Jocelyn paced away from him, her nervousness returning. Christopher wasn't like any other man she knew, and as certain as she was, there was always a chance- She shook her head, turned and walked back to where he stood. "I've decided I am not going to marry the duke."

Surprised flared in his eyes, then he frowned. "Why not? I thought the arrangements had already been made."

"They have, but...The truth is, I do not care a whit for Royal Dewar and I am not going to marry him." She looked up at him, into his handsome, compelling face. "I thought that instead I would marry you."

Silence. Then a bark of laughter escaped through Christopher's hard mouth. "Have you lost your mind?"

Her stomach knotted. "I thought...thought you would be happy about it."

He stared at her for several long moments, then turned and walked over to the window. Jocelyn could hear carriage wheels churning on the cobbled streets below. A newsboy hawked his wares.

Christopher sighed into the thickening silence, turned and walked back to her. "I can't marry you, Jo. I'm not what you want and never will be. I'd just be one of your lapdogs and that isn't going to happen. If things were different...If I had money and a title, perhaps..." His jaw hardened. "The fact is I don't. I can't give you a single thing Bransford can. You'd be miserable and so would I."

Her eyes welled. She couldn't believe he was turning her down. He had bedded her, made love to her half a dozen different ways. How dare he refuse to marry her!

Fury engulfed her. Anger and humiliation.

Her hand snaked out and connected with his cheek so hard he stumbled backward. "I hate you!" she shouted. "I hate you, Christopher Barclay!"

Whirling away, she raced for the door. Jerking it open, she rushed out of the room without retrieving her cloak. What did she care if someone saw her? She had money enough to silence any wagging tongues. She could buy anyone and anything she wanted.

Tears blurred her vision and she stumbled, caught herself before she fell.

She could buy anyone.

Anyone-except Christopher Barclay.

Lily looked up as the shop door burst open and Dottie Hobbs rushed in, an apron still tied around her thick girth.

"Can't stay but a minute. Just wanted to give ye this." She handed a note to Lily. "Loomis came to the house looking for Tsaya. He wants to meet with her tonight. He left this note. Tsaya's supposed to send word to the address on the note if she agrees."

Lily opened the note, which asked for a ten o'clock appointment and gave the address for her reply. It was nearly two in the afternoon. "Good grief, he didn't give us much time."

She glanced into the room at the rear of the shop. Seated in a chair, tendrils of carrot-red hair spilling from her mobcap, Flora hummed as she sewed flowers onto the brim of a blue velvet bonnet.

"Flora, I need to run upstairs. I'll be back in just a few minutes."

Flora nodded and Lily hurried up to her flat to pen a note from Tsaya agreeing to the meeting. A second note went to Uncle Jack, telling him Loomis had made contact and that she had agreed to a ten o'clock appointment.

She sanded the notes, folded, and sealed them with wax, then headed back downstairs.

"Loomis's address is on the one you brought," she told Dottie, handing her the original message along with the ones she had just penned. "See that he gets my reply. The other note goes to Molly and Jack."

"I'll see to it meself, miss."

"Thank you, Dottie." The woman hurried away.

Flora finished at two and departed, leaving Lily to pace and worry and wish the time would pass more swiftly. Toward the end of the day, a matronly woman walked into the shop, the grocer's wife, Mrs. Smythe. She commissioned a dress cap of white Belgian lace, perfect to wear, she said, to her grandson's christening. As soon as Lily finished taking the order, she locked up the shop.

Tommy and Mugs arrived at the backdoor just after dark. Lily was always relieved to see them. She knew what it was like on the streets. She worried about the boy's safety and prayed he wouldn't get into trouble.

"I have to go out for a while after supper," she told Tommy. "But I won't be gone long."

"Where ye goin'?" he asked.

"I'm meeting a man to talk about the stars."

"I used to look at 'em with me mum. She used to make up stories about them."

Lily smiled. "If you watched the stars, you must have lived in the country."

