Curtiss looked around fearfully. He was in a narrow passageway leading off the alleyway he’d been walking down. There were no candle-lit windows in the passage, only a couple of murky doorways. Ignoring the throbbing in his head, he thought back to the last thing he remembered and tried to bring the face of the man who’d robbed him to mind.

Though he’d employed considerable stealth to conceal his approach, the stranger hadn’t looked like a footpad. Which was not to say there was anything benign about his attacker; those saturnine features – not to mention the scars – had marked him out as the last person you’d want following you into a dark alleyway. And yet Curtiss had allowed him to do precisely that. He should have been more observant from the start. Probably would have been, had his mind not been filled with the memory of his recent entanglement with the nubile Jessica. If only he’d avoided the shortcut and taken a more public route home.

And what kind of footpad was it that stripped a man of his coat and tunic instead of just rifling through his pockets and making off before he regained consciousness? It wasn’t as if the man didn’t have a greatcoat of his own. Curtiss couldn’t recall what his assailant had been wearing under it. That much was a blur.

Groggily Curtiss felt delicately for his head wound, probing the bump. What the devil had the man hit him with? The bottle? Perhaps the scoundrel had used a fist and he’d hit his head when he’d fallen to the ground. Using the wall for support, he began making his way cautiously towards the entrance to the passageway, but had proceeded only a couple of yards when his boot made contact with something lying on the ground. He flinched, the sudden movement sending another shock wave through his skull. Hesitantly, ignoring the pain, he forced himself to look down. In the spectral gloom, the bundle at his feet appeared to be a body. Summoning resolve, he peered closer.

To his immense relief, he saw that he had been mistaken. There was no body. What he was looking at was an empty coat – his own coat, he realized with a start – that had been folded and propped against the wall. His boot had snagged in the sleeve, causing the garment to fall open. Gingerly Curtiss crouched to pick the coat up; head swimming, he waited for the nausea to subside before shaking out the garment and put it on. He let go a thankful sigh as the cloth enveloped him: warm again. Well, almost.