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tossing it. Why hold on to something that could only remind him of tonight’s humiliation? But he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. His nostrils sill retained the scent of oranges. His lips were still hungry for the taste of her.
    He would keep it as a bittersweet reminder of the price to be paid for dropping his guard. So he slipped it into his pocket and made his way slowly back to his mother’s home on Keppel Street.

    T he bolt-hole was cold, dank, and smelled of old urine and mouse droppings, but it was safe. Randall had shown her this secret place when he’d finally trusted her enough to let her join the crew that stole the money that funded his fight against oppression.
    But at the thought of Randall, Temperance’s heart sank. How close she had come to betraying him with the captain. No. She must be honest; she had betrayed him. She’d been as wanton as her father had claimed she was when he’d forced her to run away from home.
    But wanton though she might be, she’d never before felt anything like what she’d felt tonight in that soldier’s embrace. Not even when she’d lain with Randall, whom she’d loved so much. Perhaps that was why Randall had never been able to stop looking at other women. Maybe he’d secretly wanted a woman who felt like that with him.
    She squelched that thought. Randall had been faithful to her. She was the one who had betrayed their love, not him. She must face it and move on. It was just more evidence of how weak she was, like so much else that had happened over the past three years.
    She fell into a fitful sleep bedded down on filthy straw at the back of the bolt-hole, but she couldn’t stay there forever. When morning broke, she made her way back to the rookery on Mercer Street, where she found Becky standing beside a pile of debris.
    The wreckers had come, just as the landlord had said they would, and they were tearing down the abandoned building where the girls had made their home. They’d already torn off the oiled paper she and Becky had so carefully installed over the shattered casement window, and even now scavengers were picking through the pathetically small pile of what remained of their furniture, which the workmen had tossed carelessly onto the street. They’d find nothing of value. The girls had already pawned anything that could have been turned into brass.
    Becky hobbled over. Never had Tem been gladder to see her friend’s small heart-shaped face with those pale eyebrows that were mere wisps above her knowing eyes. “Are you all right, Tem?” Becky asked. “Clary saw you go off with the officer. When you didn’t come back, we were worried. Did he hurt you?”
    “Not a bit. I could handle him.”
    Becky’s face lost some of its anxiety. “You didn’t manage to get a quid or two from him, did you? I know they took what you’d prigged when they bagged you, but Clary thought maybe the officer was sweet on you. He paid an awful lot to free you—more than he’d pay for a week at Mother Bristwick’s. We thought, when you didn’t come back, that maybe, you know—you’d come to an arrangement.”
    “You know I won’t do that kind of thing for money.”
    Becky’s shoulders sagged. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t betray your precious Randall.”
    Temperance turned away to hide the shame that must be evident on her face. She’d come all too close to betraying him, and she didn’t even have the excuse that she’d done it for the money her friends needed so badly.
    “Well, we can’t afford any more of your high principles,” Becky continued, relentlessly. “The Weaver’s man Snake came by. He says they’ve waited long enough for that money we owe for last month. The Weaver won’t protect us no more. That’s why none of his bruisers lifted a finger for you last night.”
    “But how are we to pay him if we can’t steal?”
    “Mother Bristwick’s,” Becky said through clenched teeth. “Like I said, you’d have done better to get the