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offices.”
    She gaped at him. All she wanted was to hide from the uncertainty her life had become. “Us? Now? There?”
    “You and me,” he answered. “If I go alone, Devere might not allow me in to see him. We don’t have much time, so, yes, now. Nowhere better to start than with the man who knows the most about Hugh’s debts.”
    *   *   *
    Bronwyn herself had never been to Devere’s place of business. Hugh had always gone. Without her, of course. But she knew that his offices were located on Cannon Street in the City, and so, in short order, she found herself in a cab with Marco.
    She looked out the window as they wound deeper into the financial heart of the capital. She felt raw, exposed. “For eight months, I’ve been trapped inside my home. It’s all changed—in just a day. It’s like…” She struggled to name the sensation. “I’m a baby bird that’s fallen out of its nest.”
    “Whether you fly or perish is up to you,” he answered.
    “That’s not especially encouraging,” she said tartly.
    He shrugged. “As little as you know me, I know only slightly more about you. No way to foretell how you’ll manage the tasks ahead.”
    “Surely Lucy told you everything about me. I’m certain one of those dossiers on the table is mine.”
    “‘Words, words, words,’ to quote Will Shakespeare. It’s in the doing that someone shows who they really are.”
    “If you have so little faith in me,” she said, her temper rising, “why bring me to Devere’s? Surely a man as clever as yourself could find out what he needs to know without me.”
    “In less than a minute,” he agreed easily. “But there’s more I need to learn than how Hugh came into such debt. There’s learning you, too.”
    “Then we’re both strangers to each other,” she fired back.
    “So we are.” Should she be insulted by his plain speaking? Pleased? All the politesse that had shrouded her had left her here, without a cent, reliant on the benevolence of a group of vigilantes. Precarious didn’t begin to describe her circumstances.
    At the least, she wished Harriet had accompanied them to Devere’s. Being alone with Marco felt like having a cold blade pressed to her spine. With Harriet around, the blade felt swathed in batting—acting as buffer between herself and this unpredictable, cunning man.
    “Ever met Devere?” Marco asked.
    “He came to a dinner I gave once. A very agreeable man—or at least he was to me.”
    “Age? Height? Hair and eye color?”
    “You sound like one of those Scotland Yard men in the penny dreadfuls. Is he a suspect in any crime?”
    “That’s to be determined,” he answered enigmatically. “But I need to know his manner and appearance.”
    She sifted through the debris littering her memory. So many people came and went at her dinner parties, people she’d meet once and then never again. Of course, she had her regular guests—friends of Hugh’s from Oxford, the usual people in their set, bishops and journalists. But her husband’s financial agent had appeared at her table once and once only.
    A face materialized in her mind. “Middle forties, if I were to guess. Light brown hair. Full mustache and sideburns. Blue-brown eyes, like water full of silt. Rather small nose for a man. He’d laugh into his fist, as if he were coughing.”
    Marco nodded. “Perhaps you missed your calling as a Scotland Yard detective.”
    She laughed at the outrageousness of his suggestion. As if women could ever be police investigators. As if she could ever be a investigator. That was even more ludicrous than her wish to be a professional violinist.
    The hired carriage at last pulled up in front of a sober brick building. Men in dark, serious clothing teemed on the streets, hurrying to keep the great machine of England’s businesses running, or else get ground up between its massive cogs. No women were on the curb. Dread curled in her stomach. She shouldn’t be here, in this province of men.
    Marco