Chapter Three

September 16, 1812

There was absolutely nothing—nothing—that was going to stop Dodo from smiling.

"There," she said quietly to herself in the small room that served as both dining and drawing room.

She had been fortunate to get the lodgings. Well, lodgings. Two rooms in a boarding house for respectable ladies that were relatively small, though relatively clean was perhaps not "lodgings," in the traditional sense. But still. Dodo had managed to get them, and last night she had managed to win just over two guineas.

Two guineas!

One pound of her winnings had already been folded carefully into a piece of paper. It wouldn't have been so difficult, irritatingly, if she been able to place four crowns into the paper and fold it twice around to keep them safe. But her winnings had been in shillings and pence, and it was darned difficult to get them to all stay in place long enough to be folded.

Eventually, she managed it. Dodo would hardly call the result of her efforts particularly beautiful to look at, but it wasn't the outside that mattered. It was the inside.

All she had to do was take it to the post office, and her day's work would be done. And not too soon, either , Dodo thought as she yawned, slipping the letter into her reticule. It had been an awful time to arrive home last night without waking her landlady or neighbors, and she had earned a rest.

The post office was not far from her lodgings. She had attempted to find somewhere that was not too central—the prices! Robbery!—but at the same time, not too far off the beaten track.

When a woman had to get herself home alone, it was far more pleasant to do so on respectable streets—even if she had to wear her least lovely day gown to make it quite clear she was hardly a gentlewoman. Her mother would have a fit if she ever found out.

And when Dodo stepped out of Johnson's Buildings without clean gloves to wear and in a dress much less fine than the one she'd worn last night, it was to discover a small market had been set up selling pies, ales, bread, ribbons, gloves—all manner of things.

She looked wistfully as she stood for a moment, watching the day's trade bustle by.

How long had it been since she had treated herself? Really treated herself—bought something that wasn't just pleasant, but extravagant. Unnecessary. Ridiculously overpriced for what it was yet highly enjoyable?

Months. More than months. A year?

Dodo swallowed, the delectable mingled scents of a thousand different things to eat filling her stomach with ideas like hunger and food and now .

No, she really had to go to the post office. It was ridiculous to stand here and tempt herself with things that she most certainly could not, would not buy.

Stepping forward, she had almost made it across to the other side of the street but was hampered by the growing crowd around the stalls. Try as she might, Dodo could not push through, and she was hardly willing to force herself through.

"Pastry, miss?"

Dodo turned.

She found herself most inexplicably by a baker's stall. The woman behind the trestle table looked as though she had been working since the early hours, a hint of tiredness around the eyes coupled with a stained apron.

But the pastries…

Just for a moment, Dodo forced herself to close her eyes. Perhaps that would help with the temptation.

When she opened them, it was just as bad. Worse. The pastries looked and smelled exquisite, and it was her bad luck that pastries were her favorite treat.

Well, why not?

The thought rushed through her mind before she could stop herself. After all , she argued with herself silently before the waiting stallholder. You haven't given yourself any sort of reward for tricking that fool out of his money…

"You can't leave now!"

"Why not?"

"B-But my money!"

"I think you will find that it is my money now."

Dodo grinned. She had done well there. She had almost felt sorry for the man—not completely, but enough not to take him for another guinea. And she had an additional pound at home to cover the costs of the next fortnight. Why not treat herself to a pastry? It was hardly going to beggar her.

Not after her success yesterday.

"Just one, then," she conceded.

The stallholder might have been disappointed with her self-control, but she carefully picked up a pastry, wrapped it in a bit of brown paper, and handed it over to her. "A penny."

A penny? "How often does this market—"

"Every Thursday, miss," said the stallholder.

Dodo nodded. That was information worth knowing. A stall with pastries that smelled so fine, and only a penny each? Vital information.

Through the brown paper, which she took as she handed over a penny, she could feel the freshness of the sweet thing. There was no point in waiting to take it home, Dodo reasoned. She wouldn't be able to take it into the post office, by all accounts, so it was far better to eat it now.

Right now.

Slowly, fully aware it was not seemly for a woman to be eating on the street, Dodo lifted the pastry to her mouth.

Oh, the sensations were heavenly. A heady sweetness, the soft flakiness of the pastry, the warmth that neither overpowered nor burned, but instead filled her with a giddy delight…

How long had it been since she had eaten something so delicious?

A long time. Mrs. Bryson did for her, as it were, sending up a bowl of stew almost every evening for Dodo to enjoy. It was another one of the perks of the lodgings she had taken, and she knew how fortunate she was. It was hardly as though there were the means in her two rooms to prepare herself a meal. She hardly knew where she would start around a kitchen, anyway. The Loughtys had always had a cook.

