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M eg listened as the door closed behind Will downstairs, then collapsed into one of the chairs near the fire in the study.

It was hard to believe how much time had passed since her father’s murder, and the danger Jane and Adrian had faced only days afterward at the hands of the same perpetrator. She and her mother had been hustled out of London and to the Gilford estate in the country the morning after Papa’s death. At the time Meg hadn’t understood why, but now she knew it had been because Detective Superintendent Eversham hadn’t trusted Lady Gilford’s ability to manage the diplomatic party that had been taking place in this very house. All Meg had known was that her beloved father was dead and she’d been separated from the one person in the world whom she felt truly understood by—Jane.

Now, she’d had enough time to make sense of everything that had happened during that chaotic time. And thanks to Jane’s friendship, she’d joined the Mischief and Mayhem Book Club and met Lucy and gained more friends than she could have imagined when she was a slip of a girl under the thumb of her overbearing mother.

Lucy was her dearest friend and understood Meg in that easy way that required no explanations or excuses. That she was now in danger, and Meg had done nothing to stop her from racing headlong into it, would press upon her until she learned Lucy and Will were safe.

She wasn’t sure what she would do if something were to happen to Lucy or Will. Or, God forbid, to both of them. The very idea made tears spring into her eyes, and she wished she were one of those ladies who always had a handkerchief with her.

Leaning her head against the mantelpiece, she took a deep breath, trying not to cry.

“Miss Gilford, what’s happened?”

At the sound of Benjamin Woodward’s voice, Meg gave a start and hastily brushed the tears from her eyes before she turned to face him.

“Mr. Woodward,” she said in what she hoped was a normal tone of voice. “You startled me. Whyever didn’t Stone announce you?”

“I prevailed on Mr. Stone to let me announce myself,” the American said with a surprisingly gentle smile. “What’s happened, Meg? Where are your brother and mother?”

Meg debated whether to disclose everything that had happened that morning to Ben, but he’d been with Will last night when they’d searched the Blackwood home. And like her, he’d been in on some of the other attempts to gather information about Vera’s disappearance. Surely Will could have no objection to her telling his friend what was going on now.

And suddenly, she was telling him everything. The note. Lucy’s insistence on going alone. Her own fears that she’d done the wrong thing by not going with her. Will’s arrival and the way he’d pocketed the dueling pistols.

“And I’m so afraid that they’ll be hurt and it will be all my fault and I’ll be alone in the world except for Mother and, well, you know how Mother is, and—”

Tears were streaming down her face at this point, and Meg was certain she should be mortified, but such was the severity of her worry that she simply didn’t give a fig about appearing thus before a man she saw as an antagonist at the best of times.

“Hey,” Woodward interrupted her and pressed a large handkerchief into her hand. “Hey. Slow down. Take a breath.”

He dipped down a little so that he could look her in the eye. “Whatever you might think about your brother, he is not foolish. I’m sure he and Lucy will emerge from this encounter unscathed.”

Meg looked up at him and realized she’d never been this close to him before. His eyes, she realized at this angle, were an unusual shade of green with a ring of gold along the outer edge of the iris. She saw the moment he became aware of her, because his pupils widened, and as she watched, the pulse point in his neck quickened.

Unable to look away, she met his gaze and watched almost as if she were someone else as he stood up straighter. Like she’d once seen at a scientific demonstration, their faces moved inexorably closer to one another.

When his lips touched hers, Meg felt the connection throughout her whole body. Almost as if of their own volition, her arms slipped around Ben’s neck and pulled him close. With a groan, he moved his own hands to rest at her waist, and Meg was surprised at how good his hard chest felt against her own softness.

It should have come as a shock when his mouth opened and he touched his tongue against the seam of her lips, but the intimate caress was instead the most natural thing in the world. And when she opened to his gentle invasion, it was as if she’d been waiting for this all her life.

She tentatively touched her own tongue to his, and soon they were engaged in the kind of sparring Meg could never have imagined much less seen as something she herself would participate in. Now she understood why there were so many poems about kissing.

So lost were they in one another that it wasn’t until a second round of pounding on the study door that Meg even became aware of a disturbance.

But Woodward must have heard it, because he reluctantly pulled away from her, pressing one last kiss to her lips and then another on her nose. When he stepped back, he looked her over and cursed.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, realized belatedly that whoever had been knocking must know what they’d been up to.

“You look exactly as if you’d just been kissed,” Woodward said with a scowl. “We’re just going to have to brazen it out. And hope whoever it is doesn’t guess.”

Meg wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or not.

But before she had time to do more than smooth back her hair and hope Ben’s fingers hadn’t done too much damage to her coiffure, the door opened to reveal Eversham.

“Why aren’t you with Will and Lucy?” she demanded of the detective superintendent, who was looking from Meg to Ben and back again.

Still looking suspicious but keeping his thoughts to himself, Eversham said instead, “Where are they? I came as soon as I was able to get away.”

Alarm coursing through her, Meg asked, “You didn’t get Will’s note?”

Eversham blinked. “What note?”

With a growing sense of dread, Meg explained everything again.