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Turning the corner into a wider street lined with grand houses, she was buffeted by a sudden gust of wind and stumbled into the road just as a speeding curricle appeared from nowhere.

A great cry of warning rent the air. She fell to her knees as the horses, panicked at the sight of her and being reined in hard by the driver, trampled over her.

The curricle wheels clanked to a halt just before crushing her leg.

Eliza’s head hit the cobbled road with a sickening thump and everything went black.

* * *

His lordship, Raven Purfoy – more formally Earl Purfoy of Hartfield Castle in the county of Herefordshire – was in a good mood.

White’s was his favourite club for a reason: it was filled with aristocrats like himself, mainly of a Tory political persuasion, with more wealth than 90 per cent of the general population put together.

Landowners all, they were convivial gamesters, and gossip of fortunes lost or gained entertained the ebbing hours.

He had had a good night, winning at his favourite occupation, playing hazard with well-lubricated friends, but it was past two o’clock in the morning and he was tired and over-toped on brandy.

He pocketed his winnings, rose from the table, saluted his friends and set off in search of Taz, his groom.

Lord Purfoy carried his drink better than most, but those who knew him well would recognise that his customary drawl was more marked, his dark eyes more glittering, his pallor heightened by points of colour on his cheekbones.

As he strolled into the chill night he glanced around.

He knew his tiger, Taz, cared more for his horses than for anything, as in fact did he.

Taz would not allow them to idle in the cold as other grooms did, waiting on the whim of their masters.

Lord Purfoy put two fingers to his lips and gave a piercing whistle and, within a minute, his smart navy blue curricle, pulled by a pair of the finest greys, trotted into St James’s.

Taz jumped down and his sharp black eyes glanced disapprovingly at his master.

‘M’lord, ye’re too foxed to ’andle them prancers. I’ll keep the reins.’

‘Impudent fellow! My friends are right. I allow you far too much licence,’ Purfoy muttered as he walked round to climb into the driver’s seat.

‘Sir, neither you nor I wish these prime ’uns injured.

’ Taz had ultimate authority when it came to the welfare of the horses.

He had been picked off the streets by Lord Purfoy who had noticed that this wizened jockey-like figure had a miraculous way with animals.

However, Raven Purfoy’s admiration for him was not returned.

Taz only had eyes for the horses, although as humans went, he thought his master was as good as they could get.

But he offered no forelock-tugging respect; in fact his lordship’s friend, Mr Shilton, a stickler for propriety, complained bitterly at the liberties allowed to a mere servant, given by his master the respect due to a friend.

Lord Purfoy was irascible. ‘I’m driving my own beasts, damn you!

I still have my wits, you know.’ He hauled himself into the driving seat and Taz reluctantly conceded and leapt up to his perch behind.

In Raven Purfoy’s uncharacteristically slack hands, the horses set off at a pace too fast for the road and heading south down St James’s Street, in the opposite direction from home.

Taz was about to climb over the back of the seat to take the reins himself when an old woman, bundled up in a cloak, was suddenly before them, blown by the wind it seemed, and staggering under the weight of her baggage.

Too late, Lord Purfoy pulled the horses up hard and the woman, with a cry and in a flurry of cloth, tumbled under their hooves.

The shock of the accident sobered him up.

‘Damnation! Where did she come from? Taz, check the horses!’

* * *

Eliza emerged from the blackness to find herself lying on the street, her head thrumming with pain and with a stranger’s fingers trying to open the top fastening on her cloak.

In a panic, she struggled. ‘Git yer ’ands off me!

’ she said as loudly as she could, but just this effort drained her of energy and she closed her eyes, dizziness overcoming her.

When she opened her eyes again, she gazed straight into the handsomest face she had ever seen.

The stranger was leaning over her, his breath smelling of brandy, his eyes dark and intense.

His hat and gloves were tossed on the cobbles where he kneeled and his black hair was dishevelled, a wavy lock flopping forward onto his forehead.

His fingers had been moving along her jaw and down her neck, in search of a pulse.

‘Thank God!’ he said with emotion in his voice.

Eliza could not remember being shown any tenderness in her life and the intimate touch of his hand, the concern in his eyes, was electrifying.