But the rich, hearty stew she consumed every night was nothing to this. This pastry, infused with honey and something else—vanilla, perhaps—crumbled into enchantment on her tongue and filled her with delight.

Dodo closed her eyes, just for a moment. Just so that she could lose herself in the flavors.

Then she opened her eyes.

The stallholder was staring, transfixed. "'Tis… just a pastry."

"Itsnojussa—" Dodo swallowed, heat searing her cheeks at her own rudeness. "It's not just a pastry. It's a delight!"

"Oh. Good," said the stallholder, frowning. "Have a good day then, miss."

She was going to have a good day. She could just feel it. The pound lay heavily in her reticule, all parceled up to be posted, and she had another laid by at home which would see her right in Bath for another two weeks. Two weeks in which she could surely earn a little more—

"I think you will find that it is my money now. I think that is why they call it gambling, sir. Good evening."

Her stomach twisted, the deliciousness of the pastry unable to completely cover the distaste of Mr. Chance's response last evening.

Well, it was hardly my fault , Dodo thought decidedly. She was not going to worry about a gentleman's feelings when she was certainly not going to see him again. She would have to be careful, if she ventured into McBarland's again, but there it was. She had nothing to be ashamed of.

"Thank you," she said to the stallholder, who nodded.

The post office. That was where she should go to next. To get this pound to those who needed it. She would have to explain later what she was doing in Bath and not at her aunt's in Bristol—once she had earned enough to make any objections to her actions meaningless.

Dodo turned around and there was an explosion of pastry.

Well, not precisely an explosion , but it wasn't far off. So hasty had she been in making her way to the post office on Broad Street, she hadn't waited to see whether there was anyone directly behind her. When she took a hasty step forward, she therefore thrust herself—and the pastry that had been in her fingers—directly into a gentleman.

The pastry puffed out, spreading little flakes all over herself, the gentleman, and anyone within a foot of them.

"Oh, no!" Dodo cried out with dismay.

Honestly, she would have to get more accustomed to looking where she was going. This wasn't Croscombe, the village where she had been born where there were never more than one hundred people in the place at any point in time.

This was Bath!

"Oh, dear," she said hurriedly, reaching out to try to brush the pastry off the unfortunate man. "Dear me. Oh, no…"

The more she attempted to remove the pastry from the man's woolen jacket, the more it seemed to spread, breaking apart into a million pieces and carefully threading its way into the fabric.

Dodo bit her lip as she looked up at the man's surely irritated face. "I am so sorry, I… Ah."

Ah, indeed.

The man's eyes bulged. It was Mr. Chance of McBarland's. "You!"

"Ah," repeated Dodo, her heart beating frantically. "Well, good day, sir, sorry about the—"

She had taken only one step from him. That was all she could manage—all that surely anyone could manage. It was, after all, most difficult to escape someone when they had a tight grip of your wrist.

"Miss Loughty!" Mr. Chance said sternly.

Try as she might, she couldn't exactly remove her wrist from his grip, no matter how she attempted to twist away. Panic flared, but as Dodo looked around, there did not appear to be a single person on Charlotte Street who was concerned that a young lady was being accosted by a perfect stranger!

Well. Not a stranger. But still!

"What are the odds!" Mr. Chance was saying. "In all of Bath, the chances of seeing each other again—"

It did not take long for Dodo to work out it—though in hindsight, she wondered whether Mr. Chance had intended it as a rhetorical question. "With an estimated population in Bath of just over forty thousand, adding an additional twenty percent for this time of the Season, I would guess—"

"I don't care about—look," said Mr. Chance, speaking over her most rudely. "I want my money back."

That was the moment Dodo was able to wrench her hand from his. It should have been the moment she also disappeared into the crowd, abandoning her pastry behind her.

Perhaps she could… throw it at him? Use it as a distraction? Cover him with sticky honey?

Ridiculous , Dodo thought desperately. Besides, the odds of that working are—

"You should have told me you were a good card player."

And it was that statement that gained her attention. Dodo straightened up, glared at the man who was so presumptuous as to speak to her in that unfathomable and unforgiveable manner, and lifted her head high.

Well. As high as it could go. The brute was still a good half a head taller than her.

Still—she could hardly help that.

"Go away," Dodo said clearly, then she turned and disappeared into the Bath crowds.

That had been her intention. Apparently, however, it was far more difficult to disappear into crowds than she'd thought, even though she did her best to duck and weave through the hordes of people who were out on that bright Wednesday.

"You can't escape me that easily," said Mr. Chance darkly, walking alongside her.

Try as she might, Dodo was unable to speed up to a pace he could not also walk. It comes with having tiny legs , she thought gloomily. That was the only reason he was still with her. And spouting such nonsense!

