lad off to now?" "Careful there, Millicent, he trod all over my train." "Where's the fire, son? Shall we

call out the brigade?" Justin flew across the entranceway and flung open the front door. Frigid air burned his lungs. Tears of cold stung his eyes. He blinked rapidly to dispel them.


Snowflakes tumbled and spun in a wind-driven waltz, frosting the world in white. Leaving the front door gaping, he ran, sliding across the icy lawn to the street.


He searched both ways. The street was empty. The iron gate swung in the wind, creaking an eerie refrain.


Justin sank down on the curb and rested his elbows on his knees. He stared blindly into the night, wondering if he was going mad and listening to the falling snowflakes whisper promises they could never keep.


* * *


Emily's long strides ate up the pavement. Her shoulder slammed into a passing chimney sweep, knocking his tools into the snow.


"Watch where you're goin', you little fool!" he growled.


She jerked up his metal broom and swung around to press the sharp bristles to his throat. "Why don't

you watch who you're calling a fool, pudding head."


He recoiled and lifted his palms in surrender. She tossed him the broom.


"And a merry Christmas to you, too," he called after her as she marched on.


Emily was madder than hell.


She rushed on to nowhere, nursing the cold ashes of her bitterness to raging flame. She toyed with her anger, ripping the familiar comfort of the old scar wide open. She knew her anger well. It had been her friend, enabling her to hold her head high despite the giggles and slights. It had been her enemy, driving her to stomp toes and tie Cecille's braids in knots. And it had been her lover, sustaining her through cold, dark nights shivering in her attic bed by building a stone wall of fury against the despair.


Most of the shop windows were dark now, their owners gone home to sit in front of crackling fires.

Emily heard the crunch of a footfall behind her. She glanced over her shoulder, expecting the chimney sweep's broom to slam into her head. A shadow vanished into a narrow alley. She almost laughed aloud. Anyone contemplating robbing her had to be desperate indeed.


She crossed a broad street where light and laughter spilled from a corner coffeehouse. A familiar scrap

of paper on a lamppost caught her eye. A man stared as he passed, and Emily pulled her shawl up

around her face. The likeness in the tintype was still there. Not everyone in London was as blindly

stupid as Justin.


Poor, pathetic Justin.


Instead of finding him mooning for her in a deserted house, she had found him gliding past a shining expanse of glass, a beautiful stranger in his arms. He had slipped back into his life of noble decadence with alarming ease, leaving her once again on the outside, looking in.


Perhaps if she possessed the sophistication of his waltz partner, she would have known he was only toying with her on the island. Why shouldn't he? She was the only woman in miles except for the

Maori, and he had already seduced his way through their ranks before she arrived. Justin wasn't the pathetic one. She was.


That night on the beach she had allowed him to touch the most tender part of her, both in body and soul. Yet tonight he had clasped another woman to his heart as he had once held her beneath a foggy pearl of

a moon. He had been terribly handsome in his black evening garb, the rakish sweep of his hair over his starched collar oddly endearing. A wretched sense of betrayal closed her throat.


Her hands clenched into fists. She couldn't let the pain in. Not even for an instant. If she did, she would curl into a little ball right there in the street and they would find her in the morning, just another frozen casualty.


She marched on, achingly aware of her every misery. The soles of her boots were soaked through. Her naked fingers were numb. The blowing snow stung her cheeks like tiny shards of glass.


A well-dressed couple passed her. The woman tittered and the man raked her with a contemptuous glance. They knew she didn't belong there. She didn't belong anywhere.


A bakery door opened in a blast of warmth, sugaring the air with the tantalizing aroma of gingerbread. Emily stopped dead, as paralyzed and vulnerable as if she'd been caught naked on Piccadilly Circus.

She crept nearer and pressed her nose to the icy window.


Fresh rows of pastries cooled on the shelves, swollen to bursting with red and amber fruit. Flat scones rolled in cinnamon dotted the gleaming counter. Emily's breath fogged the glass.


