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heedlessly into a pack of drunk youngsters hell-bent on proving their manhood.
    He was glad he’d been there, having earlier completed a transaction that had put into his pocket five hundred pounds toward his entry fee in the International Dueling Tournament—the means of securing a future far less uncertain than his current one, which relied solely on teaching overindulged peers his skills with a sword. As he’d been leaving, he’d chanced upon the young Turks and, seeing an opportunity to gather a few more high-paying clients to his salle, set about piquing their interest. Then…her.
    She turned, her smooth brow furrowing, and he melted back into the dark press of trees. The wind whispered like a ravished lover, and the babble of merrymakers seemed overly excited. Of course his presence in such a place hadn’t surprised her—he’d strove to achieve a certain notoriety in the last years—but his kiss had.
    Had anything ever tasted more provocative? Had his body ever quickened so immediately, so overwhelmingly? And all for a kiss that did nothing to appease the hunger it inspired. It left him rampant and wanting.
    She had felt it, too. He had known the moment the inferno burning him up from the inside had set fire to her own desire.
    So why did he reject the notion that she wanted an adventure? After all, she was five and twenty years old. Why should he find objectionable the idea of her seeking the means of placating the same tormenting urges that raked his body? Because that was not the Helena Nash he had spent hours guarding and studying and learning with an intimacy few lovers knew.
    Yet he conceded there was much he did not know. For instance, while he had expected her to be mature and composed, he had not anticipated laughter. He had not anticipated she would trade sallies with him, challenge him and tease him, that she would abandon the diffidence that women in her situation practiced, women who made their way by guarding their tongues and their thoughts.
    He did not know Helena Nash nearly as well as he’d assumed he must after years of watching her, and that notion intrigued as well as unsettled him.
    Ahead, Helena slowed and finally stopped, looking once more around her. She had not found whoever had sent her that rose. That rose. He shrugged off the niggling sense of unease its presence caused. The significance roses held for him, he knew all too well, was quite different from that which they inspired in most romantics’ hearts.
    Helena headed out the nearest gate.
    He exited a dozen yards behind her and slipped between two hacks as she approached the head of the line of waiting carriages. The driver scrambled down out of his seat and assisted her into the vehicle before climbing back up top. Waiting to see if anyone joined her, Ramsey pulled off the domino and tossed it to a young street sweeper leaning on his broom who would sell it the next masquerade evening for twice what he made for one night’s work. Whomever Helena had intended to meet, and for whatever reasons, had disappointed her. The man must be a great bloody fool.
    The hack lurched out into the traffic as Ram watched it go. “You’re a long way from home, lass,” he murmured thoughtfully before turning and heading for the river bridge. “But then, aren’t we all?”
    Manchester, England
    October 1787
    The stooped custodian led Ramsey Munro down the narrow, dimly lit corridor of the Manchester Poor House, ripe with the stench of urine and sweat, to the small chamber at the far end that served as a receiving room for the indigent boys. It was here he had been brought two weeks before, after the constable had found him howling beside his mother’s corpse, which was crushed beneath a crate that had plunged from a third-story warehouse block and tackle.
    The warden stopped outside the door and eyed Ramsey pityingly. “Better to go with this mon what come fer ye and flee later, on the road. Away from the city. Yer too pretty by half to