The logical thing to do would have been to call Mrs. Selwick-Alderly, Colin's aunt. Even if the materials I was looking for weren't in her private collection, she would likely have a good notion of where I should start. But to call Mrs. Selwick-Alderly veered dangerously close to calling Colin. Really, could there be anything more pathetic than looking for excuses to call his relations and fish for information about his whereabouts? I refused to be That Girl.

Of course, that begged the question of whether it was any less pathetic to check my phone for messages every five minutes.

Preferring not to pursue that line of thought, I stared blankly at the computer screen. It stared equally blankly back at me. Behind me, I could hear the subtle brush of fabric that meant someone was shuffling his feet against the carpet in a passive-aggressive attempt to communicate that he was waiting to use the terminal. Damn.

On a whim, I tapped out the name "Alsworthy," just to show that I was still doing something and not uselessly frittering away valuable computer time. From what I had read in the Selwick collection, Geoffrey Pinchingdale-Snipe had been ridiculously besotted with a woman named Mary Alsworthy—although none of his friends seemed to think terribly much of her. The words "shallow flirt" had come up more than once. Geoffrey Pinchingdale-Snipe's indiscretion might be my good fortune. In the throes of infatuation, wasn't it only logical that a man might reveal a little more than he ought? Especially over the course of a separation? If the War Office was sending Lord Pinchingdale off to Ireland, it made sense that he would continue to correspond with his beloved. And in the course of that correspondence…

Buoyed by my own theory, I scrolled down through a long list of Victorian Alsworthys, World War I Alsworthys, Alsworthys from every conceivable time period. For crying out loud, you'd think their name was Smith. The foot-shuffling man behind me gave up on shuffling and upped the level of unspoken aggression by conspicuously flipping through the ancient volumes of paper catalogs next to me. I was too busy scanning dates to feel guilty. Alsworthys, Alsworthys everywhere, and not a one of any use to me.

Or maybe not. My hand stilled on the scroll button as the dates 1784–1863 flashed by. I quickly scrolled back up, clumsily engaging in mental math. Take 1784 away from 1803…and you got eighteen. Um, I meant nineteen. This is why my checkbook never balances. Either way, it was an eminently appropriate age for an English debutante in London for the Season.

There was only one slight hitch. The name beside the dates wasn't Mary. It was Laetitia.

That, I assured myself rapidly, scribbling down the call number, didn't necessarily mean anything. After all, my friend Pammy's real first name was Alexandra, but she had gone by her middle name, Pamela, ever since we were in kindergarten, largely because her mother was an Alexandra, too, and it created all sorts of confusion. Forget all that rose-by-another-name rubbish. Pammy had been Pammy for so long that it was impossible to imagine her as anything else.

Behind me, the foot-shuffling man claimed my vacant seat with an air of barely restrained triumph. Prolonged exposure to the Manuscript Room does sad, sad things to some people.

I handed in my call slip to the man behind the desk and retreated to my own square of territory, nudging my plastic bag with my foot to make sure everything was still there. Between Mary and Laetitia…well, I would have chosen to be called Laetitia, but there was no accounting for taste. Maybe she got sick of dealing with variant spellings.

Except…I scowled at my empty manuscript stand. There was a Laetitia Alsworthy. Just to make sure, I scooted my computer to a more comfortable angle, and opened up the file into which I had transcribed my notes from Sussex. Sure enough, there it was. One Letty Alsworthy, who appeared to be friends with Lady Henrietta Selwick. Not close friends, I clarified for myself, squinting at my transcription of Lady Henrietta's account of her ballroom activities in the summer of 1803, but the sort of second-or third-tier friend you're always pleased to run into, have good chats with, and keep meaning to get to know better if only you had the time. I had a bunch of those in college. And, in its own way, the London Season wasn't all that different from college, minus the classes. You had a set group of people, all revolving among the same events, with a smattering of culture masking more primal purposes, i.e., men trying to get women into bed, and women trying to get men to commit. Yep, I decided, just like college.

Pleased as I was with my little insight, that didn't solve the problem that Letty was a real, live human being with an independent existence from her sister Mary. Her sister Mary who might have corresponded with Geoffrey Pinchingdale-Snipe.

