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London, November 1810

C onstantia had learned through experience the importance of avoiding trouble. In a lifetime of reinventing herself, she had learned when it was time to walk away from whatever name she had claimed, the identity she had built, the place she called her own.

When the note arrived informing her of an urgent meeting of the staff of Mrs. Goode’s Magazine for Misses , she had felt the familiar prickle of apprehension.

She had wanted, unaccountably, to ignore the warning.

Well, not unaccountably . Leaving her present position would be difficult. She would feel the loss. She was six-and-twenty, and the other young ladies who worked for the magazine were the closest she had ever known to friends, though they would undoubtedly be surprised to hear themselves described as such.

Experience had also taught Constantia reserve. She knew better than to trust people. To let them in.

Or perhaps she was prickly and standoffish by nature. At a certain point, it became impossible to distinguish between what she was and what circumstances had forced her to become. At a certain point, such differences ceased to matter.

Nonetheless, she had trusted Lady Stalbridge, the magazine’s founder and editor, at least as far as she had trusted anyone for twenty years. She had made herself vulnerable, shared her art, but explained that her family situation made it unwise for her to reveal many details about herself. She had concocted a new surname, Cooper , on the spot.

And now, almost a year later, just when she had started to relax, to let herself walk out without glancing over her shoulder, the letter had come. A letter about a staff meeting she had not expected, directed to Miss Constantia Cooper at this address, written in a hand she did not know. That single, folded sheet of paper had slipped into the narrow sliver of unguardedness she had allowed to open and cut her to the quick.

Half an hour before the meeting began, she gathered up her meager possessions. Her artist’s tools first, as usual, the brushes, tiny pots, and half-finished pieces tucked neatly in their places inside the cleverly designed wooden box that served as both carrying case and easel. The rest of her things were always already half-packed: her mother’s picture and letter beneath the valise’s false bottom, her undergarments folded neatly on top to discourage anyone who might be tempted to pry.

And then she took what was likely to be her last look around the room she rented from a modiste whose French name, Madame D’Arblay, Constantia suspected would be as unlikely to hold up under scrutiny as her own. The modiste’s shop occupied a former townhome near Oxford Street. The public areas of the shop were on the ground floor; the shop work was done on the first floor; and the modiste lived above that. Constantia paid a pittance to occupy what had once been the housekeeper’s quarters belowstairs, a spacious apartment with one significant drawback for an artist: It had only one window, covered over with bars and a scraggly shrub, and in any case too small to admit more light than just what made it possible to tell night from day. The remainder of the cellar was used for storage.

Out of habit, she counted the stairs as she climbed, so as not to stumble in the darkness. One could not always be carrying a candle; certainly not now, with her artist’s case in one hand and her valise in the other. She considered walking through the door at the top and out of the shop. Away from the meeting and the little life she had managed to build. Best to make a clean break of it.

But the apprehension fluttering around in her chest had a curious way of disguising itself as hope. Perhaps Lady Stalbridge had hired a new secretary, which would explain the unfamiliar handwriting. Perhaps the meeting had been called to share good news, not bad.

As a compromise between those two warring impulses, she left her bags resting on the thirteenth step, one from the top, easy to access if she should have to leave in a hurry after the meeting, but enough out of the way that if Madame D’Arblay should send one of her shop girls down to the cellar for something in the meantime, no one would stumble over them.

After dragging in the sort of breath that could not help but pin back her shoulders and lift her chin, Constantia emerged into the dressmaker’s shop.

She hated the momentary disorientation produced by the sudden transition into light and warmth—the inevitable shiver and spate of rapid blinking, the few seconds of defenselessness, when she might be seen before she could see.

But it was November and the shop was no longer bustling, not even at midday. Madame D’Arblay was directing a woman’s notice to an open pattern book, and two younger ladies, probably the woman’s daughters, were fingering a display of ribbons. None of them paid Constantia any mind as she slipped out the back of the shop.

Navigating the warren of alleys and side streets and mews, deftly avoiding the puddles, not all of which had been left by that morning’s rain, she made her way to the rear of Porter’s Antiquarian Bookshop on Bond Street. Lady Stalbridge had arranged for the staff of the Magazine for Misses to have access to a back room there for meetings. Whenever the shop was open, any one of them might retrieve the key stowed behind the front counter.

Constantia had arranged her own access to the room the rest of the time. In exchange for dusting shelves when the shop was closed, she had been given a key to the back door. Though the room in question was crowded with furniture and books, it—unlike the cellar at Madame D’Arblay’s—had the advantage of a large window. A large, dirty window. Shockingly dirty. But still, it permitted sufficient light to draw by.

While working at the scarred oak table, she had been surprised countless times by the staff of both the bookshop and the magazine. She was aware they all found her odd, but she was indifferent—well, almost —to their impertinent stares and whispers.

Today, as usual, she was the first to arrive. She looked around the room, at the modicum of organization she had been able to impose: less dust, fewer books stacked on the floor, a complete run of the Magazine for Misses along the window ledge. It had grown into a habit with her, this neatening and straightening, something to balance the chaos of her circumstances and a certain wildness in her soul.

