The carriage lurches forward before I can process what's happening.

One moment I'm standing in the street, my emerald necklace gone and my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. The next, a gloved hand wraps around my wrist—not rough, not cruel, but firm—and I'm being pulled into the darkness of a moving vehicle.

My scream catches in my throat.

Not because I'm afraid. But because I recognize the hand. The way it holds me with that particular combination of strength and restraint. The same way James Harrow held me when I was fourteen and had climbed too high in the old oak tree at his father's estate, too terrified to climb down.

Don't scream, his voice cuts through the darkness, low and urgent. Catherine, don't scream.

The sound of my name in that voice—older now, rougher, edged with something dangerous—does something catastrophic to my composure.

I don't scream.

Instead, I turn to face him fully, and even in the shadows of the carriage interior, I can make out the sharp planes of his face. The scar I didn't see clearly before now catches what little moonlight filters through the window. His storm-gray eyes are wide, shocked, as if he's seeing a ghost.

I suppose he is.

"Hello, James," I say, and I'm horrified to discover my voice is perfectly steady. "You're looking remarkably well for a dead man."

For a long moment, he doesn't move. His hand is still wrapped around my wrist, his fingers pressing against the pulse point there. I wonder if he can feel my heart trying to escape my body. I wonder if he knows that every nerve ending in my arm is suddenly, acutely aware of his touch.

"What the hell are you doing here?" His voice is a rasp, like he hasn't used it in years. Maybe he hasn't. Not for anything resembling normal conversation, anyway.

"Attending a ball," I say coolly, tugging my wrist free. He lets me go immediately, as if burned. "I was invited. It was quite the affair—you'd have hated it. Too many people, too much small talk, and the orchestra was playing that dreadfully boring Beethoven piece again."

"Catherine." There's a warning in his tone now. A desperate edge.

"You're going to want to let me out," I continue, ignoring the way my fingers are beginning to tremble. I clasp them together in my lap. "Or better yet, you're going to want to explain to me why you've faked your death, turned to highway robbery, and chosen this particular evening to rob a carriage containing a woman you clearly recognize."

He moves away from me, suddenly, as if proximity is dangerous. It probably is. He stalks to the far side of the carriage like a caged animal, his shoulders rigid beneath his dark coat.

"You can't be here," he says flatly. "You can't know this. You need to go back to your ball and forget you ever saw—"

"Forget?" I let out a short, bitter laugh. "James, I watched you die. Eight years ago, I watched the magistrate read the verdict, watched my father shake his head with something that might have been disappointment, watched your mother collapse in the gallery. Do you know what I've spent the last eight years doing? Forgetting. Burying that memory so deep I could almost believe it was real."

The carriage sways around a corner, and I have to grip the seat to keep from sliding forward. James catches my elbow automatically, steadies me, then releases me like I've burned him.

"Your father—" he starts.

"My father orchestrated your execution," I say quietly. "Or he would have, if you hadn't disappeared first. I was twelve years old, James. I didn't understand the politics then. I just understood that you were gone, and my father never spoke your name again, and your mother stopped coming to our house."

He closes his eyes.

"I understand now," I continue, my voice sharp as broken glass. "I've spent eight years in my father's study, learning law, learning consequence, learning exactly how a man like him operates. I know how he manipulates evidence. How he turns allies into enemies. How he uses people like game pieces."

When James opens his eyes again, there's something raw in them. Something that looks like guilt.

Good.

"You need to leave," he says, but there's no force behind it anymore. It's a plea.

"I'm not leaving." I straighten my spine, channel every ounce of the composure my father spent eighteen years drilling into me. "Not until we come to an understanding."

The carriage is slowing now, turning onto a quieter street. I can hear the distant sound of the orchestra from the ball, growing fainter. We're moving away from everything I've ever known.

"An understanding," James repeats flatly.

"You're a highwayman," I say, laying out the facts as if we're in a courtroom. "Which means you're a criminal. Which means you're a danger to yourself and anyone harboring you. Which means you need to disappear again, or you need to be very, very careful about who knows your secret."

His jaw tightens.

"I know your secret," I continue. "I recognized you. Not from your face, though I'd know that face anywhere—it's etched into my memory like a scar. But from the way you move. The way you speak. The fact that you called me by my name when you thought I would scream, which means you were trying to protect me even as you were kidnapping me."

I lean forward slightly, and his entire body goes rigid.

"When you were sixteen, you broke your left hand falling from that same oak tree," I say softly. "You told everyone it was a riding accident because you didn't want your father to know you'd been climbing trees like a child. But I saw you in the library three days later, trying to turn pages with your right hand, and I laughed at you so hard I nearly fell off the ladder. You threw a book at me."

His hands clench into fists.

"You're the only person who knows that," I say. "The only person who would remember something so trivial, so utterly useless. Which means you're the only person who could have recognized me in that carriage tonight, and you're the only person I could possibly convince of this next part."

"Catherine—"

"I'm going to make you a proposition," I say, cutting him off. "And you're going to listen to it, because the alternative is that I scream right now, and this carriage stops, and I tell whoever finds us that I was kidnapped by a highwayman. My father will hunt you with every resource at his disposal. He'll burn the countryside looking for you. He'll make an example of you that will echo through three counties."

James's face has gone pale beneath the stubble and shadow.

"But if you listen," I continue, "if you help me with what I need, I'll keep your secret. I'll forget I ever saw you. I'll return to the ball with a story about how I fainted and was taken to a physician, and no one will ever know you're alive."

