Chapter 1

It had been too long since he had bedded a woman. Sir Ross Cannon could think of no other explanation for his reaction to Sophia Sydney… a response so powerful that he was forced to sit behind his desk to conceal a sudden, uncontrollable erection. Perplexed, he stared intently at the woman, wondering why her mere presence was enough to ignite such raging heat inside him. No one ever caught him off guard this way.She was undeniably lovely, with her honey-shaded hair and blue eyes, but she possessed a quality that surpassed physical beauty: a hint of passion contained beneath the frail gravity of her facade. Like any man, Ross was aroused more by what was concealed than by what was revealed. And clearly, Sophia Sydney was a woman of many secrets.

Silently he strove to control his sexual awareness of her, focusing on the scarred mahogany surface of his desk until the flare of heat subsided. When he was finally able to meet her unfathomable gaze, he remained quiet, having learned long ago that silence was a powerful instrument. People were uncomfortable with silence—they usually sought to fill it, revealing much in the process.

However, Sophia did not erupt into nervous chatter as so many women did. She stared at him warily and did not speak. Obviously she was prepared to outwait him.

“Miss Sydney,” he finally said, “my clerk informs me that you would not disclose the reason for your visit.”

“If I had told him why, I would not have been allowed past the threshold. You see, I have come about the position you advertised.”

Ross was seldom surprised by anything, having seen and experienced far too much in the course of his work. However, the notion that she would want to work here, for him, was no less than astonishing. Apparently she had no idea of what the job entailed. “I require an assistant, Miss Sydney. Someone who will act as a part-time clerk and records-keeper. Bow Street is not the place for a woman.”

“The advertisement did not specify that your assistant had to be male,” she pointed out. “I can read, write, manage household expenditures, and keep account books. Why shouldn’t I be considered for the job?”

A hint of challenge had colored her deferential tone. Fascinated and vaguely unsettled, Ross wondered if they had ever met before. No—he would have remembered her. And yet there was something oddly familiar about her.

“What is your age?” he asked abruptly. “Twenty-two? Twenty-three?”

“I am eight-and-twenty, sir.”

“Really.” He did not believe her. She appeared far too young to have reached an age that was considered to be advanced spinsterhood.

“Yes, really.” Seeming amused, she moved to lean over his desk, placing her hands before him. “You see? One can always tell a woman’s age by her hands.”

Ross studied the small hands that had been proffered without vanity. They were not the hands of a girl, but of a capable woman—one who had known hard work. Although her nails were scrupulously clean, they were filed almost to the quick. Her fingers were marked with thin white scars that had come from accidental cuts and scrapes, and with a crescent-shaped burn that must have come from a bake-pan or pot.

Sophia resumed her seat, the light sliding gently over her rich brown hair. “You don’t look the way I expected, either,” she informed him.

Ross arched a brow in sardonic inquiry. “Oh?”

“I thought you would be a portly old gentleman with a wig and a pipe.”

That drew a brief laugh from him, low and scratchy, and he realized that it had been a long time since he had made such a sound. For some reason he could not help asking, “Are you disappointed to find otherwise?”

“No,” she said, sounding a bit breathless. “No, I am not disappointed.”

The temperature in the office rose to a blistering degree. Ross could not help wondering if she found him attractive. He would soon be forty, and he looked his age. Threads of silver had begun to appear in his black hair. Years of relentless work and little sleep had left their mark, and the reckless pace of his life had left him almost rawboned. He did not have the settled, pampered look that many married men his age possessed. Of course, they did not prowl the streets at night as he did, investigating murders and robberies, visiting prisons, and putting down riots.

He saw the assessing way Sophia glanced around his office, which had been furnished in a Spartan style. One wall was covered with maps, the other fitted with bookshelves. Only one picture adorned the room, a landscape of rocks and forest and stream, with gray hills rising in the distance. Ross had often stared at the landscape during times of calamity or tension, finding that the cool, quiet darkness of the painting never failed to soothe him.

Brusquely he resumed the interview. “Have you brought references, Miss Sydney?”

She shook her head. “I am afraid that my former employer will not recommend me.”

