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in the spring the tone of her letters had become suddenly frantic, until she had sent that last panicked plea.
    The paper split a little as Sarah unfolded the final missive yet again. Her eyes skimmed over the important phrases:
    A lady alone is so helpless against any influential gentleman. Society always judges a female more harshly than her persecutor, and I fear no one would believe me if I ever revealed his name. But, oh, how I think now about that day on the yacht—one golden, bright memory in my sea of despair! How I wish I might ask Mr. Devoran, the loveliest man I ever met —Rachel had scratched through the next several lines— But no, that would never do! What if my enemy found out? All these titled families know each other, don’t they? They might even be friends—
    So when she’d denied that Rachel had wanted to enlist his help, Sarah Callaway had indeed been hiding something. But so had he.
    Why else had Guy Devoran reacted to her explanation of her cousin’s predicament with such vehemence? No doubt he’d been annoyed that Rachel had given him a false name, and perhaps that information had bruised his pride a little, but surely he must be otherwise unconcerned?
    After all, they had met only that once. Rachel had adored her day on the yacht, because Guy Devoran—carefully courteous—had neither embarrassed nor propositioned the young lady in his power.
    Instead he had made Rachel laugh.
    Yet it had all only been to help another young lady named Anne, who was now married to Lord Jonathan St. George, Mr. Devoran’s younger cousin. According to the newspapers, the couple had recently returned to England from India, and Lady Jonathan was expecting a happy event any day.
    By spending that day on the yacht with Rachel, Guy Devoran had helped Lord Jonathan’s future wife to escape her enemies, and made all her happiness possible. He had done it only because he was generous and gallant and compassionate, not because of any personal concern for Rachel.
    But what if this time he decided not to help a young lady in distress, after all?
    Or worse: What if she had misjudged everything about him from the snippets in Rachel’s letters? What if Mr. Devoran was hiding something that really mattered?

    R AIN streamed along the pavement. Guy stood in the doorway of the bookseller’s with several volumes wrapped in brown paper tucked under one arm. He glanced up and down the street as if checking the weather.
    The light-skinned man that he had seen earlier loitering near his townhouse was gone. The man’s presence might have been coincidence, or it might be that Guy was not the only person who had noticed Mrs. Sarah Callaway, captain’s relict, lingering in the street with anxiety marking her face like a brand.
    Devil take it! If anything truly dangerous was going on, she would have been far safer to have sent him a note. No one in his house would have dreamed of opening his correspondence. Instead, she had delayed her decision to seek his help until Rachel had already been missing for several days.
    If she really was missing, of course, and not simply hiding from the disappointed rage of another abandoned lover.
    Guy shrugged and strode off. He was indeed well known in London: the duke’s nephew who was the friend of so many and the intimate of almost none.
    As soon as he was ensconced in the security of his study, Guy sent out several letters. The first to deliver his regrets to a certain lady whom he had planned to escort to the Park that afternoon. The second to Lady Ryderbourne, the beautiful wife of the Duke of Blackdown’s eldest son, who had a marked fondness for him and wouldn’t hesitate to do as he asked. The third a set of requests to London’s ladies’ employment agencies, where one might—if one needed such a creature—find a governess.
    As soon as his missives were gone, Guy jotted two names on a sheet of paper and stared at