... It is a constant surprise to this publication that Lady G— was so easily dismissed for nearly a decade. What we would not offer for a peek into the lady's past! Alas, we shall have to settle for watching her bright future...

... Several critical votes are before the Houses of Parliament this week. The owner of this very paper is a vocal proponent of setting clear limits for child labor, and watches carefully as this great Nation's leaders decide the fate of her youngest citizens...

The News of London, May 9, 1833

She froze at the words.

Perhaps she could have brazened it through, if not for the way he'd made her feel, the way he'd slowly, effortlessly dismantled her guard, leaving it on the floor with her trousers and his cravat and all their inhibitions.

The way he'd somehow given her pleasure and peace and the promise of more, even as she'd known all of it was fleeting.

Perhaps she could have lied, but how could she? How could she pretend to know the tricks and trade of London's finest lightskirt when he'd so thoroughly destroyed her with his kiss and touch and kindness?

She'd expected the kissing. The touching.

But the kindness had been too much. It had stripped her bare, leaving her with nothing to protect her from his careful observations and his probing questions.

For the first time in an age, she did not know what to say. She left his lap, standing, moving naked to the place where he'd divested her of her clothing and her lies. She lifted her shirt from where it had landed on the arm of a chair, and slid into it, pulling it closed around her as he spoke again. "You cannot hide from me. Not in this. You and Chase clearly have some kind of plan – something of which I am a part. Unwillingly." The words sent fear straight through her, as this brilliant man discovered one of her best-kept secrets and came closer to uncovering all the rest.

The irony, of course, was that most men would be thrilled to know that they had not just slept with a prostitute.

But there was nothing about Duncan West that was like other men.

And there was nothing about him that appeared pleased with the discovery.

He did not seem to care that she was virtually naked, or that she was emotionally bare, or that she was unsettled by his statement, or that she did not wish to discuss it. "When was the last time you slept with someone?"

She tried to hedge her way out of the conversation, leaning down, retrieving her trousers. "I sleep with Caroline quite often."

His gaze turned furious as he leaned forward and she tried her best to ignore the way his muscles shifted, rippling beneath his smooth skin. "Let me rephrase, I forget sometimes where you have chosen to make your life. When was the last time you fucked a man?"

The curse was a gift, reminding her that she was more than this moment, that she was queen of London's underworld, more powerful than he could imagine. More powerful than anyone could imagine.

Even he.

She should have been angry with him. Should have squared her shoulders, nakedness be damned, and told him precisely what he could do with his foul language. Should have stalked, bare and bold, to the wall and rung the bell to call security to this place, where he should not be.

Where she should not have brought him.

Where she would never forget him.

She looked away. The whole afternoon had gone pear-shaped, and instead, his anger made her want to tell him the truth. To mend the moment. To answer his questions and return to his arms and restore his faith. Not an hour earlier, he'd vowed to protect her.

How long had it been since someone had wished to do that?

"Look at me." It was not a request.

She looked at him, desperate to stay strong. "What we did... it wasn't..." She couldn't bring herself to say the word. "That."

He narrowed his gaze. "How would you know?"

He meant to hurt her, and he did, the question a blow. Not undeserved, but a blow nonetheless. She answered him, laying herself barer than she had ever imagined she could. "Because the last time I did this, it was." His brown eyes searched hers, and she let him see the truth. Finished her thought, the words quieter than she'd expected. "This wasn't the same. This was... more."

"Christ." He came to his feet.

She met his gaze. "It is something more."

"Is it?" he asked, the question filled with something like doubt. He ran his hands through his hair, frustrated. "You lied to me."

She had, but now she did not wish to, even though she'd wrapped herself in lies. Wrapped them both in them. Even though her lies were layered in myriad ways, too many and too complex to tell him the truth. Too connected to too many others to find their way into the light of honesty.

"I want to tell you the truth," she confessed.

"Why don't you?" he asked. "Why don't you trust me? I would have – had I known that you – that Anna – that none of it was true, I would have —" He stopped. Regrouped. "I would have taken more care."