"You said you'd never played cards before—"

"I did not," Dodo said, unable to help herself.

She wasn't going to permit the brute to just cast aspersions on her like that!

She stepped behind a market stall selling gloves and slipped down a side street, almost ready to congratulate herself on losing the blaggard, but—

"The point is, you made me think you had no idea what you were doing," pointed out Mr. Chance, as though she owed him something.

Owed him? Her! The cheek!

"That was your assumption," she said, cheeks burning both with the embarrassment of having this conversation, and the effort she was having to put in to keep walking at such a pace. "And I—oh!"

Dodo had not intended to call out, but then, what else could she do? The man had grabbed at her again, this time by the arm, and she was unable to free herself from him.

The sense of entrapment, of being caged like a bird, swept over her, clogging her lungs, making it difficult to take in air. The side street they were now standing in was almost empty—there was no one to rescue her, no one to witness to the outrage she was currently experiencing.

Try as she might, Dodo could not pull herself away, and his hold of her tightened as she struggled. She cried out again, no words, just panic.

That seemed to do it. Perhaps chastened by her plain fear, Mr. Chance cleared his throat but maintained his glare. "You are a cheat." His eyes darted over her beige dress—quite faded, and nowhere near as refined a dress as the woman from McBarland's she'd pretended to be would have worn, even in the day. The dress afforded Dodo some freedom to walk around without a chaperone in the daylight like a woman of the working class, but now, under the penetrating gaze of Mr. Chance, she had cause to regret wearing it.

Dodo would have lifted her chin and pointed out the statistical likelihood of achieving the hands she had been dealt, let alone the anomalies in his own poor decision-making that had made it easy to predict his next moves…

But she didn't. She merely rubbed at the spot where his hand had so recently been gripping her, feeling the pain in the area subside.

And something in her stomach lurched.

It was most unfair that the man was so good-looking. She had forced herself to ignore that fact last night, at McBarland's, because she had been so focused on playing poker and winning money. Which she had done.

But now as they stood here in the cold light of day, with nothing else to distract her, Dodo could not deny that the man was very… intriguing.

Tall. Taller than her, not that that was saying much. His sky-blue eyes were sharp, determined, with a strength of character within them that one rarely saw in a gentleman that young. And he was young—at least, he could be no older than five and twenty.

His chestnut hair was coiffed in the latest of styles, but he hadn't shaved that morning. At least, not since yesterday. The dark shadow of stubble outlined his jaw in a most inviting way. Inviting her to reach out, to run a hand along his chin and—

Dodo stood back hurriedly and looked away, as though she had not just been staring at a gentleman.

Certainly not.

"You are a good card player, and you had me for a fool," Mr. Chance said quietly.

Swallowing hard, she managed, "I am not a good card player, and you are a fool."

"Why, you—"

"I am an excellent card player," she said, hoping to goodness her voice would hold.

This was Bath, after all. This was 1812! Men did not go about accosting young ladies in the street and getting away with it. Even unchaperoned ones. No, her imagination was getting away from her. There was no possibility Mr. Chance was going to hurt her, really hurt her.

Perhaps a one in a hundred chance , Dodo thought wretchedly, unable to switch off her calculating mind. But those were good odds. In most places, she would take—

"You took me for a pound," said Mr. Chance quietly. "No, more. Two whole guineas."

Dodo swallowed.

She could feel the weight of one of the pounds she had taken from him in her reticule. Not that she was about to admit to that. The half-crazed man may do something ridiculous, like ask for it back.

And there was no chance she was going to part with it. She needed it. Badly.

If only she had decided to do the intelligent thing and gone to the post office first. It would have been so much simpler if she could stand before this Mr. Chance and tell him she had already spent the money. It would not have been a falsehood.

"I-I am sorry, Mr. Chance," Dodo said, feeling far more sorry for herself than the fierce man before her. "You entered a game of hazard, and you lost. That is all there is to it."

She actually managed to dart to the left, but she wasn't swift enough.

Mr. Chance stepped ahead of her, preventing her from moving forward. "What do you care, Miss Loughty? It's only a pound."

Dodo almost laughed in his face.

Only a pound? Oh, only a pound. Only the difference between a meal and starvation. Only the gap between a roof over one's head and suffering out in the gutter. Only the option to live or die.

Honestly, did most gentlemen have this cavalier attitude about money, or was she unfortunate enough to be faced with one of the worst?

Wait … Only a pound?

Dodo swallowed and looked up into the face of the man who was fast becoming one of her least favorite people.

Only a pound? He must think her rich, then, despite the fact that she was out here on the street without a lady's maid, wearing a dress more fashionable women would find a few years out of date. Perhaps he knew little of women's fashion. Yes, he certainly believed that a pound to her was nothing more than an inconvenience, rather than something that was absolutely crucial.