He nodded. "Till Mum took sick. After she died, I come to London." He was looking past her, she realized, and turned to see what had captured his gaze. It was a small, leather-bound book of poetry, sitting where she had left it on the table.

"I never thought to ask...can you read?"

"Me mum taught me. She didn't have no formal schoolin', but she were real smart. She were a chambermaid in a big country house and the housekeeper taught her."

She walked over to the book of poems, brought it over and handed it to Tommy. "You might enjoy reading this while I'm out."

Tommy grinned. He had a nice wide smile and eating a proper amount of food was beginning to fill out his thin face. He took the book from her hand as if it were made of precious stones. "Thank ye, miss. I'll take real good care o' it."

Lily had fixed the boy a pallet in the backroom to sleep on. As soon as Tommy had eaten, he sat down on the pallet, Mugs curled up beside him, and began to read the book by the light of an oil lamp.

Dusk became nightfall. It was nine o'clock by the time Lily was dressed in her bright silk Gypsy garments and ready to leave the shop. Tommy and Mugs were asleep on the pallet as she whirled her cloak round her shoulders and tied the string beneath her chin. Drawing the hood up to cover her straight black hair, she headed for the cab stand.

It wasn't long before a plodding horse pulling a hansom appeared at the corner. As the vehicle rolled toward the small house in Piccadilly that belonged to Madam Tsaya, Lily thought of Preston Loomis and ignored the thread of worry that slipped down her spine.

Christopher Barclay sat alone at a corner table at White's, his gentlemen's club, an untouched glass of brandy in front of him. If his stomach hadn't been tied in knots, he might have gotten drunk. As it was, just thinking about it made him queasy.

For the past two days, he hadn't been able to eat, hadn't been able to sleep. All he'd done was think of the reckless little witch who had managed to enchant him.

God's blood, what had possessed him to get involved with the girl in the first place? He had known it would only lead to trouble. But a stiff cock had little conscience and he had wanted her as he couldn't remember wanting a woman.

He glanced up as a familiar masculine face came into focus: straight nose, black hair, brilliant blue eyes.

"Mind if I join you?" Rule Dewar stood next to him at the table, a glass of brandy in his hand. A Dewar was the last person Christopher wanted to see, but Rule and Christopher's younger brother, Lucas, were of an age and they were close friends.

"I thought you were in school."

"I finished the last of my classes. I'm out of there for good and damned glad of it." He pulled out a chair but didn't take a seat, just stood there waiting for an invitation Christopher wished he didn't have to give.

"I don't mind, but I warn you, I'm not in a very good mood."

Rule sprawled in the chair, drink in hand, his intense blue eyes searching Christopher's face. "Unless you lost a bundle at the gaming tables, I'd say the cause is a woman."

Christopher just grunted.

"Is she married?"

"Might as well be."

"Don't tell me you're in love."

The word made his stomach tighten. "Lust, maybe. A case of overinfatuation. Whatever it is, it's worse than an ague and I'll be glad when it's over."

"That bad, is it?"

Christopher took a drink of his heretofore-untouched drink. Rule Dewar was the last person he should be talking to. "Worse."

"If she isn't actually married, why don't you do something about it?"

"Nothing I can do. The lady is out of my league. I've no fortune to speak of. No title. If I married her, I'd never be her equal. She's worth a bloody fortune and she believes it gives her license to own the world. She'd try to own me and I'm not willing to let that happen. I'd end up no more than a bad decision she would always regret."

Rule took a sip of his drink. "The last thing a man needs is a woman who holds the purse strings."

"Doesn't seem to bother your brother." The minute the words were out, he wished he could call them back.

Rule seemed unfazed. "I guess you've heard the rumors. Everyone in London seems to know Royal is to marry the Caulfield girl, though it won't be official until the announcement is made this Saturday night. That is one of the reasons I came to London."

Christopher said nothing, but his stomach churned.

