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night.
    She was just leaping over a rotten log fallen across her path when something struck her with the force of a mule kick square between the shoulder blades.
    Isabella cried out, was spun around by the force of the blow. Instinctively her hand twisted, clawing up her back for the site of the spreading, burning pain. She could not reach it, but there was a wetness soaking the back of her gown. Her fingers touched something warm, something wet and sticky. She withdrew them to look down with shock at the thick, dark liquid that stained them.
    “Why, I’ve been shot,” she thought, horrified, just before she crumpled senseless to the ground.

VII
    A lec Tyron got to his feet, dusted off his breeches, and stood looking down at the body of Cook Parren with cold disinterest. The fool should never have tried to play him false. Others had attempted it before, and most had paid with their lives, as had Parren.
    Alec had not risen to be the overlord of London’s seamy underworld on the strength of his jolly good humor or remarkable looks. It took a strong man, a ruthless and clever one, to claw his way up to the position of ruler of the Spitalfields-Whitechapel-Kensington district. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he thought that over. Royalty, that’s what he was. At least, of the slum rat variety. King of Whitechapel. Maybe he should get himself a crown.
    “What’re you grinning at?” Paddy came up beside him, frowning. Paddy was a chapel-going sort, not at all suited for the life of riding herd over the pickpockets, murderers, brigands and bawds among whom he found himself. He had a conscience, and a most inconvenient set of morals which Alec, with his quicker brain, had found himself talking around most of his life. Paddy and he had been together since the time when both had been grimy urchins barely breeched, roaming the streets of London doing whatever they must for crusts of bread to keep body and soul in one piece. They’d complemented each other, Paddy with his enormous size and huge muscles, and Alec, for all that he was some few years the younger, with his agile brain. It was that combination of brain and muscle which had got them to where they were. And it was that combination of brain and muscle that would keep them there. Paddy was the only human being in the world besides himself that Alec completely trusted.
    “Where’s the gentry-mort—the lady?” Alec had worked hard and long to rid himself of the cant speech of the streets, but sometimes he slipped. It usually occurred in times of stress, and he was always severely disappointed in himself when it happened. Speech habits marked a man, labeled him as clearly as slovenliness or a cringing mien. To rise above the lowest of the low, the class to which he’d been born, it had been necessary to change the way he spoke as well as nearly everything else about himself. He’d done it, by dint of much effort. But still, when he least expected it, hints of his origins would emerge, to his secret shame.
    “The little wench? When the shooting started, I told her to run. I saw you go down, and I thought Parren might have done for you at last.”
    “Not bloody likely. And the little wench is no wench, at least not by birth. It’s become clear to me that she is the very lady we came seeking.”
    “What?” Paddy was skeptical.
    “Parren and his men lost her, and we found her. Just how many females do you think go running about these woods at night, anyway?”
    “She didn’t look like no lady I’ve ever seen. Not—not fancy enough.” Paddy frowned doubtfully at Alec.
    Alec shook his head, pocketed his pistol and knelt by Parren’s sprawled body. “You great looby, it’s the bawds that wear the fancy dresses and perfume. Ladies—real ladies, born-to-it ladies—don’t dress like that. They dress real plain.”
    “She was dressed plain, all right.” Paddy began to grin. “You put your hand on her—”
    “Aye, well, I thought she was a