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“I wanted some fresh air, and there was no one around to accompany me,” she said, but her voice was curiously listless.

Martina looked at him, a speaking expression in her dark eyes, and he knew they were going to have to have a talk about the situation, something he dreaded. He didn’t want to talk to anyone about Georgie, and certainly not to someone who was deluded enough to think he had feelings for her.

“Take her back home,” he said. “I’ll be back in another hour or so.”

He waited for Georgie to protest, but she said nothing, and the anger that was never far away from him nowadays surged back. His lively Georgie...no, not his Georgie...was looking diminished.

He’d made a botch of everything, and it was time to end it.

End Stiles, and his bully boys would concentrate on other things—they had no quarrel with him.

Find the damned cache, though it seemed as if he’d looked everywhere.

He’d done what he could to bring the Mannings back to solvency, but in the end they weren’t his responsibility, just an errant whim on his part.

They would do fine without him, and if they didn’t, so be it.

They could sink or swim for all he cared.

“Lock her in her room,” he said gruffly, not allowing himself to look at her too closely. “Tie her up if you have to. Just make sure she doesn’t leave the house on her own again.”

“Yes, master,” Martina said in a cheeky voice, threading her arm through Georgie’s. “Let’s go home, lovey.”

And Georgie turned her back on him without another word.

It was a short walk back to the house, but for Georgie it seemed endless as Martina kept up a line of soothing chatter.

Georgie only half listened. She felt curiously sluggish, as if she were fighting her way through jellied consommé, and there was nothing she wanted to say or do but throw herself on her bed and weep.

Rafferty was leaving. She knew it wasn’t an empty threat—indeed, she’d been afraid this day would come since the moment he first set foot in the house.

He wasn’t made to be a butler, even though he certainly was a splendid one.

No, he was something far grander, like..

.like a pirate, or a highwayman, or something. And he didn’t want her.

Rafferty’s kiss...she still wasn’t quite sure what she thought of it. She needed him to kiss her again so she could ponder it. Her reaction had been more physical than intellectual. It was the kiss of a man who wanted a woman, she was sure of that much. So why was he leaving?

“We’d best go in through the kitchen,” Martina said. “No one else knows you went out.”

She roused herself. “How did you?”

“Because Rafferty had ordered me to keep an eye on you while Stiles is still about,” she said frankly, heading down the stone steps.

“But why? I don’t understand why Mr. Stiles would want to hurt me. He was being pleasant enough at tea.” She remembered his unctuous manner and controlled her little shiver of dislike. There’d been something in his flat black eyes, a malice that chilled her to the bone.

“He knows you’re Rafferty’s weakness.”

Georgie lifted her head, a thread of hope spearing the darkness. “I am?”

Martina looked annoyed, though Georgie knew it was with herself. “You are,” she said reluctantly.

Georgie scoffed. “He thinks I’m like some overgrown puppy.”

Martina’s strong mouth curved in a smile. “I don’t know as how that’s accurate, Miss Georgie.”

“What’s this?” Bertha demanded when they walked in. “Miss Georgie, have you been out on your own again? How many times must I tell you that?—”

Georgie burst into tears. Georgie who never cried, at least not in front of anyone, let out a wail of pure grief. He was going away, and she’d never see him again.

She let them fuss over her. Hug her and soothe her, ply her with hot tea and a cold wet cloth for her eyes, and Martina got her settled back in her bedroom, the curtains drawn, the bed turned down and her pretty dress carefully laid out.

The dress she’d foolishly thought would entice Rafferty.

By then, her tears had stopped, and she was simply in a state of benumbed misery, and then she thought she might cry again, but sleep overtook her first, and she dreamed of Rafferty.

Dagger Fanning lay in a crumpled heap on the ground, unconscious, and Rafferty flexed his bruised and bloody hands.

Dagger was a huge man, outweighing him by a good three stone, taller even than his own remarkable height, and he was a bully.

Rumor had it he’d killed a woman, one of the whores Belding ran, and when he was sent as a bill collector, bloodshed and death followed.

Rafferty had considered killing him—it would be nobody’s loss, and it would send an even more effective message than simply beating him to a pulp would.

But he’d lost the taste for death, if he’d ever had it.

He’d had to kill in his life, more often than he liked, but he saved it for a last resort.

He would kill Billy Stiles—there was no help for it. Dagger would serve as a final warning.

He crossed the deserted alleyway and picked up the knife Dagger had pulled on him, the one that gave him his name.

It was a nasty piece of business, and he’d managed to slice Rafferty’s chest before he’d disarmed him.

It was a shallow cut, hidden by the jacket, and he’d sew it up himself if need be, but as far as anyone could tell, Dagger hadn’t laid a finger on him.

Word would get to Billy—he probably already knew. It would go one of two ways. Stiles would take the warning and back off. Or things would escalate.

He needed to get the hell away from the Mannings, but for the time being, he didn’t dare.

He’d put them in danger, and it was up to him to keep them safe.

As soon as Billy was in the ground, he’d leave, without warning or a by-your-leave.

In a year or two she’d think back on him with acute embarrassment.

In a year or two he’d....have forgotten all about her. Of course he would.

Bertha and Martina were looking at him with acute dislike when he came in the kitchen door, and he was tempted to turn around and leave again. Instead, he sighed. “What have I done now?”

“You know perfectly well what you’ve done,” Martina said sternly. “That poor little girl is in love with you, and you’ve been treating her like she’s getting in your way.”

“She is. I can’t help that she thinks she’s in love with me. What would you have me do, seduce her?”

“Watch your tongue,” Bertha snapped. “You won’t be talking about Miss Georgie like that!”

He wanted to bang his head against the wall. He had absolutely no idea how things had gotten so bloody complicated. How he was tied to the place, to the girl, in ways that were anathema to him, was something he couldn’t fathom—all he knew was he was trapped.

At any other time he would have simply walked away and let things sort themselves out on their own.

He didn’t want responsibility for a group of helpless aristocrats—he’d walked away from that kind of life years ago and there was no going back.

Not for anything less than his grandmother, and in the end, not even for her.

But he couldn’t just leave. Whether he cared for Georgie or not, he could scarcely leave her to Stiles’s tender mercies. He wouldn’t even condemn the Beauty.

“I’ll be leaving,” he said. “As soon as I judge it safe to do so. Does that please you two biddies?”

Bertha just looked at him. “You’d break her heart like that, would you?”

“As I said before, what would you have me do?”

“Disillusion her,” Martina piped up. “That shouldn’t be that hard—Lord knows you have practice in it. The women who’d like to cut your throat are legion.”

“The problem with Georgie is she’d probably do it.”

Martina sighed. “You’re right. And every one of those angry women would be back in your bed if you beckoned. You have the devil’s own luck.”

There was no way he’d consider Georgie’s patent adoration to be lucky, not when it was off-limits and too bloody tempting. He stared at Martina. “I’ll be done by the end of the week,” he said.

‘That’s five days. You think you can take care of business in that time?” Martina said, her low voice thick with disbelief.

“I can.”

“And what business is that, may I ask?” Bertha said, eyeing the two of them suspiciously.

“Keeping the family safe from marauders,” Martina said blithely. “Don’t you worry, Bertha. This family won’t be the worse for having Rafferty as a butler.”

“Hmph,” said Bertha, her voice derisive. “You just watch out for Miss Georgie. Or I’ll have your guts for garters.”

Rafferty gave her a wry smile. “Nothing’s going to happen to Georgie, I promise,” he said, knowing it was the truth. Billy Stiles’s rule of the London underworld would come to an end after so short a reign. Someone else would fight and crawl their way upward, but it wouldn’t be him. Not anymore.