She'd never in her life felt more cared for than in the last hour, in his arms. And she wanted to give him something for it. Something that she'd never given another person. Her darkest secret, kept only in her deepest thoughts. "Caroline's father," she whispered. "He was the last."

He was silent for a long moment, before he asked, "When?"

He still did not understand. "Ten years ago."

He sucked in a breath, and she wondered at the sound, at the way he seemed pained by her truth. "The only time?"

He knew the answer to the question, but she replied nonetheless. "Until now."

His hands came to her face, lifting her chin, forcing her to look at him. "He was a fool."

"He was not. He was a boy who wanted a girl. But not forever." She smiled. "Not even a second time."

"Who was he?"

She blushed at the question, hating the answer. "He worked in the stables at my brother's country estate. He saddled my horse a few times, rode out with me on one occasion." She looked away, wrapping her arms tight around herself. "I was... bewitched by his smile. His flirt."

He nodded. "So you took a risk."

"Except it wasn't a risk. I thought I loved him. I'd spent my young, entitled life without a care in the world. I wanted for nothing. And, in the great error made by every entitled child since the beginning of time, I searched for the thing that I did not have instead of celebrating the things that I did."

"What was that?"

"Love," she said simply. "I did not have love. My mother was cold. My brother was distant. My father was dead. Caroline's father was warm, and near, and alive. And I thought he loved me. I thought he would marry me." She shrugged the memory away with a smile. "Foolish girl."

He was quiet for a long moment, his handsome brow furrowed. "What is his name?"

"Jonathan."

"That's not the part I want."

She shook her head. "It's the part I will give you. It does not matter who he is. He left, and Caroline was born, and that is that."

"He should pay for what he has done."

"How? By marrying me? By becoming Caroline's father in name as well as deed?"

"Hell, no."

Her brow furrowed. Everyone with whom she'd ever discussed Caroline's birth had agreed that if only she would name the man, all would be well. Her brother had threatened her with marriage, as had half a dozen women who lived with her in Yorkshire, after she'd birthed Caroline and raised her into childhood. "You don't think he should be forced to marry me?"

"I think he should be forced to hang by his thumbs from the nearest tree." Her eyes widened, and he continued. "I think he should be stripped bare and made to walk down Piccadilly. I think he should meet me in the ring in the heart of this place, so I can tear him apart for what he did to you."

She would be lying if she did not say she enjoyed the threats. "You would do that for me?"

"And more," he said, the words not boastful, but quick and honest. "I hate that you protect him."

"It is not protection," she said, trying to explain. "It is that I don't wish him relevance. I don't wish him the power men hold over women. I don't wish him to be a part of me. Of who I am. Of who Caroline is. Of who she might become."

"He is none of those things."

She watched him for a long moment, wanting to believe him. Knowing the truth. "Maybe not to me... but to them... to you... of course he is. And he will be, until there is another."

"A husband. With a title."

She did not reply. Did not have to.

"Tell me the rest."

She lifted one shoulder. Let it fall. "There is not much to say."

"You loved him."

"I thought I loved him," she corrected. And she'd believed it. But now...

Love. She turned the word over and over in her mind, considering its meaning, her experience with it. She had thought she had loved Jonathan. She'd been so sure of it. But now... here... with this man, she realized that what she had felt for Jonathan was minuscule. A thimbleful.

What she felt for Duncan West was the wide sea.

But she would not put a name to it. That way lay danger.

Because, for all her secrets, for all the lies – he had them, too.

She shook her head and looked down at her lap, where his long, bronzed arm crossed her pale legs. She placed her hand on that arm, playing with the golden hairs there. Repeated herself. "I thought I loved him."

"And?"

She smiled. "I told you, a tale as old as the hills."

"And after?"

"You know that, newspaperman."

"I know what they say. I wish to hear what you say."

"I went to Yorkshire. I ran away to Yorkshire."

"They say you ran with him."

