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M illie did not knock. She blew into Dot’s home like it belonged to her and marched straight past several scandalized staff to Dot’s study.

Dot, of course, might not have even been home, but Millie somehow knew she was and exactly where to find her.

Ember was present, too, which suited Millie’s tumult very well. The two women had set up a painted cork board propped up against couch cushions and, for some reason, were heaving little metal darts at it from behind the opposite couch.

They both looked up like they’d been caught doing something tawdry. Dot looked startled, and Ember immediately broke into a wide grin.

“Perfect!” Ember said, grabbing Millie by the wrist without a single question about the reason she’d just blown in unannounced. “Take this and heave it at the center of that board, will you? Dorothy here insists it’s too difficult.”

Millie looked down at the heavy little projectile in her hand, then up at the cork board, and without really processing the oddity of the situation, she threw it. It hit near center, not perfect, but hard enough that the board heaved over and onto its back.

“Too difficult,” clipped Dot, crossing her arms.

“Bah,” said Ember, immediately walking over to straighten the board again, prising out the dart Millie had thrown with no small effort.

“My mam says the pub in Kildare got one and it’s so popular, they already bought two more.

She mailed this one to me with a very loud letter about how the Forge needs one before week’s end, and mind, she probably wrote it some weeks ago! ”

Dot looked skeptical but somehow cowed by the opinion of Ember’s mother, whom no one in this room other than Ember had ever met.

Ember held up the dart, which Millie could now see was slightly bent at the tip, and frowned.

“You,” she said to Millie, “throw from farther away, I think.”

Dot, at this moment, finally seemed to register Millie’s presence, turning to look at her friend with a slow phase into mild concern. “Goodness,” she said, swatting Ember away from a new delivery of darts for Millie, “what’s happened? Sit down.”

Millie allowed herself to be pushed into a cushiony embrace, watching the dart board get demoted to the armrest while Dot and Ember took the couch across from her.

She felt a little chord of regret for interrupting their fun.

Perhaps what she had really needed, after all, was just to mutilate more darts.

“Did you know,” she began, awkwardness finally finding its way under her skin, “that Freddy is in London and living with Abraham Murphy?”

“Yes?” said Dot.

“What!” Ember grinned.

Millie sighed.

“He had to go somewhere,” Dot reasoned. “Silas and I thought it was a good idea. Mr. Murphy was in need of more accommodating living quarters so he could open his new office, and he is someone we can trust to act as a sort of … chaperone,” she chose the last word with a wrinkle of her nose.

“Oh, well, that’s delightful.” Ember chuckled. “I don’t know Abe well, but I couldn’t have imagined a more ridiculous pairing.”

“I do know him well,” Millie found herself interjecting, frustrated that her dearest friends were so completely oblivious. Even their looks of mutual surprise irritated her, dampening her ability to rant.

She paused, realizing that perhaps she, like Abe, had deliberately not told them. Was she just as bad as he was?

“We’ve been … solving a case together,” she attempted, knowing how it sounded, grimacing.

“Is that what we’re calling it?” Ember asked, her eyes twinkling. “Millie, I didn’t know you had it in you. He is a handsome devil, I’ll give you that.”

“He’s been courting you?” Dot attempted to clarify, looking like a concerned matron. “And he didn’t tell you about Freddy?”

“He hasn’t been courting me,” Millie protested weakly.

Dot frowned. She obviously disagreed without knowing a single detail to justify her disagreement. It made Millie want to pull a blanket over her head until the end of her life.

“If he didn’t tell you about Freddy,” Ember said, leaning back on the cushions like she was simply taking in a comedy at the Covent Garden theater, “then he probably hasn’t told Freddy about you.”

“So what?” Millie replied, clinging to her impatience because it felt better than her shame.

Dot made a face. “You’re Freddy’s sister-in-law, Millie,” she reminded her. “And Freddy is a peer. Abe is … probably not what Freddy would consider appropriate.”

“Bang appropriate!” Ember cut in, excitedly malicious. “Freddy is a possessive little snot. He will hate sharing Abe, and even though he barely knows you, Millie, he will also hate sharing you. Abe getting cozy with Claire’s sister? Oh, he’ll burst into flame.”

