Emmy’s hired coach rattled down Fleet Street and passed beneath the ancient arched portal in the city wall that gave Ludgate Hill its name. Over the past few years, the area had become almost as popular as Bond Street for shopping, and the streets were bustling with well-dressed ladies and au courant gentlemen.
The stately grey dome of Wren’s masterpiece, St. Paul’s Cathedral, kept a benign watch over the area. Emmy caught a glimpse of the great brick walls of Newgate Prison as they neared their destination, and the sight of the looming ramparts dampened her excitement somewhat. The grim edifice was a sobering reminder of what could befall her family if they were ever caught.
She dismissed the morbid thought with a toss of her head.
The coach lurched onto Ludgate Hill and rocked to a stop, the driver having been instructed to deposit them at the far end of the street. Emmy helped Camille down, and together, they began a slow promenade along the thoroughfare.
To the casual observer they were two fashionably dressed women studying the contents of each shop window, and yet Emmy’s awareness was entirely fixed upon the elegant white stone building at number 32. She’d been robbing its basement less than twelve hours ago.
Three stories high, the exterior of Rundell & Bridge was graced with elegant arches held up by fluted columns. The sign, hanging above the door, was of two golden salmon leaning against each other, the significance of which, for a diamond merchant and jewelers, eluded Emmy. She opened her parasol with a practiced flick of her wrist and ushered Camille a little closer.
Her stomach gave a little flutter of anticipation. Bow Street would send their best men to investigate this crime. She knew who it would be.
The delicious scent of strongly brewed coffee and the babble of conversation escaped from the front door of the London Coffee House, which took up two adjoining properties at numbers 24 and 26. Her stomach grumbled longingly. The next shop, Isherwood & Sons, House Decorators, held a display of hand-painted oriental wallpaper, and Emmy suppressed a smile at the odd name of the alley leading off it: Naked Boy Court. London’s streets were a never-ending treasure trove of bizarre names. Surely there was an amusing story behind that one.
They still weren’t close enough to see inside Rundell & Bridge. Emmy paused to inspect the bonnets displayed in the premises of Charles Vyse, straw hat manufacturer, then admired the silk stockings in the bow window of Ebenezer Flint, Hosier and General Outfitter. They passed the premises of Mr. Sharp, Perfumer to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, and finally stopped in front of Mr. Blade’s lighting emporium, directly across the street from the focus of her insatiable curiosity.
“I don’t know what you hope to achieve by coming here, my love,” Camille murmured. “Luc is correct. The theft went off without a hitch. Why return to the scene of the crime?”
Emmy barely heard her. A dark, masculine shape was inside the shop, talking to Mr. Rundell’s mild-mannered nephew, Edmond. She squinted, using the reflection of the window and the shiny surfaces of the lights displayed in front of her to glimpse a tantalizing flash of broad back and dark blue tailcoat.
Tall, slim, brown-haired. Her heart skipped a beat.
The man turned, and her suspicions were confirmed; Alexander Harland’s handsome reflection was magnified a hundred times, duplicated in the myriad faceted glass droplets of the chandelier before her. As if one version weren’t dazzling enough.
She sipped in a breath. Harland always dressed immaculately. Crisp white cuffs, snowy cravat, beautifully cut jacket that outlined his impressively large physique. Buff breeches that molded almost indecently to his long, muscular legs. Black hessian boots polished to a military shine.
“Ah.” Camille gave a wry, worldly chuckle. “Now I see the appeal.”
Camille was, in her own words, a “connoisseur of gentlemen.” Having been born into the French aristocracy, she’d been a friend of Queen Marie Antoinette and had spent her youth flirting and intriguing at the glittering court of Versailles. Entirely pragmatic about marrying for financial security, she’d wed her first husband, the wealthy Comte de Rougemont, thirty years her senior, when she was only seventeen. He’d died of an apoplexy three months after the wedding, leaving Camille a very rich, very merry widow.
Her second husband, Le Chevalier Hugo, had been “an absolute rake, but impossibly charming.” Camille had seemed genuinely fond of him. “There was never a dull moment with Hugo,” she often said. “Of course, then he went and fell from his horse. I told him it wasn’t wise to take that fence after a second bottle of Burgundy, but the fool wouldn’t listen. Ah, well. I suppose it was all for the best. After all, if darling Hugo hadn’t broken his neck, I’d never have met your grandfather, would I?”
Emmy’s grandfather had been the last of the countess’s husbands, and by all accounts, it had been une affaire de coeur. Her grandmother, having fled the Revolution and settled in England, had taken one look at Anthony d’Anvers—dashing diplomatic aide and fellow French exile—at the ambassador’s reception and fallen “head over heels.” Emmy’s father had been born a slightly scandalous eight months after their wedding.
Having found bliss in the arms of a wonderful husband, Camille’s goal in life was to see Emmy equally happily settled. She was entirely dismissive of powdered, fashionable dandies and held a great appreciation for rakes, rogues, and scoundrels of all kinds. She was especially fond of a man in military uniform.
Her sharp elbow jostled Emmy’s ribs. “Enlighten me, Emmeline. Who is that wonderful specimen?”
Emmy sighed. She might as well make a clean breast of it. There was no keeping secrets from Camille. “That ‘specimen’ is Alexander Harland, Lord Melton.”
Camille gave an appreciative sigh as she half-turned to study him covertly. “Ooh la la. I congratulate you, Emmeline. Your taste is superb. Quel homme!”
Camille always became more French whenever she was excited.
Emmy frowned at Harland’s reflection. He was preparing to leave; he’d picked up his gloves from the counter. “Unfortunately, Lord Melton is an obstacle we must avoid if we wish to keep our heads. I’ve heard that he and his two friends, Benedict Wylde and Sebastien Wolff, are employed by Bow Street to solve crimes just like this one. I was afraid he would become involved.”
