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with delight. “By God, what you did for that little girl took courage.”
    Before she knew what he was about, he tipped her chin and brought his mouth down to hers for a fleeting yet thorough kiss. Her pulse rocketed like a celebration day firework.
    Then, with no particular effort that Laurel could perceive, he was atop his horse and making rapid progress down the street. His friend fell in beside him and the two sped away at a canter. With no choice but to abandon their pursuit, the shouting constables came to frustrated halts. They glanced at Laurel, dismissed her with disparaging shrugs, and about-faced.
    The crowd up at the corner dispersed, and Holly’s worried face appeared. As the girl hurried closer, Laurel pressed her fingertips to her quivering lips and tried to master her breathing. Her shocked sensibilities were another matter. If the impulsive kiss had revealed her rescuer as rather less than chivalrous, neither could she quite claim being a lady.
    Because the truth was, as improper and insulting as that kiss had been—or should have been—she had wholeheartedly, unreservedly, and in defiance of everything she had been raised to believe, enjoyed it.

Chapter 2
    London, March 1838
     
    A idan’s first hint that his pleasant night had reached its inevitable conclusion came with an irritating burst of brightness against his eyelids. The second was the slap of his own dress shirt against his face. Though he had not yet opened his eyes, he immediately recognized the garment as his own by the scent of his companion’s flowery perfume clinging to the linen.
    Miss Delilah, the lovely creature whose acquaintance he’d had the pleasure of making after winning several hundred at hazard last night, and who had done him the honor not only of joining him for a late supper but also of serving up a rousing bit of dessert afterward in this very room, deposited a kiss on his brow and disentangled herself from the sheets.
    The satin coverlet slithered from the bed as she drew it around her splendidly supple body. An image crept into his mind of the contortionlike poses the young lady had achieved with her long arms and shapely legs. A professional, she had made the distasteful task of sullying his own reputation rather more palatable, and he would be sure to leave her an ample reward.
    While he couldn’t claim to detest his occasional visits to London’s finer brothels, the pleasure he took in such episodes typically proved fleeting. Like gambling and drinking, whoring had become part of the persona he showed the world.
    Last night he had also needed an alibi. No one who knew him would ever suspect that before retiring to seek his pleasure here, at Mrs. Wellington’s Gentlemen’s Sanctum, he had sent his carriage—with Delilah inside it—circling the London Docks while he had picked a lock and stolen inside a certain warehouse, seeking evidence against a certain notable solicitor.
    Delilah herself had asked no questions. But then, she had known that he would pay as dearly for her silence as for her other professional services.
    Her padding footsteps faded from the room, followed by a pronounced throat clearing. “Wake up, Barensforth. We’ve business to discuss.”
    With a groan, Aidan buried his face into the pillow. His head ached like the dickens, and he feared opening his eyes would send the room spinning. “Later.”
    “Now.” The mattress jerked beneath the force of what could only have been the bottom of the intruder’s boot. A second article of clothing that felt suspiciously like his waistcoat landed on his shoulder. “We have a situation.”
    He gingerly opened an eye to a partial view of the stocking-draped washstand on the opposite wall. “I say, Wescott, will you kindly cease bombarding me with my own wardrobe? That’s no way to treat a peer of the realm, not to mention the man who single- handedly saved your financially inept arse and restored your family’s security and your damned bloody