Free To Tempt a Saint by Kate Moore

thought the first generous installment of her allowance a good sign that he meant to honor their bargain.
    The coach turned a sharp right corner forcing them both into a lean. Charlie frowned.
    “What?”
    “Cleo, I want you to know that I am prepared to defend you.” They came upright, and he reached into his boot and drew forth a lethal-looking blade that was all point with a heavy iron ring at its base.
    “Charlie Spencer, what on earth is that?”
    “It’s a pig-sticking knife. Davies gave it to me. Said I ought to have something to protect you with.”
    “Give it to me.” Cleo held out her hand. “This is Mayfair, not the East India Company docks. The only weapons you need here are a raised brow, a sharp wit, and a quizzing glass. Lethal enough, but hardly bloody.”
    Charlie shook his head, holding on to the thing. “Promise me, Cleo, that you’ll use it if you have to.” He looked solemn and brave in spite of his unruly hair and thin face. The coach began to slow.
    “I promise,” she said.
    He handed the blade over with apparent relief. “The thing is, girls don’t have good hiding places for blades.”
    “I’ll put it under my pillow.”
    He brightened at once. “Good thought. Just the spot for it.”
    The coach pulled up, and they alighted on Hill Street in London’s smoky dusk, a half dozen blocks from where Uncle March kept their father’s house. Their bags were handed down, and a tall servant with ginger hair, narrow shoulders, and a long, solemn face emerged from the house to pay the coachman and postilions. The coach rattled off down the street with Cleo and Charlie still standing on the pavement under gray skies. A chill wind pressed their thin clothes to their bodies as they gaped at Sir Alexander Jones’s house.
    From the basement to the attic its windows blazed, long rectangles of light like gold bars. Scores of candles burned at a staggering cost. Charlie turned to Cleo with a sheepish look. She still had the knife in her hand. “It’s lighted up like a stage,” he whispered.
    “No wonder he needs to buy a gasworks,” Cleo replied.
    The silent servant with the thin, horselike face bowed and picked up their bags. “In here.”
    Then her husband stepped out of his own door, his features shadowed by the light behind him. She really needed to get used to his austere good looks so that she didn’t gawk at him every time. His expression under the dark brows was unreadable.
    The quick ceremony, his hasty departure, and a week of activity had erased that unsettling moment in the church when his lips had lingered on hers. Now his dark gaze found Cleo’s and instantly revived the memory of that burning kiss in the church. She tried to pinpoint the elusive sensation. Her stomach did a little flip, which could be no more than her body’s response to the end of a long carriage ride. To go from the swaying, jouncing motion of coach travel to firm contact with unmoving stone explained it. She tucked the knife-holding hand into the folds of her cloak.
    An awkward moment passed until Jones came forward and shook Charlie’s hand. “I must borrow your sister for a meeting with our solicitor.”
    “Now?” Cleo protested. “I can’t desert Charlie before he’s even in the door.”
    “Norwood is waiting.”
    “Don’t worry, Cleo.” Charlie followed the servant. “A witness is good,” he whispered as he passed.
    Cleo’s husband led her through a hall so dazzling it made her blink, past a marble nymph at the base of a soaring iron staircase, and into a book-lined library where the light was only somewhat subdued.
    A stout, square-faced gentleman, his substantial girth straining a bottle green waistcoat, lifted a writing desk from his ample lap and rose. He had a wide face and kind features with brows like cotton tufts, but his blue eyes sparked with keen intelligence.
    “Lady Jones, I’m Norwood, at your service. It’s good to meet you at last, ma’am.”
    Cleo shook his hand and