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inadequate today?”
    There was no stopping the panic now. Jessamin felt the morning air chilling the sweat on her neck, and a sickening weight settled in her belly. If Mr. Briggs refused the money, all her recklessness of the night before had been in vain. If such an enormous sum wasn’t sufficient, she’d never pull the bookshop out of debt. What would she tell Jack? The prospect of putting a loyal employee out of work troubled her more than the thought of closing the shop.
    “Miss Wright, our bank is one of the most respectable in London.” He looked down his pince-nez at her, arching his bushy gray eyebrows above the golden rims. He paused for a beat, as if expecting her to take his meaning. When she said nothing, he added, “And we mean to remain respectable. In all of our dealings.”
    Jess opened her mouth but no words came.
    Briggs turned away from her dismissively, huffing out a grumble of frustration.
    Then realization hit with the force of a strike, and she covered her mouth with her hands to keep from crying out. That kiss. That bloody foolish kiss. Had one act—a choice made out of desperation to stave off this very moment—cost her everything?
    Jess closed her eyes and struggled to settle her whirling thoughts long enough to find her voice.
    “Mr. Briggs, were you by any chance at an art gallery in Mayfair last evening?”
    Please say no . But he didn’t have to say anything at all. Though she’d often suspected his disdain for her, whether because of her father or her own failures as a bookshop owner, it was clear now. His mouth tilted in a sneer, and then he looked away, as if disturbed by the very sight of her. At the gallery, after she’d kissed Lord Grimsby, many of the men and women around her had done the same.
    She’d disgraced herself, plain and simple. And somehow Mr. Briggs knew of the incident.
    He’d brought a toady along with him, and the two of them wandered about the shop, no doubt assessing and planning how to dispose of her stock. After they whispered together, heads bent, Briggs glanced back at her, and the look of disgust in his bulbous eyes was the only answer she required.
    The man who accompanied him, a younger, lankier version of Briggs himself, stepped forward and handed her a neatly folded document. Her hands shook as she tried to open it, but the gentleman spoke up in a surprisingly pleasant voice and said, almost regretfully, “Miss Wright, the bank has not acted on your overdue lien for years. Now that there is no viable means for you to settle the arrears, we have come to inform you that we will take possession of your inventory in one week in an attempt to settle the debt.”
    “It won’t be enough.” Jessamin heard her voice as if it was another’s, an echo from far away—lifeless, hopeless. “You can sell every book, the bindery equipment, everything, and it still won’t be enough to repay the debt.”
    When she looked up at the young man with tears blurring the corners of her vision, she imagined the regret she’d heard in his voice reflected in his pale gray eyes. But he merely stared down at her and said, “No.”
    He glanced at a sheaf of document in his hands, and then looked at her again with his cool, direct gaze. “Your lease. I see here it is—”
    They wanted her out and would no doubt be pleased to know she was already halfway there.
    “My lease has been up for months. The landlord has allowed me to pay month to month, but there’s the matter of . . .” The bank men knew more about her father’s money troubles than anyone, but acknowledging that he had even failed to pay the rent, that it was another debt she had yet to bring current, seemed like a final betrayal. “There was a previous arrears. Landlord wished me to clear it before he would allow me to sign a new lease.”
    He nodded as if that bit of information was very interesting indeed. The fact that she didn’t have the certainty of a roof over her head was simply a fact to him,