Jane rapped on the door as Amy glowered at an infuriating streak of orange in the darkening sky.

“Ready?” she asked.

“An hour ago.”

Jane’s lips quirked as she looked pointedly at the grimy men’s clothes and the streaks of soot adorning Amy’s face. “I guessed as much. I just spoke to Miss Gwen and she says she’ll meet us back here at eleven so we can all leave for the warehouse together.”

“She’s not going to go with us to leave the note?” Amy scraped back her hair with one hand, and felt around on her dressing table for a ribbon with the other.

“No.” Jane took the ribbon from her and began tightly winding the mass of dark curls so they would fit under a knit cap. “She’s saving herself for the real mission. When I went in, she was skewering pillows with her parasol.”

“Some chaperone,” muttered Amy.

“Fortunately for us,” Jane countered wryly, knotting the ribbon. “I’m going to get dressed—are you sure you’re all right?”

“Just fidgety.” Amy demonstrated the proof of her words by resuming her pacing, scattering flecks of dried mud across the carpet. “But I’ll be perfectly happy tomorrow once Lord Richard is gnashing his teeth in frustration because we bested him.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be besting Bonaparte?” Jane inquired delicately.

“Two birds with one stone,” proclaimed Amy with a toss of her head.

Jane shook her head and headed for the door. “I’ll be ready to leave in five minutes,” she reassured her cousin.

Amy glanced at the clock. Nearly half past seven. By eight o’clock . . .


At half past seven, in a small house across the city, Geoff poked his head around the door of Richard’s study.

“Would you like some tea?”

“You can come in, you know,” Richard said crossly, pushing back his chair from the desk. “I’m not going to bite.”

“Do you promise?” Geoff pushed the door the rest of the way open. Richard kicked a chair in his direction. Since the floor of the study was covered by a Persian rug, the chair didn’t go awfully far, but Geoff took the point and the chair. “I thought you were going to skewer Miles with your butter knife tonight at dinner.”

“Well . . . Miles.” Richard shrugged as though that explained it. “Brandy?”

“Thank you.” Geoff accepted a snifter. “Why don’t you just talk to her?”

Richard stiffened, the brandy decanter poised over Geoff’s glass. “To whom?”

Geoff gave him a look. “The Queen of Sheba, who else?” Richard focused on pouring the amber liquid. “Amy, of course.”

“Oh.” Richard corked the brandy decanter and sat back in his chair. “Darts?” he suggested hopefully.

Geoff, however, was not to be deterred. “You are going to do something about her after tonight’s mission, aren’t you? I don’t really care what, but you’ve been increasingly unpleasant to live with.”

“Thanks.”

“Think nothing of it. Well?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it,” Richard grumbled, not meeting Geoff’s eye. That was the problem with friends who had known you since you were just out of the nursery. It was far too easy for them to detect lies—and they had no shame about pointing them out. All right, so Richard had thought about it. Incessantly. He had rehearsed about twenty variants of a speech along the lines of, “Only the need to save England prevented me from revealing to you . . .” No, he had scrapped that one as too pompous. “By the way, thought you might like to know, I’m the Purple Gentian. Will you marry me?” seemed a bit too offhand. And they just got worse from there.

“I was thinking about doing a bit of reconnoitering before tonight’s mission,” Richard announced loudly. True, Geoff was only two feet away, but raising his voice helped to drown out all of that silent skepticism radiating from his friend.

Richard hauled himself out of his chair. He hadn’t really considered reconnoitering before, but now that he’d declared the intent to do so, it did seem rather a good idea. It would give him something to do, keep his mind off Amy, and get him in the right mood for tonight. “I might drop by Delaroche’s lodgings and see if there’s anything about the gold in his secret files there.”

“The ones he keeps under his pillow?” Geoff asked, diverted. “How such an accomplished agent chooses the most idiotic hiding places . . .”

“Shocking, isn’t it?” Richard agreed heartily, seizing the change of subject and making a rapid dash towards the door before Geoff could remember his initial purpose. “The desk drawer in his office and under his pillow. It takes all the challenge out of it. Well, I’m going to go change. I’ll meet you back here by ten or so.”

“Anything else you need me to do?” Geoff asked.

