Felicity froze. Impossible.

“Nothing happened after the ball.”

“That’s not what we were told.”

Felicity looked to Pru, then back to Arthur, a thread of suspicion in her. “Who burst into your rooms before me?”

“I think you know.”

She went cold. “He shouldn’t have come here.” He’d used her. He’d betrayed her.

You were the perfect revenge.

He’d done enough damage; couldn’t he leave well enough alone?

“Nevertheless,” Arthur said, “he turned up here yesterday.”

“He isn’t important,” she lied.

Arthur raised a brow.

“He seems quite important, if you ask me,” Pru interjected.

No one asked you, Pru. “What did he say?” Felicity asked. He wouldn’t have told Arthur the truth about the night on the roof, certainly. That ran the risk of landing him with her for a wife, and Lord knew he wasn’t willing to risk that for anything.

Lord knew he wasn’t willing to even consider her for a wife.

“He said a number of things, as a matter of fact.” Arthur looked to Pru. “Introduced himself all polite—despite the fact that he’d climbed a tree and broken in.”

“He does that,” Felicity said.

“Does he?” Pru asked, as though they were discussing Devil’s penchant for riding.

“We’re going to have to have a talk about how you know that, eventually,” Arthur said. “He then tore a strip off of me for mistreating you.”

Her gaze flew to her brother’s. “He did?”

“He did. Reminded me that you were never a means to an end. That we were treating you abominably and that we didn’t deserve you.”

Tears welled, along with anger and frustration. He, too, didn’t deserve her. “He shouldn’t have done that, either.”

“He does not seem the kind of man who can be stopped, Felicity,” Pru said.

Especially when you want to stop him from leaving you.

“He was right, is the thing,” Arthur said. “We did behave abominably. He thinks you ought to turn your backs on us. Thinks we’re unworthy of you.”

“He doesn’t really believe that.” Her worth had run its course the moment her usefulness in his revenge had done the same.

“For someone who doesn’t believe in your worth, he certainly was willing to pay a fortune for it.”

She froze, instantly understanding. “He offered you money.”

Arthur shook his head. “Not just money. A king’s ransom. And not just to me—to Father as well. A hefty sum to fill the coffers. To begin again.”

She shook her head. Taking Devil’s money tied them together again. He could turn up any time to check on his investments. She didn’t want him near her. She couldn’t bear him near her. “You can’t take it.”

Arthur blinked. “Whyever not?”

“Because you can’t,” she insisted. “Because he’s only doing it because he feels some kind of guilt.”

“Well, one might argue that a guilty man’s money spends as well as that of someone who sleeps well at night, but, leaving that aside, why would Mr. Culm feel guilty, Felicity?”

Mr. Culm. The name sounded ridiculous on her brother’s tongue. Devil had never used it before with her. He loved being the opposite of a mister with a powerful passion.

And also, Mr. Culm made her remember when she wished she was his Mrs.

Which she didn’t anymore. Obviously.

“Because he does,” she settled on as an answer. “Because . . .” She trailed off. “I don’t know. Because he does.”

“I think he might feel guilty because of the other thing he said while he was here, Arthur.”

Arthur sighed, and Felicity looked to Pru, who looked like the cat that got the cream. “What was it?”

“How did he put it?” Pru asked with a smile that gave Felicity the keen sense that her sister-in-law had committed whatever Devil had said to memory. “Ah. Yes. He loves you.”

Tears came. Instantly. Tears and anger and frustration and loathing that he’d said the words she’d longed to hear to Prudence and Arthur and not to her. The person whom he ostensibly loved.

She shook her head. “No, he doesn’t.”

“I think he might, you know,” Arthur replied.

One lone tear spilled down her cheek and she dashed it away. “No, he doesn’t. You are not the only ones who treated me abominably, you know. He did, too.”

Arthur nodded. “Yes. He told us that, as well. He told us he’d made enough mistakes to make it impossible for him to make you happy.”

She stilled. “He said that?”

Pru nodded. “He said he would live with the regret for a lifetime. That he would remember the chance he’d had and lost.”

Another tear. Another. Felicity sniffed and shook her head. “He didn’t care enough about me.”