“Why not?”

Finally her composure was disrupted, a wash of color spreading over her face. “For many years I have worked for a distant cousin. She allowed me to reside in her household after my parents died, despite the fact that she was not a woman of great means. In return for her charity, I was required to serve as a maid-of-all-work. I believe that Cousin Ernestine was pleased with my efforts, until…” Words seemed to clot in her throat, and sudden perspiration lent her skin a pearly shimmer.

Ross had heard every possible tale of disaster, evil, and human misery during his ten years as Chief Magistrate at Bow Street. Although he was not callous by any means, he had learned to put a certain emotional distance between himself and those who came to plea before him. But the sight of Sophia’s anxiety filled him with the insane urge to comfort her, to pick her up and soothe her. Holy hell, he thought in grim surprise, struggling to master the unwanted surge of protectiveness.

“Go on, Miss Sydney,” he said curtly.

She nodded and took a deep breath. “I did something very wrong. I-I took a lover. I never had before… but he was a guest at a great estate near the village… I met him while walking. I had never been courted by anyone like him. I fell in love with him, and we—” She stopped and averted her gaze, apparently unable to look at Ross any longer. “He promised to marry me, and I was foolish enough to believe him. When he tired of me, he abandoned me without a second thought. Of course, I realize now that it was ridiculous to think that a man of his station might have taken me to wife.”

“He was an aristocrat?” Cannon asked.

She studied the shapes of her knees through the drape of her skirts. “Not precisely. He was—is—the youngest son of a noble family.”

“His name?”

“I would prefer not to reveal it, sir. It is all in the past now. Suffice it to say that my cousin learned of the affair from the lady of the manor, who also revealed that my lover was married. Needless to say, there was a scandal, and Cousin Ernestine told me to leave.” Sophia smoothed her gown in a nervous gesture, her palms running over the fabric that covered her lap. “I know that this is evidence of an immoral character. But I promise you that I am not easily given to… to dalliances. If you could manage to overlook my past—”

“Miss Sydney.” Cannon waited until she could bring herself to look at him once more. “I would be a hypocrite if I condemned you for the affair. We have all made mistakes.”

“Not you, surely.”

That elicited a wry smile from him. “Especially me.”

Her blue eyes were alert. “What kind of mistakes?”

The question amused him. He liked her fearlessness, as well as the layer of vulnerability beneath. “None that you need know about, Miss Sydney.”

She smiled slowly. “Then I remain skeptical as to your having made any.”

It was the kind of smile a woman might wear in the sultry aftermath of lovemaking. Very few women possessed such effortless sensuality, a natural warmth that made a man feel like a prize stallion on a stud farm. Dumbfounded, Ross concentrated on the surface of his desk. Unfortunately, that did nothing to dispel the lurid images that had flooded his brain. He wanted to reach across the desk and pull her on top of the slick mahogany and strip her naked. He wanted to kiss her breasts, stomach, thighs… to part the curls between her legs and bury his face in the tender salt-scented folds, and lick and suckle until she screamed in ecstasy. When he had made her ready for him again, he would unfasten his trousers and drive himself deep inside her, to thrust until his raging desire was satisfied. And then…

Infuriated by his lack of self-control, Ross drummed his fingers on the desk. He struggled to remember the thread of conversation. “Before we discuss my past,” he said, “we had better attend to yours. Tell me, did a child result from this liaison?”

“No, sir.”

“That is fortunate,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Is Shropshire your birthplace?”

“No, sir. I was born, along with my younger brother, in a little town on the Severn. We…” Sophia paused, a shadow passing over her expression, and Ross sensed that the past held many painful memories for her. “We were orphaned when our parents drowned in a boating accident. I was not yet thirteen. My father was a viscount, but we had little land, and no funds to support it. There were no relatives able or willing to care for two virtually impoverished children. A few people in the village took turns looking after my brother and me, but I’m afraid…” She hesitated and spoke more cautiously. “My brother, John, and I were quite wild. We ran about the village committing acts of mischief until we were caught in a bit of thievery at the local bakeshop. It was then that I went to live with Cousin Ernestine.”

