A listair had met her, briefly, in the spring of that same year. He had accompanied his friend Miles, Viscount Deveraux, on the sort of outing that might have seemed ordinary to rakish Miles, but which Alistair would always remember as an adventure: a breakneck ride from Hertfordshire to London—chasing after a girl, of course. Miles’s second reluctant fiancée of the Season.

At the end of the journey, a discovery had awaited them. Miles’s name was once more to appear in the scandal sheets. The author of the piece had been Miles’s bride-to-be, Miss Daphne Burke—who, as it had turned out, was also the advice columnist for Goode’s Guide to Misconduct . Alistair’s sisters were faithful readers of the notorious periodical, despite his protests.

And this time, the exposure of Miles’s rakishness was to be accompanied by a less than flattering illustration of that devil, Deveraux . The artist had been none other than the hand behind the magazine’s monthly mocking cartoon, “What Miss C. Saw.”

None other than the young woman now lying before him.

Miles and Alistair had intercepted the scandal sheet at the printing house before the damage had been irreversible. And after an explanation—and an embrace—had set all to rights between Miles and the author, it had fallen to Alistair to accompany the artist home.

Half an hour alone with her in Miles’s curricle ought to have been sufficient time to discover something about Miss C. Her name, for instance. Where she’d come from. How she had joined the staff of Mrs. Goode’s Magazine for Misses .

Why he—dull, generally inoffensive Alistair Haythorne—had been a frequent target of her satirical pencil.

But asking questions was an awkward business, and Miss C. had not been forthcoming on her own.

The only information she’d imparted had offered no more of a clue about her identity than that old letter. Her few words had been quietly and coolly spoken; above the rattle of wheels and the noise of the street, he had heard too little of her voice even to speculate about her accent. She had instructed him to deposit her in the vicinity of Bond and Oxford Streets, a bustling shopping district into whose impersonal throngs she had quickly disappeared.

He hadn’t liked to leave her there, unaccompanied and unchaperoned. But she had seemed to regard her independence as unremarkable. Whether she lived nearby with her family in one of the elegant mansions of Mayfair or alone in a room above a shop he would never know. At least, not without prying in a most ungentlemanlike manner.

Now, though, what choice did he have but to pry?

Laying aside the cartoon, he explored the remaining pieces of half-completed artwork. The deeper he went into the pile, the better the pictures had fared in the accident, their style varied but the hand that had made them invariably skillful.

Her hand?

The available evidence pointed to one conclusion: Miss C. was an extraordinarily capable artist, whether working in pen-and-ink, watercolors, or oils. But that only begged another question. Why would someone with such a gift squander it on satirical sketches for the Magazine for Misses ?

Alistair knew of one person who might be able to answer that question, other than the artist herself. In their quest to find Miles’s fiancée, he and Miles had inquired of Miss Burke’s chaperone, Lady Stalbridge, and been directed to the Magazine for Misses ’ printer by Lady Stalbridge’s stepson, Lord Manwaring. Manwaring had admitted that Lady Stalbridge knew Mrs. Goode. Impossible not to speculate that she might in fact be Mrs. Goode. But of course Alistair had never acted on those speculations or vouchsafed that secret to another soul. To have done so would have been very bad ton , and Alistair was no gossip. It was one reason he and Miles, so different in most every respect, had been able to rub along so well for so many years.

Truth be told, despite Alistair’s vocal misgivings about the magazine whenever he happened upon a copy, the identity of Mrs. Goode was a matter of supreme indifference to him. His three youngest sisters—Lady Frederica, Lady Georgiana, and Lady Harriet Haythorne, known in the family as Freddie, Georgie, and Harry—had been just shy of unmanageable long before Goode’s Guide to Misconduct had come on the scene.

But if Lady Stalbridge, or Mrs. Goode, also knew Miss C., what choice did Alistair have but to make use of a connection he ought properly to have forgotten? The packed valise and artist’s case, the sturdy shoes and woolen dress, all hinted at a woman undertaking a journey. Running away from home? Why, at this very moment, Miss C.’s family might be frantic with worry, with no notion of what had become of her.

He scrounged up a half sheet of paper, dipped his quill, and scratched out a few lines of explanation and inquiry, worded in such a way that he hoped would not reveal more than either Miss C. or Lady Stalbridge would like.

The seal had only just hardened when he heard a rap on the outer door. He went to answer it and found the lad returned with the food. Another coin from Alistair’s waistcoat pocket, almost the last. Another set of instructions, and the boy was on his way to Berkeley Square with the letter, while Alistair returned to the library and sat down to his dinner.

Not that he had much appetite. Nor did his desk make a terribly genial dining room, though this was not the first occasion on which he had resorted to it.

Tonight, however, his attention was all for the figure reclined on the little sofa on the other side of the room.

Was it his imagination—his misplaced hope—that a hint of color had returned to her face? Perhaps it was nothing more than the reflected glow of candlelight.

But no, her breathing was steadier too. Deeper. With a sigh, he pushed away his plate, rose, and approached the settee, his thoughts a jumble of concern and frustration and perhaps even a flash of irritation.

Readers of the magazine had dubbed Miss C.’s cartoons the Unfashionable Plates. It was true that Alistair was often careless about what he wore. He had no aspirations to join Beau Brummell’s set, that dandy who seemed to imagine the funds for fine tailoring grew on trees. But Alistair was hardly alone in his indifference to fashion, and certainly not the only gentleman without a fortune to go along with his title. What had he done to draw Miss C.’s eye—to say nothing of her ire?

Last spring, he had not even ventured to ask her.

