Chapter One

Four years later

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when a married man crosses his wife, it is expected of her to sell every precious item he ever bequeathed her.

However, this keepsake was different. Lily Bancroft stared at the intricately etched ring on her left finger, poised above the black velvet backdrop of the jeweler’s display. If she caught the owner’s attention, he would give her thirty pounds for the ring, if not more. It was, in her estimation, a masterpiece. Artfully wrought vines climbed the gold band that glinted in the sunlight streaming through the lone window of the Bond Street shop. The vines opened into delicate curved petals with a deep, clear sapphire in the center. In the past four years, Lily hadn’t removed the ring once.

Not due to sentimentality over her capricious husband. No, he—and his gifts—meant less to her than Prinny’s ablutions. But the ring represented more than the naive flight of fancy that had led her so far down the path to perdition that she’d stumbled to the altar with an unsuitable man. The ring had been sold to her husband by her father. It had been one of the last creations Papa had ever made. She couldn’t part with it.

Not even to feed my sisters? Papa would have wanted that.

If Papa had gotten what he’d wanted, she wouldn’t have to deal with so much confounded resistance to her attempts to step into his shoes. He’d had no sons. Therefore, when his health had started failing a month after her wedding, he’d trained her in the art of crafting jewelry. But without a man at her back—even with the dubious respectability of her married state—the shop was failing. Her gaze drifted to the Bond Street wares. The delicate chains attached to pendants might have fooled the vapid lords and ladies who frequented the shop, but Lily’s trained eye noticed every imperfection in the cut of the jewels and the fragile chain work. How lowering, to contemplate selling a work of art to a mountebank.

But if she didn’t, she and her sisters were in danger. More creditors haunted their doorstep every day, and Lily alone was no longer enough to assuage them. If Mama had been in the proper mind to handle this…

No ifs. Lily stopped herself from contemplating what could have been. Her mistake had cost her family everything. Because she’d married the wrong man, their lives had careened out of control. The once-lofty Bancroft family, mingling with the upper crust of Society due to the wealth and affluence of Papa’s shop, now relied solely on Lily for sustenance.

And the only thing she had left to buy them a little more time was Papa’s ring.

The ring Papa had given to a man who’d wanted to marry his daughter. Lily had once flattered herself into believing she knew every facet of Adam Darling, including his long list of misdeeds as a confidence man. She’d fallen in love with him anyway.

He’d taken everything, including her innocence.

She was no saint, but she had been a naive clodpoll who had danced on air at the sight of one of his smiles. “Not anymore,” she mumbled under her breath. The ring was a reminder of the dolt she’d been. She should have cast it off four years ago, when she’d woken in the Bristol hotel room to find her husband of a week gone without a word.

But she hadn’t. Her gaze drifted to the display once more as memories drifted like snowflakes through her mind. Their courtship. His entreaty for her help with jewels while he swindled one last target. The way he always had a kind word and a small pouch of coins for the injured veterans-turned-vagabonds on the streets of London. Everything, all the memories of what had led to her downfall.

But he’d given as well as taken. Thanks to him, she had the knowledge and the skill to steal from anyone she pleased, if she deigned to sink to his level.

Think of Willa and Sophie. She had two sisters to feed—not to mention a mother nearly catatonic with the grief of Papa’s unforeseen passing three years prior.

With careful planning, she could snatch every last gem in this shop.

But she was nothing—nothing—like Adam.

A breeze stirred the stray hairs on the nape of her neck. For a moment, the bustle of the clotted London street swelled before the shop door closed again. Lily glanced sidelong at the shop proprietor. Greet your customer so I may forget I was ever in here. Better she spare herself the humiliation.

However, the charlatan was too deep in wooing a young buck hoping to impress the woman he courted. All the jewelers near Mayfair traveled in the same social circle, competed for the same deep pockets. How would it look to find the owner of a jewelry store frequenting another’s shop? She held herself rigid and bent over the display, letting the curls at her temples fall forward to obscure her profile. She had too few customers to risk alienating one.