Arthur nodded. “I shan’t tell you otherwise; you must decide if he is a man worthy of you. But know that Devon Culm has bestowed a fortune upon you, Felicity.”

“Upon you,” she corrected. “So, what, that I may be kept? That I may be your responsibility forever? That I may belong to you, and live in sadness and silence here in this world that used to be all glitter, and is now faded paint, peeling from the rafters? All he’s done is make my future a gilded prison.”

“No, Felicity. I spoke correctly. Culm bestowed a fortune upon you. He wished you to have enough to find your own happiness.” He looked to Pru. “How did he say it?”

Pru sighed. “A future wherever and with whomever you wish.”

Felicity’s brow furrowed. “A dowry?” The bastard. He’d just thrown up another door. She’d unlocked everything, and here she was again, surrounded by new chains. New locks.

Arthur shook her head. “No. It’s yours. The money is yours. An enormous amount, Felicity. More than you could ever spend.”

The shocking words settled as Pru lifted a box from her dressing table and walked it over to Felicity. “And he left you a gift.”

“The money was not gift enough?” The black onyx box, longer than it was wide, barely an inch high, and tied with a pink silk bow. Her chest tightened at the pretty package it made. Pink on black, like light on darkness. Like a promise.

“He was adamant you receive this when we told you of the funds.”

She slipped the ribbon from the box, wrapping it carefully around her wrist before she opened the lid to discover a thick white linen card inside. Across it, in Devil’s beautiful black scrawl, were three words.

Farewell, Felicity Faircloth.

Her chest tightened at the words, tears springing again instantly.

She hated him. He’d taken away the only thing she’d ever really wanted. Him.

She lifted the card, nonetheless, and her breath caught at the glint of metal beneath, six straight, thin lines of shining, gleaming steel, beautifully wrought. Tears came freely now, her hand shaking as she reached for the gift, her fingertips caressing the smooth metalwork. “Devil,” she whispered, unable to keep his name from her tongue. “They’re beautiful.”

Pru craned to look in the box. “What are they? Hairpins?”

“Yes.”

“What a strange design.”

Felicity lifted one from the box, inspecting the jagged wave at one end. Setting it down on its black velvet cushion—the most beautiful tool chest in Christendom—she ran her finger over the L-shaped angle in another. The flat square end of a third. “They’re lockpicks.”

The money was one thing. But the lockpicks were everything.

You’ve got the future in your hands every time you hold a hairpin, he’d said all those days ago in the warehouse, when he’d told her she shouldn’t be ashamed of her talent.

These picks were proof he knew her. That he put her desires first. Her passion first. That he cared more for what she chose for herself than for his own guilt.

But more than all that, they were proof that he loved her.

He’d bought her freedom—she would never again have to make choices based on Arthur’s business or her mother’s home, or her own social standing. He’d freed her from Mayfair. From the world she no longer wanted. And he’d given her the future.

Just as he had on the roof, when he’d resisted her. When he’d told her that he wouldn’t take her. That he wouldn’t ruin her. That he wouldn’t rob her of the future he could see—like Janus. In the moment, he’d let her choose him, and she had, without for a moment feeling ruined. And now, he’d ensured that she’d never be ruined again; he’d replenished her family’s coffers and made her rich beyond measure. Rich in money and freedom.

Wherever and with whomever you wish.

She lifted the pins one after the other and inserted them into her hair.

She didn’t want the world of the aristocracy. She wanted the world.

And he was the man to give it to her.

Not that she wasn’t prepared to take it.


To no avail, Felicity banged on the great steel warehouse door a half hour later as the sun edged over the rookery’s rooftops. What good was the benefit to having been given the blessing of a Bareknuckle Bastard’s protection in Covent Garden if one could not enter their damn warehouse when one wished?

She was going to have to do it another way. She reached into her hair, pulling out one gleaming steel pin, and a second, each one beautifully shaped. Devil had found a skilled artisan who understood complex lockpicking, which seemed the kind of thing that should not exist . . . but he specialized in things that did not exist, and so she was unsurprised as she knelt in the dirt outside the warehouse door.