She laughed, the sound humorless even to her ears. "He was long disappeared from my life by then. Gone before daybreak the morning after we —"

He inhaled his anger, and she stopped. "Go on," he urged.

"I took a mail coach. My maid's sister's aunt knew of a place in Yorkshire. Somewhere girls could go. To be safe."

He raised a brow. "A duke's sister, riding by mail."

"There was no other way. I would have been caught."

"Would that have been bad?"

"You did not know my brother then. When he discovered what had happened, he was furious. And not a little bit terrifying. My mother was filled with hate and disdain. We never spoke again."

He narrowed his gaze. "You were a child."

She shook her head. "Not once I had a child of my own."

"So, this place... it took you in."

She nodded. "Me, and Caroline." She thought back to Minerva House, to its welcome inhabitants and its lush lands. "It was beautiful. Peaceful and warm. Filled with acceptance. It was... home." She paused. "The last home I really had."

"You are lucky you had one at all."

She watched him carefully, sensing that there was more to the statement than it seemed, but before she could press him, he asked, "How long were you there?"

"Four years."

"And then?"

"And then my mother died." He tilted his head in question, and she explained, lost in the tale. "I came home, feeling that I should be in London to mourn her. I brought Caroline – ripped her from the safety of her home, where no one had ever judged her – I brought her to this horrible place. London in season. And one day, we took a walk down Bond Street, and I counted the stares."

There had been hundreds of them. Enough for hatred to begin to settle, hot and unyielding, in her breast.

He seemed to understand. "They did not accept you."

"Of course they didn't. I was ruined. Unwed. A mother of a daughter, who is nothing. If she'd been a boy..." she trailed off.

"If she'd been a boy, she could have made her way."

But she hadn't been. And that had turned the hatred into rage.

And then into a plan to hold dominion over them all.

"And then Chase found you."

Like that, they were returned to the present. To this place. To its secrets. To the lies she told.

She looked away. "On the contrary, I found Chase."

He shook his head. "I don't understand. Why masquerade as a whore? Anything could happen to you. Hell, Pottle nearly —" He did not finish the sentence, closing his eyes briefly. "What if I hadn't been there?"

She smiled. "Women in my position, we hold tremendous amounts of power. I chose to be here, in this place. I chose this path. I choose this world." She paused. "How many other women have the choice?"

"But you could have chosen anything. You could have been a governess."

"Who would have hired me for that?"

"A dressmaker."

"I cannot sew a straight line."

"You know what it is I am saying."

Of course she did. She'd heard it a dozen times from her brother. A hundred. And she'd told him just what she told Duncan. "None of those positions held the power of this one."

"Consort to a king."

King herself.

"I wanted power over all of them – every last one who stared down their nose at me. Every last one who judged me. Every last one who cast their stones. I wanted proof that they lived in glass houses."

"And Chase gave it to you. Chase and the others, all wanting to do the same. You became the fifth in their merry band."

Tell him.

There was no fifth. She was fourth.

She was first.

She could tell him. She could say the words. I am Chase.

Except she couldn't. She'd just told the story of her deepest betrayal, the one that had ruined her, threatened Caroline, and would ever be the reason for her secrets. If she told him the rest, if she laid herself at his feet, what then?

Would he protect her, even once he knew she was the man who used him? Who manipulated him?

Would he protect her club?

This life she had worked so hard to build?

Perhaps.

She might have done it, if he hadn't gone on. "And still, you protect him," he said, and she heard the bitterness in his voice. "Who is he to you? What is he to you? If not your master, your consort, your benefactor? Who the hell is he?"

There was something in the last, something that was not for her.

Something that was not curiosity.

Something like desire. Like desperation.

He wanted Chase's secret. Hers.

But if he had it, would he entrust her with his own?

She resisted the question, hating that even now, even here, after they had shared the powerful moment, they still dealt in information. Traded it.

He'd been with Tremley earlier in the day – taken the information she'd given him and done something unexpected with it. Something indefinable.

