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not be traveling, and her complaints against Farthingstone are well founded. Promise me that you will at least hear her out.”
    “She will be safe.” St. John glanced meaningfully to the waiting bailiffs. “Allow me to see to this other matter for you, Duclairc.”
    “No. It is an amount I could never repay.”
    Fleur knew a thing or two about the fate that Dante faced. “Mr. St. John, Dante has no horse. They will make him walk all the way to London.”
    “Stop by the stables and get a horse for him,” St. John ordered the men. “I will settle it with Laclere.”
    “Dante,” Fleur whispered frantically, reaching toward him.
    He bent over her. “St. John will see to you now, Fleur. He is not nearly so strict as he appears. Tell him and Charlotte what you told me.”
    “It is not that. Those men . . . How much, Dante? How much do you owe?”
    He raised her hand to his lips. “An obscenely high amount. Do not even offer. I have never dunned friends, and I would never accept a penny from a woman.”
    “But it is my fault.”
    “No, Fleur, it is mine alone.”
    Assuming the cool elegance for which he was famous, he walked out of the cottage.

chapter
4

    F leur stepped out of Daniel St. John’s carriage and accepted the footman’s escort to the gaol’s front door.
    There was one great convenience to being a twenty-nine-year-old woman on the shelf who devoted herself to charity. When you told little lies, people believed you. Mr. St. John and his wife, Diane, thought that today she was attending a meeting to plan a new school for workers’ sons.
    Fleur knew all about London’s gaols. She supported the reformers like Elizabeth Fry who sought to improve their condition. She noted with distaste that Mr. Thompson had arranged for Dante to be put in one of the worst of them. The narrow, crowded street smelled of rotting food and offal, and a din of voices poured out of the old buildings. The crumbling plaster of the gaol, black with age and damp, depressed her spirits.
    It would hurt Dante’s pride for anyone he knew to see him in such a place. She rehearsed once more the plan that had brought her here.
    The gaoler’s wife let her in with a display of bowing, indicating that the care Fleur had taken with her appearance had been successful. She had sent to her house for her only fashionable dress, a broad-skirted one in ice-blue muslin. Considering her mission today, she did not want to look too much the dowd.
    The woman brought her into the sitting room of the fetid inn that housed debtors while their creditors tried to extract payment. The chamber’s few windows let in little light, but she could see the negligible attempts at providing comfort. Considering the squalid environment, the high spirits of the men playing cards and wagering with pieces of straw surprised her.
    In the thick of it, joking and laughing, still playing the games that had brought him here, sat Dante Duclairc.
    In contrast to the poor appearance of his comrades, Dante looked impeccable. His cravat showed several days’ wear and his frock coat needed pressing, but he had shaved and dressed for a day on the town even though he would never leave these walls.
    “You’ve a visitor, Mr. Duclairc. A
lady
,” the woman called.
    They all looked at her. Dante’s smile froze. He threw in his cards and came over.
    “Miss Monley, this is surprising.” His tone conveyed disapproval. “I will take her out back, Meg.”
    “For ten pence you can use my chamber if you want,” Meg offered with a bawdy grin.
    “We will go out back, Meg.”
    He led her out to a garden. Three pigs grunted in a pen at one end and chickens pecked around the almost-bare ground. A crude bench sat against the far wall.
    “You should not be here.”
    “Do not scold, Dante. I have seen such places before. I brought you something from Charlotte.”
    “She already sent enough money to pay for meat. Tell her I do not need any more.”
    “It is not exactly from Charlotte