Now that was the Sally he remembered.

She’d been the toughest, hardest and fiercest of their gang. All of the lads — the pickpockets, the mudlarks, the thieves — had been afraid of her. Except for him. He knew the one thing that frightened Sally. When he wanted her to shut her mouth, all he had to do was kiss her. Or show her he cared about her.

That had been a long time ago. Back in the days when he never would have dreamed he’d end up on the good side of the law as a Bow Street Runner. Back then he never would have pictured Sally in anything but a ragged dress, with her fists doubled and her point of a chin stuck out. Never would he have pictured her looking down her nose at grand ladies.

Trevelyan tossed away his cheroot and ground it into the cobblestones of the street.

Sally had done well for herself.

It was a shame he was going to have to destroy her.

Estelle froze. All thoughts of what exact shade of ivory the daughter of the Duke of St Ives should wear vanished from her head. It no longer mattered that the fashion was now for long sleeves. Or that it could be possible to make Lady Amelia’s bosom appear more ample, with strategic pleating and a lot of padding.

He stood in the doorway, the proverbial bull in the china shop. At once her lavender sachets were overwhelmed by the rich, refined, masculine scent of him, of smoke, shaving soap, and sandalwood. His straight shoulders filled the doorway from side to side. His gaze — sharp, intelligent — glinted with an amusement that made her quake, and fastened immediately on her.

She had wondered if he would ever come and find her. It would be so easy for Trevelyan to get his revenge, which he surely must want.

All he had to do was tell every lady in her shop exactly where she had come from and who she really was.

A pin jabbed into her tongue. Estelle spat them into her hand. The attention of every woman in her salon riveted on him. He had to duck for the doorway, and he took off his beaver hat to clear it, revealing his striking coal-black hair and the one streak of white that began at his temple and followed the sweep of his unfashionably long hair to his shoulder.

“Madame Desjardins,” he said, with a perfunctory bow. He straightened, then ensured he closed the door behind him, a sardonic smile on his mouth. “Is it intended to mean ‘Star of the Gardens’? I like that very much.”

Her stomach almost dropped away. What did he want? “May I help you, Mr Foxton?”

The buzz began at once.

“Goodness, Mr Foxton is a Bow Street Runner,” whispered Lady Amelia to her bosom-bow, Lady Caroline.

Lady Caroline put her gloved hand to her mouth and her eyes glittered with delight. “What is he doing here? Do you think there’s been a crime committed?”

“You mean other than these prices?” muttered Lady Caroline’s mother.

“Have you heard?” one young lady whispered. “It is said that Mr Foxton is the heir to the Earl of Doncaster.”

Estelle froze. She took care to know the gossip of the ton. How could she not have known this?

“That cannot be true. I heard that he grew up in the East End stews,” declared the voluptuous Countess of Bournemouth. “And that he has a very sordid past.” She said it breathily, as though “sordid” was a commendable thing.

“I think he is trying to look down Lady Armitage’s bodice!”

That would not surprise Estelle. Trevelyan had always been a rogue. And he appeared to enjoy making her clients shocked and uncomfortable. “Madame Desjardins,” he began, in a voice that had deepened and roughened and grown even more magnetic in ten years, “I hate to trouble you, but I would like a private word.”

The ladies gasped. For, of course, it meant he must walk through her shop, past the curtained rooms in which women stood in various states of undress. “Miss Sims,” she instructed her best seamstress, “advise the ladies to keep their curtains closed, if you please. Mr Foxton, you may come to my office. I assume a respectable representative of Bow Street will keep his eyes averted.”

Oh, she was not prepared to have him in her private office. At once he went to her desk and tried the drawers. “The key, please, Sal.”

That name. She had not heard it for ten years. It was not her name any more. “If you want my help, do not call me that, Lyan.” She carried her keys in a pocket sewn into her dress, skilfully designed so as not to ruin the line of the smooth-flowing skirt.

This was her sanctuary — this office, this shop. “Do you wish to see my book of accounts? You are free to review it, if you are interested in what a satin ball gown costs these days. If it’s the measurements of my clients that interest you, I will not help you there. That information rests only in my head.”