"Tell me who he is, Georgiana," he said, and she heard the plea in the words. What did he want with her? With Chase?

She met his gaze, on alert. "Why is it so important?"

He did not hesitate. "Because I have been nothing but his good soldier for years. And it is time."

"For what?" she asked. "To ruin him?"

"To protect myself from him."

She shook her head. "Chase will never hurt you."

"You don't know that," he said. "You are blind to his power. To the things he does to keep it." He waved a hand at the door. "Have you not witnessed it? The way he plays with lives? The way he bolsters the men belowstairs? The way he tempts them to wager until they've nothing left? Until all they have belongs to him?"

"It's not like that." It was never so cavalier. Never so unplanned.

"Of course it is. He deals in information. Secrets. Truths. Lies." He paused. "I deal in those things as well – which is why we make such a pair."

"Why not leave it at that?" She didn't want it to change. Everything else was shifting beneath her, around her. "You are well compensated. You have access to information throughout London. You ask, you receive. News. Gossip. Tremley's file."

He stilled. "What do you know?"

She narrowed her gaze on him. "What are you not telling me?"

He laughed at that. "The sheer sum of what you will not tell me, and you have the gall to ask for my secrets?"

She buttoned her shirt, protecting herself in more ways than one. "What is your relationship with Tremley?"

He met her gaze without hesitation. "What is your relationship with Chase?"

She was quiet for a long moment, considering the next. Considering the implications of her truth. Finally, she said, "I cannot tell you."

He nodded. "And so it is."

She stilled, watching him. He, too, had secrets. She'd known it, but she'd had no proof. But now, she did. And while the discovery should have made her immensely happy – as she was not the only one who spread lies between them – instead, it made her devastatingly sad.

Perhaps because his secrets would keep hers locked away.

Neither of them was honest.

There was no point in defining the way she felt for him.

And certainly no reason to define it as love.

Duncan West had saved her a great deal of heartache, she supposed, ignoring the tightness in her chest. She swallowed around the lump in her throat. "That is that, then?"

He stood, pulling on his own shirt and buttoning his trousers, which she realized he'd never fully removed. She supposed he had left them on in case Chase entered. In case he had been required to give pursuit. He wrapped his cravat carefully, watching her as he completed the economical movements from memory, without the aid of a mirror.

As she willed herself not to beg him to stay.

When he was finished, he lifted his coat off the floor and shrugged it on, not buttoning it.

Stay. She could say it. And what?

She looked away.

He pulled his cuffs to bare an even inch of crisp white linen at the edge of his sleeve. When he was through, he looked to her. "You choose him."

"It's not that easy."

"It's exactly that easy." He paused. "Tell me one thing. Do you want this? Do you want to be so thoroughly entwined with him?"

Not anymore.

Who had she become?

He saw the reply on her face, the frustration, the confusion, and he turned to steel, hiding all emotion from her. "Allow me to leave him a message, then. Tell him I am through being beholden to him. I am done. Today. He can find another to do his bidding." He unlocked the door. Opened it.

"Good-bye, Georgiana."

He left without looking back, closing the door behind him with a soft click.

She watched that door for a long moment, willing any number of things to happen. Willing him to return. Willing him to take her in his arms and tell her it was all a mistake. Willing him to tell her the truth. Willing him to kiss her until she no longer cared about this world, this life, this plan that had become so important.

Willing him to want her enough for all their secrets.

To love her enough.

Knowing that it was impossible.

She took a deep breath, and sat at her desk, extracting a piece of paper, considering the blank expanse for a long moment, thinking of all the things she could write. All the ways she could change their mutual course.

What if she told him everything? What if she put herself – her heart – in his hands? What if she gave herself to him?

What if she loved him?

Madness.

Love between them would never work. Even if they found space and time to trust each other, he was not an aristocrat. He could not give Caroline the future Georgiana planned.

There was only one way that would keep her secrets safe.

That would keep her heart safe.

