Chapter One

On June 4, 1840, Lady Lily Spark arrived at the London docks with nothing but the clothes on her back and two treasures: a legendary pearl, which she kept hidden, and her name, which she had not spoken aloud in years.

“I need to go to Grosvenor Square,” she told the driver of the nearest coach for hire. 

The driver, a ruddy-cheeked, big-boned, unflappable sort of man, appeared skeptical.

Well, and so he might. She wore a dirty, ill-fitting dress that she’d bought off a servant girl in Galata, the European quarter of Constantinople, back when she still had coin to spare. A day later, she’d sold her empty purse for a bit of fried bread before boarding the sloop that brought her back to England.  

She didn’t look like she belonged anywhere near Grosvenor Square. 

“You’ll show me your coin before I take you anywhere,” said the driver.

“Listen.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “Either someone at my destination will pay my fare, or you can take me around to the nearest dark alley and I’ll frig you for it.”

The driver’s expression didn’t change. It was a fine day, blue skies overhead and not overwarm. Perfect weather for a light summer frock. Lily’s long-sleeved, high-necked gown fit the season about as well as it fit her body, which was to say very ill indeed. 

“Are you a betting man?” Lily threw back her shoulders. If her bosom couldn’t convince him, nothing she said would bring him round. “Think of it as a gamble, only you win either way.” 

He shooed her toward the empty seat with a wave of his whip. “I’ll hold you to that. Grosvenor Square?” 

“Grosvenor Square,” Lily agreed, foot on the baseboard and ready to hop. “Hastings House.”  

A single horse pulled the tiny two-wheeled vehicle. It swayed as she sat, lighter and flimsier than anything on the road when last she saw England. The driver stood upright behind her, and his horse lunged forward at a flick of his whip. 

She sat with her fingers around the door handle and her cheek against the window, fogging it with her breath. She had never known the East End, nor the docks, but the sun and the river told her they were headed in the right direction. More or less. If the driver stopped early, if he decided her offer made her fair prey, she’d open the door, tumble out and run. She’d bruise or break something in the process, but she’d suffer the injury here, on the main thoroughfares, where she’d still have some chance of reaching her destination. 

Perhaps she shouldn’t have put herself at risk in order to spare herself a bit of walking, but she was hungry and the soles of her shoes looked like a sieve. 

So she’d been foolish. Nothing new there.

But the driver took them away from the Thames exactly where he ought to, trotted her down the Strand, tall buildings clad in clean white marble looming on either side, up to Piccadilly and across Regent Street into the quiet avenues of her girlhood. 

She knew these streets and yet felt a stranger in them. Two feelings as incompatible as oil and water—it was like seeing double. Some ghostly remnant of her old self stirred inside of her, and while she could hardly process her return, it had never left. 

Her sense of disorientation only increased as the driver wheeled her into Grosvenor Square: massive, intimidating homes surrounding an oval park manicured within an inch of its life. Hastings House, her destination, stood fully five stories high, a red brick structure with five thin plaster columns dividing its facade like vertical stripes. 

The plain white-painted door opened before she could knock. The footman blocking the threshold—burly, military, her father’s sort of man—seemed to think he could scare her away with the intensity of his glare. 

But Lily was her father’s daughter, and of the gifts he’d passed on to her, one was this: a harsh look could not frighten her. 

“My name is Lady Lily Spark—”

“Lady Lily is dead,” interrupted the footman.

“I can see how you’d get that idea,” Lily replied. “Really I can. But as it happens, I was only missing, and now I’ve returned. Is there anyone in the house who’d remember me? My father, for example?”

A tall, broad-shouldered fellow appeared at the footman’s back. Rundle, the butler. He’d gotten older, thicker and grayer, but she knew him instantly.

Rundle’s jowly, bullish face gave no indication that the recognition was mutual. 

Rats.

“Rundle, is that you? Looking very hale, if you don’t mind the observation. Not a day older than when last we met—you remember that, don’t you? It’s been years, of course, but you always had such a memory. If you please, this lovely man drove me here and I haven’t any money on me. Could you see that he gets paid?” 

Blank-faced, Rundle handed the footman a coin.

The footman gawked at the bit of silver, then at Lily, his eyes widening comically. 