“Just dissuade my mother if she has any ideas of coming along tonight. Other than that, I can’t think of anything that could go wrong,” Richard said breezily, and exited to undertake the calming, and familiar, task of burgling Delaroche’s lodgings. He glanced at the clock: just past seven thirty. He could easily be there within the next half an hour and back by ten.


By eight o’clock, Delaroche’s empty lodgings had become an unexpectedly lively place.

Perched with one leg on the lintel of Delaroche’s windowsill, Richard froze at the sound of a door being eased open. Trying to ignore the discomfort in his leg muscles (after all, it wasn’t the most convenient of poses), Richard watched as the wood swung open in a slow semicircle and a dark-clad frame slid into the small room.

Delaroche? No. The figure, even if somewhat hard to make out in the dark room, was clearly too small to be Delaroche, weedy little man though the Frenchman was. Besides, why would Delaroche be slinking around his own bedroom? The man was odd, and probably mildly mad, but Richard still couldn’t see him prowling around his own darkened room for fun. He preferred to prowl around other people’s darkened rooms for amusement, a pastime Richard had to admit he rather sympathized with.

The small figure stole towards the bed, hips swaying. Hips doing what? Something about the way the prowler was moving nagged at Richard’s memory. Heedless of caution, Richard leaned sharply forward. Intent on tiptoeing, the intruder didn’t notice. The very female intruder. The . . . good God, it was Amy. No wonder that backside looked familiar. He’d certainly spent enough time staring at it over the last few weeks.

The intruder was Amy.

Devil take it, what was Amy doing in Delaroche’s bedchamber?

Amy swerved at the sound of the window sash being raised behind her—and tripped over a leather bed slipper that Delaroche had inconsiderately left lying on the floor beside his bed. She hit the dusty ground with an ooof that obscured the sound of the first footfall, picking herself up off the floor just in time to see a second booted leg join the first. Her gaze traveled up from the scuffed black boots . . . to the hem of a black cape swinging in dark folds against the boot calves. Oh no.

Amy’s hands went cold.

In fact, her entire body must have turned to ice, because she stayed frozen in her half crouch, one hand still touching the dusty floorboards. Her horrified eyes strayed upwards, over a pair of tightly fitted black breeches, black gloved hands loosely resting on the windowsill. . . .

It wasn’t fair. What was he doing here, now, when she was so close to taking her well-deserved revenge? Why couldn’t he have put in an appearance at tea yesterday, or Mme Bonaparte’s salon the day before? Why plague her now? Amy’s whole body began to shake as she took in the lean line of his throat, the familiar angles of his face under the shadowy circle of his hood. She would not fling herself into his arms. It had been a very bad habit, and, besides, he clearly didn’t want her in them anyway. All that was over, over, over. But why did he still have the power to reduce her to an emotional blob of jelly? It was worse than unfair; it was wrong.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, brushing her dusty hands against her knees. With his back to the window, blocking what little moonlight there was, it was all she could do to make out his face, let alone any expression.

“I might ask the same of you,” retorted the Gentian, stepping away from the window in a swirl of black fabric.

Amy automatically took a step back towards the bed, as if putting a few more inches of distance between them would dull the impact of his presence. It didn’t. She still felt his nearness along every inch of skin, raising goose bumps under the coarse linen of her shirt, prickling along the roots of her hair. Amy’s fingers tingled. Hoping it would drive the tingles away, she balled her hands into fists. The tingles spread into her palms.

The Gentian shook his hooded head. In a voice warm with amusement, he said, “You don’t give up easily, do you?”

Amy’s chest constricted with the injustice of it. So it wasn’t enough to repudiate her? He had to laugh at her, too.

“Not on the things that matter,” she bit out.

“I take it you weren’t just out for an evening stroll?”

Amy felt the card containing the Pink Carnation’s note to Delaroche stiff in her pocket. Whatever happened, it was imperative, absolutely imperative, he not discover the existence of the Pink Carnation. Amy clung to that one thought in a mind rapidly turning to mush as Richard took yet another casual step closer. The backs of Amy’s knees banged against Delaroche’s mattress. Thank goodness it was a deep pocket!

“If you’re looking for Delaroche’s secret files”—the Purple Gentian leaned towards Amy—“I’ll give you a little hint. He keeps them under his pillow.”