Camille nodded sagely. “I see. We stand forewarned.”
A glistening black carriage pulled up outside the jewelers and blocked their view. Unable to resist one final glimpse of her nemesis, Emmy tugged Camille across the street and around the back of the carriage. The coachman had already let down the step, and her heart almost stopped as the door to the jeweler’s opened and Harland strode out.
In sudden panic, she lowered her chin so her parasol shielded her face. She grabbed Camille’s elbow and swung them both away, feigning a rapt fascination in an enameled snuff box in the window. From the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of blue, caught a waft of masculine scent that made her stomach clench in agitation, before Harland jumped inside the waiting carriage and rapped on the roof to signal he was ready.
Her heart assumed an unnaturally fast rhythm.
What was she doing? She should be running away from the man, not trying to get closer. She had, after all, perfected the skill of walking away.
In a heist, there was always a moment when one had to commit past the point of no return. No matter how well-planned, every job contained an element of the unknown: a random passerby, an unexpected delivery, a servant who suddenly changed their routine. Every job was different, with its own personality, and Emmy had learned to trust her instincts when it came to assessing risk. Luck was as important as skill. There was nothing cowardly in retreating, in living to steal another day. On several occasions she’d abandoned a theft because something didn’t feel right.
Everything about Alexander Harland warned her to run. Instinct told her that here was a man who would bring her nothing but trouble, not least because of the dangerous frisson of attraction that drew her to him utterly against her will. It was a matter of self-preservation, the very reason she’d walked away from him four years ago.
The day she heard he’d returned from Waterloo had been one of the happiest of her life. She was fiercely glad that he was alive, saddened to learn that he’d been injured. She’d managed to glimpse him across a crowded ballroom. Apart from a small scar by his right temple, there seemed to be very little physical evidence of his injury, but rumor said he’d lost a degree of peripheral vision in his right eye due to a cannon blast. That, at least, was the excuse he used for his current refusal to dance.
The Alexander Harland she’d kissed had been a cheeky, confident, young man. The Alexander Harland who’d returned looked older, wiser. He smiled less frequently. And he’d acquired a new cynicism, a certain hardness to his chiseled features. He had a bleak, weary look in his eyes, as if he’d seen far more of life than he’d ever desired.
His opening of a gambling club in St. James’s had come as no surprise to her. Such a scandalous profession, skirting the very edges of what was socially acceptable yet pandering to the aristocracy’s never-ending desire for novelty and entertainment, seemed entirely fitting with his character.
A few months ago he and his fellow club owners, Benedict Wylde and Sebastien Wolff, has been awarded earldoms by the Prince Regent for “services to the crown.” Rumors had circulated in the ton for weeks that they were working for Bow Street, and those rumors had been echoed by Sally’s network of friends and informants amongst London’s criminal fraternity.
They were truly on opposite sides of the law now, the Runner and the thief. And despite her undeniable attraction to the man, the more distance she put between them the better.
Emmy sighed. A Welsh acquaintance of hers had introduced her to the word hiraeth. It had no direct translation in English, but it seemed wholly appropriate to describe her feelings about Harland. The word expressed a bittersweet sense of missing something or someone that you’d loved, while still being grateful for their existence. A longing for home, or a time that felt like home.
Four years ago, at nineteen, she’d felt at home in Harland’s arms. She’d imagined herself in love with him, but it had been a childish infatuation. She hadn’t known the real Alex Harland. She’d loved an illusion, the handsome paragon she’d made up in her mind. Their dance, their kiss, was frozen in time like a perfect vision, a moment that would never be repeated.
She was older now, and wiser. A little more cynical about life and men. A little more realistic about fairy-tale princes.
The snap of a whip and the shout of Harland’s carriage driver jolted Emmy back to the present. Amazed at her own inattention, she caught Camille’s elbow, turned her back on Harland’s conveyance, and marched them both swiftly away down the street.
Alex sat back against the seats with a deep exhale. When he breathed back in, a waft of feminine scent, something floral and unique, teased his nostrils and his heart gave an unsteady, disbelieving jolt. In the space of a single breath, he was transported to a moonlit garden, kissing the woman of his dreams.
His mouth dropped open. That perfume. Unmistakable.
It was her!
He lurched forward and thrust his head out of the carriage window, craning his neck to identify the source of the scent.
Had he just passed her on the street? There had been a couple of women looking in Rundell & Bridge’s window, but he’d been so preoccupied with what he’d learned about the robbery that he’d barely glanced at them. The women had been on his right, in the black spot of his peripheral vision.
The carriage was pulling away from the curb. Alex cursed. Countless women thronged the street, a flurry of skirts and parasols in every pastel shade.
Which one was she?
He almost pulled the strap to stop the carriage, then imagined himself sprinting down Ludgate Hill, grasping each woman by the shoulders and spinning her around, peering into her face in some vain hope of recognition. Sniffing her wrist for evidence of that elusive, maddening perfume.
The image was sufficiently ludicrous to make him emit a laughing groan.
He was going mad. The possibility didn’t seem unlikely, considering the things he’d witnessed during the war. Sometimes madness sounded like a pleasant escape from reality.
His mind was playing tricks on him. The woman he’d dreamed of didn’t exist. Maybe she’d only ever been a figment of his imagination.
He inhaled again, but the scent was gone. All he could smell was coffee and horse sweat, tobacco and refuse. He sat back heavily against the velvet swabs and ran his hand over his face. He had work to do. A criminal to catch. A diamond to recover. He didn’t have time for other distractions.