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B efore the heavy door to Miss Fleetwood’s house could shut, Will stuffed his boot into the gap between door and frame.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” he told the maid in a firm voice, “but I am Viscount Gilford and this is Miss Lucy Penhallow. We have business with your mistress that can’t wait. It is regarding a matter of some importance, and a lady’s safety might be at risk.”

But if they’d expected Will’s plea to move the maid’s finer feelings, they were sorely mistaken.

The woman only rolled her eyes. “Milord, there must be a dozen folk here a week claiming to be quality asking for just one word with my mistress. And I’ll tell you just as tell them that she ain’t receiving.”

“Let them in, Hetty. I’ll see them in the parlor.” The cultured voice of a lady reached Lucy and Will even from their position just outside the door of the house.

Not turning to face her mistress, Hetty indicated with a sweep of her hand that they should come inside. “Do not overtire her,” the maid said as she escorted them through the well-appointed entryway toward a door leading to a pretty, well-lit chamber where a handsome lady bearing a remarkable resemblance to Sir Charles Fleetwood sat in a chair near the fire.

“Bring tea and some of those biscuits you made this morning, please, Hetty,” Miss Fleetwood said before turning to Lucy and Will. “My lord, Miss Penhallow, it is a pleasure to meet you. I hope you forgive me for not rising. I am feeling a little unwell today. Please, take a seat.”

Not daring to exchange a look with Will, Lucy allowed him to steer her with a gentle hand on her elbow to a settee near the window. Once she was seated, he took his own position beside her.

Lucy only gave herself a moment to take in the finer details of the room. Though the house was in one of the outlying areas near London rather than in one of the more fashionable neighborhoods, the house itself was furnished with care, and unless she missed her guess, despite its small size, no expense had been spared to pay for the appointments.

Turning to their hostess now, she noted that despite having pled illness for just today, Lucy was all but certain that Miss Christina Fleetwood was suffering from some long-term illness. Consumption, if Lucy guessed aright. As if to prove her point, the lady began coughing uncontrollably, and though she quickly hid the handkerchief she’d used to cover her mouth, Lucy spotted a spray of red on the snowy cloth.

During her fit, the maid, Hetty, came hurrying in with a glass of some cloudy liquid, her face tight.

Once Miss Fleetwood’s paroxysm had subsided, Hetty pressed the glass into her mistress’s hand. And once she’d been sufficiently reassured, the older woman again left the room.

The maid looked as if she would like to object, but must have thought better of it. “Very well,” she said with a pointed look at Lucy and Will. “But do not overtire yourself.”

“She is very protective of you,” Lucy said to their hostess. “You are lucky to have such a loyal servant, Miss Fleetwood.”

At the mention of her given name, the woman known as Madame Celestina gave Lucy a wry smile. “It has been some time since I’ve received a call from someone who knows my true identity, Miss Penhallow, Lord Gilford. To what do I owe the honor?”

“Oh, come now, Miss Fleetwood,” said Will with a tilt of his head, “that is not quite true, is it? You have received a call from either your brother or one of his friends in the past little while, have you not?”

At the mention of her brother, Miss Fleetwood sat up a little straighter, though it was clear she didn’t possess a great deal of strength. Her lips twisted before she said, “I do not refer to an intrusion from my brother into my home as a ‘call,’ my lord. Nor one in which he brings unwanted guests along.”

At the mention of unwanted guests, Lucy felt her pulse quicken. “Who were these guests?” she asked before she could weigh the wisdom of such a direct question of the woman.

Now it was Miss Fleetwood’s turn to ask a direct question. “Why do you wish to know? You have come to me, Miss Penhallow. If I am to answer your questions, I fear you must answer some of mine. It is only fair.”

Lucy exchanged a look with Will, wondering how much they dared to tell her. He gave a little shrug, and she took that as a sign that they had little choice.

Turning back to Miss Fleetwood, she gave her a brief explanation of her friendship with Vera and how Sir Charles and Christopher Hamilton were involved in the young woman’s abduction.

