Louisa touched one of the pages. “You’ll find it. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Look at a jumble no one else understands and discover a clear pattern?”

That was exactly what he did, but this time, Fellows was finding the way murky. “You have much faith in me.”

“I’ve heard about your cases from Hart. He’s very interested in what you do. You find people, you solve crimes that no one else is able to.” Louisa looked up at him, her eyes full of confidence. “You’ll solve this one. That was what I was trying to tell you before you dragged me away so precipitously from my sister’s supper ball.” Her smile returned, the warm one she’d bestowed on Fellows a few times in the past. He remembered every single instance. “If anyone saw us go, my reputation will be in tatters—even more than it already is.”

“You’ll not be ruined,” Fellows said. “I’ll make sure of it.”

“Because Daniel is with us? True, I wager he’ll spin a tale that he and I begged you to show us the inner workings of Scotland Yard until you capitulated.” She shrugged, pretending nonchalance, though her shoulders were stiff. “It is all in the family, after all.”

“We’re not family,” Fellows said abruptly.

Louisa shook her head, which made the diamonds glitter in the room’s stark gaslight. “Indeed, we are, which is Isabella’s fault. I never thought I’d find myself with five somewhat overbearing brothers and one energetic grown-up nephew, but when Isabella married Mac, that is what I got. I do like it, most of the time.”

“You and I are not brother and sister.” Fellows’ words came out harsh and flat.

“Well, no, not by blood.” Louisa smiled again, that heartbreaking, beautiful smile. "We have shared a kiss or two, after all."

He was going to die. Louisa sat in his office chair, decorating the room as nothing ever had, smiling her sweet little smile. She didn’t belong here, and yet she brightened the space like a beacon.

“A kiss or two,” Fellows said. “Is that how you think of them?” While he dreamed of them in the nighttime and woke up hot, sweaty, and hard. He had to stifle his groans so he wouldn’t disturb the neighbors.

Louisa’s smile wavered. “I imagined that was how you thought of them. The silly kisses of a silly girl.”

Fellows came around the desk and stood over her, his breath hurting him. “I’m not like Daniel,” he said, voice still grating. “Or your Mr. Franklin. Or those stuffed asses at the ball with lust in their eyes as they watched you dance. I wanted to pound the faces of every one of those bastards for looking at you like that.”

Louisa blinked in surprise. “What are you talking about? They looked at me in disgust. Everyone believes I poisoned Hargate.”

“And the idea that you might be a murderess excited them. Every male there wanted you, Louisa; I watched them want you. That’s another reason I took you away from there tonight, another reason I urged you to stay home until this is over.”

They stared at each other. Louisa’s eyes were a beautiful green, slightly moist with tears she refused to let form. The men tonight had wanted her, Fellows had seen. Not only was she lovely in her froth of a ball gown, that black ribbon around her throat, the taint of the murder made her even more seductive. The same taint also took away some of the stigma for touching her—she was not the sweet innocent her set had thought her, or so they now believed. If they debauched her, it would be Louisa’s fault, not theirs.

Fellows had to protect her from that. At the same time, he knew he was a hypocrite, because he wanted her as much as had any man there. Fellows didn’t only dream of Louisa in the night, he dreamed of her every waking minute.

He couldn’t stop thinking about her soft red lips in the kisses they’d shared. He couldn’t cease imagining how her mouth would feel on other parts of him, especially the one that was hard under his kilt even now. He wanted to kiss every inch of her body, taste her skin, inhale her scent.

When he lay awake in his bed of nights, his imagination put Louisa in the room with him, she casually undressing with her back to him. She’d slowly strip off her gown, then what was under the gown, letting each piece of clothing loosen and fall. When she was clad only in her corset, her red hair rippling down her back, she’d look over her shoulder and give him her lovely smile.

Fellows made a noise in his throat. He could reach for her right now. She was alone with him, vulnerable. He could do anything to her, and nothing that came to his mind at the moment was honorable.

“Do you believe the same as they do?” Louisa was asking. “That I’m fast?” She let out a small sigh and another shiver. “I’m very afraid they might be right.”

She waited for his answer worriedly, as though what Fellows’ thought mattered to her very much. The cameo at her throat beckoned him to lean down to lick her there. “Louisa, you’re an innocent.” He had to remember that. “Of that there is no doubt.”