“Ember,” Dot said.

Do shut up , they all heard in Dot’s unspoken voice.

It just made Ember grin again. “But we’re angry at Abe, aye? I just want to make sure I’m reacting properly.”

“ Angry is a strong word,” lied Millie.

“Mr. Murphy will make it right,” Dot said gently, as though he already had and she’d seen it in a crystal ball. “He’s been invaluable in this whole affair, even back when he was spying on us. And besides, we’re all a little stupid about Freddy.”

“Yes,” agreed Millie impatiently, “you all are.”

Ember giggled.

“How is everything else going, dear?” Dot put in, frowning at both of her lesser companions. “Are you certain this doesn’t just feel larger than it is because of everything else? The letter?”

“The letter,” Millie echoed, deflating. “I should never have written it.”

This won sounds of protest from the others.

“Don’t you ever say that,” Ember snapped, her wry amusement gone in an instant. “Don’t even think it. If it didn’t need to be written, then Society wouldn’t be boiling like lobsters over it. No one makes a fuss over something that shouldn’t exist.”

“Lady Bentley is no longer the sole suspect,” Dot put in, nodding along in agreement. “The whisper campaign has worked. I daresay Mrs. Smith is enjoying her voluntary inclusion in the suspect pool entirely too much. And now no one can say a woman didn’t write it.”

“It has spoiled matches,” Millie said softly, “inspired a runaway who still hasn’t been found. And I read something last week about a coalition of servant women buying a boarding house together after reading it. I didn’t tell them to do that. I don’t even know if it’s wise.”

“Well, that is kind of the point, isn’t it?” Ember pointed out, picking up a discarded dart to examine it in her lap. She flicked her finger over the sharp tip. “They don’t need to be told. It means what you said is true.”

Millie considered this, still not convinced. It made the pain around Abe and Freddy a little fuzzier, yes, but only because there was more anxiety to share when she really thought about it.

If they hadn’t been interrupted again right at that moment, she might have never come up with an answer at all. But, as it was—

“Mrs. Cain!” called out an absolutely overwhelmed maid just as the door to the study flew open again. “I am so sorry!”

Hannah Lazarus appeared, fleeing past the maid into the study. She wasn’t angry like Millie had been. Her face was tear streaked and she was gulping for air, trying hard to push the maid out of the room so she could shut the door behind her.

“Miss Lazarus!” Dot cried out, coming to her feet to shoo the maid away.

Hannah looked around the room and chose Millie to collapse onto, her little body shaking like she’d been struck by an errant bolt of lightning.

She just kept repeating, hiccuping like a child who’s just had a crying jag, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry” over and over again.

Ember, for her part, quietly slipped out of the room to demand a tray of tea from the frazzled maid while chaos unfolded in the study.

Millie thought perhaps she was not a very honorable person, because as she held Miss Lazarus and watched the scene change in front of her, she felt something very odd.

Relief.

It took some time for things to calm down in Dot’s study.

The poor maid who had failed to properly vet and announce both Millie and Hannah had been given the rest of the day to enjoy as she saw fit. Millie thought that was fair. The poor woman had already worked a full day, and it wasn’t even time for luncheon.

Hannah, for her part, plied with tea and cool cloths and a nibble of biscuits, eventually got herself under control. Her face was splotchy but no longer ruby red, and the only remnants of her crying were the occasional stutters in her breath.

Then, only once the poor thing was no longer on the verge of unspooling completely, did she begin to explain.

“I found the manifesto,” she began, choosing, perhaps without full understanding of the weight of her words, to begin with an explosion. “The night of the ball. I wanted to watch the dancers from above and I came upstairs and it was in the hallway, on a table.”

“It was in my study,” Dot protested.

“It was in the hallway,” Millie corrected immediately. “I moved it out there after …” She trailed off, her mind holding up a firm barrier.

After I showed it to Abe. After he kissed me.

“After I read it through once more,” she decided, warmth building under her collar.

