I looked up at the dark green painted frontage. Our father had first taken us to Hatchards when we were ten. He had always bought his books there—as we did now—and from the first moment I stepped into its dim, book-lined quietude, I felt a particular kind of excitement. So much imagination and knowledge on the mahogany bookshelves waiting to be leafed open, that heady scent of glue and ink released from the pages. Although the shop of my memories no longer existed, I still felt that same thrill whenever I entered this new Hatchards.

“Wait for us here,” I instructed Tully, loudly and unnecessarily. “We will be some time.” An addition just in case one of the noses was among the waiting servants.

She curtsied. A footman immediately rose from the bench and offered her his seat.

“I hope this works,” Julia murmured as we passed over the bookshop’s threshold.

I did, too, for I was relying on the power of assumption and a little help from a friend. I knew my plan to leave London without detection was elaborate—perhaps overly so—but I could not bear the thought that we could inadvertently lead the Runners or Mulholland to Lord Evan. If the Runners caught him, it would be the gallows, and if Mulholland reached him first…No, I did not dare countenance such a possibility.

Inside, I drew a breath of warm air scented with book. Although most of the ton families had gone to their estates, the shop was abuzz, no doubt due to the arrival of the latest edition of Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. It was still the talk of society, as was his blatant affair with Lady Caroline Lamb. Neat stacks of the new pressing had been placed upon a table near the entrance, and two young women in pastel pelisses—one of them wearing a Lord Byron miniature upon her bodice—were reading small snippets of the poem to each other. I had heard of this new rage to carry an image of Byron around, but this was the first time I had seen one displayed so proudly. It seemed almost religious in its devotion. But then, I could remember the fervors of my own youth and how at fourteen I had drawn very bad likenesses of a young curate who had once smiled at me. In truth, my own imaginings about Lord Evan were probably not so far removed from this girl’s infatuation. If I had a miniature of Lord Evan, I would probably carry it too.

For a breathtaking second, our last moment together rushed through my body as if he still stood before me: outside the asylum, his mouth pressed upon my own, our farewell kiss running through every nerve in my body, locking us together forever. We had both thought it was the last time we would see each other for months, or perhaps even years.

“Lady Augusta?”