“What became of your brother?”

She responded with a distant stare, her manner turning wooden. “He is dead now. The title is extinct, and the family lands are being held in abeyance, as there is no eligible male to inherit.”

Being no stranger to grief, Ross was sensitive to it in others. He understood at once that whatever had happened to her brother, it had left a deep scar on her soul. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

She was rigid, seeming not to hear him.

After a long moment, Ross spoke gruffly. “If your father was a viscount, then you should be addressed as ‘Lady Sophia.’”

His remark earned a faint, bitter smile. “I suppose so. However, it would be rather pretentious for me to insist on a courtesy title, wouldn’t it? My days as ‘Lady Sophia’ are over. All I desire is to find suitable employment, and perhaps to make a new beginning.”

Ross considered her closely. “Miss Sydney, I could not in good conscience hire a woman as my assistant. Among other things, you would be required to list the occupants of the prisoners’ van bearing criminals to and from Newgate, compile reports of the Bow Street runners, and take depositions from the assortment of foul characters who parade daily through this building. Such tasks would be offensive to a woman’s sensibilities.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” she said with equanimity. “As I have already explained, I am neither sheltered nor innocent. I am not young, nor do I have a reputation or social standing to preserve. Many women work in hospitals, prisons, and charity wards, and they encounter all kinds of desperate and lawless people. I will survive just as they have.”

“You cannot be my assistant,” Ross said firmly. He raised a hand in a silencing gesture as she tried to interrupt. “However, my former housekeeper has just retired, and I would be willing to hire you as her replacement. That would be a far more suitable employment for you.”

“I could take a hand in certain household matters,” she conceded. “In addition to working as your assistant.”

“You propose to do both?” In a gently sardonic tone, he asked, “Don’t you think that might be too much work for one person to handle?”

“People say that you do the work of six men,” she shot back. “If that is true, I could certainly manage to do the work of two.”

“I am not offering you two positions. I am offering only one—that of housekeeper.”

Strangely, his authoritative statement made her smile. There was no mistaking the challenge in her eyes, but it was a friendly provocation, as if she knew somehow that he was not about to let her walk away. “No, thank you,” she said. “I’d have what I want or nothing at all.”

Ross’s face hardened into the expression that cowed even the most seasoned Bow Street runners. “Miss Sydney, it is clear that you don’t understand the dangers you would be exposed to. An attractive woman has no business mingling with criminals whose behavior ranges from mischief-making to depravities I could not begin to describe.”

She seemed unruffled at the prospect. “I would be surrounded by more than a hundred law enforcement officers, including constables, horse patrols, and a half-dozen or so Bow Street runners. I daresay I would be safer working here than I would be shopping at Regent Street.”

“Miss Sydney—”

“Sir Ross,” she interrupted, standing and bracing her hands on his desk. Her high-necked dress revealed nothing as she leaned toward him. However, if she had been wearing a low décolletage, her br**sts would have been presented to him like two succulent apples on a tray. Stimulated unbearably by the thought, Ross forced himself to focus on her face. Her lips curled in a faint smile. “You have nothing to lose by letting me try,” she pointed out. “Give me a month to prove my worth.”

Ross stared at her intently. There was something manufactured about her display of charm. She was trying to manipulate him into giving her something she wanted—and she was succeeding. But why in God’s name did she want to work for him? He realized suddenly that he could not let her go without discovering her motives.

“If I fail to please you,” she added, “you can always hire someone else.”

Ross was known for being a supremely rational man. It would be impractical for him to hire this woman. Stupid, even. He knew exactly what the others at Bow Street would make of it. They would assume that he had hired her because of her sexual appeal. The uncomfortable truth was, they would be right. It had been a long time since he had been so strongly attracted to a woman. He wanted to keep her here, to enjoy her beauty and intelligence, and to discover if she returned his interest. His mind weighed the scruples of such a decision, but his thoughts were eclipsed by male urges that refused to be quelled.

And for the first time in his magisterial career, he ignored reason in favor of desire.

Scowling, he picked up a haphazard pile of papers and handed them to her. “Are you familiar with the Hue and Cry?”