“Learn from it and then let it go. Dwelling never helped anyone.”

“As they walked, the subtle lamplight of a dirigible washed over them. Finley glanced up, watching the light grow closer, slowly descending from the sky in a whirl of propellers as the ship made its way into the London air dock just a few miles away. How amazing it must be to float so high, to travel so quickly.Dandy followed her gaze, but they didn’t stop walking. “I was up in one of them flyers once,” he told her. “I climbed over the rail and hung on to one of the ropes. Freeing it was. I almost let go.”She whipped her head around to gape at him. “The fall would kill you.”He smiled ever so slightly. “Not afore I flew. Worse ways to go.”

“I'm not going to be a distraction for you, or allow you to be one for me.""A distraction?" He folded his arms across his chest. "Is that what you think you are? What I am? Bloody hell, woman. I need something to distract me from you!”

“She didn’t want to believe the pretty gentleman capable of such violence, but she had learned the hard way that pretty gentlemen were often the worst of the lot.”

“It would take little effort for her to hurt him right now. She could hurt him badly.But Griffin King could hurt her, as well, and he hadn’t. Instead of using force or violence against her, he used patience and understanding. She had no defense against that.When he let her go, she was shaking. Tears filled her eyes as she turned to her mother who stood staring at her in horror.“My sweet little girl,” her mother whispered. “I didn’t know. I would never…” Her words faded into a choked sob. Finley crossed the short distance between them on quivering legs and wrapped her arms around the shorter woman. She didn’t care if Griffin or his nasty aunt saw her tears. If anything was worth crying over, the discovery that her father had made her a monster had to be one.”

“You aligned yourself with the wrong fella and there were consequences. Now, you can wallow in it, or you can pull that thick head of yours out of your posterior and help us figure out how to fix things.”

“You aligned yourself with the wron fella and there were consequences. Now you can wallow in it, or you can pull that thick head of yours out of your posterior and help us figure out how to fix things.”