He pulled out her ledger, planted his trouser-clad derrière on the edge of her desk, and flipped open the book. “I am here about Lady Maryanne Bryght.”

A shudder of apprehension slid down her spine. “Lady Maryanne? I do believe she was a client of mine. But why—?”

Her book of accounts landed, closed, on her desk. His green eyes had narrowed, and he looked so expressionless, she shivered. The Lyan she remembered had never looked so cold.

“You’re lying to me, Sal. That’s why I never came to see you before. I knew all you’d give me was a pack of lies.”

“Perhaps you should question me first, before assuming that’s all I will do.” She tipped up her chin and spoke with the bravado she’d cultivated on the streets.

“At first, I suspected Lady Maryanne never came to see you. I assumed she used your appointment in order to leave the house so early in the morning. I believed she’d headed for Gretna Green instead.”

In the stews, she had stared down any number of men — from randy young toffs to vicious pimps looking to drag her into their seedy flash-houses. But she was quaking now. “Then you should be able to find her.”

“Angel, that appointment was five days ago. She should have returned a happily married woman by now. I followed her tracks along the Great North Road as far as the border, and then she disappears. No one in Gretna remembers her. If she was wed over the anvil, no one will admit to performing the ceremony. She’s vanished into thin air.”

Estelle swallowed hard. That made no sense. She had investigated Lady Maryanne’s handsome young scholar. That was what she did. She smoothed the course of true love for young ladies about to be forced into loveless marriages. She had made her choice years ago — security over love. But that did not mean she could bear to see innocent women made into prisoners in their marriages. This gave her the chance to see others have what she couldn’t.

Her investigation had revealed the gentleman Maryanne adored to be exactly what he claimed — a studious, respectable, noble young man, the youngest son of a now-impoverished viscount. “Do you know who she ran away with?” she asked, trying to look shocked.

This was a nightmare. There was no one in London — in all England — who knew her like Lyan did. If anyone could see through lies, it would be he.

“Yes. Don’t you?”

She imagined he hoped she would incriminate herself. But there was nothing more she could tell him. She had watched Lady Maryanne climb into a hackney, and had loaned the eighteen-year-old girl a purse filled with money to finance the journey (since, like most girls, Maryanne had no access to money on her own).

She had sent Maryanne on her escape to true love.

She had hoped Maryanne had crossed the border into Scotland, where a young couple needed no one’s consent but their own to marry. As soon as they had crossed the border, lovers could marry anywhere, but Gretna Green was close and, since the couple usually wanted to be joined in haste, that was where they would stop. Vows were spoken over the anvil at the blacksmiths’ shops, officiated by the blacksmith priests.

Maryanne must now be safely wed. And blurting out the truth of what she had done would not accomplish anything. It would not give Trevelyan any more information than he already had. It would destroy her. And she was not the only person she had to worry about.

“Lady Maryanne came here that morning. We had another fitting. Dresses for her wedding trousseau — for her upcoming nuptials with her guardian, Lord Cavendish.” She managed not to shudder at the name. “I do not know any more than that, Lyan.”

“You do, love. Everything about you screams to me that you’re keeping secrets. You always looked your most defiant when you were telling me a tale. Now, how about we strike up a bargain? You tell me everything, and I won’t go back out and have a nice chat about our childhood with the Duchess of St Ives.”

“Don’t. Don’t ruin me, Lyan. It may please you to see me lose everything, but I would not be the only one to suffer. You see, I have a daughter.”

She could not have stunned him more if she’d hit him with a plank. She could see that from the way all six feet of him lurched back on his heels. And she knew what he must think.

“No, she is not your child. But I will be damned if I will end up like my mother — poor and in some stinking, wretched flash-house. My daughter is almost nine years of age.” She lied there. It had been ten years since she had last seen Trevelyan. Since she had panicked and gathered up half the money she knew he hid in his grotty room, and run away with it. “You know what her life would be like if I have to go back there.” Her voice was shaking, no matter how much she tried to calm it.

“Who is her father, Sal?”

“That is none of your business.”