Gemma couldn’t have been more pleased if she’d been given keys to a palace. Brilliant. Her Baz was excited to see her. She’d wanted that for three years.

She stood and faced the door as Baz stepped over the threshold. Hair still black as a stovepipe. Eyes filled with intelligence. Bearing tall and confident. Features so handsome even his thick side-whiskers did nothing to hide them. Her heart sighed.

“Gemma.” He was one of the only people who didn’t say her name as if it sat sour and distasteful in his mouth. “You—There wasn’t—You didn’t waste any time.”

He carried himself with confidence, but she remembered well how he tripped over his tongue sometimes when he grew flustered. It was an endearing contradiction.

“You said you’d rather I didn’t dillydally.” She watched him, hoping he’d cross to her, pull her into a hug. She’d missed his embraces.

He smiled a little and motioned her to sit. She returned to the wingback chair, and he sat in the one nearest it.

“I’ve seen your penny dreadfuls all around,” she said. “You feared no one’d take to them, but seems to me they’ve caught fire.”

“A lot of things have been catching fire lately.” The observation was made with too heavy an undertone to be a jest. He’d heard of those troubles, then, same as her.

“London’s a regular firebox lately, i’n’it?” People were losing homes and businesses all over Town. “Have you doctored a great many burns?”

“A few. One patient was so bad off I wasn’t certain she’d survive.”

“It did always burden your mind when a poor soul couldn’t be saved.” Her heart had broken seeing how distraught he became, how much he grieved. Though he’d not confessed to it, she’d twigged that his grief over his mother was the foundation for all the rest. “I can’t imagine you’ve stopped your rescue efforts. What flavor ’ave they assumed lately?”

“I—I am—” He shifted his gaze to the fireplace. “I still do what I can to thwart the underhanded madams and macks of London. And some of my fellow penny dreadful writers and I have started a charitable organization aimed at easing some of the suffering in the poorer areas of Town.”

“You ought to put Wandsworth on your list. There’s suffering and plenty in that corner.”

He looked to her once more, growing entirely still. “Wandsworth is where you’ve been living.” His eyes always had spoken louder than he did. In that moment, they were screaming with worry.

She tossed him the small smile she often had when he’d fretted over her. “I’ve made my home in shabby corners nearly all my life. I’d’ve been lost as a cow in a bog if I’d dropped m’self in a rum area of town.”