"As for my brother, he really has no choice. He's the Duke of Bransford, after all. Got to have an heir and all that. Besides, he made a vow to our father. He intends to use his wife's money to rebuild the family fortune."

Christopher sipped his drink. "She'll make him dance for every penny. She's that kind of woman."

"Then she doesn't know the man she is going to marry. Royal will control the money as soon as the vows are spoken. As his wife, she'll have little say about what he does with it."

Christopher clamped down on a bitter laugh. You don't know her like I do, he thought. Jocelyn was spoiled and selfish and she would make the duke's life miserable. A man would be a fool to think he could tame a creature like that.

But, by damn, he wanted to be the man to try.

His fingers tightened around the glass. It wasn't going to happen. Jocelyn didn't love him. He wasn't sure she was capable of that kind of emotion, and it would take that and more for a marriage with such a difficult woman to work.

He downed the last of the liquid in his glass, set it on the table and rose from the chair.

"Nice talking to you, Rule. Give your brother my regards." And my eternal sympathy for the life of hell he is about to embark upon with Jo.

Twenty-Six.

It was almost ten o'clock. When Lily arrived at the house, Dottie was busy in the kitchen. She had delivered Tsaya's reply to Preston Loomis and left the note for Jack with Molly at the flat the two of them now shared, a circumstance Lily wholeheartedly approved.

She glanced at the clock. Loomis would be arriving any minute. She walked over and pulled out the rolled-up astronomy chart showing the position of the stars. She knew why Loomis wanted to come after dark. He wanted to watch her, see how she worked.

She almost smiled. As a little girl, she had been fascinated by the stars. Her father had taught her the names of each constellation and how to locate them-assuming it was clear enough to see them, which it usually was at their cottage in the country.

Here in London, the sooty air, low-hanging clouds and fog kept the sky mostly obscured. Not tonight. The wind had come up this afternoon, blowing away the soot and cleansing the air. The sky was black as pitch, the stars sparkling like diamonds, which, she was sure, was the reason Loomis had chosen tonight for his visit.

She made a last quick check of her appearance, tugging the black wig into position and straightening her red silk blouse, then headed for the kitchen to make certain Dottie was ready to receive their visitor.

Pushing through the swinging door, she froze at the sight of Royal Dewar standing exactly where he had been the last time Loomis paid a call, dressed in the same simple, masculine garments as before.

"You...you shouldn't be here. How...how did you know Loomis was coming?"

"Molly sent me a note. She didn't like the idea of your being here with him alone."

"I'm not alone. Dottie is here."

He scoffed as if to say, Two women are not much better at defending themselves than one. "I'll wait back here out of sight, as I did before."

"But-"

A knock on the door ended the argument. Exasperated and resigned, Lily took a breath, turned and walked back into the parlor while Dottie went to answer the door. The housekeeper showed Loomis into the sitting room and Lily rose to greet him.

"Mr. Loomis...Good evening."

"It is good to see you, Tsaya."

"You, as well. Would you care for tea? Or perhaps something stronger?"

"Nothing tonight." Instead, Loomis's gaze lit on the charts spread open on the table. He walked in that direction. "You were preparing to use these tonight?"

"The sky is clear, as it rarely is in the city. I hoped to renew myself, perhaps be granted the gift of a vision."

He smoothed his silver mustache. "You were right about Savage. The investment I made with him paid off quite nicely."

She made a slight bow of her head.

"Are you ever wrong?"

"I do not speak if I am in doubt."

He flicked a glance toward the darkness outside the window. "Would you mind if I watched you work?"

She shrugged as if it didn't matter. "If that is your wish." Making her way out of the parlor, she paused to retrieve her cloak, then led him into the entry and down the hall to the back of the house. On the porch, she wrapped her hands round the railing and looked up into the darkness.

"How does it work?" he asked as he walked up beside her.

Lily kept her eyes on the sky. "First you must search for the Star of the North. It is the center of all things." She pointed. "There, do you see it?"

His gaze followed where she pointed. "Yes."