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Her body warmed beneath the gentle caress of Henry’s touch. She drew back her shoulders and tugged at the sleeves of his coat. He helped her shrug it off, tossing it aside.

“That didn’t last long,” he murmured, his breath warm on her skin. He slid his hands up the length of her bare arms and throat, resting just beneath her jaw. He tried to take control of the kiss, moving her head in time to his lips, but she shrugged out of his grasp. This time—this embrace—was hers. Caroline would take what she wanted, and learn what she wanted to know, before Henry was gone.

Before he was gone forever. Again.

He was inching her skirts up her legs, urging the fabric out from under her knees and sliding his palms along the smooth expanse of her silk stockings. Something about the sound of it—the scrape of his skin against her legs, quiet, a happy whisper—made her grin against his lips. It was involuntary, this grin, irrepressible.

“Caroline,” he said against her mouth. “Are you laughing at me?”

“I”—
kiss
—“would”—
kiss
—“never.”

“Yes, you most certainly would.”

And then she really did laugh, and so did he, and in that
second between them, Caroline’s heart felt so full she wanted to cry.

She kissed Henry instead.

Her fingers worked at his cravat, unwinding it from about his neck. He held her, softly, on her sides, thumbs hooked into the spaces between the ribs of her stays.

Caroline pressed him back against the seat, unbuttoning his shirt.

“You’re certain?” he panted.

“Certain.”

She felt him relax. “All right.” He held out his arms, grinning. “Do what you must, my lady, I am your willing servant.”

“Splendid,” she said, pulling away so that Henry could take off his shirt. She watched as he reached his arms over his head; he grasped the back of his collar and slid the shirt over his head. It was dark, but even so Caroline could appreciate the enormity of his physique, the flex of the muscles underneath his arms and along the sides of his torso.

She bit her lip, slid her hands over his chest. “Now stay still.”

She remembered their first night together—their wedding night—and she remembered how he taught her to touch him. He hadn’t allowed her to finish then. He would tonight.

Sliding her hands down the length of his chest, Caroline leaned forward and covered his mouth with hers. He tensed as her hands found their way to his belly, to the waistband of his breeches.

Henry’s hand shot down to catch her by the wrists. She pulled away
. “Stay. Still.”

“I can’t. Not when you’re touching me like that. You don’t have to—”

But his refusal was lost in her kiss. She wouldn’t be thwarted. Not when she’d come this far, and there was so little time left to them, together.

He tensed, his body coiled, as she fingered the buttons of his fall. His cock pressed eagerly against her touch. He was enormous here, too; for a moment Caroline was overcome with doubt. What if she did it poorly? What if she hurt him?

Henry would tell her, that’s what. She would ask. And he would tell her.

Caroline hadn’t a clue from whence this sudden bravery
had come. Wasn’t she just swearing, hours ago, that she was too scared to allow herself to feel the things that lurked on the dark side of her heart—the things she once felt for Henry?

And yet.

She felt herself sinking into these lurking things, these delicious, overwhelming, warm-feeling things. She let the weight of her body pull her down into the flood, and she liked it. For these minutes, she would allow herself to admit to liking it.

The front of his breeches fell away beneath her fingers. Henry sucked a breath through his teeth as Caroline wrapped her fingers around his cock. The place between her legs throbbed. With longing, with curiosity.

“Show me,” she whispered. “Like you did before.”

Henry reached down between them. As he had more than a decade ago, he wrapped his hand around hers, urging it tighter around his manhood. He moved his hand and she moved with him, thrilled by the intimacy of the act, by the eroticism of the power she felt, knowing that she controlled his pleasure.

Caroline kissed him, hard, and he kissed her back wildly. His body arched against hers, his teeth nicked her bottom lip. He was groaning against her mouth, his worry about the driver all forgotten; he was saying her name, whispering it as he kissed her. Her pleasure rose in time to his.

“Caroline.” He gritted his teeth. “I’m going to come. Let me go, God, let me go, please, before—”

The words caught in his throat. Quickly she unhooked her fingers and pulled away. Henry covered his cock with his hand and squeezed shut his eyes. He pressed his forehead against hers, sucking a breath through his gritted teeth as he was overcome by his completion.

For several moments neither of them said a thing. The only sound was Henry’s rough breathing; Caroline’s heart beat loudly in her ears, almost as loudly as the desire that beat between her legs. Had she, in all her twenty-nine years, ever been so aroused?

She closed her eyes, too, and willed herself to memorize the feel of Henry’s forehead, damp with sweat, against hers. Willed herself to be aware, immaculately, of this feeling of freedom. The lightness of living in this moment, one heartbeat
to the next. No past, no interminable future. Just now, when Henry was all hers, and she wasn’t afraid of what that meant.

Caroline felt Henry’s eyelashes flutter against her nose. She opened her eyes and saw him looking at her, his pale eye translucent in the darkness. The way he looked at her—it made her heart turn over in her chest.

Her gaze moved to his other eye, the one that was missing. She reached up, feathered her fingers across the patch. The look in Henry’s good eye changed, intensified. His nostrils flared with each breath he pulled in.

Caroline didn’t know why she did it; only that she was curious, and sad, and that she wanted to know what it was like, to have half the world hidden from view.

She traced her finger over the leather’s crackled ridges, like the scales of a tiny fish, and wondered what she would find beneath it. A scar, perhaps, or a red-rimmed hole. What had happened to his eyelashes? Would they have survived, she wondered, if his eye had not?

Her fingers moved to the leather thong pressed into the skin of his temple. Henry pulled back, suddenly, as if she’d caught him with the edge of her fingernail. Caroline looked away, embarrassed.

He reached for the rumpled length of cambric that was once his cravat. Looking down, he went to work tidying himself up, wiping his hands before tossing the cravat aside.

