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They’d made it back to the Lyon’s Den through the servant’s entrance, past the kitchens where Marta was already kneading dough for the morning shift. One look at Rosine’s torn hem and Sander’s scraped knuckles, and the kitchen maid had pressed her lips together and asked no questions. Smart woman.

One floor up, the alley door to Sander’s chamber was three doors down—close enough to Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s office, but far enough for propriety—or what passed for it when dogs chased one through Mayfair gardens.

Moments later, with the dogs’ breath still raw in her memory, Rosine stood in Sander’s narrow chamber and tried to steady the shake in her hands. This was Sander’s—she could tell: spare coat on the peg, boots set heel-to-heel, a chess set, and a small Hebrew prayer book on the table. Mrs. Dove-Lyon kept her women under her own roof, but not all her wolves—propriety on one side of the wall, watchfulness on the other.

The door had shut on the alley and its teeth. The room held a chipped table, an iron bed, and a neat shelf. On the shelf, one treasure: a brass samovar, polished until it gathered the candlelight and kept it. Her satchel of raisins pressed hard against her ribs. She did not put it down. Not yet.

“Rosine,” he shaped her name as if tasting it, reverent and a little dangerous. Heat from the run still climbed her throat. The scent here was soap, tea, and something worn—wool pressed smooth by careful hands. She saw two of her raisin buns on a plate gone dry with age, two apples mottled from storage. Nothing wasteful. Everything chosen.

She should have thanked him. He had brought her through gates and walls, torn his breeches, and set his body between hers and danger.

I should be grateful. I am furious.

He shields me from the world, but he saved me from the hounds.

“You’ve made this yours,” she said at last, because speech felt safer than the silence that made room for all she could not hold.

“It is rented.” No apology. His gaze moved over her face, then down to her arms, still curved tight around the satchel. “You’re trembling.”

“No.” She was. Fingers aching, she eased them open, inch by inch, and set the satchel on the table as if the leather might bruise. He touched the latch, so the door stayed a handspan ajar—room to leave, room to breathe—then struck the stumpy candle. The wick spat and caught. Steam rose as he poured tea; soap, wool, and the faint bite of metal lived in the warm air.

Her eye went to the things that had not left him. “That samovar,” she said softly. “From home?”

“My mother’s,” he answered, resting a palm on the lid, a touch that resembled memory. “The prayer book—my father’s.” His hand shifted to the slim brown volume on the shelf, then to the chessboard beside it. “And this was my brother’s. We played winters until the stove went out. I kept the board when there was nothing else left after they emptied our home.” He didn’t need to say anything about their family and their belongings; Rosine knew all too well how Jews had been treated in the Pale of Settlement. Apparently, it was no different so many miles away where she’d been raised in Strasbourg.

“I kept sugar,” she said, surprised by how easily the truth came. “Flour. Not because they were safe, but because they gave answers to my hands when nothing else would. If I worked, something rose at a time when nothing else made sense.”

He slid a bun toward her—dry top, split seam. Her throat tugged tight.

“I dunk them when they dry,” he said, the tension of his expression easing. “Every morning. I like to begin the day thinking of you.”

Heat ran under her skin—startle, pleasure, sense enough to fear them both. He lifted her cup to pass it; his fingers brushed hers and held for the space of a breath, as if the touch itself were a question.

“What do you want in London, Rosine?” he asked. “All of it. Tell me.”

“You know what I want, a lease for my own bakery,” she said. “A blue-on-cream sign with my name above the door. Light in the kitchen, not just heat. Friday nights with peace enough to breathe. A man who sees me and doesn’t ask me to be small. And to keep my faith while I do it.”

She swallowed. The room felt very narrow and very kind. “I called you a fox,” she said at last, the words warming as they left her.

“Why?” he asked, spoon stirring once through the tea, watching her rather than the cup.

“Because when other men bare teeth, you do not. You think first and wait. You choose the gate no one sees, and you’re there before danger knows it’s moved.” Her fingers curled around the cup. Steam kissed her wrist. “You read a chessboard the way you read danger—three moves ahead. That is how you keep breath in your chest when dogs run after you.”

He sat down across from her, the bench complaining, a sound too human for comfort. “Strategy is foresight.” He cupped the clay cup as if he needed to hold on to something.

“And foresight put your arm in front of me,” she said, the truth tripping out before she could smooth it. Her chest tightened around it. “You were—putting yourself in danger because I put myself in danger.” The dogs had been giant. Their growls still hummed in her bones.

He held his cup. “If danger comes too close to you, it shall meet me first. For as long as I breathe, nothing touches you.”

The even way he said it—no flourish, only fact—made her throat sting. Since Strasbourg, she had not been held by anything but cold and crowds. Sheltered daughter one night, hunted girl the next; every door she’d opened since, she’d opened alone. She had taught herself to be iron because there was no one else. Letting him stand between her and harm felt like surrender—and like rest. Both at once. That was the terror.

He’d left the door ajar. He didn’t crowd. He looked as if he could see the thin, tired places loneliness leaves and would stand there without pressing. The way he had moved in the garden had not been performance; it had been practice, exact and ungentle. She loved him for it and hated that loving felt so frighteningly easy.

She lifted her chin. “Then don’t keep the world from me,” she said. “Come through it with me.”

“Beside you,” he answered, as steady as the promise itself. He set his cup down.

“I’d have to be rather close to you then,” she ventured.