At the mention of Hamilton and her brother, Miss Fleetwood’s mouth pursed in distaste. “Yes, both my brother and Mr. Hamilton were here—though he didn’t give me his name.”

“What name did he give?” Lucy asked, curious. Though she supposed it made some degree of sense for Hamilton to wish to keep his identity a secret from someone who could reveal his scheme to trick Vera into marrying him.

“He gave no name,” Miss Fleetwood said, accepting a cup of tea from Hetty, who had entered with the tea tray and begun serving them from it. She took a sip before continuing. “Though that doesn’t surprise me. He seemed very unsettled as soon as he entered the house. But I suppose that’s because his intentions from the first were unsavory.”

“What did he want from you, Miss Fleetwood?” asked Will, his voice kind. Lucy could sense that he was trying to make himself seem unintimidating despite his size, and she could have kissed him for it.

As if in response to Will’s efforts on her behalf, the spiritualist seemed to relax. “My brother—whom I hadn’t seen in a decade or more, mind you—brought him here because he thought I would be amenable to performing a fictional séance for his prospective fiancée, in order to convince the girl that her dead mother was telling her that she must marry this man or her father would be killed.”

Lucy gasped. The scheme was even worse than she’d at first imagined.

“Precisely,” Miss Fleetwood said with a disgusted expression. “There have been cases in which I’ve been approached with a request to twist my gift to fit others’ wishes, but never with such a reprehensible aim as this. Of course I told my brother and his friend to leave at once.”

“So you never met Miss Blackwood?” Lucy could hear the thread of disappointment running through Will’s voice, and she felt the same. They’d had such high hopes that Miss Fleetwood would be able to give them some idea of where they might find Vera.

At this Miss Fleetwood shook her head. “I am sorry to disappoint you, but after I refused them, I never saw my brother or the American again.”

“I wonder if you might be able to answer some questions about the man who accompanied your brother?” Lucy asked, well aware that the other woman was tiring and they should leave her soon.

But despite her obvious fatigue, Miss Fleetwood was almost eager to answer their questions. “What this man intended to do was horrible. It is just the sort of chicanery that gives gifts like mine a bad name.”

Lucy wanted to know more about her gift but curtailed her curiosity. “Is there anything in particular you remember about the man who accompanied Sir Charles? You say he was an American, but was that all you noticed?”

The medium looked into space for a moment, as if searching her memory. Finally, she said, “He was, as I said, American. Handsome enough with dark, almost black hair. But perhaps the most interesting thing about him was how he reacted to something I said.”

Leaning forward in her seat, Lucy somehow knew this was important. “What was that?” she asked with barely disguised eagerness.

Miss Fleetwood gave Lucy and Will a wry look. “I know the two of you might be skeptical about gifts such as mine, but I can assure you that not all of us are charlatans. I have been able to… sense things… about people from the time I was a small girl.”

“And what did you sense about your brother’s friend, Miss Fleetwood?” Will asked, and Lucy could tell he was just as interested as she was as the answer to the question.

“I told Mr. Hamilton—for that is the man’s name, I’m sure of it—I told him that his cousin would not thank him for what he was doing to his fiancée. And that he, this Mr. Hamilton, would be punished for it.”

When the seer spoke, however, Lucy felt nothing but disappointment.

Perhaps sensing her guests’ lack of enthusiasm for her revelation, Miss Fleetwood spoke up again. “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. By fiancée, I mean the absent Mr. Hamilton’s fiancée.”

At that, Lucy was flummoxed. “Do you mean to say that Christopher Hamilton isn’t Miss Blackwood’s betrothed?”

“Oh, Christopher Hamilton was at one time assuredly betrothed to Miss Vera Blackwood. But unfortunately, that Mr. Hamilton passed away a few months ago. This Mr. Hamilton is his cousin. And he has been passing himself off as Christopher Hamilton the entire time he’s been in England.”