Another corner of the little world she had built into a sort of nest and would have to abandon—or tear down.

But it wouldn’t do to give in to sentiment. Slipping a blank sheet of paper from the drawer of a rickety desk and plucking a pencil from the knot of her simple coiffure, she took up her post at one end of the oval table, across from the place Lady Stalbridge usually commanded, and began to sketch.

Out of habit, her pencil swept across the page in the exaggerated style of the magazine’s satirical cartoonist. Her monthly contribution, “What Miss C. Saw,” had been rechristened the Unfashionable Plates by readers, who delighted in her sharp critiques of London’s elite—much to Constantia’s surprise. Surely a fair number of those readers belonged to the very set she mocked?

But she supposed there was a certain entertainment in discovering one’s ballroom adversary had been skewered, a certain relief in ascertaining one’s own fashionable foibles had been spared—for this month, at least.

The pencil was dull and the picture that emerged from its tip equally so. One could only bear to draw so many ridiculously high collars or absurdly tall hair plumes. Ordinarily, she would already have finished a pair of panels for the next issue. She preferred to work well ahead of deadline. But this month, every effort had found itself kindling for the fire.

Still, she supposed she ought to try, as it was likely to be her last contribution to the Magazine for Misses .

Once, she had gone so far as to imagine herself slipping into Lady Stalbridge’s shoes as editor, whenever the countess decided to step aside from that role. But that had always been a foolish dream—not least because Constantia knew better than to plan for a future that could never be anything but uncertain.

Before she could do more than place indistinct figures in a scene, Lady Clarissa Sutliffe arrived, slightly out of breath. “Oh, Miss Cooper. You’re here.” She slid into a chair along one side of the table, her back to the window. “That must mean—oh. Well, I’m not really sure. What does it mean, do you suppose?”

Constantia did not answer, did not even look up from her work, though the blunt tip of her pencil was creating more smudges than lines. She had her suspicions about this meeting, but it would do no good to share them with the petted and indulged daughter of a marquess. What could she know of danger or treachery?

To her relief, Lady Clarissa did not press for conversation. Next to arrive was Miss Theodosia Nelson, who was clutching the fateful note in her hand. Upon seeing the other two women, she smoothed the scrap of paper against the table and laid it in the center. Miss Nelson’s grim expression did not invite confidences, but it told Constantia she understood the letter’s import.

Detractors of Mrs. Goode’s Magazine for Misses —known variously among them as the Magazine for Mischief or Goode’s Guide to Misconduct —would give much to discover the identities of the contributors. And now it seemed that someone other than Lady Stalbridge was in possession of their names and addresses. The significance of the letters summoning them all here was as clear and chilling as any threat.

With a nervous sound, which might under other circumstances have passed for a laugh, Lady Clarissa reached into her reticule and laid her letter beside Miss Nelson’s. For no reason that she could explain, Constantia retrieved hers from her bodice and added it, still folded, to the pile. Silence hung over the three of them like a pall, and beneath the dull pencil, Constantia’s sketching grew less and less legible.

Miss Julia Addison was the second to last to appear, sinking into the chair beside Miss Nelson and sliding her letter across the table to join the rest.

Lady Clarissa greeted her arrival as another opportunity to strike up a conversation. “I wonder why Lady Stalbridge needs to see us on such little notice? I had to say that Thomas, my cat, had run away—even though the poor old thing is asleep under my bed.” Her violet-blue eyes were always wide, but Constantia’s quick glance over the tops of her spectacles revealed them to be even wider than usual, fixed with alarm on the growing pile of notes. “Papa let me join some of the servants in a search for him. I gave two footmen the slip and came here. I figured, it worked for Daphne,” she finished, calling to mind the sudden appearance of a cat at one of their meetings last spring, and with it, Miss Daphne Burke, who had become the magazine’s advice columnist, against Constantia’s wishes. Miss Burke had meddled shamelessly in the lives of one of their readers and, to make amends, had thrown herself away on a rake and was now Lady Deveraux.

“I had been wishing for another meeting,” Miss Nelson ventured after a pause, “so that I could tell you all that I’m to have an article published in The Times .”

“Theo,” exclaimed Lady Clarissa, reaching across the table to grasp her fingers. “That’s marvelous. I knew you could do it.”

Constantia twisted the pencil between her first finger and her thumb. The walls of this little room were closing in. In the face of bad news, surely they were entitled to seize this last chance to share something good?

“I’ve submitted a watercolor to an exhibition,” she announced. She preferred to work in oils, but Madame D’Arblay had feared the odor of mineral spirits would offend her customers.

As triumphs went, it was a small one, hardly worthy of the name. But if she didn’t speak of it with these three women, she might never have an opportunity to speak of it with anyone at all.

“Anonymously, of course,” she added—unnecessarily. She never did anything that wasn’t anonymous, to one degree or another.

Miss Nelson was the first to congratulate her: “Excellent news!”

The others seemed not to know what to say. Nearly a decade Constantia’s junior, Lady Clarissa was obviously intimidated by her, though the girl’s own artistic gift was nothing to sneeze at. If her father could be persuaded to allow it, she would surely achieve her goal of becoming a concert pianist.

