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She was wearing a deep indigo color punctuated with white scales of white nacre that had been sewn into an arcing pattern on either side of her waist. The color made her skin glow, pale and unblemished against the dark fabric. She looked like some fabled siren glimmering under the surf.

He wanted to touch the scales and the satin. He wanted to touch her. It made the pads of his fingers feel like they were being held against a kettle.

“Your letter was most intriguing,” she said, a curious glint in her eye. “I’m sorry I didn’t write back. I got absorbed in my wildflower letter. I assure you I am most eager to hear about the developments in your hunt for the jewel thief.”

“Did you finish your letter?” he asked, raising his brows in curiosity. “I would very much like to read it when you do.”

“Would you really?” she said, reaching up to touch a coil of glossy hair on her pale shoulder. “I … I suppose that would be all right. There is a copy here, in fact. I brought it to Dot yesterday when I picked up my journal.”

“And what did Mrs. Cain think?”

“I haven’t found that out just yet.” Millie bit her lip, scrunching up her nose. “I suppose I’m a little afraid to ask. It might ease my nerves, actually, if you’d read it first.”

“By all means,” he said, offering his elbow to her the way he’d imagined doing a thousand times since their stroll in the park. “Lead the way.”

“Very well,” she said, slipping her hand over his jacket and curling her fingers over his arm. “But only if you tell me about your investigation as we go.”

“I am close, I think,” he said, clearing the dryness that had taken his throat when she touched him with a quick sip of his drink.

“It took a long while, but I found a name that recurred on the logs several times with all three agencies. It became evident that our thief is most likely called Francis Aiden. Mr. Aiden lives near Tottenham Court Road.”

“Goodness!” Millie gestured to the rear of the room, where the staircase lay behind a set of wooden doors. “Have you a plan for confronting him? It might be dangerous.”

“I have questioned the fellow, in fact,” Abe said, lowering his voice to enhance the drama of his revelation.

“And there were a few things that stood out as strange. Firstly, he is rather advanced in years, and though he claims he is still a capable servant, his account of last Season’s work history was quite a bit more sparse than his name in the logs would otherwise suggest.”

“Well, that isn’t so strange,” Millie said, slipping her hand from his arm to guide them up the stairs. “A caught thief would, of course, lie.”

“True enough. Where are we going?”

“To Dot’s study,” Millie said, waving an absent hand. “I warn you, it is often a bit of a hovel.”

“My natural habitat, then,” he replied with a grin.

“As I was saying, he was fairly old and not really the type you’d imagine swiping jewels from duchesses.

I went back to my desk truly perplexed and revisited the logs.

That’s when I noticed something else that was strange: our suspect, an established serviceman, spells his name F-R-A-N-C-I-S, but the signature on several of the work orders was spelled C-E-S. ”

“Odd,” Millie said, opening the door that apparently led to Dorothy Cain’s study and stepping aside to indicate he ought to enter. “That is the feminine spelling, I believe.”

“Yes!” Abe stopped just short of entering the room, wedged against Miss Yardley in the doorway. He looked down at her, pleasure and surprise at her wit making him feel a bit manic. “Yes, that’s exactly right! And to boot, some of the jobs penned in by the name were not a man’s duties.”

She stared up at him for the space of a breath, brown eyes as wide as a cornered doe’s. “Oh!”

He leaned toward her, his grin widening at the way her breath hitched.

She flushed and ducked under his arm, walking briskly into the study without looking behind her.

It might have been a defeat for any other man, but Abe could not shake his smile. It was proof, he thought, that she felt the heat of their proximity as keenly as he did.

“So someone is impersonating Mr. Aiden?” she asked, her voice a pitch higher than it had been a moment before.

“Perhaps,” he confirmed, pulling the door shut behind him as he closed them into the study together.

“But no one at any of the agencies will admit such a thing could be possible. And Mr. Aiden himself has no daughters or sisters. The man is what we call a confirmed bachelor. It is a puzzler, isn’t it? ”

“Oh, but it need not be a close relative or friend,” Millie said, sitting on the chair behind the desk and riffling through the stack of papers on it.

She looked up, her eyebrows raised as she held her letter aloft.

“Goodness, Abe, it could be anyone . Any woman who knows Mr. Aiden’s name and his relationship with the agencies in question.

I imagine they check the log for known persons, but do not investigate beyond that when filling orders for Society’s happenings. ”

“Indeed,” he said with a sigh. “So it may be a tantalizing thread that leads to yet another dead end. Disappointing, isn’t it?”

She frowned. “Yes. Does this sort of thing happen to you often in your line of work?”

“Mercifully, it does not,” he answered, crossing the room to take a seat on one of the sofas opposite the fireplace. “Most criminals and ne’er-do-wells are just like the rest of us. That is to say, they are rather simple.”

Her frown quivered with amusement. “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”

He laughed. “Shall I endeavor to be kinder to the miscreants? If you order it, I will obey.”

“Well, I suppose someone ought to be,” she said with a roll of her eyes, pushing herself to stand. “Here is my letter. Will you read it now? I confess I am feeling impatient for your thoughts. Consider it an order, I suppose.”

“Bring it here,” he said playfully, holding out his hand. “I endeavor to please.”