Ned gave a violent start. “What are you going to do with me? I promise that if ye’ll let me go, I won’t take any more commissions for this sort of work ever again.”

Tobias took a long, narrow strip of leather out of one of the deep pockets of the old trousers he wore. “I said, turn over and put your hands behind your back.”

Ned looked as though he might cry. But he surrendered to the inevitable and reluctantly complied.

Tobias secured his wrists with a few deft twists. “On your feet.”

Ned struggled slowly upright, face twisted in despair. “Are ye going to hand me over to the Runners? Ye might as well stick a knife in me vitals now and be done with it. I’ll hang for sure.”

Tobias grasped his arm. “We’re not going to Bow Street.” He looked at Lavinia. “The three of us will walk to the corner. I’m going to put you in a hack and send you back to Claremont Lane. Wait for me there.”

She hesitated. “What about Ned?”

“Leave him to me.”

She did not like the sound of that any more than Ned did. Tobias’s mood was unreadable.

“He’s just a boy, Tobias,” she said quietly.

“He is no boy. He is a young man well on his way to becoming a hardened villain. The next time he agrees to accept a commission, he might decide that murder is not beyond the pale.”

“No, never,” Ned said quickly. “I’m no cutthroat. I’m a thief, but I’m not a murderer.”

“Tobias, I really don’t think he meant to do more than frighten me,” Lavinia said.

“I will deal with him.” Tobias hauled Ned toward the entrance to the lane. “Let us be off. I have several other matters to attend to this afternoon. I have no more time to waste.”

He would not do any great harm to young Ned, she assured herself. Tobias was in a dangerous mood but he was in full control, as always.

Sometimes one had to trust one’s partner.

Vale watched Joan walk slowly through his collection of ancient vases and stone sarcophagi. She stopped in front of a glass case that contained several necklaces set with various colored gemstones.

Sunlight from a nearby window burnished her fashionably styled hair, turning it a color that was nearly identical to the ancient Roman gold in the jewelry case.

Her classical profile would have done justice to a statue of a Greek goddess, he thought. But it was not her looks that drew him to her. There were, after all, a host of younger women who could surpass her in that aspect, although to his eye, they lacked the elegance and confidence that came with maturity.

No, it was the invisible power of her personality that pulled him so fiercely, he thought. There was a strength in her that called to everything that was male in him.

He marveled at the intensity of his desire. He could not remember when he had begun to fall in love with this woman. He only knew now that the emotion consumed him. Indeed, it had become so powerful that it had overtaken his passion for his other great love, the antiquities the Romans had left behind in England.

He had never allowed himself to think of Joan in intimate terms while her husband was alive. Fielding Dove had been one of his very few close friends. He had honored that friendship and valued it too highly to allow himself to lust after Dove’s beautiful wife. Not that it would have done him any good, he thought wryly. Joan would never have looked at another man while her beloved Fielding was on this earth.

But Fielding had been gone for over a year now, and Joan had finally emerged from the cocoon of mourning. He had waged a careful and very deliberate campaign of seduction, wooing her with his collection of antiquities and conversations concerning their many mutual interests. The passion had blazed between them easily enough, but somewhere along the line he had discovered that he wanted more from her.

He wanted her to love him as much as he loved her.

For a time he had begun to hope that his feelings were reciprocated. But in the past few days Joan had seemed to retreat from him. He sensed that he was in great danger of losing her, and the knowledge filled him with quiet desperation. But he was at a loss to know what had gone wrong.

“Has Mr. March asked you to consult on this business of the memento-mori-ring murderer?” Joan asked. She did not look up from her examination of an onyx cameo. “I know that he and Mrs. Lake are extremely concerned about their new case.”

“March mentioned the matter, but I was unable to offer much assistance. He and Crackenburne are attempting to learn who might have profited from the commissioned deaths.”

“They are searching for a person who gained financially from the murders. But Mrs. Lake and I find it interesting that these recent deaths have all resulted in a change of wedding plans for some young lady in Society.”

“You think there is a connection? That seems a bit far-fetched.”

“Do not be so certain of that.” Joan left the jewelry case and wandered over to a cabinet filled with pottery. “At first glance it may be difficult to imagine that anyone would commission a murder merely to halt one marriage or promote another.”

“You must admit it sounds quite extraordinary.”

She trailed a gloved fingertip along the carved edge of a stone altar. “Not if one considers how much is at stake in a marriage, especially one made in Society.”

Vale thought about the huge amounts of money that often changed hands in the form of marriage settlements. To say nothing of the estates and titles that were often affected.

“You may be right,” he admitted. “Perhaps it is not at all improbable that a person might kill to change the fate of a particularly lucrative marriage contract. As March has frequently pointed out, money is always an excellent motive for murder. But I collect that these deaths did not result in any obviously substantial change in the fortunes of those who stood to benefit most.”

“There are other things at stake in a marriage.” Joan turned to look at him down the length of the gallery. “In fact, given the enormous risk a woman assumes when she weds, it is really rather remarkable that there are not a great many more murders committed for the purpose of altering a young lady’s future.”

He frowned. “I beg your pardon?”

Joan moved to study a portion of a column he had removed in the course of an excavation of a Roman temple near Bath.

“For a woman there are a great many risks involved in marriage,”

she said quietly. “Not all of them have to do with financial considerations.”

“I’m afraid I do not follow your logic, my dear.”

“For a young lady, there is the grave risk of childbirth, not to mention the fact that she will lose all legal control of her finances.”

He nodded. “It is the way of the world.”

She gave him a sharp, annoyed glare that caused him to wish he had kept that bit of conventional wisdom to himself.

“There is also the risk of finding oneself tied to a vicious man capable of doing physical harm to his wife or his own offspring,” she continued grimly. “Or the threat of marrying a wastrel who might throw away the children’s inheritance in a single night at the gaming tables. There is the possibility of finding oneself involved in a cold, loveless, desperately lonely business arrangement.”

“Joan He stopped, not certain what to say. The conversation had suddenly veered off in a direction he had not foreseen.

She turned slowly around to face him again, her eyes shadowed.

“And for a woman there is no escape from any of these risks once the vows have been spoken and the contracts signed.”

Was this how all women viewed marriage, he wondered, as an enormpus risk, not only for themselves, but for their children? He had never contemplated it from that point of view.

Few alliances in the ton were love matches. More often than not, couples went their own ways after the birth of an heir. It was customary for both husband and wife to conduct discreet affairs in so-called polite circles.