And then he looked at her again. She heard him swallow. His hands were on her thighs again, thumbs inching toward the place where she ached for him, fiercely.

Caroline glanced to the window. She pulled back the curtain: nothing. No sign of William. No sign of anything, really, as the alley was darker than the night from which they’d escaped.

She turned back to Henry. He lifted a hand and pressed his thumb to the place where her eyebrows met.

“You’re worrying again,” he said. “I thought I was supposed to be distracting you.”

Caroline released the furrow she hadn’t known was there, brows stinging with relief.

She half laughed. “Distract me, then.”

“I’m not going to take you in a carriage, Caroline,” he said.
His thumbs inched up her thighs. “But perhaps I might touch you as you touched me?”

Henry didn’t wait for a reply. He sat up in the seat, pressing his lips to hers as his hands moved up her legs, pulling her against him. This kiss was slow, luxurious in comparison to the fevered bites and pulls they’d shared just minutes ago. He was being careful now, diligent that he should kiss her thoroughly, and well.

Behind closed lids, Caroline saw stars as his mouth moved to her jaw, her neck. The stubble of his chin tickled her throat; she giggled; Henry growled playfully.

In the throes of her rising passion, Caroline didn’t hear the voices approaching the hackney; or maybe she just ignored them.

Either way, she was not prepared for the ominous
clap
of the carriage door as it swung open.

“Mr. Lake.” It was Lady Sophia, Violet’s cousin. “I—
Mr. Lake
!”

In a flurry of movement, Henry tore Caroline from his lap and settled her behind him, his fingers shaking as he attempted—and failed, of course—to button up his breeches.

Caroline glanced over his shoulder to see Sophia standing openmouthed outside the carriage, eyes wide as saucers as she took in the scene before her. Behind her, Mr. Hope hovered, the limp figure of Lady Violet draped across his arms.

Caroline’s blood rushed to ice. After the heat of her desire, the rush left her reeling; for a moment blinding pain flashed inside her head. The agony of being interrupted; the shame of being caught
in flagrante delicto
.

But there was no time for shame. At first glance, it appeared things had not gone as William planned: Violet’s head lolled over Thomas Hope’s forearm.

Oh God, Caroline thought
.
Oh, God, William would never let Violet out of his sight. Where in hell is he?

“Is she all right?” Caroline asked, helping Henry shrug into his coat. There was no hope for his shirt, much less his cravat.

“Yes,” Sophia panted. “I’ll explain everything, but we
need
to
go
. Now.”

“What about William? My brother—where—?”

“We need to go.”

Henry placed a hand on Caroline’s thigh, gave it a good squeeze. He turned to Sophia. “I say, what’s that dreadful smell?”

Caroline blinked, her nose twitching as the acrid scent of singed tar, overlaid with the more savory smell of burning wood, filled her head.

Bile rose in her throat. That couldn’t be good.

With Henry’s help, Thomas—giving his old friend a black look—handed Violet’s body into the hack. Thomas and Sophia climbed in after them, squeezing Caroline against Henry, hip to shoulder. His hand was still on her thigh.

“No word of the diamond?” he asked.

Hope shook his head, let out a sigh of defeat. Like Henry, he stood to lose everything—his bank, his fortune—if the diamond was lost. “That fool Harclay set the jeweler’s ship on fire. Why, I haven’t a clue. The ship will sink, if it hasn’t already.”

Caroline began to shake. Was William still on that ship?

“Violet told us virtually nothing,” Hope continued, running a hand through his mop of dark curls. “We found her running from the ship, choking on smoke. For all we know, Artois could’ve run off with the diamond before the fire started, or that Eliason chap could’ve jumped ship with it in his pocket. The French Blue could be anywhere by now.”

Caroline jumped when Henry slammed his fist into the roof, jolting the driver—and the hack—into motion. “Bloody perfect,” he growled. “We came so close. So
bloody close
.”

She rolled her lips between her teeth, struggling to breathe against the panic rising in her chest.

William. Where the devil was he, damn him, she’d box his ea—

An enormous sound—so enormous it was more of a sensation, a force that knocked the wind from her lungs—rent a hole in the darkness. It was like the thunder that followed lightning struck very close: crackling, huge. The horses cried out; Caroline cried out. Henry’s arm shot across her breast, bracing her against the seat as the hackney drew to a sudden halt.

Henry leapt from the vehicle, shouting at the driver; the driver shouted something back about an explosion, out there on the river. Hope joined them, holding the door open behind him.

Wordlessly, Sophia reached across the bench and took Caroline’s hand in her own.

“William,” Caroline whispered. “Oh, God.”

Henry turned to her, resting an arm on the door’s top bracket. The lapels of his coat stretched open, revealing his bare chest. “Do not move, Caroline, or so help me I will tie you to the seat. There’s nothing you can do, not without getting harmed yourself. I’ll see to William. You’ll have word as soon as I do.”

Without waiting for a reply, he turned and dissolved into the darkness.

Caroline sat very still, the backs of her eyes burning with tears. Hope lingered in the open door, telling Sophia to look after her cousin Violet, that he’d given the driver instructions to take them home, under pain of death.

He closed the door, pounded it with the flat of his hand. The hackney jolted forward, eliciting a moan from Violet. Caroline watched the slope of Hope’s shoulders disappear toward the river, after Henry.

And then they were alone—she, Sophia, and Violet. The diamond was gone. William was—well, who knew where he was. Henry was going after him, yes, but who knows what would happen—what wouldn’t happen? It was possible she would lose them both. She couldn’t think about it, not without being strangled by a creeping sense of disaster.

Caroline squeezed Sophia’s hand, and looked away from the window to the lifeless body dangling across her knees. “Let’s see to your cousin,” she said.

Thirty-eight