As for Miss Addison? Well, her tendency to bubble over with enthusiasm, her apparent indifference to the potentially serious consequences of behaving rashly or saying something outrageous, had often put her and Constantia at odds. She was free in a way Constantia would never be, and perhaps she was having difficulty mustering felicitations for someone she did not like.

And in fact, when at last that young lady spoke, it was not to praise Constantia, but to contribute another confession of sorts to the pile: “I’m going to marry Lord Dunstane.”

Constantia narrowly restrained a gasp of astonishment. Miss Addison’s biting theatrical reviews had earned the attention of notorious playwright Ransom Blackadder, who had subsequently written a play, The Poison Pen , that threatened both her and the magazine’s reputation. At Lady Stalbridge’s urging, she had established a tenuous connection with the Earl of Dunstane, Blackadder’s patron, to see if the situation could be defused.

How had a plan to keep the magazine from being destroyed led to an engagement? Constantia couldn’t decide whether Miss Addison had sacrificed herself on their behalf or thrown them all to the wolf. After all, how could she be expected to keep her secret—all their secrets—from the man who would be her husband?

Or might she already have said too much?

Before Constantia, or anyone, could speak, Lady Stalbridge appeared in the doorway.

“Oh.” The countess’s disappointed gaze traveled the room. “I had hoped...” Then, spying the papers in the center of the table, she sighed, opened her reticule, and tossed two more letters to join the rest. “Oliver received one as well.”

Oliver, Viscount Manwaring, was Lady Stalbridge’s stepson. He was also the person behind Mrs. Goode, author of the famed Guide to Homekeeping and the figurehead of their magazine. Penning domestic manuals and managing ladies’ magazines were not the sorts of activities that did credit to a gentleman’s reputation, however. Lord Manwaring had a great deal to lose if those behind the Magazine for Misses were exposed.

But not more than Constantia.

Lady Clarissa expressed some childish hope that the letters had been sent as a joke, which Lady Stalbridge was quick to deny.

“But—but,” Miss Nelson stammered, “this means someone else knows who we all are, even where we live!”

At those words—the truth that Constantia had known from the first but had come today hoping to hear denied—she pushed back from the table, her chair scraping noisily across the floor. “You’ll excuse me, please,” she said with a nod and a curtsy, leaving the half-finished sketch behind.

Experience had indeed taught her when it was time to walk away from a situation.

Today, it was time to run.

Leaving through the front of the shop might have been a tactical error, she realized, as she glanced from customers to clerks to whoever might be disguised behind that bookcase crammed with books, as tall and solid as a wall. But the distance from Porter’s front door to Madame D’Arblay’s was shorter, two points on a straight line.

As she passed the counter, she laid her key on it before striding out into the gray afternoon. She did not hurry her steps—at least, not noticeably so. She did not cast a suspicious look at every passerby. She knew by now how to stay vigilant without showing fear.

That did not mean, however, that she did not feel it.

Her heart pounded, working to move blood half-congealed by the combination of chilly air and the icy terror that had overspread her veins. The magazine’s foes were legion. Rakes who objected to Miss Busy B.’s advice. Playwrights and actors who found fault with Miss on Scene’s reviews. Parents and governesses and a larger society who wanted young ladies to remain ignorant and thus easier to control. The letter writer could have been any of them. And what a clever way, just the names and directions on a series of notes, to show the staff of the magazine who had the upper hand now.

Constantia had no reason to assume that Miss C.’s cartoons were the particular target of the letter writer’s ire. But that arrow had pierced her fragile bubble of security and contentment all the same.

When she burst through the door of Madame D’Arblay’s, a bell jangled harshly. Though the shop was empty of customers, the modiste sent Constantia a reproving look. She was to come and go through the back, not the front.

“I won’t trouble you or your clientele again,” Constantia assured her, after leaning for a moment against the doorframe to catch her breath. Then she slipped through the shop, snatching up her bags from the stairwell as she passed, and left for the last time through the rear.

This time, her feet traced a different route through the alleyways, northwest toward the nearest coaching inn. She would take the next available stage, whatever direction it might be bound. She couldn’t afford to wait and choose her destination.

She only prayed she had enough money left in her purse to start again wherever she ended up.

The rumble of wheels and clatter of hooves, muffled by the rows of houses and shops between her and the streets of London’s West End, grew louder as she approached the point at which she would have to emerge to cross the thoroughfare.

“Where ’re ye off to, miss?”

The man’s wheedling voice made her whole body jerk, coming so close behind and just loud enough to be heard over the patter of her own hurried footsteps and the pounding of her heart. Almost as if he had spoken right in her ear.

Probably just some servant or shop assistant. No one sent to pursue her.

Nonetheless, startled, she leaped away from him into the relative safety of the busy street.

Sound and sensation blurred around her, inside her. The shouted oath of a coachman. The hot snort of a frightened horse. Sharp pain, everywhere, as the cobbled street rose up to meet her. Both valise and artist’s case flew from her hands.

Then everything went black.