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The old fear—if I reach for this, what will be taken—breathed near and drifted. She didn’t send it away so much as step past it.

“One thing.” Rosine lowered her voice, private among pans. “If Mrs. Dove-Lyon says not yet—because of Nagy, because of…whatever this is—will you stand with me anyway? Quietly, if we must until we can wed?”

His answer cost him nothing and seemed to cost him everything. “Yes.”

“Then let’s go,” she said, and the steadiness in her surprised her.

They crossed the corridor together. The hum behind velvet ebbed and swelled; wolves moved the way wolves do when the air changes. At the foot of the stairs, Titan’s two-finger salute said he had the door. Rosine felt the promise beside her, warm as a palm at the small of her back.

At the landing, Rosie saw that Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s door stood closed, a line of light beneath, a violet’s shadow pinned where scent stayed private. Rosine smoothed her apron and thought of the kiss that had begun all this and of the paper that meant to end it. She knocked.

The house paused to listen.

They went together, but Sander knocked. Three neat taps; a pause to listen. Titan’s post at the stair shifted its weight and settled again—he had the door.

“Enter,” Mrs. Dove-Lyon called.

She sat straight-backed at the desk, a ledger open and squared to the blotter as usual. The posture steadied him; it always did. He closed the door to a handspan, no more, and stayed beside Rosine rather than ahead of her.

“Report,” Mrs. Dove-Lyon said, quill resting. “I heard the commotion.”

“A patron pulled Marta into the corridor,” Sander said. He kept his voice level and the heat out of it. “Pressed her. She broke free; he pursued. I reached them before he did more than frighten her. Titan will identify him by a torn cuff and gloves.” He set a folded slip on the blotter. “Names who saw. I recommend he be barred and his club informed.”

“Do it,” she said, the two words falling tidy as coin. “Bridget?”

“In the kitchen with her,” Rosine answered softly. “Honey in warm water. I’ll keep her there until she’s steady.”

Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s gaze touched Rosine—approving—then returned to Sander.

He drew a breath and his little finger brushed Rosine’s. If they had Mrs. Dove-Lyons permission, he’d not just hold Rosine’s hand but take it. “Madam, with your—”

“Good,” she said, lifting a hand that stopped him as neatly as a door. “Now listen.” She tapped the quill once and laid it aside. “The Earl of Pembroke has given Mr. Nagy a ladder. He means to stand in the Commons tomorrow and ask whether establishments employing ‘aliens’ are properly overseen. He cites the Alien Office on Crown Street and offers Bow Street a chance to ‘attend’—his word, not mine. An inspection of the lowest sort of motivation that seems as tidy as tea.”

Sander almost felt the click of the trap Nagy was setting. Rosine stepped back as if she’d understood, too. Ink, not cudgels. The question he’d meant to save for later came out before he could school it. “Customs?”

“A memorandum has already reached the West India Docks. A hold on our sugar ‘pending inquiry.’ We have enough for tonight; after that, we persuade a miller on Mark Lane to remember us while the question cools.”

Rosine’s chin lifted—and her eyes flicked to him, quick and puzzled, hurt edging the look: you knew? He hadn’t told her the rumor Titan passed on at the stair; he’d meant to ask for leave first, then lay the weight in his own hands. Now it landed out of order.

He kept his voice level. “We’ll manage the docks and the miller.”

“And Baron Stone?” Rosine asked, steady again, though the question placed itself between them like a thin sheet of glass. It was generally well-known from the papers that a certain Baron Gregory Stone, a friend to the Jews, took a stance in the House of Lords to support the rights of Jews and the Jewish Emancipation Bill.

“Pushed to the back bench for now. Pembroke means to make a show of order. If Nagy has his way, we become an example he sets. Crown Street takes names; suppliers go to cash only; three of my best women with foreign papers become nervous; five of my best men, my wolves, could become targets in the street.” She turned the ledger so they could see the neat columns. “The Den runs on order, reputation, and coin. Nagy aims to freeze all three and may secure Pembroke’s support to secure his jurisdiction in England.”

Sander marked the pieces as she spoke, the way he marked a board: Bow Street at the door under a magistrate’s polite seal; Crown Street clerk with a list; Customs with a thumb on the sugar; club gossip folding over itself like waves. “But why Pembroke?”

“A tired man who makes poor choices when he is made to feel respectable,” she said. “Nagy will stand at his elbow and look like a friend.”

Rosine eased one step closer to the desk. “How do we answer?”

“With daylight,” Mrs. Dove-Lyon said. “We will not hide. We will hold an Exhibition Night purse and send it to the Foundling Hospital. We will invite inspection and hand the clerk what is his to have: contracts, wages, addresses. We will bar the brute who touched Marta and make sure his club hears why. We will let London watch us behave exactly as we always have: fair, solvent, generous.”

She shifted the ledger back, signed once, and only then looked between them. “And you two?”

Sander sensed Rosine’s breath change beside him; he matched it without thinking. “We promised to ask your leave to court,” he said. “Together.”

“And I give it,” Mrs. Dove-Lyon said, crisp and gentle at once. “That took you two long enough!”