It was a busy day in Bond Street. Shoppers bundled up against the cold in heavy topcoats and cloaks hurried up one side and down the other. Their arms were laden with parcels, their puffs of breath visible in the frosty December air. Carriages and cabs rattled by them through the mud. Drivers jockeyed for position amid the heavy midday traffic that clogged the rain-sodden center of the street. Pedestrians crossed at their peril.

But the thin little dog exercised no caution.

He flew straight into the path of an oncoming conveyance, seemingly set on catching the wheels of a passing carriage and four.

A jolt of alarm spurred Charles into action. He surged into the street, narrowly avoiding being flattened by a coach himself. Vehicles veered around him. The muck from the flying hooves of the horses spattered his greatcoat

“Bloody fool!” one of the drivers shouted.

Charles didn’t stop to apologize. The pup was on the move and Charles along with him.

He had many flaws, admittedly, but no one had ever accused him of failing to be a man of action. It was what he’d chiefly been known for during his time away. Five years altogether, spent serving in Her Majesty’s Army. Always the first into the fray, no matter the risk to life and limb. It was a quality he hoped to put to use now he was finally back in England.

His ship had only docked in London yesterday morning. It was but a brief stop in his journey. Tomorrow, he’d be traveling home to join his parents and younger sibling at Heywood House, their family estate in Somersetshire. A long-awaited reunion. A difficult one as well.

He hadn’t left home on the best of terms. Indeed, his father had strictly forbade him joining up.

But Charles had no thought for that now. Nor for the Christmas presents he was meant to be buying in a feeble effort to atone for the pain of his absence these many years. There was only the dog and the immediate threat of danger.

Charles reached out to grab the muddy miscreant, but the little beast nimbly darted away, snapping first at the wheels of one carriage and then another.

The dog was in the throes of the chase, heedless of the crushing danger of the wheels or the steel-shod hooves of the horses. It was a madness in some creatures. Charles had observed it before. Raised in the country among his mother’s pack of unruly dogs (a ragtag group of dubious lineage and character), he’d learned from the cradle to count animals as his friends. He’d seen them at their best—and at their worst.

But this snarling canine was nobody’s friend. He didn’t appear to reciprocate any fellow feeling toward humankind at all.