Page 27

S he sent a message to Lady Bentley that she would not be home tonight.

It had started to rain shortly after the doctor arrived, a gentle brushing rain. It was a gift from the sky, warm and sweet for the approaching summer, and it did not at all match the day Millie had been experiencing here on the ground.

The maid, whose name was Paula, was not dangerously injured. Her face looked so frightful that Hannah had fainted straight away when the doctor pulled the wet rags away to begin to inspect it.

Gretchen, who looked unrecognizable in homespun, did not react at all.

She looked as though she’d gone cold. She held her friend’s hand with a look on her face like all feeling and context had been stripped from her life today, only allowing herself to flicker the hint of an expression when Dr. Grady sighed in relief.

“Just a little fracture, in the cheek,” he’d said. “You’ll heal so well, you’ll never know it happened at all.”

“Terrible thing,” Dot had put in, blinking innocently, “for a man to set upon one of my maids on her errands. London is more dangerous by the day, Dr. Grady. It’s a travesty.”

And the good doctor hadn’t questioned it. Not one bit.

Privately, away from prying ears, Ember, Dot, and Millie had discussed next steps.

“I will give them money,” Ember volunteered. “But I can’t get them safely to Dover. When Silas gets home, maybe he can—”

“No,” Dot had said immediately. “Silas has quite enough to deal with right now. I will tell him what is going on, but I cannot enlist him in this.”

“I could ask Abe,” Millie volunteered, sounding very small, even to herself. “He smuggled Freddy once upon a time, didn’t he?”

Dot shook her head. “No, Mr. Murphy does not have the right temperament for this. He will take one look at Miss Paula and immediately embark to murder Gretchen’s father.”

Millie blinked. Abe? Her Abe?

She’d never seen him so much as hint at a temper. Did she know the man at all?

“There is only one man I know who can handle this properly.” Dot sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “We’ll have to send for Mr. Cresson.”

Ember and Millie exchanged a befuddled glance.

“The law clerk?” Millie clarified. “Curly-haired, knock-kneed fellow?”

Dot had a small smile. “He is the one who kept Freddy in the carriage last year while I was marrying his brother. Mr. Murphy didn’t do that. Silas certainly didn’t. It was Mr. Cresson, and he did it quietly and without fuss, if you recall.”

Ember gave an acknowledging tilt of her head. “That did happen, didn’t it? Still waters, I suppose.”

“I’ll send for Mr. Cresson,” Dot continued, nodding to herself in approval of her own scheme. “He will know how to handle the loose threads here, and he can manage them without drawing any unwanted or dangerous attention.”

“They’ll need an escort to Dover,” Millie put in, her brow wrinkled. “Can Mr. Cresson do that too?”

“I suppose we’ll have to ask him,” said Dot, looking uncertain. “One thing at a time.”

When Dot walked away, Ember turned to Millie with a look of concern. “There’s only one of us here in London who knows how to lie, scheme, and trick their way across international borders.”

Millie felt herself run cold, her fingers clenching. “No.”

“We can’t do it, Millie,” Ember said, sounding tired. “He can.”

“No.”

But she felt herself sigh in defeat.

Cresson could handle the specifics, but if they were going to spirit two wanted women out of the country, they needed something a lot less reasonable and official.

They needed Freddy.

Millie did not take a cloak or a shawl or an umbrella. She declined the carriage. She walked right past the horses.

She needed the rain, something, to feel real and remind her that she was still corporeal in this insanity. It wasn’t until she reached the edge of the street where Abe’s office lived that she sighed to herself and flagged down a hackney carriage to take her those final two blocks.

“You’ll be going to Bloomsbury with another rider,” she told the driver, who didn’t seem to care at all, and she paid him from her own wages, fished out of her soaked reticule.

She stood in front of the door for a long time. She read Abe’s name on the sign over and over. She told herself she was wasting valuable minutes and to just knock already. But it still took a while.

When she finally did, it was Freddy who opened the door.

“Millicent?!” he had cried immediately, grabbing her by the forearms and pulling her inside. “Is Claire all right? My mother? What has happened?”

And then, of course, Abe had arrived, summoned from some room she couldn’t see, deep in his work, shirt-sleeves rolled up, hair askew, to stare at the scene she’d made.

