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Ruby stepped closer. “You’re blushing.”

“I’m going to be sick is what I am.”

“Now I’m more worried.” Ruby looked her up and down. “Has he taken you to bed?”

“No!” Nina choked. “He’d have me in jail sooner than his bed if he knew the truth.”

“I saw the way he looked at you.” Ruby took her hands. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Oh bloody hell, of course not.” She sounded hysterical. “My life’s on fire. Jack made a hash of everything. My savings are gone. And the only man I’ve ever . . .”

Ruby’s fingers tightened on hers. “You ever what?”

Nina shook her head. “I used to think, if I felt some way about someone, he’d end up deceiving me. Not the reverse.”

“It’s usually both.” Ruby sighed. “But the blokes are worse, more often, because they can be.”

“I don’t want this.” Tears burned Nina’s nose. “I always saw myself like Aunt Sylvia and Miss Lolly. I want their life. None of this, this feeling like my heart is going explode out of my chest.”

“You’ve got it bad.” Ruby released her hands with a sympathetic squeeze.

“I should go.” Nina rubbed her face. “He’ll wonder where I’ve gone.”

“French letters,” said Ruby. “Sneak ’em from Laddie. Is there anything you want to ask me?”

Nina drew a long breath, her head a blaringly explicit jumble of lovers’ limbs and images of love’s aftermath, which the stereographs never pictured: abandoned women with extinguished eyes. Could French letters protect your heart?

The most urgently practical question trumped all. “Will you take out the dustbin?”

She slipped back into the parlor, stationed herself in front of a random picture, and focused on it with all her might. The artist’s talent, while small, matched his ambition exactly, with happy result. A small, welcoming landscape. She’d suggest Alan buy this one. Three of Jack’s fakes did hang on the walls, but they were badly lit and sandwiched between framed prints and carved masks. Easily passed over. Alan might neglect them. And she could certainly be excused for failing to notice.

“Dearest.”

She pivoted. Alan sauntered toward her. His black hair was clipped short. His cheeks had been scraped clean. His jaw was sharply chiseled. All that hard definition—his lips looked softer for it.

“Dearest,” he drawled again, when it became clear that she could only gawp. “I’ve already selected three pictures for our nuptial bower. Mr. Ladbrooke’s about to wrap them up.”

“That’s right, guv.” Laddie sidled past him, toward Nina, and took one of Jack’s pictures from the wall. “I shall cocoon the goods. Best daubs in the house.” He glanced at the picture in his hands. “Don’t I wish I could remember where they came from.” His eyes slid over Nina as he turned, the left fluttering, the most furtive of winks.

She felt a little throb of gratitude.

Laddie might have squealed, tried to barter his information for money. But he hadn’t given up his friend, or her, for that matter. Maybe he wouldn’t sell his own mother. She’d apologize for that particular quip.

Alan handed her into the coach and waited outside to see the pictures packed. She expected him to speak as they rolled down Clerkenwell, but he looked steadily out the window. His profile seemed finished somehow, framed by the clean edge of his jaw. His starched cravat folded snow-white against his tanned neck. He looked more, and less, like himself.

“Nina,” he said at last. “You know about my surname. Now I find I’m curious about yours.” He turned his face to her, his expression oddly blank. “Finch. How did you come by it?”

“By my father.” She hesitated, the quiver in her stomach sharpening to a pain. “Same as most.” She couldn’t see his eyes behind his spectacles. Light flared on the lenses.

“Your father,” he repeated softly, shuttering the window. He stretched his body in the opposite direction and shuttered the other window too. The compartment dimmed. Now his pale eyes dazzled.

“But your father was Reeve, was he not?” He removed his spectacles and slid them into his coat pocket. His gaze never left her. “Or so your brother’s surname leads me to believe.”

For an instant, the world seemed to stop. She had the sensation of hanging in space, everything dark, Alan’s eyes distant stars. Then the pavement juddered the coach’s wheels and a word puffed out of her.

“No.” She blinked, and her vision cleared.

“No?” He lifted his brow. “Jack Reeve is not your brother?”