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He was close enough for the lemon on his skin to find the lemon on hers. His shadow covered the narrow space where hands were apt to stray; the small chivalry unstrung her far more than swagger ever could. If she rose the tiniest fraction, her mouth would meet the corner of his.

Oh, heart, behave.

“I won’t be turned from my plan,” she heard herself say—too quickly, too true. “In London, I’ll have wages that arrive, a safe room that’s mine, Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s note when I’ve earned it—and when I’ve saved enough, a bakery with my name on the sign. If I’m wanted, it must be on those terms.” Without those things, I’m what I was in Strasbourg—a target with no door to bar, no coin to flee with, no name that means anything but prey.

His gaze warmed rather than cooled. “Good,” he said softly. “Then I’ll stand where I must so you can keep to it.”

The corridor seemed to draw closer. Steam breathed from the kitchen, sweet with cardamom. She should have stepped away. Instead, she tipped her face a little; flour dusted her cheekbone like a crescent.

“May I?” he asked, hand lifting—polite, undoing her.

“Leave it,” she meant to say. “Take it,” she whispered.

His thumb moved slowly, tracing flour from her skin. Heat ran straight to her pulse. He didn’t crowd; he simply was there, large and careful, and her mouth—wicked traitor—considered a sin.

“Not here,” she breathed, the words brushing his skin. “Not in the Den.”

“Your rule,” he murmured. “I’ll keep it.”

“You’ll need to,” she managed, cheeks hot. “I am easy to distract.”

“I noticed.” The smile that touched his mouth was the kind that ruined a woman’s composure and left her grateful for the ruin.

From the end of the passage, a laugh cracked too loudly; footsteps turned. He shifted so that bad luck would have to pass through him first. She didn’t thank him. Gratitude for ordinary decency is a dangerous habit. But oh, how it steadied her.

“What’s waiting for you in London?” he asked, low, as if the answer might undo him.

“Work that is mine,” she said. “A future I choose.” She swallowed. “And when those are true—you.”

The single word startled her; she let it stand. Foolish girl. Brave girl. Sometimes they are the same.

His breath caught. For a heartbeat, the world held still: his hand at the jamb, her tray between them like a fragile shield, the space between a woman’s cheek and a man’s thumb narrowing to a thought.

The kitchen door sighed open behind her, a pan rang like a bell, and heat rolled out as if to rescue her from herself.

She stepped back into steam and light, tray steady. “Show me the safe ways,” she said, eyes on his. “The rest—after.”

“After,” he answered, and the word went through her like wine.

She turned, carrying her plan like a banner and her want like a secret flame, and the door closed gently between them.

Chapter One

When Mrs. Dove-Lyon summoned you, there was no refusal to show up. Except tonight, oddly enough, she’d asked Sander to stand outside her door.

Thus, Sander stood outside Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s office, silent and still. At the Lyon’s Den, about five hours past midnight, when the lamps burned low and secrets steeped warm in the velvet-thick air, he could tell that something was about to change. He just didn’t know yet what it was—just like the feeling you get when your opponent makes a waiting move and then closes in for a checkmate.

But there wasn’t a checkmate in store for this night, for he had not been called into the side room tonight, the one where men wagered fortunes over chessboards instead of dice. The Lyon’s Den thrived on dares, wagers, and luck—but even Mrs. Dove-Lyon made exceptions for a good chess match every once in a while. “Wit against wit,” she called it. Occasionally, she even sent Sander in as her player on behalf of the house—her wolf among the puffers, the hired men who goaded wagers higher.

His given name was Aryeh ben Yaakov—‘lion’ in Hebrew—yet within the Lyon’s Den he answered simply to Sander, a house name taken from Shakespeare’s Lysander, the lover who gently sidesteps expectation for love. The wolves who guarded the Den all wore such names, but the mask had never altered what he was beneath. He had been hired to protect this place—and he did. Its walls. Its people. Its promise. Including the kitchen downstairs, where Rosine baked for the nobility who came to gamble upstairs. She was a talented beauty hiding in plain sight, just as he did.

In fact, Rosine must have baked again, for the scent of her creations lingered. The corridor smelled as it always did at this hour—scorched oil, worn velvet, and Sander mourned the fading sweetness of her raisin-cardamom buns. It should have comforted him, but not this night.

Yet, he didn’t shift. Didn’t blink. One did not keep watch at the Lyon’s Den with sentiment. One endured and listened.

Inside Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s office, voices lifted, measured but unmistakably sharp. Nagy’s voice first—always too precise, too clean. Richard Nagy, an attaché of the Austrian legation and, as he liked to style himself, “bailiff to the Kaiser,” was a menace. He flashed the Regent’s name as if it were a pass and flourished correspondence from the Austrian legation alongside Home Office circulars from the Alien Office—the bureau that registered foreigners and hunted spies during the war—as though paper were a badge. He had come to London to silence what he called the “Jewish problem”: the few Jews whose merit had earned them a place at Court and friends in Parliament pressing for emancipation. Sander’s jaw tightened.

“You employ foreigners here,” he was saying to Mrs. Dove-Lyon in a tone she’d not like. “Strangers. Immigrants. That kitchen girl—what’s her name? Her sweet buns are practically a staple among the gentry. I wonder how your clientele at St. James’s would say, knowing they’ve been served by—well. A girl like that.”