Suddenly she was hungry. Wickedly, savagely hungry.


Her father had once taken her to such a place. He had lifted her in his strong arms so she could see the steaming array of treasures, then allowed her to pick three of the most tempting. They had sat in the bakery the rest of that cold winter afternoon, gorging themselves on pie and pastries until they had both retired to bed that night with aching bellies.


The door swung open again. A plump woman with her hands jammed deep in a fur muff was ushered into the bakery by her towering escort. Without hesitation Emily slipped in behind them.


She lurked behind the man's cloak while they made their choices. As the baker turned to fill a sack with powdery crumpets, Emily saw her chance.


She reached over the counter and snatched a fat tart, burning her fingers with its delicious heat.


"Ho there, little lady, you can't do that."


It was not the baker, but the man who spoke, his jovial tones ringing in the silence. Emily fled for the door. She tripped over the threshold and stumbled into the snow.


"Constable! Stop this thief!"


The baker burst out behind her. She scrambled to her feet, but had barely taken two steps when she heard pounding footsteps coming from both directions. The { blast of twin whistles deafened her. She spun around, not I knowing which way to run. Her hesitation cost her dearly. The baker's genial

customer caught her by the back of her dress and lifted her high.


"There now, little one, quit squirming. You mustn't be such a wicked gel. Wicked gels end up in jail,

you know."


He lowered her, but before she could flee, a uniformed constable caught her arm and wrenched it behind her back. The tart slipped from her fingers and plopped into the dirty snow. A heartbroken wail escaped her.


Caught in an implacable tangle of arms and legs, she fought wildly. Her foot connected with the shin of one of the constables with a satisfying thud. The other one howled as her teeth sank into his wrist. The shawl slid from her hair.


"Stand back, lad!" one of them shouted. "We don't need no crowds. She's a rabid wench."


A hand caught in her curls and tugged her head straight back, stilling her struggles. Tears of pain stung

her eyes.


"Aye, a rabid wench she is. But don't worry, gents. I'll muzzle her right and proper."


As Emily stared up into black, beady eyes glistening with lust and greed, she moaned in utter dread.


He jerked her hard against him and grinned at the gaping constables. "Mr. Barney Dobbins, mates, at

yer service."


* * *

Somewhere a child was laughing.


Justin sat bolt upright in bed. His heart pounded in his throat, deafening him for a long moment before

the shift of the coals on the fire penetrated his panicked haze. The blankets bound his legs in tangled cords, as twisted as the dreams that haunted his waking hours, and made sleep a nightly torment.


There was something he should know. Something hovering at the edge of his nightmares, taunting him.


He threw back the heavy drapes of the bed and struggled out of the feather tick. Like everything else

in this house, the bed was a monstrosity. Every inch of the dark mahogany had been carved with the serpentine vines and pronged leaves of miniature Venus's-flytraps. He dreaded climbing into it each

night for fear the mattress would swallow him without a trace.


A thread of light shone beneath Penfeld's adjoining door. The valet never slept without his lamp lit. Justin pulled a dressing gown over his nakedness, wishing light were enough to keep his own demons at bay.


He marched down the long, curving staircase, raking his hair out of his eyes. No one would dare trouble him. The servants had grown accustomed to him prowling the house at all hours. They gave him wide berth, frightened of the gaunt shadows beneath his eyes. He was beginning to feel as mad as they must think him.


He was the Duke of Winthrop now. He could buy a dozen gold mines. He could travel to Vienna and study music, as he had always longed to do. He could rent an opera house to feature nothing but his own symphonies night after night. But all he craved was the warmth of sunlight on his face and the music of Emily's laughter.


His shin slammed into a wooden pedestal in the dark and he bit off an oath. There wasn't an inch of

grace or simplicity to be found in this cramped house. He grabbed the teetering vase atop the pedestal