I should have known that Mary wouldn't be the writing type.

Behind me, the little trolley used to transport books from the bowels of the British Library to the wraiths who haunted the reading room rolled to a stop. Checking the number on the slip against the number on my desk, the library attendant handed me a thick folio volume, bound in fading cardboard, that had seen its heyday sometime before Edward VIII ran off with Mrs. Simpson.

Propping the heavy volume on the foam stand, I listlessly flipped open the cover. I had ordered it, so I might as well look at it. Besides, the computer in the back was now occupied, and I doubted its present occupant would show me any more mercy than I had shown him. A salutary lesson on "do unto others," and one that I was sure I would forget by lunchtime.

The documents at the front of the volume were far too late, Mitfordesque accounts of nightclub peccadilloes during the Roaring Twenties. I'd come across this kind of volume before, letters pasted onto the leaves of the folio with glorious unconcern for chronology, medieval manuscript pages sandwiched between Edwardian recipes and Stuart sermon literature. Otherwise known as someone cleaning out the family attic and shipping the lot off to the British Library. Checking the number I had scribbled down from the computer, I saw that it had marked the Laetitia Alsworthy material as running from f. 48 to f. 63, and then again from f. 152 on.

After lunch, I was really going to have to give in and call Mrs. Selwick-Alderly.

Turning by rote to page forty-eight, my hand stilled on the crackly paper. The letter pressed into the center of the page was short, only three lines. Despite its having been pasted into the folio quite some time ago, I could still make out the phantom impressions of two deep lines incised into the paper, one vertically, one horizontally, as though it had been folded into a very small square, the better for passing unseen from hand to hand. There was also a series of crinkles that prevented the paper from lying completely flat against the page, as though someone had crumpled it up with great force and then smoothed it out again.

But it was the signature that caught my attention. One word. One name.

Pinchingdale.

As in Geoffrey, Lord Pinchingdale. The signature was unmistakable. It most certainly wasn't Marmaduke. What on earth was he doing writing to Mary's sister? Forgetting about computer hogs and lunch plans and the way the wool of my pants rasped against my waist, I settled the folio more firmly on its stand and hunched over to read Lord Pinchingdale's short and peculiar note.

"All is in readiness. An unmarked carriage will be waiting for you behind the house at midnight…."

Chapter One

Letty Alsworthy awoke to darkness.

Midnight coated the room, blurring the edges of the furniture and thickening the air. Letty's tired eyes attempted to focus, and failed. The armoire in the corner was top-heavy with shadow, like a lopsided muffin spilling out of its pan. On the other wall, the drapes fell flat and opaque against the one window, no grains of light filtering through the cheap material. The fireplace across from the bed was a hollow cavern, bare even of ashes, nothing more than a darker patch in a landscape of shadow. A fire in June would be an extravagance, the sort of extravagance the Alsworthys could ill afford.

All was dark and still.

Rolling her face into her pillow, Letty came to an irrefutable conclusion. It wasn't morning yet.

She let her head slump back into the pillow, accompanied by a satisfying crackle of feathers. If it wasn't morning, there was no reason for her to be awake. She could just snuggle back down into the sagging mattress, pull the sheet back over her shoulders, plump her pillow, and go back to sleep. Her eyelids approved of that assessment. They were already dragging steadily shut.

But something had woken her.

Letty struggled reluctantly up on her elbows; the movement unleashed a nagging ache behind her temples, which agreed with her eyelids that she really was not supposed to be awake yet. Yanking her unraveling braid out from under her left shoulder, she peered blearily around the room. There was little to peer at. The narrow room contained nothing but the armoire, a wobbly night table, and one chair that had previously belonged to the drawing room, but had been banished due to a poorly repaired crack in the frame. When the owner advertised the house as "furnished," he intended the word in its most minimal sense. Between her mother's and sister's excesses among the bonnets and ribbons of Bond Street, and her father's inability to pass a book without buying it, Letty had been in no position to argue. As it was, they were fortunate to be able to eke out another Season in London. Letty had learned to pinch a penny until it screamed for mercy, but there wasn't much more left to pinch.