Even though it was the touch of a stranger, in this instant the exultant recognition of something intensified her senses.

She felt her spirit flow out to meet his.

As he turned to address the small man behind him, Eliza noticed his high cheekbones and fine aristocratic nose, his noble authority and calm, and was reminded poignantly of her beautiful black stallion left behind at the circus.

Percy was the only living being she loved with all her heart and trusted with her life, and she felt the sharp pang of his loss constrict her chest.

Eliza heard the stranger’s voice continue in an unruffled way.

‘She lives, which is a mercy, but I have to check for injuries.’ His fingers gingerly probed the back of her skull through her coils of hair and when he withdrew them, she noticed they were dark with blood.

In the shadows she saw him start and look at her more intently. ‘Does anything hurt?’

Having heard him speak, she knew she had to talk in the ‘proper’ way she had learned as a child and answered carefully. ‘Only my head. But I’ve known worse.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Eliza.’

‘Eliza what?’

Fear clutched at her heart. If she told him the truth of where she had come from, she would be escorted back to the circus. In a moment of clarity, Eliza realised she had to pretend she could not recall anything, apart from her given name.

The gentleman, watching her hold her head, waited and she answered haltingly, with a catch in her voice, ‘I can’t remember.’

He responded in his sardonic way, ‘I shall call you Miss Mysterious until you do.’ Eliza struggled to sit and he extended a hand, so warm to her frozen touch. ‘Do you recollect where you may have come from, or where you were going?’

‘I don’t know,’ she muttered, aware of how many lies she now had to tell. Looking up, she asked, ‘What is your name, sir?’

Lord Purfoy hesitated. ‘Purfoy. Lord Purfoy,’ he said, his languor returned, ‘and this is Taz, my tiger.’

Eliza was shocked. She had never been this close to a member of the nobility before.

Callow young scions of noble families gathered after the show in the hopes of wheedling a kiss, but she always gave them short shrift.

This man was so much more distinguished and she turned her head away, embarrassed by the social gulf between them.

Then she glanced across at Taz to see a face that was comfortingly familiar to her.

There were circus folk who worked with the animals who had the same dark weathered skin and bright, questing eyes that missed nothing.

Eliza felt entirely at home in this man’s company.

His manner towards her too seemed to soften.

‘Ye a lucky lass not to be more out of sorts. That ’ead’ll need seeing to but no limbs are broken, thank the devil! ’ He spat into the gutter.

Taz had collected her valise from the road and picked up Mr Fox.

Eliza had not realised he had flown out of her pocket in the collision and her heart turned over at the thought she might have lost him.

She grasped the small creature and pressed it to her cheek, the only connection with her old life, so distant in time and now no more than a fragment of a dream.

She saw Taz show his master her map which he’d found crumpled on the road, and watched the two men frown as the smaller stuffed it into his pocket.

Lord Purfoy asked her, ‘Do you have any memory of your family?’

Eliza shook her head. ‘Mr Fox is the only family I have.’ When his lordship looked nonplussed, Taz explained it was the toy he had retrieved from the road and Eliza interrupted firmly, ‘He’s not a toy, he’s my family and been with me all my life.

’ She realised how much she had revealed in that comment but consoled herself that she was only concealing her recent past. Her loss of memory was only half a lie as she had little idea of what had come before the circus, and had never known her true identity.

Neither man, however, seemed to have realised this slip-up in her story, so exercised were they with the present conundrum of where she might belong.

‘Is there anywhere you’d like me to deliver you?’ Lord Purfoy sounded concerned.

Eliza was uncertain and said in a hesitant voice, ‘I did have a map with an address and the name of a lady who might give me work.’

Lord Purfoy ignored this and said to Taz, ‘I can only think that Mrs Wolfe would be the person to know best how to proceed.’ He offered his hand to help Eliza to her feet.

‘Miss Mysterious, let’s get you off the street.

’ She stood unsteadily. ‘I will have to take you somewhere safe until your memory returns.’

Taz helped her up into the curricle as Raven Purfoy sprang into the driving seat, miraculously returned to cold sobriety by the crisis. He gazed with some anxiety at the young woman beside him, her head drooping. ‘Taz, sit up here and make sure Miss Mysterious does not slip off the seat.’