Now he wondered whether he would have another chance.

He stood looking down at her. Her hair was all in a tangle, as one might expect, given her ordeal—though he remembered it having been rather disordered the first time he had seen her too. Its tendency to curl— to frizz , his sisters would have said—made it rather ungovernable, he supposed.

The Miss C. of last spring had carried herself with the air of a woman who would bristle at the notion of being governed.

Well, and look where that independent streak had got her. Once more, he brushed a few strands of hair away from her face, carefully avoiding her bruised and bandaged cheek.

Last spring, he hadn’t suspected how soft those curls were. As fine as copper-colored silk.

He hadn’t noted that scattering of freckles before either. The spectacles had disguised them, he supposed. Her eyelashes were fair, but thick enough to cast a wispy shadow over her cheekbones.

Was that a flicker of movement? Or only a trick of the light?

Another rap at the front door distracted him. He opened it to find the now-familiar boy, who thrust a note into his hands with a sharp nod before disappearing into the rapidly thickening gloom. Alistair returned to the study and broke the seal on the letter—his own letter, refolded and resealed. Beneath his query a few lines had been added in Lady Stalbridge’s elegant script.

He sank down onto the crate nearest the settee and read the note twice more. Words leaped out at him. Danger and false and, most alarming of all, capable care . He was practically penniless and alone in an almost empty house.

What had he to offer a damsel in distress?

The phrase brought a little snort of wry laughter to his lips. Miss C., he felt certain, would not appreciate it—neither the label nor his laughter.

Tossing aside the paper, he took her uninjured hand between both of his. The beds of her nails were paint-stained, her fingers roughened by frequent scrubbing. Not the hand of a lady. Absently, he chafed his thumb across her knuckles.

We know nothing of her family.

The young lady may be in some danger.

Had the terrible accident with the carriage been no accident after all?

Had she been running from something? Some one ?

Last spring, he had dismissed her as a frowsy spinster who had taken an irrational dislike to him—no, to his appearance . She didn’t know him .

Now, having seen the pictures in her artist’s case, having glimpsed skills far beyond those of Mrs. Goode’s satirical cartoonist, he felt a flicker of regret at the realization he might never know her.

He thought of the portrait hidden in the bottom of her valise. Too old to be her own work. But precious to her, for some reason. Miss C. was a woman with a secret. A woman who guarded even her name. Mrs. Goode believed that the name by which she knew her was a fabrication. But Miss C ....surely there was some clue in that?

“Charlotte?” he ventured, searching her slack face for some hint of reaction. “Caroline?” Still nothing. He patted the back of her hand. “Christine?”

Useless, really. He might run through dozens of names without striking on the proper one. And what if it were the first initial of her surname instead? After all, Miles’s bride, the former Miss Burke, had written under the name “Miss Busy B.” Surnames beginning with C were legion indeed.

Still, he felt compelled to try. “Miss Cleves?” he called out in a singsong voice, the sort one used to wake a sleeping child. “Oh, Miss Crawford! Dear Miss Camden.”

Nothing .

What in God’s name was he to do?

Tomorrow, his tenants expected the key to an empty house. He tried to picture their reaction to finding an injured and unconscious young woman sprawled on the settee in the library.

No, he couldn’t leave her, of course. But the alternative—taking her with him to Rylemoor—seemed equally ill-advised. Carting her across the country in a jouncing coach was worse than any hospital—and might just constitute kidnapping.

“Oh, my dear Miss Clara Cartwright,” he exclaimed, increasing the volume of his voice and patting the back of her hand more vigorously, “you simply must wake up.”

Again, that flicker of shadow beneath her eyes, so faint he put it down to his imagination.

Well, at the very least, he could make her more comfortable. She was tall, almost as tall as he, and the angle of her head against the arm of the settee was giving his own neck an empathetic crick.

He stood and peeled away his greatcoat to reveal her slender form. A reticule—it had perhaps been dangling from her injured wrist—lay nestled in her lap. He picked it up to place it with the rest of her things, noting its heft and then recalling for no particular reason how when Harry was a little girl, she had often stuffed hers with rocks.

Miss C.’s practical, almost coarse, woolen dress, he decided as he slid his arms beneath her shoulders and knees, was just one more layer to her disguise, for the figure it hid was, like her hair, softer than he had expected. Standing, he cradled her against his chest. Despite his annoyance with some of her artistic choices, he could not help feeling a surge of protectiveness at her current vulnerable state.

The slightest whimper eased from her lungs as he started toward the stairs, but she gave no other indication of waking. He thought of the physician’s parting words about her injuries; perhaps he ought not to have tried to move her. But surely a bed was the proper place for an invalid.

Two floors above, arms aching and suitably winded, he toed open the door to his own suite of rooms and the last bed in the house that had not been stripped of its linens. It was a spartan chamber, even without the evidence of his imminent departure. But the mattress was soft. He deposited her on the center of the bed, covered her with the quilted counterpane, and turned to light a fire in the hearth.

Its crackle and snap at first muffled the sounds of movement behind him. The more convinced he became that what he heard could be noises of wakefulness, the more reluctant he grew to turn and reveal them once again to be the products of nothing but his own fancy.

“Where—? Who—?” The mumbled questions were quiet, laced with confusion and edged with pain.

He spun on his heel to face her. She was trying to lift her head from the pillow and wincing with the effort it required. “You’re alive!”

Confusion streaked across her face. Then, as the firelight illuminated his features, a flare of what could only be recognition. And finally, her eyes squeezed shut and she slumped against the pillows once more.