"What could you possibly need from a highwayman?" His voice is hollow.

I take a breath.

"I need you to help me escape my arranged marriage."

The silence that follows is so complete I can hear the rhythm of his breathing. In and out. In and out. Like he's trying to steady himself.

"Absolutely not," he says finally.

"Your Grace, I haven't even explained the terms yet."

"I don't care what the terms are. You're not—" He stops himself, runs a hand through his hair in a gesture so achingly familiar it makes my chest ache. "You're going to marry the Duke's son. You're going to have a good life. A safe life. That's what I—"

He cuts himself off, but I hear what he was going to say.

That's what I left for.

The realization hits me like a physical blow.

"You didn't disappear because of what my father did," I say slowly. "You disappeared because of what he threatened to do. To me."

James turns away from me, toward the window. His shoulders are rigid, his jaw clenched so tightly I can see the muscle working beneath his skin.

"He came to you," I press on, the pieces falling into place like a lock opening. "He told you that if you didn't leave, if you didn't disappear, he'd ruin me. He'd make sure I was implicated in whatever he was framing you for. He'd destroy my reputation before I was even old enough to have one."

"Stop," James says quietly.

"And you believed him." I can hear the wonder in my own voice, mixed with something that tastes like fury. "You believed him because you knew what he was capable of. You knew that he'd do exactly what he threatened. So you left. You faked your death and you disappeared, and you've spent eight years running instead of fighting."

"I saved your life," he says harshly, turning back to face me. "Do you understand that? If I'd stayed, if I'd fought, if I'd dragged your name through the courts—"

"I would have survived," I interrupt. "I'm my father's daughter, James. I know how to survive. What I didn't survive was the life he built for me in your absence."

The carriage is slowing again, pulling into what sounds like a stable yard. I can hear the distant sounds of horses, of movement.

"We're stopping," James says, and it's clear he's trying to regain control of the conversation. "We're going somewhere safe. You're going to listen to me explain why this is an impossibly stupid idea, and then I'm going to return you to the ball, and we're never going to speak of this again."

"Or," I say, standing as the carriage comes to a complete stop, "you can introduce me to your sister."

He freezes.

"Yes," I say, with a small, sharp smile. "I know about Eleanor. I've been keeping track of you for eight years, James. It's remarkable what you can learn if you know how to ask the right questions in the right places. Eleanor Harrow, apothecary's assistant, living in a cottage outside the city. It wasn't difficult to deduce that she'd be your anchor. That she'd be the one person you'd trust with your secret."

"If you go near her—" he starts, and there's such venom in his voice that I actually take a step back.

"I'm not threatening her," I say coolly. "I'm suggesting that we discuss this with someone who has a vested interest in keeping you alive. Someone who might be more amenable to my proposition than you are."

James stares at me for a long moment, and I can see the war happening behind his eyes. The conflict between self-preservation and the guilt that's written all over his face.

Finally, he reaches for the carriage door.

"If you're lying," he says quietly, "if this is some kind of trap—"

"It's not," I say. "I could have screamed. I could have betrayed you. Instead, I'm offering you a way out that doesn't involve running anymore. That doesn't involve spending the rest of your life looking over your shoulder."

He opens the door, and the night air spills in—cool and sharp and carrying the scent of cedar and smoke that I now recognize as distinctly, dangerously James.

"Come on," he says, extending his hand to help me down from the carriage.

I take it.

The moment my fingers touch his palm, I feel it—that spark of electricity that exists between people who have known each other in another lifetime. His hand is calloused now, rough from years of living outside the law. It's nothing like the soft, gentle hand that held mine when we were young.

It's infinitely better.

He helps me down from the carriage, and for just a moment, we're standing close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating from his body. Close enough that I can smell the cedar and smoke more clearly, underneath it something darker—gunpowder and risk and something that smells like home.

"This is a terrible idea," he says softly, and he's not letting go of my hand.

"Probably," I agree. "But I'm not going back to my life as it was. I'm not marrying the Duke's son. I'm not spending the next forty years as my father's ornament. And if you won't help me, I'll find another way. But I'd prefer it if you helped me, because despite everything, despite the eight years and the faked death and the highway robbery, I trust you."

His grip on my hand tightens.

"You shouldn't," he says.

"I know," I reply. "But I do."

He studies my face in the darkness, and I can feel him cataloging the changes. The scar along my jawline from a fall down the library stairs when I was fifteen. The new hardness around my eyes that comes from spending eight years learning to survive. The way I'm standing—spine straight, chin up, completely unafraid despite the fact that I'm alone in the darkness with a man I haven't seen in eight years, a man who's faked his death and turned to crime.

"Eleanor's cottage is two miles north," he says finally. "We'll discuss your proposition there. And if I don't like what I hear, I'm putting you back in that carriage and sending you home, and you're going to forget any of this happened."

"Fair enough," I say.

He releases my hand, and I'm struck by the sudden cold.

"Can you ride?" he asks, already moving toward the stables.

"Competently," I say, gathering my skirts. "Though I'll admit this dress isn't ideal for it."

I could swear I hear him laugh—just barely, just a whisper of sound—before he disappears into the darkness.

I follow him, and with every step, I'm acutely aware that I've just committed myself to something irreversible. I've just made a bargain with a ghost, and there's no going back now.

The thought should terrify me.

Instead, I feel more alive than I have in eight years.