She reached for a pen, dipping the nib in ink and writing two lines.

Your membership has been revoked.

And you will stay away from our Anna.

Our Anna

The words were a joke at best, the last vestige of a girl's silly desire. She'd always secretly desired the possessive, wanted to be wanted.

And for longer than she would like to admit, she'd desired him.

She folded the paper once, twice, into a neat square, then sealed it with crimson wax, unlocking the heavy silver locket that hung at her breast and stamping it with an elaborate C before ringing for a messenger to fetch it for delivery.

It was for the best, she told herself, deliberately setting the missive aside and reaching for another file, one marked "Langley."

She had other plans for her life. For Caroline's.

And loving Duncan West was not in them.

Not even if she wanted it very much.

She returned to her work. To her world, empty of him.

He left the club, furious, and headed to his offices, desperate for proof that he held some kind of power in this world that seemed to be spiraling out of his control.

Tremley, Chase, Georgiana – they all wished to own him. To wield him like a weapon – his newspapers, his network of information, his mind.

His heart.

Only one of them threatened his heart.

He corrected his earlier assessment of the situation. She did not wish to own his heart. On the contrary, she seemed not at all committed to the organ.

He pulled his greatcoat around him, lowering his hat and marching up Fleet Street as though the wind was a worthy foe. He kept his head down, trying his best to keep from seeing the world.

From letting it see him. His doubt, his frustration, his pain.

And it was pain – the sensation high in his chest. He'd thought their afternoon would change her mind. He'd thought it would win her heart.

What an idiotic fool he was.

She'd been with Chase for too long to turn her back on the man, and there was something powerful in her commitment to the owner of The Fallen Angel. Something made even more remarkable by the fact that it was not tied to the physical.

Memory came, dark and unbidden. Georgiana leaned back on the desk, her golden hair floating down behind her to brush the hard oak. Her breasts high for him. Her thighs parted. Her gaze on him.

She'd given herself over to him, physically, yes – to his kiss and touch – but more than that, she'd given herself to him in a myriad of other ways. She'd entrusted him with her pleasure, with her secrets.

Most of her secrets.

Except it was not hers, the one for which he asked. Chase's identity had nothing to do with her. And yet she remained beholden to the man, refusing to give up the only thing that could protect Duncan.

There was a nobility in her actions – a loyalty that he could not help but respect even as he hated it. Even as he envied it.

Even as he wanted it for himself.

Just as he wanted her.

Just as he loved her.

He looked up, mere yards from his offices, only to discover a pretty chestnut tied to a hitching post outside the entrance to the building. It was a familiar horse, but either because of the day or his frustration, he could not place it. He climbed the stone steps and let himself inside, nearly walking past the building's receiving room before realizing that there was a woman seated inside, reading the latest issue of The Scandal Sheet.

A young woman.

A very young woman.

He removed his hat and cleared his throat. "Miss Pearson."

Caroline put the paper down immediately and stood. "Mr. West."

He raised his brows in her direction. "May I help you?"

She smiled, and he marveled at the way the expression turned her into a younger version of her mother. "I came to see you."

"So I gathered." He supposed he should send a note to Georgiana, apprising her of her daughter's location, but instead he said, "I happen to be free for the next quarter of an hour. May I interest you in tea?"

"You have tea here?"

His lips twitched. "You seem surprised."

"I am. Tea seems so..." She paused. "... civilized."

"We even serve it in cups."

She seemed to consider that. "All right, then. Yes."

He led her into his office, indicating to Baker that they required food. "And speaking of civilized," he added as he waved the girl into a chair, "where is your chaperone?"

Caroline smiled. "I lost her."

He allowed his surprise to show. "You lost her."

She nodded. "We went for a ride. She did not keep up."

"Is it possible that she was not certain where you were going?"

The smile was back. "Anything is possible."

"And you simply turn up here?"

Caroline lifted one shoulder and let it drop. "We established that I read your newspapers; the address is right on the page." She paused, then added, "And I am not here to visit. I am here for business."

