seal, marked with a delicate female angel, lithe and lovely with wings that spanned the wax.

The seal was unfamiliar.

Mara brought it closer, for inspection.

Lydia spoke. “The seal is from The Fallen Angel.”

Mara looked up, heart suddenly pounding. “The duke’s club.”

Blue eyes lit with excitement. “The most exclusive gaming hell in London, where half of the aristocracy wagers an obscene fortune each night.” Lydia lowered her voice. “I hear that the members need only ask for what they want—however extravagant or lascivious or impossible to acquire—and the club provides.”

Mara rolled her eyes. “If it’s impossible to acquire, how does the club acquire it?”

Lydia shrugged. “I imagine they are quite powerful men.”

A memory flashed of Temple’s broad shoulders and broken nose, of the way he commanded her into his home. Of the way he negotiated the terms of their agreement.

“I imagine so,” she said, sliding a finger under the silver wax and opening the letter.

Two words were scrawled across the paper—two words, surrounded by an enormous amount of wasted space. It would never occur to her to use paper so extravagantly. Apparently, economy was not at the forefront of Temple’s mind—except, perhaps, for economy of language.

Nine o’clock.

That was it. No signature, not that she required one. It had been a dozen years since someone had exhibited such imperious control over her.

“I do not think I like this duke of yours very much.” Lydia was leaning across the desk, neck craned to see the note.

“As he is not my duke, I have little problem with that.”

“You intend to go?”

She had made an arrangement. This was her punishment. Her penance.

Her only chance.

Ignoring the question, she set the paper aside, her gaze falling to the second envelope. “That’s much less interesting,” Lydia said.