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Gideon snatched the papers from him. “Who is this widow?”
    “A dressmaker by profession. She’s worked very hard all her life, built a tidy little business for herself. And now her dead husband’s brother is trying to steal her house out from under her. Claims it’s legally his.”
    “Has she any money?” Gideon asked despairingly. “Any chance I might earn more than a shilling from this?”
    Mr. Dodge beamed at him. “None whatsoever.”
    “I hate you, Mr. Dodge.”
    “I know, Mr. Cole,” Dodge said cheerfully. “You will take the case?”
    “I will look into it,” Gideon grumbled. But they both knew it was virtually a certainty that Gideon would take the case. Which would prevent him from taking other more lucrative cases.
    Which was why it was Gideon’s own bloody fault he wasn’t yet rich.
    “You’re a good man, Mr. Cole,” Dodge said softly.
    Gideon snorted and made a shooing motion, a half-smile playing at his lips, and Dodge tottered cheerfully off, whistling a little tune.
    Widows, orphans, the elderly… Gideon didn’t know why Dodge took on these kinds of clients. But Dodge, as a solicitor, was under no obligation to support the lifestyle of a gentleman of the ton , with the lodgings and fine clothing and entertainments it entailed. Dodge was already married; he didn’t need to woo the daughter of a marquis with the promise of a town house on Grosvenor Square. And Dodge, Gideon was willing to wager, didn’t have a Master Plan.
    Gideon stared grimly down at the brief. He thought of Helen in Yorkshire and the last letter he’d had from her, the words cheerful and careful on the surface and wrenching beneath. He thought of Constance, and how she would greet the news that Gideon Cole all but gave away his services when she’d assumed he’d been busily amassing the sort of fortune befitting the daughter of a marquis. Astonishment, confusion, contempt… he imagined them flickering in succession across her gray eyes. She would likely feel betrayed.
    She’d be right to feel that way.
    Gideon lifted his head from the brief and rubbed a weary hand over his eyes. A decade after Oxford, he was still leaping to the defense of the defenseless. But he suspected the visceral pleasure he took in it had become an indulgence. The dressmaker… well, perhaps this particular dressmaker would have to fend for herself.
    “Mr. Cole, there is one thing I neglected to mention.”
    Dodge again ? Gideon leveled a knee-bucklingly hostile glare at the solicitor, but Mr. Dodge seemed unaffected; perhaps intimidating glares merely glanced off his spectacles like sunbeams.
    “It’s about your former client, Mr. Wesley.”
    Gideon brightened a little, albeit warily. Wesley was a farmer; Gideon had shared a number of very satisfying conversations with him about the Leicester Long Wool, a breed of sheep Gideon thought might thrive at Aster Park. “How fares Mr. Wesley?”
    “I’ve unhappy news, I’m afraid. Mr. Wesley has passed away.”
    Gideon felt the sadness sink through him like a stone. Well , he thought mordantly. This day improves by the minute .
    “But he remembered you in his will, Mr. Cole.” Mr. Dodge continued gently. “With utmost gratitude for helping him to save his farm. Here you are: thirty pounds.”
    And then Dodge pushed the sheaf of bills at Gideon and tottered away again, just as though he were an ordinary solicitor and not a veritable messenger from the gods.
     
     
    “Lily!” All exuberance, Alice ran to Lily for a hug. Alice had been instructed to be wary of everyone but Mrs. Smythe and Fanny while Lily was out, but Lily knew fresh gratitude each day she arrived home to find Alice safe, because reticence didn’t come naturally to Alice.
    “We’ve bread and cheese for dinner tonight, dearest. Are you hungry?” The moment Lily set foot over the threshold of their room she flung the dialect of St. Giles from her like a tattered cloak. For her mother had raised Lily and Alice to be