He tried not to smile. "I see."

Her brow furrowed in an expression that he'd seen a dozen times on her mother. "You think I jest."

"I apologize."

He was saved from saying more by the arrival of tea, along with scones and clotted cream and a pile of cakes that surprised even Duncan. But perhaps the most rewarding part of the tea service was the way that Caroline came to the edge of her seat, considering the sweets with wide eyes befitting her age. She was unsettlingly beyond her years most of the time – a younger, more forthright version of her mother – but right now, the nine-year-old wanted cake.

And that was something that Duncan could manage. "Help yourself," he said as Baker set a pile of letters on the desk and took his leave.

Caroline immediately went for a fondant-covered oval at the top of the pile and had it halfway to her mouth when she froze, looked at him, and said, "I am supposed to pour."

He waved her on. "I don't need tea."

She did not care for that answer. "No. I'm supposed to pour."

With great control, she set her cake on a plate and stood to lift the heavy teapot, pouring steaming liquid into one of the cups. When it was full, she said, "Milk? Sugar?"

He shook his head. "As it is." It was bad enough he was going to have to force down a cup of the stuff, but the girl seemed so proud of herself as she offered him the teacup, rattling in its saucer, that he did as any decent man would do, and drank the damn tea.

"Cake?" she asked, and he heard the yearning in her young voice.

"No, thank you. Please, sit."

She did. He did not miss the fact that she did not pour a cup for herself. "You don't want tea?"

Her mouth was full of sweets, so she shook her head, swallowing before saying, "I don't like it."

"You asked for it."

That shoulder lifted again. "You offered. It would have been rude to say no. That, and I hoped there would be cake."

It was precisely the kind of thing Georgiana would say. Mother and daughter might not have spent the lion's share of the years together, but there was no question that they were connected – clever, quick-witted, and with a smile that would win over an army.

She would no doubt be exceedingly dangerous when she came of age.

"What can I do for you, Miss Pearson?""I came to ask you to stop helping to get my mother married."

It appeared she was exceedingly dangerous now.

He resisted the urge to lean forward. "What makes you think I am doing that?"

"The columns," she said pointedly. "Today's was the best yet."

Of course it was. It was the one he'd written after the night in his swimming pool, when he'd hated and adored her all at once.

"It made her seem positively respectable," Caroline added.

He blinked. "She is respectable." He ignored the fact that he'd made love to the woman in question not an hour earlier.

She met his eyes, all seriousness. "You are aware that I am a bastard, are you not?"

Good Lord. The child was as brazen as her mother. She shouldn't even know the damn word.

But she reminded him too much of another girl, another time.

The same word, whispered as he walked past with his mother. His sister.

"I never want to hear you say that word again."

"Why not?" she asked. "It's what I am. Others use it."

"They won't once your mother and I are through with them."

"They will," she replied. "They just won't do it to my face."

She was too wise, this girl. Knew too much about the world. And he – who had only known her for a week – hated that she had no choice but to know it. That her life had always been embroiled in scandal and muck.

All that could be done was to give her a chance at propriety. Which was why Georgiana had come to him. Together, they could give Caroline that opportunity, just as he'd given it to Cynthia all those years ago.

And it was in that moment that he understood why Georgiana hid from him.

He didn't know how he hadn't seen it before – how he hadn't recognized the way she moved the pieces across the chessboard of Society. Hadn't he done the same? Hadn't he packed up his sister and run into the night, afraid of being caught, but even more terrified of leaving her there, in that place, with those people who judged her with every breath? Hadn't he built this life to keep Cynthia safe?

To keep their secrets?

And now, as he stared at Georgiana's daughter, he understood that she was doing what she could to save Caroline. This girl, with her smart mouth and her independent spirit and her winning smiles – Georgiana would do anything to save her. To give her the life Georgiana had not had. To keep her secrets.

And that meant keeping Chase's secrets, too.

How many times had he seen Chase destroy a man? How many times had a debt been collected to the demolition of a history, a life, a family?

