Thank you to the wonderful staffs of the University of Florida research libraries. These guys knoweverything and helped me navigate all their many resources: obscure texts—filled with fascinating details to enrich fiction, Victorian diaries—with first person accounts of my era of interest, and mapping and imaging—for authentic historical settings. I greatly appreciate all your help.

The love of a good woman?

To save a wicked man like me?

Never…because there's no woman born

who's as good as I am bad.

—ETHAN ROSS MACCARRICK,

LAIRD OF CLAN MACCARRICK,

EIGHTH EARL OF KAVANAGH

I didn't steal it—I swear!

Oh, as if things never fall into your pocket!

—MADELEINE ISOBEL VAN ROWEN,

SNEAK THIEF, OPPORTUNIST

Iveley Hall, Buxton, England

Spring 1846

Ethan MacCarrick thought the bored wife he was about to tup might be a bonny wench.

However, this was a best guess. At present, his vision was compromised by whisky, the great equalizer of women's charms. Even after the wind-whipped half-hour ride to her home, he was drunk; in fact, he seemed to be getting worse.

But the womanbehaved as if she was pretty, he assured himself as he removed his jacket, tossing it toward a divan in her opulent bedroom and missing it. Even in his muddled state, he detected a superficial silliness about her that men would tolerate only if she was fair. Plus, she'd been confident when she'd propositioned him in the shadowy hall of the Buxton tavern, having had no doubt whatsoever that he would meet her tonight.