Lily stepped aside, clearing the way to the street. 

The footman dashed past. Lily waved cheerily to the driver and crossed the threshold into her old home. The vast front hall had once been light and airy, gold accents against a cream background. Now the walls had been papered over in dark blue, against which vases full of red roses stood out like spatters of bright blood. 

Ghastly.

“Is he in residence?” she asked Rundle. 

“This way.” The butler led her up the grand staircase, down a corridor, then paused before a closed door. “If you’ll allow me to go in alone. Give His Grace a moment to prepare.”

Lily laid her hand over the knob. “No.” 

The silence stretched. Finally, the butler dropped his eyes and Lily stepped through alone.  

Her father sat behind a large desk of polished wood, bathed in sunlight that streamed in through an open window. He, too, was older—they were all older, of course, time didn’t play favorites—his hair more silver than blond now. But it was the same long, thin, fine-boned face looking up at her that she had once looked up to when she was small. And his cold sharp eyes, the same tawny color as her own, hadn’t dimmed in the slightest. 

He rose automatically, reaching for a gold-handled cane that hung from a hook bolted to his desk. He stood with his shoulders back, chin up, as though he’d just stepped onto a parade ground. He still looked taller than he was.

“I’m home,” she said, more faintly than she’d planned. 

Recognition staggered him. He nearly crumpled—the bad leg, of course—and that flash of weakness staggered her. Lily raced forward, but he righted himself before she could cross the distance, leaning hard on his cane. 

“Papa?” She took his arm. “I’m sorry I startled you.” 

“Sit.” He pointed to the chair opposite his desk.

She held fast. “You first.” 

That made him glare; he hated being told what to do, almost as much as she hated being cut down to size. But, for once, her father’s prickly harshness filled her with joy. She had hated him for the first half of her life and missed him for the second. 

Impulsively, Lily flung her arms around him and held him tight, though he didn’t bend in turn. 

“I’ll sit,” he conceded irritably. “What are you wearing? What—”

“It’s a long story.” Lily waited for him to follow word with deed before she circled around the desk and sat. Unlike her father’s chair, sized to his frame and well-padded, it had a deep seat and no cushions. Designed to cause, rather than relieve, discomfort. 

“The short version is: I married a Turk, but he’s just died, and the whole Ottoman Empire appears to be on a—shall I call it a slimming regime? Because it’s smaller every day, and—listen to me, I’m babbling. It seemed like a good time to come home.” 

“You married—”

“A Turk,” Lily confirmed. “His name was Rustem Pasha. He was not a Christian, but he had no other wives. I was terribly fond of him.” 

For once, the Duke of Hastings was speechless.

“If it’s just too awful to contemplate, I can leave in the morning.” She’d beg for money first, but she’d go. “Do I have a tombstone somewhere? I ought to visit it. Pay my respects.” 

“Yes.” He swiped a hand across his forehead. “You have a tombstone.” 

Something cold fluttered in her chest. Fear of death, or just guilt? “At Irongate?” 

“Next to your mother.” 

“Ah.” 

“Adam stayed in Cairo for months,” said her father. “He searched for you long after the authorities had given up.” 

She had used her brother to engineer her escape—she’d have been found in a day if she’d tried to run away in England—and left him to take the blame. She’d known that Adam would suffer from guilt, fear, grief. She’d done it anyway. That, to the best of her ability to understand it, was evil—and she had perpetrated it. 

“I’m sorry.” 

“You’re not,” returned her father. “But you’ll always have a place here. Nothing you do could change that.” 

All her muscles turned to water. She leaned into the arm of her chair, her bones a frail scaffolding that wobbled horribly under the pressure. Oh, praise the stars and the saints, the mules that had carried her down the long roads and the boat that had sailed her across the seas. Every hungry morning and uneasy night had been worth it. Every hard desperate moment had brought her, at last, to safety. 

And her father saw her relief, which revealed the depth of her need. 

“But, Lily.” He tapped the desk between them, suddenly sharp and confident. “You’ve come home at a… delicate time. The way events are shaping up in the wider world—in the world that you just left. I’m going to need your help.” 

The sweet relief drained away, faster than it had come. Whatever he wanted, she would hate it.