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temples throbbed. At last, tears escaped, half blinding her as she ran. How could this have happened? How could everything she had believed be false? She desired only to get away from this place, and from Edward Francis.
    She stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Where was he? Why was he not following her?
    The house was utterly silent. The lighted tapers on the walls of the hallway showed that the main door was secured by bolts and an iron bar. Moonlight threw patterned shadows from the small-paned windows. The door to the dining room stood open, revealing the remains of the wedding breakfast. The actors had left the clearing-up, apparently, for Mr Allcott’s real servants.
    Aurora’s legs were trembling. Her tears cooling on her cheeks, she sat down on the bottom stair. She was alone, at the mercy of a man who was not the fool she had taken him for. He had unlocked the door knowing perfectly well she would flee. She might escape Richard Allcott’s bedchamber, but she could not escape his house. If she ventured out at this hour, dressed only in a nightdress and cloak, with no carriage or driver, and not knowing the way from Hartford House to Dacre Street, she would not get far.
    For a moment she wondered wildly if she could take a horse from the stables and ride to London, relying upon strangers to set her on the road to Westminster. But she had been brought up in the city, and was no horsewoman. She leaned her head against the banister post, beset by the weariness of defeat.
    “Aurora,” said Edward from the top of the stairs. “You will freeze to death. Come back to the bedchamber. I swear I will leave you alone there, once you have heard me out, which you promised to do if I opened the door.”
    She pulled her cloak closer around her. “I care nothing for your ‘swearing’, sir.”
    The sound of his footsteps as he descended the stairs jolted Aurora’s heart once more. She could not fight down her fear of this man, who, careless of the fact that he had deceived her so wantonly, continued to press his request to be heard. She huddled at the edge of the staircase, clamping her teeth together to stop them chattering. She was cold, to be sure, and fear was making her colder. She drew her bare feet under her nightdress, waiting for his next words.
    “If you will not return to the bedchamber, will you come into the dining room?” he asked, sitting down beside her on the stair. “The fire in there has not quite gone out.”
    Aurora’s instinct was to refuse. But refusal would result, at best, in a lonely, freezing night followed tomorrow by a humiliating return to her mother’s house. How she had longed to get away from there! But now it was safety, not adventure, that she craved. She must not give in to instinct; she must use the intelligence her husband insisted she possessed, and consider the alternative.
    She thought quickly. Perhaps Edward had a good reason for his elaborate deception. If he was indeed a villain, and had tricked her in order to ruin her, he would surely have saved the truth for tomorrow morning. But he had not taken advantage of her innocence. He had respected her virtue. In return, it may be wise to respect his request.
    Tentatively, she spoke. “Do I have your word, sir, that you will not touch me?”
    “You have my word, madam.”
    “Then…” She could not stop trembling. She must get warm. “Then I will come with you, and hear you. But I make no promise beyond that.”
    Her hair, hanging untidily over her face, made a screen through which she could see his expression, but he could not so clearly see hers. His evident relief struck her so hard that she studied his face for a few moments. Was it indeed true that beside her sat a decent man driven to trickery for reasons he was desperate to explain? Or was he a better actor than the men his friend had hired?
    “Thank you,” he said simply. “Now, shall we sit by the fire?”
    Having promised not to touch her, Edward did not offer