A man swaggered along the floor behind her. His loud footsteps, far from the dainty little clicks made by women’s slippers, announced his gender. His stride bespoke his arrogance.

She knew his type. The disdainful men who stepped into her shop demanding to deal only with the jeweler—the male jeweler. When she’d had the income to hire a man to wait on customers, the demands of arrogant men hadn’t cut so deep. But after… Her chest clenched as a deluge of memories took root. Too many instances when she’d had to inform the men calling that the renowned jeweler of whom they’d heard had passed from this world.

Oh, Papa.

But today, this blatherskite was another’s problem. To men like him, she was little more noticeable than the drapery. If she wasn’t to sell her wedding ring, she had no business being here.

As she drew herself up and tensed to flee for the door, awareness tickled her neck like an errant feather. A man’s voice murmured near her temple, far closer than she’d thought him.

“Are you contemplating taking them for yourself?”

A frisson climbed her spine. It cannot be. She hadn’t heard that voice in four long years.

Her lungs seizing painfully and her eyes suspiciously wet, she turned. He stood so near, hemming her against the pedestal housing the jewels, that her skirts brushed both with the movement. Blinking rapidly to compose herself, she battled the indescribable ache in her chest. Anger. It must be. She certainly hadn’t mourned his absence.

She tilted her face up, and there he was. The dimple in his clean-shaven chin winked, begging for her touch. His hazel eyes danced with a devilish twinkle she recalled in mortifying detail. He looked older, his sun-kissed skin forming faint crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes. His hair, in dire need of a trim, curled to caress his cheek. Lily fought the inexplicable urge to surrender to the same desire.

The last time she’d seen him, they’d been face to face, skin to skin, celebrating their marriage. She’d awoken to find the bed empty. No note—and no money. He’d left her with nothing, not even a kind memory.

The betrayal sliced through the unwanted desire boiling between them.

Adam Darling was a dangerous man. And she knew better than to let him walk back into her life unscathed.

…

As the woman turned, confirming her identity, Adam’s innards winged into knots. Lily. He ravaged her with his gaze, drinking in the sight of her. After all these years, he was parched for her.

A man shouldn’t feel this way about the wife of a week he’d knowingly left in his dust. But, lawks, Adam’s knees weakened at the sight of her. His heart throbbed painfully in his throat. Heaven preserve him, even if he didn’t deserve it. He still loved Lily.

Which made her presence in this shop all the more alarming. Mr. Bancroft was a proud man, too proud to see his daughter shopping at one of his competitors. Why would she risk the disapproval of the father she adored? Unless this was now her shop. Because, upon his leaving, she had married a man more suited to her upbringing.

He fought not to wheeze. His chest felt wrung out like a damp cloth as the possibility circled his mind. Four long years had passed since he had last seen her.

But they were married. Surely she couldn’t have sought an annulment or a divorce without his signature?

The look in her eye sharpened, skewering him along with an angularity to her face and form he didn’t recall. She’d always been soft of figure. She must have lost two stone or more since they’d last parted.

Judging from the glint in her green eyes, she’d lost none of her shrewd wit or her bravery.

The momentary confusion in her face washed away, replaced by a veneer of confidence and poise. He’d taught her to do that, taught her to look fate in the face and spit. She hadn’t forgotten their time together entirely.

Even if cordiality seemed beyond her.

Waspish, she snapped, “I’m afraid I occupy a higher moral ground than to steal from a person of my acquaintance.”

The barb cut him to the quick.

He gritted his teeth. I deserve her censure.

Yes, but…

In his bloodiest of nightmares, he’d never foreseen the cruel twist of the knife fate had wedged between them. If he’d had his druthers, he would never have left—never have taken the money they’d intended to set up as a dowry for their future daughters. Both choices had been wrenched from his control on one dastardly evening on the end of a Bristol pier.

