Chapter 1
“You just spent your father’s last favor.”
Jessamine looked toward her family’s table.
Nobody stood.
That mattered.
Her father was not there, but five people who had spent years invoking his name were.
Not one moved.
Piers remained wrapped around Nerissa, his face buried against her shoulder.
“Mommy, I didn’t want to.”
“I know.”
She whispered it into his hair again.
And again.
Because apparently one reassurance was not enough after an adult had used his hand as a weapon against the person he loved most.
I looked at Jessamine.
“Why Nerissa?”
Her expression hardened.
“She forgot her place.”
Wrong answer.
“What place?”
“She works here.”
“So?”
Jessamine stared as if the question itself offended her.
That told me more than an explanation would have.
Then Piers lifted his head.
“Mom.”
Nerissa looked down.
The boy glanced toward Jessamine and immediately lowered his voice.
“She said we had to leave before her dad came.”
Jessamine went still.
Interesting.
I looked at Nerissa.
Her face changed too.
She knew something.
“Nerissa.”
She shook her head.
“Sir, not here.”
That sentence was enough.
The ballroom contained nearly eighty people.
Half my organization.
Half hers.
And apparently whatever Jessamine wanted hidden was dangerous enough that a housemaid preferred silence even after watching her son forced to strike her.
I crouched beside Piers.
“You’re not in trouble.”
He nodded without believing me.
“Did Jessamine tell you why you had to leave?”
He swallowed.
“She said Mommy saw the wrong men.”
My eyes went back to Nerissa.
Jessamine whispered:
“Leopold.”
“No.”
My voice stayed low.
“You used a six-year-old child to make his mother afraid of unemployment.”
Her ringed hand dropped completely.
“You don’t get my name as a warning right now.”
Then Nerissa finally spoke.
“Her father was here this afternoon.”
Silence.
My pulse slowed.
Jessamine’s father, Edmund Rothwell, had been under my protection for seven years.
One condition mattered above all others.
He stayed out of family business.
Nerissa continued:
“He wasn’t alone.”
“Who?”
She looked toward two empty upholstered chairs beside the head table.
“One of the men you banished last winter.”
May you like
The engagement dinner had not been the meeting.
It had been cover for one.
