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Chartwell’s face changed as he took in Goldsworthy’s matted hair, Perry’s battered face, and the blood staining Charles’s trouser leg. “Right,” he said, and fired off a series of orders to the soldiers who accompanied him. Instantly, a man was dispatched to summon a surgeon. Two soldiers seized Dashkova’s accomplices and marched them away while two other men took a plank from the bare scaffolding in the room to serve as a litter on which to carry the fallen agent.

With very little bustle, the ransacked room was emptied of the enemy.

Goldsworthy turned to Wilde. “Lad, get our wounded to more comfortable accommodations. We’ll have the surgeon here in no time.” The big man turned back to Chartwell. “Let’s talk.”

* * * *

The sky was bright outside the club by the time the surgeon finished cleaning and dressing the wound in Wynford’s side. Dr. Ryle was a brisk, efficient practitioner of his craft who did his work with precision and dispatch. With his departure, Octavia and John Jowers left as well, taking the dog and intending to offer their support to Perry before returning to John’s aunt.

After hours of uncertainty and danger in the midst of friends and enemies alike, Harriet was alone with her love in the full knowledge that she loved him unreservedly. The tiny spark of awareness that had first glowed in her girlhood when he took the trouble to seek a remedy for his ailing servant had never gone out. If she had not been distracted by and determined to resist his very real attractions, she would have observed that at every encounter with him since he had asked her to help Octavia the little spark had grown until now it blazed brightly.

Under lowered lids she regarded him now in the privacy of the comfortable gentleman’s suite to which Wilde had led them. It was a male setting, and it suited him. She and Octavia had quickly stripped away his bloodstained neckcloth and jacket, waistcoat and fine lawn shirt. The doctor had, as a last step in his procedures, wrapped a bandage around Wynford’s waist and written a set of instructions for Harriet, entrusting his care to her.

Sitting in a mahogany armchair, bloodied and bandaged, his face drawn and wearied, dressed only in his trousers, he took her breath away. She had been used to finding beauty in the distant stars, but now she saw that the most ordinary things of earth shone as brightly when one truly loved them. She let her gaze touch the knob of his wrist and the fine hair dusting the back of his hand, the curve of muscle in his languid arm, and his proud, straight shoulders. Her gaze found and touched the hollow arc of his torso, curved in the chair like a slice of new moon in the sky. And though she merely looked, she discovered a hunger she had not known one could have, the hunger for skin against skin. It left her shaken, aware of just how ungovernable her passion for him might become.

Her gaze reached his face and met his still-troubled one.

“Are you in pain?” she asked. The doctor had given him a draught.

“I never meant for you or Octavia to be in any danger,” he confessed. “I thought I was cleverer than Dashkova and ahead of her every step of the way. Arrogant of me, I know. I didn’t see how she was the one leading me where she wanted me to go. Even after she murdered Ashton, I did not recognize that her purpose all along was to destroy the club.”

Harriet moved and knelt at his feet, needing to touch him and resting her hands on the bloodstained knees of his trousers. She offered no words yet, only her touch while he unburdened his heart.

“I think my mother must have felt the same way. She must have believed that we were in no danger from her mission, that she could protect us.” He paused, his eyes blank, his attention inward on the past that only he could see. “The agony of her death must have been the greater for not knowing whether her sacrifice was enough.”

Harriet laid her head on his knees, and after a moment he lifted a hand to cup her head. She willed him to believe that facing Dashkova’s bullet absolved him of the errors and failings he claimed for himself.

“Our mother,” he said, “has been the Christmas ghost that’s haunted Wynford Hall since Octavia was a babe.”

Once more he seemed to lose himself in thought, then began again. “I met your brother at the ball,” he said. “I should never have left that day. You would not have suffered from his cruelty and greed.”

She lifted her head and gave him her most quelling glance. “You must not blame yourself for my brother’s sins. You did not know who I was.”

“I’m sorry about Nelson,” he said.

“He told you?”

He nodded. “Boasted of it.”

She whacked her palm against his chest. “And that’s why you stepped in front of a bullet?”

He grabbed her hand and held it to his heart. “I could not let Dashkova shoot your dog, for Cat is your dog, you know.”

She smiled up at him, struggling against the sting of tears in her eyes. “Oh, I think he’s your dog,” she said.

His hand framed her face. “Our dog now.” He grabbed the chair arms to push himself to his feet.

Harriet rocked back on her knees. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“There’s a great deal to do,” he said, but his eyes glazed over as the draught took effect.

Harriet stood and offered a shoulder for support, sliding an arm around his waist. “First, bed, my lor—”

“You must call me Charles,” he said, looking down at her with laughter in his eyes. He glanced across the room at the large, comfortable bed. “Join me.”

Together they crossed the room. Harriet turned back the counterpane and helped him stretch out on his uninjured side. She unlaced her half boots and climbed up beside him, and he settled her against the curve of his body.

Just when she thought he had drifted off, he spoke once more. “Remind me to tell you very soon how much I have been looking forward to taking you to bed.”