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“A good tailor, I hope. You’ve likely ruined my favorite coat.”

“A surgeon. Let me take you to him. That’s my cab, you see.”

He had the oddest feeling that he had been played, that she had seen Rook coming and laid a trap. He couldn’t think clearly, and he had no way to reach Rook. He did want a surgeon, and no questions asked. The only sawbones in this neighborhood had shaking hands and wiped them on his filthy linen. Lark should play out the scene. He couldn’t help Rook now. Rook would wonder where he’d got to, but he’d explain later. “Don’t you want your book?”

“The Spanish Brothers?” She bent down, scooped it from the pavement, and piled it back on the shelf. “No. I don’t need it anymore. Will you tell me your name?”

“Lark…in,” he said. “Edward Larkin.” It was the name he planned to use in his new life, if his old life didn’t do him in first.

She nodded. “Vivian Bradish.”

*

In the cab, Viv subdued her billowing skirts and stripped off her gloves. She brushed aside the edges of her cape, and twisted to see her companion, a bit startled at his nearness on the narrow seat, so close the scent of his shaving soap reached her, and his coat’s unmistakable tang of London smoke. She was grateful that he’d tipped his head back against the squabs and closed his eyes. His fine, full mouth was pinched. With his eyes closed, he looked young, almost boyish. She doubted he was thirty.

“We’ll be there in no time,” she told him. “May I see the wound?”

“Are you a doctor?” he snapped.

“I’ve done my share of nursing.” She supposed he was justified in sounding cross, as the cab jolted over the cobbles. Any distraction she could offer might help. “Do you have a clean handkerchief?”

“In my pocket.” He didn’t move, and his arrogant profile gave no indication which pocket he meant. Now that she could observe him more carefully, she noted the richness of his brown tweed coat with its velvet collar. His black silk tie was perfectly tied and held in place by a single gold stickpin. His waistcoat was an old gold silk jacquard, and his linen was dazzling. With one hand he clung to his hat, with his other hand he pressed his side where her bullet had grazed him. She hoped it was no more than a small groove in his flesh, but the ball might have hit a rib. Her Toby pistol was a lady’s gun, meant to dissuade would-be robbers, but at a distance of mere yards, it packed a punch.

If he did not have the sense to apply a handkerchief to his wound, she would have to do it. She dipped her hand into the outer pocket of his coat. Her fingers closed not around linen, but around a ring. She pulled it out and held it in her palm. The stone was a square-cut garnet, framed by two rows of tiny pearls, set in a gold band. It was a lady’s ring, and for a minute she could not imagine what it was doing there.

She became conscious of his gaze on her and lifted her chin. His deep-set eyes were startlingly blue.

“You’ve never seen a ring before?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon,” she said. “Were you about to propose marriage?”

He laughed and immediately groaned. “Do ladies always think of marriage when they see a ring?”

Up behind them on his perch, the driver turned the cab west into the traffic of the Strand. Viv dropped her gaze. She wasn’t going to admit past folly. Two years had passed since she’d been a green girl in a Bath ballroom, dazzled by a gentleman’s attentions. “I only meant that if there is a lady waiting for your addresses, we should get a message to her so that she doesn’t worry.”

“You think I was about to propose in a shabby street full of dirty books?”

“Oh.” She looked up again. She had stung him somehow. There was a curl to his lips and a tone of offended pride in his voice. She stuffed the ring back in his pocket and stared out over the horse’s head. He meant to be a disagreeable patient. She resolved to let him.

The cab rattled along, bumping her leg against his, and jostling them shoulder to shoulder, every move stirring awareness of his lean, taut body. She balled her hands into fists in her lap. He didn’t want her help.

“I have the ring because the lady … ended our betrothal.” He rushed the words a little, offering more than she’d asked. He leaned his head against the squabs again just as the cab stopped in the bottleneck of the Temple Bar. Over the centuries the monumental white stone structure with its single narrow arch for horse-drawn vehicles had become a traffic stopper. There was talk of tearing it down. Around them, drivers of every sort cursed each other to no avail.

“We’re not moving, so you’d better let me see to that wound.”

She didn’t wait for a reply, but opened the front of his coat. A bit of fine lawn cloth peeked from an inside pocket. She plucked it out and laid it in her lap. He plainly had a taste for expensive things. Gently she lifted his hand from his side, uncovering a singed black hole in his waistcoat. Around it, blood had stained the silk in streaks, like storm-reddened clouds at dawn.

“Why were you there?” she asked him. “It was oddly fortuitous, was it not?”

“If you call getting shot fortuitous.”

She ignored the sarcasm, unhooked the fob of his watch, and went to work on the buttons of his waistcoat until she could fold it open. The same black mark marred his shirt, and blood had plastered the sheer linen to his skin in a fist-sized blotch. The wound would need to be cleaned and dusted with basilicum powder. With her fingertips she peeled away the stained patch of shirt. A slight tremor shook him, and he inhaled sharply.

“What I can’t work out is why you stepped in the way?”

“I couldn’t let you shoot some poor wretch in the back.”

“I aimed only to wound.” She tugged at his shirt to free it from his trousers. His body arched briefly and froze. She halted.