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A s soon as Ollie had found a hat for Evelyn, he hurried home as fast as he could.

It felt a bit silly, but he thought it was quite literally the most perfect hat he could buy for her.

It was dove gray felt and would cover the entire top of her head while the wide brim dipped low, hiding the back.

From the front, the brim curled up and rose at a jaunty angle, accented by a spray of pink, silk flowers and gray feathers, kept together by a large, blue, velvet bow.

Even though the hat itself wouldn’t be a surprise, perhaps it would lift her spirits. Evelyn had seemed morose lately. Not that he blamed her, of course.

As Ollie waited on the crowded tram for his stop, he clutched the hat box tightly while biting the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning like an idiot.

Buying a gift for Evelyn had been an exhilarating experience.

He had never bought a gift for a woman before, and even though Evelyn was only a friend, he still found himself strangely excited by it.

Ollie couldn’t wait to see her eyes light up when she saw it.

He was in good spirits as he walked through the front door. Mrs. Chapman hurried to meet him upon hearing his return. Rapidly, he told the housekeeper about the outing and how brilliant the hat was.

“Mr. McNab, please!” Mrs. Chapman interrupted in a low but anxious voice.

“What’s the matter?” Ollie was heading farther into the house to find Evelyn, but Mrs. Chapman stepped in front of him to stop him. “Am I not allowed to enter my home?” he jested.

Mrs. Chapman gave him an unamused look. “I’ve been trying to tell you, through your incessant talking, that you have dinner guests.”

Ollie frowned deeply. “I don’t have a dinner planned.”

“I know that.”

Unexpected guests? Who could that be? Cold fear snaked through Ollie. “Blast, is it the earl and the baron?” The thought of Evelyn being stuck with them while Ollie had been away made him sick to his stomach.

The housekeeper shook her head. Relief flooded him, but only briefly. No one knew she was here, so it shouldn’t be someone for her, then. Maybe it was Victor and Dantes, with more lost sums to shove in Ollie’s face. He swallowed. “Who’s here, then?”

Mrs. Chapman’s face twisted with regret. “His Grace and Her Grace. The Duke and Duchess of Invermark.”

Ollie slapped a palm to his face. He would have paid good money for it to have been his brothers and not his grandparents. “What are they doing here?” Ollie groaned.

Mrs. Chapman fidgeted. “When I opened the door they came barreling in, with no regard to manners. I informed them you were out and instead of leaving like everyone else in the world would, they insisted they wait for you. And ordered me to tell Cook to have dinner ready at a ‘normal time,’ with extra annunciation on those last words.” There was a long pause.

“When was the last time you talked to them, Mr. McNab?”

With a grimace, Ollie admitted it had been almost six months now. Granted, there had been numerous invites for him to visit them during that time, but Ollie had always had some excuse. Apparently, he’d avoided them for too long and was now going to pay for it. At the worst possible time.

Fergus and Marjory, as Ollie generally referred to them instead of “Grandfather” and “Grandmother,” had taken the McNab brothers in when Ollie had been four.

Dantes and Victor had been sent to boarding school, though Victor had run away and left permanently two years later, and had raised Ollie as a nob.

However, despite only living in Whitechapel for four years, it had been some of the most formative years of his life.

It was where Ollie had learned to talk and walk, where he’d made his first friends, where he’d had his first so-called family: the gang of street boys Dantes and Victor had taken up with to survive the streets without parents or a roof over their heads.

It was also where Ollie had learned to eat on his own—with his hands, not with five different forks—where he learned how to pick locks, and where he’d learned how adults acted, though largely the tattered, drunk men and the street women they’d spent time with, not polished gentlemen and ladies prudishly dancing at a ball.

And when the first years of one’s life were rooted in the slums, there was no way to ever fully escape it.

Not to say Fergus and Marjory hadn’t tried.

Too many times, Ollie had been caught breaking into girls’ bedrooms late at night, after being invited by said girls.

The first time he’d been caught, they had both been sixteen.

At eighteen and after two years of his shenanigans, his grandparents had been so put out by his behavior, he’d been sent to Oxford year-round.

The intention had been to surround him with young men of his own age and station, to emulate the behavior of his peers.

And while his peers may have spoken better, eaten better, and acted better, they had not been much better behaved at all.

