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her person, Miss Morgan has concealed the fruits of her morning’s work at Tyburn,” Lord Nick solemnly informed the room. “And not incidentally, my watch. One of my most valued possessions,” he added judiciously.
    “Not the one ye nabbed from old Denbigh, Nick?”
    “The very same, Thomas,” he concurred with a grave nod. “Now, Miss Morgan, I think it’s time for you to reveal your hiding place and show us your proceeds.”
    She stared at him, her cheeks crimson as she understood what he was saying. In the doorway, waiting for the mob to pass, he’d seen her hand move stealthily when she’d been about to restore his watch. He knew precisely where she kept the pouch. He would know it was fastened around her waist, and to untie it, she would have to raise her skirts.
    “You pox-ridden bastard,” she said softly.
    “Retribution, Miss Morgan, remember?” One eyebrow lifted. Casually, he reached up to the rack of clay pipes above the bar and took one down. She stood unmoving on the table as he filled the pipe, struck flint on tinder, and lit the tobacco. A plume of smoke rose to mingle with the wood smoke, and the already heavy cloud of pipe smoke, in the low-beamed room.
    “Of course, Bessie could assist you if you find yourself in difficulties,” he observed, gesturing to where the aproned woman still stood in the kitchen doorway. He held Octavia’s livid gaze, his eyes cool and penetrating and not in the least amused. This was not a man to cross, Octavia recognized with dull foreboding as Bessie readily stepped forward, wiping her hands on her apron.
    She had no choice but to comply—not if she was to prevent the woman from stripping the gown from her back in the middle of the room.
    Closing her mind to the grinning circle of faces as they pressed closer to the table, she hitched up her skirt and hertop petticoat. In her haste and embarrassment, her fingers were all thumbs. During an eternity of mortification she fumbled desperately with the ribbon that secured the lambskin pouch to her waist. But at last it fell free.
    The highwayman was standing at the table, one hand extended for his prize, the other cradling the bowl of his pipe. His face was expressionless. Octavia hurled the heavy pouch at his head with all her force; then she jumped from the table and ran for the door, shoving her way through the audience. She grabbed her soaked cloak from the girl who still held it in the doorway and raced into the passage and out into the blinding blizzard, not knowing where she was going or what she was going to do, just running down the street, her feet sinking in the drifting snow.
    The wind cut through the flimsy material of her gown as she struggled to wrap herself in her cloak while she was running. She’d left her gloves and muff behind, and her fingers were quickly numbed, but she continued to run, head down into the storm, sobbing with rage.
    The pounding footsteps behind her were deadened by the snow and she heard nothing until a hand descended on her shoulder and the highwayman declared in tones of considerable exasperation, “Odd’s bones, woman, ate you mad?”
    “Let me go!” She twisted away from him, glaring at him through the thick curtain of snow. “Scum! You got what you wanted, now leave me alone.”
    “I do not want your death on my conscience,” he declared.
    “What conscience? You don’t know the meaning of the word, you filthy piece of kennel slime!”
    Disconcertingly, the highwayman laughed, and it was a rich, merry sound this time, worlds apart from the mockery of before. “You’re entitled to that, I grant you. But I owed you something for a bite on the arm and a fist to the chin. You weren’t hurt, and you showed no more than a petticoat, so cry truce now and come back in the warm before you catch your death.”
    “I’d rather die!” She swung back into the storm, plowingher way up the narrow street, blinded now by snow-flakes clinging to her eyelashes.
    “You are