“She didn’t need to. She did a masterful job of causing a scene outside. More effective than if every guest in the house had seen her, I’d say,” Robert said. “Far better to let the story make its way through the crowd on its own.”

“Our old friend gossip,” I said.

“It was hideous,” Ivy said. “Half the room knew what had happened before the countess—and they were all breathless, waiting to see what she would do. I was standing not three feet from her when she turned on poor Polly. The girl withered in an instant.”

“Lord Thomas seems more concerned with defending his fiancée’s honor than in throwing her over,” I said.

“That will change as soon as his father’s through with him,” Robert said. “The family will not allow him to marry the daughter of a housemaid.”

“I’d imagine not,” I said. “Of course, if her mother had been a mistress of higher class, we’d all turn a blind eye, wouldn’t we?”

“We would not!” Ivy said.

“No,” I said. “You’re correct. Because a mistress of higher class would have raised the child herself and everyone would have pretended to believe it to be her husband’s, not her lover’s. Society prefers a fine, well-bred deception.”

“Emily!” Ivy’s smooth brow furrowed. “You know perfectly well that sort of thing hardly ever happens.”

“I won’t argue with you, Ivy. It’s too hot.”

The sound of crunching gravel announced the approach of my incomparable butler, Davis, who arrived carrying a tray heavy with a large pitcher of cold lemonade.

“Madam?” he asked.

“Please pour for us, Davis,” I said. “I’m exhausted and can hardly move. Too much dancing in the heat.”

He did as I asked, then bowed and turned to leave, stopping before he’d taken more than half a step. Looking back at me, he raised his eyebrows and his lips quivered ever so slightly.

“Yes?” I asked.

“I left Mr. Hargreaves’s cigars inside, madam, as the combination with lemonade would be rather atrocious.”

“You’re very bad, Davis,” I said. “I’ll expect an entirely different outcome the next time I call for port rather than lemonade.” With another bow, he left us. “He knows Colin doesn’t mind when I smoke, but dear Davis refuses to be an accessory to what he views as my ruin.”

“A good man, your butler,” Robert said.

“I won’t take any nonsense from you, sir.” I smiled. Robert had long ago given up on trying to influence me. He had come to tenuous terms with his wife’s own small rebellions (drinking port with me, for example), so long as she restricted them to private situations. Decorous behavior, however, he required in public.

It was I who had corrupted Ivy, just as I’d corrupted myself. While locked up in mourning after the death of my first husband, I’d undergone an intellectual awakening and taken up the study of Greek. I’d learned to read the ancient language, reveled in the poetry of Homer, and become a respected collector of classical antiquities. As I became more enlightened, I’d also come to despise the restrictions of society, and in the course of rejecting them, had come to discover the simple pleasure one could afford from a glass of port, a drink ordinarily forbidden to ladies. Now, at the prodding of another dear friend, I’d expanded my studies to include Latin, and had convinced Ivy to learn it as well. She might not have been quite so enthusiastic a student as I, but she had a sharp mind and was learning quickly.

The lemonade cooled us and we sank into more relaxed postures as the blue light of dawn reached for the dark sky. I wondered how much longer Colin would be. His work as one of the most trusted and discreet agents of the Crown took him from me at odd times of the day and night, and I had come, after more than a year of marriage, to trust his competence absolutely. His missions might be dangerous, but no one was better suited than he to handle them. When he at last staggered into our garden that night, his evening clothes were tattered, his face black, and the bitter smell of smoke heavy on him.

“Colin!” I cried, jumping out of my seat. He raised a bandaged hand to my cheek, a crooked smile on his face.

“Don’t be alarmed, my dear, I’m perfectly fine.” He dropped onto a chair and Robert poured a tall glass of the now lukewarm lemonade for him, emptying the pitcher. “But I’m afraid I do come with terrible news. Mr. Michael Dillman is dead, burned to death in his warehouse south of the river.” He swallowed hard and ground his teeth.