There had just been more rules to work around.

Unfortunately for Fergus and Marjory, Ollie’s first years of life had been wild and lawless. By the time he’d been with them, he’d known well enough life would go on without following stifling rules.

Additionally, being in Oxford without Fergus and Marjory breathing down his neck had allowed him more time and freedom to see his brothers.

When he’d been in London or Scotland with his grandparents, or at boarding school in Eton, seeing his brothers had been impossible, even if they hadn’t been far away.

Oxford had provided the freedom to visit them almost whenever he’d pleased.

They’d been only a train ride away, and over his Oxford years, he’d become close with them once more.

And during this time, Victor and Dantes had begun tossing around the idea of opening a pub.

They’d just needed a bit more money first.

Unbeknownst to their grandparents, the McNab brothers had pooled together their share of their inheritance from their father’s railroad company, and The Harp & Thistle had come to be, the name a nod to their long-dead parents: their Irish mother as the harp, their Scottish father the thistle.

Ollie had begun working there in addition to attending classes.

And then Ollie’s scoundrel Oxford mates had gone, too. Turned out, nobs enjoyed letting loose just as much as the working class.

Ollie had graduated from Oxford at the bottom of his class and had promptly broken the news of the pub to Fergus and Marjory, who’d been aghast. Marjory had cried for an entire day straight while Fergus had hidden in his library.

Their reactions had seemed rather dramatic to Ollie, even for them.

When he’d confided in friend from university, that friend had said, “Well, yes, you’re not supposed to work.

You’re the spare, Ollie, didn’t you know that? ”

He had not, in fact, known that, and soon discovered he’d been the only one who’d been unaware of that crucial fact.

Victor wanted nothing to do with the title, and at the time Dantes was a famed pugilist with a rough reputation.

It did make sense Ollie would be considered the spare heir, as he had been raised in the aristocratic world.

Fergus and Marjory had tried their very best to train him well.

They had hired the best etiquette tutors in the United Kingdom.

Sent Ollie to the best schools. All of it a desperate attempt to salvage their own scoundrel son’s even wilder offspring.

But despite their stifling dedication to improving Oliver McNab, his roots had remained in Whitechapel, and there had been nothing they would ever be able to do about it.

Ollie would always be a chimera of the wealthy and the poor.

As he thought about all of this, he stared down the hallway at the closed door that led to his parlor. Behind it was an awaiting storm—he could already feel it crackling in the air.

His entire family was now cross with him at the same time. Even though they often clashed, it was still a wretched feeling.

“Where are they?” Ollie asked with a sigh, though he already knew. He was trying to delay facing them. That euphoria he had felt earlier was now completely gone.

“In the parlor,” Mrs. Chapman replied.

“And Evelyn is with them, I assume?” What an absolute nightmare this was turning out to be.

Evelyn and his grandparents would have been like oil and water.

Plus, there was also the fact she was even here in the first place.

She was unmarried, and so was he. Even though she was here to escape a bad situation, it would still be quite the scandal for her stay to be discovered.

At Ollie’s request, Mrs. Chapman took the hatbox to put in a safe place for him to fetch later.

“Miss Sparrow is upstairs napping,” the housekeeper explained.

She then looked down at the hat box in her hands.

A funny look crossed the woman’s face. “Buying her pressies now,” she replied in a wry tone.

Ollie resisted the urge to sigh at yet another conundrum under his roof. “What is it now?”

Mrs. Chapman glanced up the stairway. “I don’t mean to add more to your shoulders, but you should know I found your lady guest in your bedroom earlier.”

Admittedly, that was strange, and yet the thought of it sent a thrill up his spine. “Really? Why was she in there?”

Mrs. Chapman shrugged. “She claimed you told her she had free rein of the house.”

“I did.”

“And she claimed she ended up in there by dropping something.”

Ollie laughed. “She was curious, that’s all.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

Ollie tried to imagine Evelyn sneaking around his bedroom like she had at the museum. He grinned like an idiot.

Mrs. Chapman raised her eyebrows at this reaction, causing Ollie to force the grin away and clear his throat. “When I confronted her,” Mrs. Chapman continued, “she was at your bedside.”

Evelyn had been at his bedside. “Doing what?”