How many times had West aided and abetted those destructions?

Granted, they had always been men who deserved the demolition, but that only made it more tempting to partner with him. It was easy to climb into bed with Chase. But virtually impossible to climb out.

There had been resignation in Georgiana's eyes earlier – when he'd left her – as though she had no choice but to play Chase's guardian.

To play his fool.

And now, staring at this girl, he understood why.

Chase held too much power over her.

Chase held too much power over every one of them.

No one had ever resisted his sway.

No one had ever been strong enough to do it.

Until now.

"I am not a fool," the child across the desk told him.

"I never said you were," he replied.

"I know the way of the world," she insisted, "and I see what my mother is doing. What she's asked you to do for her. But it isn't right."

He could have denied the charges, but this girl, who had spent her whole life in darkness, deserved light. "She wants to marry."

"She doesn't want to marry. Anyone can see that."

He changed tack. "Sometimes, you make choices to protect the ones you love. To keep them happy."

She narrowed her gaze on him, and he was instantly uncomfortable with the knowledge there. "Have you done that?"

He had built a life on it. "Yes."

She watched him for a long moment, as though she could see the truth in him. Finally she said, "Was it worth it?"

It had left him deep in debt to Tremley, a man who was willing to do anything to keep his power. It had built him a life of dependence on informants and scandalmongers. But it had also built his empire, established his power. Kept Cynthia safe.

And it would keep Georgiana and Caroline safe, as well.

Even if it would not make him worthy of them.

"I would do it again without question."

She thought on that. "What about keeping my mother happy?"

He would do that, too, if only she'd let him.

He smiled at the girl. "Your mother has made her goals clear."

"Me, in a house somewhere, preparing for Society events."

He nodded once. "Eventually. Until then, I think she'd just like you to be happy."

There was a long silence, until Caroline said, "Do you have children?"

"I do not," he replied. But as he looked at this girl, all strength and smarts, like her mother, he thought perhaps he might like one or two.

"It isn't only she who wants me happy," she said after a long pause. "I wish her happy, as well."

As did he. Quite desperately.

He stood, having every intention of coming around the desk to – he didn't know what – but he hoped it would be the right thing to comfort this girl who so clearly wanted to have some control over her life.

He stopped, however, when he saw the small ecru square on the desk, and recognized the seal there.

It was from Chase.

He was opening it before he could stop himself, reading the words written black and forceful across the paper.

Rage flared, hot and welcome, not because of the fact that he had lost his membership – there were a dozen other clubs that would have him – and not because of the insistence that he stay away from Georgiana.

The fury came with the single, possessive word that rippled through him like poison. Our.

Our Anna.

He wanted to roar his disagreement with the words. She was not Chase's. Not any longer. She was his. She, and the girl who sat across from him.

He would get them their new life.

He would keep them safe.

He might not know what was to come, but he knew this: Chase's power was at an end. Duncan wanted him weakened, never again dictating his actions, or Georgiana's, or Caroline's. Duncan would see them protected from Chase and his unmatched control. And he would see them blossom.

Even if they were not with him when they did.

"Let me take you home. Your companion will no doubt be terrified to have lost you." He came around the desk, noticing that she watched him carefully.

"What of my request?"

"I'm afraid that I already have an arrangement with your mother. She wants a marriage, and I have promised to help her."

"It is a bad idea."

He knew it. She would not be content with marriage. She would certainly not be content with Langley. And he wanted her content.

He wanted her blissful.

He could make her so.

Of course, he couldn't. Not really. Not with his past. Not with the future that loomed every time Tremley threatened.

"What is in the message?" Caroline asked.

He shook his head. "Nothing of import."

"I don't believe you," she replied, her gaze falling to his hand, where the paper was crushed in his fist.

He looked down at it, then said, "It is the next move in a game I've been playing for years."

Her gaze turned curious. "Are you losing?"

He shook his head, his next step resolved, for the woman he loved. "Not any longer."