The only other time he’d felt so helpless, he’d held his dying brother in his arms. He hadn’t been able to save him, but after four years of back-breaking work to provide them with an escape, Adam might yet be able to salvage the situation with his wife. Unless she had married again. Or taken a lover. Or…

Perhaps he’d only made that inane comment out of a desperation to learn her motives. Better she had turned to a life of crime than risen beyond his grasp. Better for his battered heart, in any case.

He retreated. If not from the room, then at the least from wearing his heart so near to his sleeve. His old, practiced smile rose to his lips like a supple mask. He wanted nothing from her—save perhaps her forgiveness and the chance to make amends—but he was far more accustomed to pretending good intentions than to having them. Lily, as always, threatened his sure footing.

When he inhaled through his nose, he caught the hint of rosewater. In a moment of weakness, he leaned closer. He’d forgotten how good she smelled. Forgotten how tall she stood, her face level with the crook of his neck when he held her close. He ached for her.

And if she knew, she would shred him to pieces. The sparkle in her eyes held a jaded edge. An edge he had put there.

What a legacy.

Offer her repayment and leave. It was what he’d come to London to do, to right the wrong he’d been forced to make. He had no right asking anything of her, not even her time. A lowborn bastard like him had had no right reaching for a jewel like her to begin with.

He stuffed his hand into his jacket pocket. The rasp of fine parchment met his fingertips. Give her the documents. He couldn’t. Selfish as he was, he craved a few more moments in her company. And there was the small matter of the rumor he had overheard, the fact that a scholarly friend of hers, one long absent from both their lives, had returned to his native haunts.

“Can I beg a moment of your time?”

When she stepped back, he braced himself for ejection from her new shop.

“No. If you’re looking for a malleable, biddable miss, I suggest you try Almack’s.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Since when have I asked for a biddable wife?”

Their gazes locked. He refused to look away first. Instead, he willed her to remember all they had been together. Partners. Equals. He’d always encouraged her to think and act for herself. To take what she wanted.

And when he had been the object of her desire…

He blew out a pent-up breath and mustered a shaky smile. “And, darling, if memory serves, I’ve already accepted a woman for better or worse.”

She stiffened. A blush swept onto her cheeks like a crashing wave. When she turned away, her color swamped her freckles and nearly matched her hair.

“I don’t know what we had, but it certainly wasn’t a marriage.”

She turned so violently, her skirts whipped him in the legs as she fled. Not toward the safety of the back of the shop, but out—onto the busy street. The door crashed into its frame like a landslide.

He took one involuntary step forward before gritting his teeth. Give her time.

Time to do what—to prove she’d rather see me dead than hear my apology?

He still loved her. She deserved better than to be forced to face him without warning. He should have thought his plan through more thoroughly, but when he’d spotted her entering the shop…

A surge of emotion smothered him. Balling his fists, he glared at the shopkeeper, a man much too old for her. He looked perplexed, which didn’t seem to give his customer much confidence in him. Had Lily remarried?

Adam had no right to be jealous, but logic couldn’t dam the flood crashing over him. He forced his hand out of his pocket before he crumpled the gift he meant for his wife.

His wife, not any other’s.

“This isn’t over.”

The mumbled words should have been succor. But as he slipped onto Bond Street, searching in vain for the pale flash of Lily’s dress or the glint of red in her hair, he felt as if he stepped back onto a battlefield. He’d scarcely left the last alive.

This time, it wasn’t only his life at stake. It was also his heart.

If he couldn’t have her, the very least he could do was prove himself worthy of forgiveness. But in the sticky summer air, desire swelled in him.

He couldn’t help but yearn for what might have been, if not for the intervention of a blackguard pretending to be her friend. Hearing of the man’s return had hastened Adam’s plan to make amends and return to London, despite the fact that he had a few repairs left to do on his means of redemption. He couldn’t leave Lily to the likes of the man who had hurt her—especially one who called himself her friend.