Grace immediately dropped to her knees next to her employer, her arms instinctively coming around her.

“What the devil?” the dowager snapped, but fell silent when she caught Grace’s expression.

“Gunshots,” Grace whispered.

The dowager’s lips pursed tightly, and then she yanked off her emerald necklace and thrust it at Grace. “Hide this,” she ordered.

“Me?” Grace practically squeaked, but she shoved the jewels under a cushion all the same. And all she could think was that she would dearly like to smack a little sense into the esteemed Augusta Wyndham, because if she were killed because the dowager was too cheap to hand over her jewels-

The door was wrenched open.

“Stand and deliver!”

Grace froze, still crouched on the floor next to the dowager. Slowly, she lifted her head to the doorway, but all she could see was the silvery end of a gun, round and menacing, and pointed at her forehead.

“Ladies,” came the voice again, and this time it was a bit different, almost polite. The speaker then stepped forward out of the shadows, and with a graceful motion swept his arm in an arc to usher them out. “The pleasure of your company, if you will,” he murmured.

Grace felt her eyes dart back and forth-an exercise in futility, to be sure, as there was clearly no avenue of escape. She turned to the dowager, expecting to find her spitting with fury, but instead she had gone white. It was then that Grace realized she was shaking.

The dowager was shaking.

Both of them were.

The highwayman leaned in, one shoulder resting against the door frame. He smiled then-slow and lazy, and with the charm of a rogue. How Grace could see all of that when half of his face was covered with his mask, she did not know, but three things about him were abundantly clear:

He was young.

He was strong.