Things had not much improved in the time between. Seven Dials was the home of gin halls, doss-houses, brothels with courtesans of both sexes, and streetwalkers for every taste. The area contained not only pickpockets but desperate thugs who would knock a person to the ground and steal all they had, right to their undergarments and the shoes on their feet. My dress and coat alone, though secondhand and nowhere near finery, could feed a household for days.

The men from the building site had chased me here deliberately, knowing I would be prey.

I cursed them at the same time I went cold with fear. My only hope was to keep running, to wend my way to a more salubrious part of the city and find a public vehicle to take me back to Mayfair.

A gin house, brightly lit and noisy with music, spilled people into the street. A man who’d stumbled from it drunkenly grabbed my arm.

“Come in and dance with me, missus.”

He was only inebriated, not malicious, and I jerked from him. “No, thank you. Good evening to you.”

He laughed and doffed his cap. “You come back any day, missus. Ask for old Jim.”

His friends jeered at him, and old Jim vanished.

I broke through the crowd but heard my pursuers, who’d not been content with simply driving me off. The gin hall had given me an idea, and as my would-be captors called to one another, searching for me in the growing throng, I ducked into a tavern.

Taverns were slightly more reputable than gin halls, if only just. But while women did not go into the taprooms, we could sit and sip an ale in the snug, as I sometimes did with Daniel.

I nipped through a short passageway beside the taproom to a snug that held only a few people. But it had no windows to the street. A person would have to barge into the tavern and through the hall to find me. If my pursuers hadn’t seen me come in, they might give up and drift away.

I realized I was cornered in this shabby room where the whitewash had gone gray, but at least I could catch my breath.

A waitress condescended to look in on me. “What you want?”

“A cup of tea, please,” I said as I sat down and took out my handkerchief. “Make certain the water is clean.”

“Ooh.” She wrinkled her nose at me. “Ain’t you the queen?”

She sounded so like Tess I couldn’t help a breathless laugh. “The Princess Royal,” I said. “Please bring it.”

The waitress laughed, a sunnier nature coming forth. She gave me a mock curtsy and wandered off, scooping up dirty mugs on her way.

She brought me tea that was drinkable if bitter, although I wiped the rim of the mug with my handkerchief before lifting cup to mouth.