“Are you?” Caroline asked softly. “Interested in Society events?”

Georgiana hesitated. She had been. She’d adored the few country dances to which she’d been invited. She could still remember the dress she’d worn to that first ball – the way the skirts had weighed heavy and lush around her. The way she’d played demure, lowering her gaze and smiling carefully every time a boy asked her to dance.

Caroline deserved that memory. The dress. The dances. The attention. She deserved the breathlessness that came from a wild reel, the pride that came from a compliment on her coif. The increase in her heart rate when she met the beautiful blue gaze that proved to be her ruination.

Dread pooled in Georgiana’s stomach.

Caroline knew her past – knew she had no father. Knew that Georgiana was unmarried. And Georgiana assumed that Caroline knew the consequences of those things – that her reputation was blackened by association and had been since her birth. That she needed more than a mother and a motley collection of aristocrats with questionable reputations to save her. To garner Society’s approval.

And yet, Caroline had never once acknowledged those truths. She had never – even in the frustrated moments a girl had with her mother – said a word to indicate that she resented the circumstances of her birth. That she wished for another life.

But it did not mean she did not want it. And it did not mean Georgiana would not do everything she could to give it to her.

“Mother?” Caroline prompted, bringing Georgiana back to the present. “Are you interested in Society?”

“No,” she said, leaning down and kissing Caroline’s forehead. “Only in its secrets.”

There was a long moment as Caroline considered the words before she finally said, all conviction, “Neither am I.”

It was a lie. Georgiana had been a girl once, too, full of hope and ideas. She knew what Caroline dreamed of in quiet moments. In the dark of night. She knew, because she’d dreamed of the same things. Of marriage. Of a life filled with happiness and kindness and partnership.

Filled with love.

Love.

The thought of the word came on a wave of bitterness.

It was not that she did not believe in the emotion. She was not a fool, after all. She knew it was real. She’d felt it any number of times. She loved her partners. She loved her brother. She loved the women who had taken her in all those years ago, who had protected her even as she’d risked their safety – a duke’s sister, escaped and on the run. She loved Caroline more than she’d ever thought possible.

And there had been a time when she’d thought she’d loved another. When she’d believed that the remarkable way he made her feel had made her invincible. When she’d thought she could conquer the world with the way she felt.

That they could conquer the world together.

She’d trusted it, that feeling. Just as she’d trusted the boy who had made her feel that way.

And she’d been left broken.

Alone.

So, yes, she believed in love. It was impossible not to every time she looked into her daughter’s face. But she also knew the truth of it – that It destroyed. It consumed. It was the source of pain and fear, and it could turn infinite power into powerlessness. Could reduce a woman to a simpering girl on a balcony, taking the brunt of insult and shame in the infinitesimal hope that her pain might save someone she loved.

Love was bollocks.

“Good night, Mother.” Caroline’s words shook Georgiana from her reverie.

She looked down at her daughter, blankets pulled up to her chin, somehow looking both young and far too old at the same time.

Georgiana leaned down and pressed a kiss to her daughter’s forehead. “Good night, sweet girl.”

She left the room, closing the door quietly behind her before turning to face Temple, now standing with Asriel in the hallway beyond. “What is it?”

“Two things,” the duke said, all business. “First, Galworth is here.”

The Viscount Galworth, in debt to his eyeballs to the Angel. She took the file Temple offered, looked inside. “Is he ready to pay?”

“He says he has little to offer.”

She raised a brow, paging through the file. “He has a town house, and acreage in Northumberland that earns him two thousand a year. Not so little.”

Temple’s brows rose. “I didn’t know about the land.”

“No one knows about the land,” she said, but it was Chase’s job to know more than the rest of the world about the members of The Fallen Angel.

“He’s offered something else.”

She looked up. “Don’t tell me. The daughter.”

“Offered with pleasure, to Chase.”

It was not the first time. Too often, the aristocracy had a disrespect for its daughters and a willingness to deliver them into the arms of unknown men with dangerous reputations. In Chase’s case, that particular package was never well received. “Tell him Chase is not interested in his daughter.”

“I’d like to tell him to throw himself off a goddamn bridge,” the former bare-knuckle boxer said.

“Feel free. But get the land first.”

“And if he doesn’t agree?”

She met his eyes. “Then he owes us seven thousand pounds. And Bruno should feel free to collect however he likes.” The hulking security guard enjoyed punishing men who deserved it. And most of the members of the Angel deserved it.

Most of the members of the aristocracy deserved it.

“It is also worth reminding him that if we find he’s planning to do anything but marry the girl off to a decent man, we’ll release the information on his throwing horse races. Tell him that, too.”