Devilish Lord, Mysterious Miss. ANNIE BURROWS

      ‘Well, that’s what I’m doing now. When Grit came to ask me what he oughter do about the questions Lord Matthison was asking about you, I told him to tell the gentleman whatever he wanted to know. Coz I don’t think he’ll do you any harm, Mary. There’s places what cater to gentlemen of that sort, and he don’t go to them. Not that I’ve heard…’

      ‘Molly, I don’t understand what you are talking about!’

      ‘No, I don’t s’pose you do. Look,’she said earnestly, ‘how long do you think Madame will keep you on, once your health goes completely? She puts up with you now, because the kind of beading you do is all the rage. But there’ll be a new fashion next season. Or your eyesight might go. Or…or anything could happen! And then, out you’ll go!’

      Mary shook her head. ‘Madame took a risk, taking me in and giving me a job. She’s always been good to me.’

      ‘I’ve worked for her a damn sight longer than you, girl, and I’m telling you, she’s like an old spider, she is, sucking all the life out of us, and then throwing away the husks what ain’t no good no more! Mary, she don’t even pay you!Yougetyourbed andboard, while she’smakingher fortune out of what your clever fingers bring in. Do you know how much she charges the Earl of Walton for those gowns you embroider for his wife? And do you see a penny piece of it? No! Coz you’re too simple to stand up for yourself. Well, I’m doing it for you!You’ve caught the eye of a real live lord, girl. One of the wealthiest in town.’

      ‘Well, yes, but only because I look like someone he used to know.’

      ‘Makes no difference why he wants you. It only matters that he does want you. Gents like him can be very generous, if you give them what they want. And when he tires of you, he won’t just chuck you out on the street. Point of pride with men like him, to leave their ladybirds comfortably off.’

      ‘L…ladybird?’ Mary echoed in appalled disbelief.

      ‘Oh, yes! I reckon he’ll be making you an offer quite soon. And when he does, you take it! You hear? Play your cards right, and this could be the making of you.’

      ‘The making of me?’ Mary gasped. ‘The ruining of me, you mean!’

      ‘Lord, Mary, don’t be any dafter than you have to be. You don’t dislike him, do you?’

      ‘It’s not that. I do feel sorry for him, but…’

      ‘Well, there you are. No harm in offering the poor man a spot of comfort, is there?’

      No harm? She did not know where to begin to explain the sheer magnitude of the harm that would come to her if she sold her body to a man! She could never regard becoming a man’s mistress as a step up in the world. It was all very well for Molly to describe it as a chance to gain the kind of financial security she could never hope for, not if she sewed for Madame for a hundred years, but as far as she was concerned, it would be the ultimate degradation!

      But there was no point even trying to explain all that to Molly. She would just see her scruples as further proof of her stupidity.

      She hunched her shoulders against her friend’s well-meaning meddling, and walked back to the shop in Conduit Street feeling like the loneliest, most misunderstood girl in London.

       Chapter Three

       Mary was standing on the edge of a cliff. She could hear waves pounding the shore far below, but it was too dark to see them. It was too dark to see anything. One false move, and she might go tumbling down to her doom.

       Her heart started to race. Her legs shook. And, just as she had somehow known it would, the ground beneath her feet crumbled away and she was falling, falling, her mouth open wide in a soundless scream…

       She landed with a bump, in the bottom of a small boat, winded, but unharmed. The dark gentleman had been there, waiting to catch her. His arms broke her fall.

       It was not dark down here in the boat with him. The sun was shining. She felt warm and secure lying in the dark gentleman’s arms, being gently rocked as the waves lapped against the boat. She could hear gulls keening. She looked up into a vast, cloudless sky, the kind of sky you never saw in London, fettered as it was by rooftops rank with smoking chimneys.

       He smiled down at her as she relaxed into his hold with a sigh.

       ‘I know you want me to kiss you,’ he said, and lowered his head…

      With a jolt, Mary woke with the blankets twisted round her legs. The feeling of tranquillity dissipated under a sharp blast of shame. How could she be dreaming about kissing a man? That man! She could not seriously be considering Molly’s suggestion she become his mistress!

      Could she?

      Sick with self-disgust, Mary pulled her nightgown out from under Molly’s leg, and wriggled out of the bed she shared with her and Kitty, one of the other seamstresses who lived with them over the shop.

      She pulled her wrapper round her shoulders, and padded barefoot up to the workroom. The sun was not yet up, so she lit one of the lamps Madame Pichot kept available when her girls had to work beyond the hours of natural daylight, and settled onto her stool by her embroidery frame.

      She had intended to distract herself from the disturbing feelings the dream had unleashed, by getting on with some work. But her mind stayed stubbornly focussed on the dark gentleman, like a stray dog gnawing at a stolen bone.

      She had woken just before his mouth had touched hers, but she already knew what it would feel like. Though in the dream he would not have kissed her as he had done in the gin shop, with frustrated anger. No, he would have kissed her tenderly, lovingly, exactly as she would want him to…

      No! She did not want him to kiss her! She was not that sort of girl! She did not want to snuggle up to him, and put her arms round him, and…and…comfort him with her own kisses…why that would make her no better than a harlot!

      She could not understand the person she had become in the Flash of Lightning. Before last night, she would have sworn that she feared and reviled men. All men. She had never wanted to receive the sort of lewd advances that other girls found flattering.

      So why had she not felt the slightest inclination to jerk her hand out of his when he had grasped it? Why had she not wanted to struggle away from him when he had crushed her to his chest and kissed her?

      She supposed she could argue that she would have been glad of anything that distracted her from sliding down into one of her panics. And she had certainly not been able to think about horses once he had swept her into his arms.

      He had overwhelmed every one of her senses. His breath had been warm against her face, his hands strong and determined, yet they had not bruised her shoulders when he had pulled her against the hard wall of his chest, where her nostrils had filled with the scents of him. Expensive linen and fine milled soap and warm, clean man…

      She sucked in a sharp, shocked breath. There she went again, savouring an experience that should by rights have scared her. Why had the feel of his arms closing round her felt like…she forced herself to admit it…like coming home? She rubbed at a dull, nagging ache that was thrumming at the base of her skull. It was ridiculous! He was a complete stranger to her.

      A stranger who had managed to breach all her defences with one kiss!

      One kiss, she sighed, and she could not stop thinking about him.

      Oh, she pressed her palms against her flushed cheeks, she hoped she never saw him again!

      If Molly was right, and he was about to make her a dishonourable offer, she did not rightly know how she would answer. She knew what she ought to answer. Of course she did. But would she be strong enough to say no? If he spoke to her again, kissed her again, this time gently, persuasively, as he had been about to