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She stepped up on legs that felt like overcooked noodles, squeezing past the row of benches to collect her prize. The room had not thinned out at all, if anything, more heads had turned toward her now than during the whole of the bidding, and she was suddenly, acutely aware of every eye tracking her uneven gait toward the front.

The auctioneer looked down at her from behind his raised desk, his brows drawing together as he took in her slight frame properly for the first time, no longer obscured by the crowd of shoulders around her.

“Step forward, young sir. Do not be shy.”

She was not being shy. She was being careful, which was an entirely different thing, though she supposed it looked much the same from where he stood. She reached the front table, where the tray rested under the glow of a wall lamp, the necklace catching the light in small glints, and she took a breath before she spoke, forcing her voice down into the tone she’d practiced.

“I shall settle the balance now,” she said quietly. “I can offer half the sum this evening, and the remainder within the month.”

For a moment, nothing happened. The auctioneer simply looked at her, and she allowed herself to hope, foolishly, that this might actually be permitted. Then the club owner stepped in front of the desk, a burly man with a nose that had clearly been broken in at least three disagreements, and the hope died a quick and undignified death.

He slammed a hand onto the timber, hard enough that the tray jumped.

“Half now? What kind of lending shop do you take this for, boy?” His voice climbed with every word, drawing more attention than she could afford. “You bid seven hundred guineas of coin you clearly do not possess. Do you take me for a fool?”

“I am good for the debt,” she insisted. The pitch of it climbed higher than she intended on good, and she had to drag the rest of the sentence back down by force. “You will have your funds.”

“I will have my coin right now,” he said, leaning over the counter until his red face was inches from hers, close enough that she could smell gin on his breath. “Or I will have your coat and your boots to cover the difference. You think you can waltz in here playing the grand lord when you look as though a stiff breeze might blow you right out the door?”

She opened her mouth. She had, in fact, no idea what was going to come out of it, which was probably for the best, because she never found out.

“Easy, friend.” Another voice came smooth from just behind her shoulder, and every muscle in her back went rigid at once. “The lad probably only has a slight miscalculation in his accounts.”

She turned, expecting she knew not what, and found herself looking up at the stranger whose light brown hair and broad shoulders she recognized only from across the auction room, the man whose bid had put her in this position in the first place.

The gentleman stepped up beside her, and the small space they’d been arguing in seemed to shrink further around his presence. He did not look at the club owner first. He looked at her, a slow drift of his gaze from the waistcoat down to her boots and back up again, cataloguing every wrong detail of her posture, before he finally settled on her eyes with an infuriating smile.

“Were you simply trying your hand at a bluff, Sir?” He said so calmly, she wanted very badly to stamp on his boot. “I would hate to think a gentleman cannot back up his enthusiasm.”

“I am not bluffing,” she hissed through her teeth, her hands curling into fists inside her pockets where no one could see them. “I merely prefer to manage my disbursements in stages.”

“Disbursements.” He repeated the word back at her with a short laugh, and even the club owner blinked, caught off guard by the sudden shift in tone. The gentleman turned toward the proprietor next, that same smile settling into something a shade more authoritative, a man clearly accustomed to being obeyed without needing to raise his voice for it. “Let us not distress the boy further. He must be plainly unaccustomed to such fierce competition.”

Leonora scoffed. “I am not a boy, and I would appreciate it if you –”

“I will take the piece off your hands,” he said to the owner, not acknowledging her.

The owner’s aggressive posture softened at once. “You will cover his debt?”

“His debt?” The gentleman raised his eyebrows and chuckled. “Oh no. I want the piece. I will pay. In full.” He drew a leather case from his inner pocket. “Charge the sum to my account. The trinket comes with me.”

“Trinket?” Leonora’s eyes widened.

“Done.” The owner snatched at the offer before he could reconsider it, shoving the tray across the table so fast the necklace nearly slid off its cushion. Then his attention swung back to Leonora. “As for you, lad, take your twig legs out of my establishment and never let me see you about these rooms again.”

The gentleman lifted the tray, turning the necklace so the blue and silver stones caught the light properly for the first time, and Leonora watched it happen with something twisting unpleasantly in her chest. He glanced back at her, his mouth curving with unmistakable amusement and then he began to walk away.

Leonora stared at his back for what seemed like a suspended moment, her fingers curling so tightly inside her pockets that her knuckles ached against the wool. She had not survived weeks of sneaking out past midnight, practicing a clumsy swagger, and spinning endless falsehoods to Lady Byron just to watch some arrogant stranger snatch her mother’s heirloom away like a bauble from a market stall. If he truly believed it was a meaningless trinket, why on earth had he intervened at all?

She spun on her heel and marched straight out of the club, her boots pinching her toes against the steps. The night air hit her face, thick with the smell of horse manure and river fog. She caught up to him near the shadow of a brick wall where overgrown bushes crowded the narrow passage.

“Sir,” she called out, her voice dropping instantly into that raspy counterfeit register. “Please. You need to listen.”

He paused, turning slowly on the cobblestones.

“I know this necklace may look like nothing to you,” she hurried on, stepping closer while keeping her chin tilted up. “However, it is deeply important to me. It is a family piece. I realize my bid outstripped my immediate purse, but I am good for the debt. If you sell it to me instead, I can pay you half now from my savings and the remainder within the month. My family is reliable. You do not have to worry.”

He tilted his head, that smirk touching the corners of his mouth. Why did he look so amused? She had never met him personally, yet something about the shape of his jaw and the confidence in his posture tickled the back of her memory. Perhaps it was just the dim light playing tricks on her eyes, but she felt somewhat certain she had seen him somewhere before.