Louisa rose, her breath lifting her too-low décolletage in a dangerous way. “Then why do I think about kissing you every time I see you? I should be at my sister’s ball, hoping one of the gentlemen I dance with will propose to me and solve my troubles. Instead, I ran off with you the moment you beckoned. Whenever I see you, I know I don’t want duty and properness—I want the wicked things my brothers-in-law whisper to my sisters-in-law when they think I don’t hear them. I want to do those things with you, not with the young men I was raised to expect to marry. Please, explain to me how I can be so innocent with those desires in my head.”

Oh God. Fellows’ body tightened. He wasn’t good with words, was much better at chasing down criminals and then beating them until they stayed down. Words weren’t his gift—persistence and his fists were. And now the woman he craved was asking him to explain away the basic animal instinct that burned inside him.

He cleared his throat. “Have you acted on these thoughts, either with me or other gentlemen?”

“No, of course not . . .”

“Then you are an innocent. You have no idea of the full of it.”

“But I want to know.” Louisa put her hand on his where it rested on the desk. “I want to know all these things. With you.”

The world stopped. The flash of Louisa undressing, smiling at him over her shoulder, came to Fellows again, with force. He couldn’t say anything, not even her name. Louisa. The beautiful, sweet word. She wanted him. What he desired, what he craved—she wanted it too.

Louisa nodded, her diamonds flashing again. “You see? I am a wanton. At least, I am where you are concerned. And I have no idea what to do about it.”

Fellows had plenty of ideas. And he couldn’t act on any of them, not without being as insidious as the most vicious criminals he’d chased to ground.

Louisa was alone with him, in his power, innocent, no matter what she claimed. She knew nothing of life, not in all the ugliness he’d lived through. And she was telling him she wanted to give that innocence to him.

So much heat washed through his veins that Fellows thought he’d fall. But cold followed hard upon the heat. Louisa trusted him. She had no idea what a man like Fellows was capable of. He could take her right here, to hell with virtue and respectability, and she wouldn’t be able to stop him. She trusted him because he was now one of the Mackenzies, acknowledged as the half brother of her sister’s husband. All in the family, she’d said.

But Fellows wasn’t like the Mackenzies—he was worse than any of them. For all the brothers’ hardness and ruthlessness, Hart, Cam, Mac, and even Ian had a modicum of polish. Fancy schools and university, money, influential friends, and the right circles, had given them a bit of a gloss.

Fellows had lived in squalor, his mother working harder than any woman should have to keep him fed. Catherine had stayed late into the night at the taverns, working her feet off for impatient tavern keepers, putting up with men trying to corner her. Fellows knew she’d let some of them corner her, for money, when she needed it. And he’d never blamed her for it.

The tamer Mackenzies had never had to watch their mother try not to cry as she counted out her coin for the night and realized it wouldn’t be enough. Hart hadn’t fed off tavern scraps grudgingly given, hadn’t had to watch his mother work harder and harder for less and less as her prettiness faded. Fellows had determined, the day he’d been accepted as a police constable, that his mother would never have to work again. And he’d fulfilled that vow.

Louisa knew nothing of these hardships, and Fellows would do everything in his power to make sure she never did.

He could frighten her away from him. Make her go running back to the safety of Mac and Isabella’s home, lock the door, stay there. He abruptly slid his hand to the back of her head, twisted her face up to his, and crushed his lips over her mouth.

Louisa gasped, lips parting. Fellows tasted the sweet and tart of the lemonade she’d drunk, brought to her by the insipid Mr. Franklin. The thought of Franklin made Fellows angry. He dragged Louisa closer, fingers tangling in her satin-smooth curls, the kiss turning hard.

She made a little sound, and he knew he was bruising her, but he didn’t care. He meant to frighten her, meant her to jerk away and flee him.

She didn’t flee. Louisa was warmer than the room, the heat of her mouth searing. Daniel’s coat, still around her shoulders, smelled of cheroots, but her fragrance was all Fellows heeded.

He scooped his arm under her legs, easing her up onto the wooden desk. Perfect. Louisa sat on its edge, looking up at him, lips red with his kisses. Fellows cradled her head in his hands and kissed her again, deeper and fuller, locking her in place.