I hadn’t known Mr. Dillman well, but there was no one in London unfamiliar with his stellar reputation. He ran a successful export business and treated the men who worked in his warehouses more decently than was the current custom. He paid them generously and ensured his personal physician was on hand whenever their family members fell ill. Several charities depended on his generosity, and he was a great supporter of the arts. Yet, despite all this and a not insignificant fortune, he wasn’t much of a fixture in society. He could be socially awkward, not because he was unkind or disinterested, but because his personality tended to a quiet shyness rather than the buoyant joviality required during the season. I regretted that I had not taken the time to know him better.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Someone chained him to the bars on the office window and set the building on fire. I’m sorry, Robert, to speak of such horrors in front of your wife, but I see no point in disguising the truth. The newsmen were there almost as soon as I was. There will be no hiding from the story.”

“He … he was to be married next week,” Ivy said, her voice thin. “Cordelia showed me her wedding dress not two days ago.”

“Cordelia Dalton?” I asked. Ivy nodded. Cordelia was a quiet, thoughtful girl who’d made her debut the previous season. She’d not made much of a splash amongst the fashionable set, but that was likely due to a failing on their part rather than hers. We’d discussed novels when our paths crossed at parties, and she always seemed more interested in reading and sketching than in dancing. I was quite fond of her.

“I’m more than sorry, Ivy,” Colin said. “Your friend will need your comfort now.”

I did not listen to the rest of the conversation; the words no longer made sense to me. I could not stop imagining the hideous scene, the terror the poor man must have felt when he realized what was happening, the pain he must have endured before succumbing to death.

I shuddered. And remembered that only a few hours earlier, I’d had the audacity to complain about the heat in a ballroom.


6 June 1893

Belgrave Square, London


How quickly things change! I was pleased when Colin asked Robert and me to bring Emily home from the Londonderrys’ ball. Not because Colin had been called away for work, but because I was looking forward to quiet time with my dearest friend and discussing all the gossip of the night. Polly Sanders has all my sympathy, and I do wish there was something I could do to secure her happiness. But the moment Colin arrived with his dreadful news, Polly’s plight seemed utterly insignificant.

I felt almost paralyzed when he told us Mr. Dillman had been murdered. Emily was equally affected, though she retained her composure better than I. She’s more experienced in such matters. But I know she gets little crinkles that creep around her eyes when she’s upset, and I saw enough of them tonight to tell me I was not alone in my reaction. I hope I never see enough of this sort of brutality to control my emotional response. To acquire such strength would swallow who I am.

Poor, poor Cordelia. When I think of what she must be feeling I can’t help but cry. Robert says it’s unbecoming to take on someone else’s misery, and I’m certain he’s right, yet I can’t find a way to stop. I remember the joy that consumed me as I became a wife. Cordelia will never feel that. Even if, years from now, she finds affection somewhere else, how could she ever escape a constant dread that her happiness is about to be ripped away from her?

I suppose it can happen to any of us, at anytime. I feel so fortunate to have escaped a similar fate. My husband languished in prison, but only for a relatively short period of time (although at the time it did not seem so). He wasn’t taken from me forever, he was returned to me, and now I’ve the sweetest daughter on earth. What does one do to deserve such luck?

I’m off to see Emily now. She’s persuaded me—much against my will—to accompany her to some dreadful meeting. I never could refuse her anything. I have two hopes: one, that it won’t last too long; two, that it is more interesting than Latin. Surely the latter is a certitude.

2

Violent death was no stranger to me. In the past few years, I’d been intimately involved in apprehending four heinous murderers, one of whom had killed my first husband, Philip, the Viscount Ashton. Only a year ago in Normandy, I’d found the brutalized body of a young girl, and had been kidnapped and cruelly tormented by her killer, whose subsequent trial and execution had enthralled Britain and the Continent. Try though I might to shake the images of these ghastly events from my mind, I found I could not do so, and now the news of Mr. Dillman’s death was taking its own gruesome hold on me.

“We were dancing, Colin,” I said. “Dancing.”

“It’s a disturbing contrast, I agree,” he said, smearing ginger marmalade on a piece of toast. We were sitting next to each other at the round table in our sunny breakfast room. On the bright yellow walls hung a Roman mosaic, an emblema, its tiny pieces of glass carefully laid out to depict an elaborate scene of Apollo driving his golden chariot across the sky, sunbeams streaming from the crown on the god’s head. I’d purchased it in a small village near Pompeii, and promised the British Museum I would eventually donate it to them. I couldn’t yet bring myself to part with it.