She gave him a little shake of her head. She tried to be subtle.

Freddy first , she tried to say without speaking. Then you.

“The others are fine. Everyone is fine. But we need your help,” she said to Freddy, whose pale blue eyes were in panicked, perfect circles. “Dot and Ember and I, we need your help.”

“With what!” Abe had put in, only to be ignored.

“Whatever you need,” Freddy had answered immediately, startling everyone in the room, including himself.

He looked so painfully earnest that Millie thought for a moment she wasn’t even sure she recognized him. This wasn’t Dot’s erstwhile fiancé, the villain who’d stolen her sister. It was just some man who knew her somehow.

“There’s a carriage outside,” she said, “take it to Dot’s house. They need you to … well, they will explain,” she said, shaking her head, flecks of warm rainwater springing free from her sodden hair. “And thank you, in advance.”

Freddy didn’t say much after that. She watched him put on a coat and a pair of boots and couldn’t stop studying his face, looking for something, anything, familiar. When he reached for the doorknob, he turned back to her in confusion.

“Aren’t you coming?”

“No,” she said, flinging droplets of water from her fingers, shifting her weight as she puddled on the floor.

“I need …” She glanced over her shoulder at Abe, who’d been watching all of this while gripping the bannister of his staircase.

“I need Mr. Murphy’s help too,” she decided.

“Many things are in play. You will understand soon.”

And he’d accepted it. Blessed heavens, he’d just nodded and gone and closed the door behind him, leaving her soaked and alone with Abe Murphy.

“Millie,” he said, after the door had been closed for long enough that they could believe it would stay closed.

She looked at him. Looked at him all rumpled and casual and dry and standing there like that, gripping that bannister like she was about to pull him out to sea, and she took a step toward him. Like he could save her, maybe.

“Millie, are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?” he asked warily.

Two more steps. Closer. Almost touching him.

“No,” she said.

And then she kissed him.

She held him by the neck, her fingers cool and damp against the dry heat of his bare skin. She melded her wet, exhausted body against his, and she kissed him like she needed it to stay alive.

He kissed her back, tentatively at first like he was misunderstanding this kiss as an apology and not a demand, but it changed quickly, almost imperceptibly.

He reflected her heat with a bursting flare of his own, and when he pulled back, the nonsensical nature of how this day had unfolded starting to needle its way into his mind, she made a noise of frustration.

“I’m confused,” he managed, breathy against her lips.

“Good,” she said, pulling him back for more. “So am I.”

He groaned, sinking his hand into her wet, tangled hair and giving her what she wanted. What she needed. She felt the rainwater soaking into his shirt, transferring from her dress and her rain-lashed skin.

He pulled away, something sharp and feral flashing in his eyes, those eyes that were always so soft and sparkling with amusement. He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her up the stairs.

“Let’s be confused in my bedroom,” he said, his voice firm and brokering no argument as she hastened after him. The warmth of his hand over hers seemed to travel up her arm and then out into the rest of her as he led her to his door.

She felt his hands on her hips, on her waist, as he flung the door open, somehow managing to exist both behind and ahead of her as he pulled her into his domain. He was moving like a predator. Disorienting her like prey.

She found herself pressed to his wall, her cheek turned to the side as the heat of his breath fell into her ear, his teeth grazing at her lobe. She could feel the deftness of his fingers, working their way into the ties at the back of her dress and jerking them apart one by one.

He was not quite rough, but it certainly wasn’t gentle.

This wasn’t polite or careful or shy in any way, not like she’d been led to believe it would be, should she ever get to experience it.

She could feel the length of his erection, the persistence of it, pressed tightly into the small of her back.

She surrendered to it, allowed herself to whimper, to feel her dress pushed from her shoulders and down her waist.

She shivered at the growling sound he made, like a primal approval, when the fabric briefly caught on the flare of her generous hips and bottom. She leaned into the sharp flick of his tongue on her neck, consuming the beads of sweetwater rain that lingered on her skin.

She wiggled to get the dress loose, swaying her hips in a way that wasn’t meant to be provocative but certainly appeared to inflame Abe. He made a sound low in his throat like hunger. No, not hunger. Like famine.

She didn’t even feel him untying her half stays. They simply went sailing across the room, as though they’d never belonged there in the first place.