Why would he … ?

Ah. The sapphires. Or in truth, the glass-jeweled necklace that she had purchased specifically because they looked so akin to sapphires. The idea that she could actually afford jewels like that—but he wouldn't know, would he? Mr. Chance would merely look at her, see a woman with a great amount of wealth, and baulk at the idea of losing a pound to her.

Which begged the question—

"But you are a gentleman. Probably," Dodo said, forgetting her manners in her surprise. "What difference would a pound make to you?"

Mr. Chance drew himself up. "I am not, in fact, a gentleman."

Well, he did not need to tell her that. The man had made it perfectly clear, thanks to his ill-manners and disgraceful habit of grabbing at her, that he was no gentleman. "Yes, but—"

"I am an earl," said the man haughtily. "The Earl of Lindow."

Dodo's mouth fell open.

It was not the most complimentary expression. The veins on the temple of the man—Mr. Chance, Lord Lindow if he was to be believed, despite the fact that his brother had introduced himself as a marquess—purpled. Perhaps the earl suspected she was shocked to discover he had blue blood in his veins.

But really! She'd known him to be a marquess's brother, but that did not mean he was not a rogue. The man had not acted like an earl, from the moment she had met him.

Perhaps a gentleman. At the very least, gentry.

But a titled man himself?

"You… You are the Earl of Lindow?" Dodo repeated, as though testing the water.

A man in workman's clothes passed them by, and just for a moment, she considered speaking out and asking him for assistance.

But the moment passed just as the Earl of Lindow said, "Of course I am. I know who I am."

"But your brother—Lord Aylesbury—he never said—"

"I should have known old Aylesbury would be at the bottom of this, somehow," the Earl of Lindow said wearily, dragging a hand through his hair. "Our eldest brother shared out the titles—yes, I know it's unusual, but that's the way Cothrom is. And speaking of my good-for-nothing brothers, why would you let a marquess use you like that?"

He kept speaking, but Dodo could not take in a word. Use her? The marquess had used her somehow when he had accosted her at Lord Llyne's card party and suggested… suggested she go to McBarland's?

Her mind was spinning, struggling to keep up with the change in the way she must think of the man before her going forward. Lord Lindow. But he was so much better suited to "Mr. Chance."

Yet one moment of clarity remained.

"But then…" Dodo laughed, and it was with such relief that she felt a weight lift from her. "You cannot possibly need it, then!"

The idea of the Earl of Lindow, if that truly was his title, needing a mere pound—well, it was laughable! She knew some second and third sons struggled to make their own fortunes, but a titled gentleman himself? It relieved a great deal of stress from her shoulders. There was no need to feel guilty about relieving the man of two guineas last night. Why, it would be nothing to his accounts!

Yet the earl was staring with a curious expression. "And you do, then? Need it, I mean? The pound?"

Dodo swallowed.

If only that blasted heat did not have to move up her chest and completely cover her neck and face, making it so obvious she wished to hide something.

Because she did need it. Desperately. Though they did not yet know of her presence in Bath, there were people waiting on that pound, the pound weighing down her reticule, and if she wasn't able to help them soon, the guilt would start to rise once more and overwhelm her. She had to get it to them.

But she didn't have to admit to such things. She was Miss Doris Loughty. Her business was her business. And it was none of his. Mr. Chance's. Lord Lindow's.

Oh, Lord …

"Go," Dodo said clearly, in as impressive a voice as she could make it. "Away."

She managed three steps this time, and though the earl kept up with her as she attempted to find her way to the post office, she did not look at him.

There was no need to look at the man. Even if he was handsome.

"You have to tell me how you won," he said firmly.

"Absolutely not," Dodo said, almost as firmly. Just as firmly. As firmly as she could manage while holding up her skirts just a tad to step over a puddle.

If she had hoped her stern tone would force the man away, she was most disappointed. The earl did not touch her again this time, for which she was extremely grateful.

Probably.

"I will dog you everywhere you go," said Lord Lindow lightly, as though he were not threatening a lady whom he barely knew in the street. "Wherever you go, whoever you attempt to scam next, I will be there. I will prevent you from winning. I will be your worst nightmare."

Dodo snorted. Like the Earl of Lindow would go to the places I intend to go. "I'd like to see you try."

"Oh, you would, would you?" His voice was light still, but there was a steel to its center that made her shiver as she reached—

Ah. The post office.

"Good day, my lord," Dodo said stiffly, stepping up to the door of the post office and reaching for the handle.

"Good day, Miss Loughty," came the teasing yet unamused voice of the earl from behind her. "And good luck."