“Miss Yardley, do you remember that night we met, how upset I was about Mr. Danvers abandoning our dance to instead have a second turn with Gretchen Waters?” Hannah said, eyes wide and pleading. “Do you recall that?”

“Of course I do,” said Millie.

“It was the strangest thing,” Hannah continued, relief tinging her words. “Because that night I found Gretchen hiding upstairs too. She was so … sad? And I knew I should hate her, but I just sat beside her and we watched the dancers below in silence. And then we started to … to talk.”

“Do you know where Miss Waters is?” Dot put in, a reasonable and pressing question, but one that seemed to fluster little Hannah.

“I … we started to talk,” Hannah repeated, sounding as though if she deviated from the timeline of events, she’d lose her ability to explain entirely.

She looked up at each of them in turn, even Ember, a total stranger, as though she wanted to ensure they understood.

“We talked about a lot of things. Gretchen’s papa is very hard to please.

And then we found it, the manifesto, and I know this is silly, but I felt like it was written to me.

For me, specifically. It felt like it was mine.

And I said that, but Gretchen said she felt that way too, like whoever wrote it was writing it directly to her. ”

Millie blinked in surprise.

She didn’t think it was the appropriate time to say, but of course, that letter had been written for Miss Lazarus in a way. It had been intended for her to eventually see, but Gretchen? Gretchen was a classic English rose, not a wildflower.

Wasn’t that right?

Hannah continued, oblivious. “When she said that, we realized that maybe every debutante would feel that way, every single one of us, and Gretchen, she … she said we ought to publish it. I know it was wrong, Mrs. Cain. I know I betrayed you.”

She started to cry again, big warm tears springing from the corners of her impossibly huge blue eyes.

Dot, who had consumed each word as it was given, looked unsatisfied. “But Hannah,” she said, leaning forward to put a hand on top of the girl’s. “What has happened today? The letter was published a week ago. Something else brought you here, didn’t it?”

Hannah nodded, a little miserable whimper escaping from her lips.

“Gretchen told me she planned to run away,” she continued, drawing deep sharp breaths in through her nose so she wouldn’t collapse completely again. “She’s been … taking things, little things so she could afford to flee. But she got caught by a maid.”

“She’s been stealing?” Ember repeated in obvious confusion.

Hannah nodded. “But the maid wasn’t angry. She didn’t tell on her. She started helping her. The maid, I mean, she started stealing too. Only from parties. Only from people who are too rich to be hurt by it. She told Gretchen they’d run away together.”

“They were stealing jewelry,” Millie forced herself to say over the rapidly growing lump in her throat, “weren’t they?”

“Yes,” Hannah said, surprised. “How did you know?”

“Everyone knows,” Millie replied, though Dot and Ember visibly disagreed with that statement. “It’s an ongoing investigation on Bow Street.”

“Please don’t tell.” The words seemed to combust out of Hannah, desperate and pleading.

“Just let them go, Miss Yardley. Please. Gretchen’s father is …

well, he found the boarding house where they’ve been hiding.

Miss Waters has been lying low while her friend, the maid, was trying to find them a way to Calais. ”

“So she’s been found?” Dot pushed in, spots of pink appearing on her cheeks. “Her papa found her?”

“Yes, but he …” Hannah trailed off, shuddering.

“Gretchen wasn’t there. She was buying food.

He found the maid and he hit her over and over and over again.

And no one stopped him, Mrs. Cain. They just watched until he stormed away, trying to find Gretchen, and I’m afraid.

I’m so afraid he’s going to find her and do that to her too, and it’s my fault.

It’s my fault. If we hadn’t snooped. If we hadn’t read the manifesto … ”

“How do you know Gretchen was out buying food?” Ember said immediately, clutching the couch cushions on either side of her skirt with white-knuckled ferocity. “How do you know any of this, Miss Lazarus?”

Hannah drew in a shaking breath, a telltale flick of her eyes to the windows, where the carriage she’d arrived in sat passively against the curb. “You have to promise,” she said thinly, “you have to swear you won’t tell.”

Dot flew to her feet, wrenching the study door open and calling for the housekeeper, Mrs. Knox.

Millie watched frozen in disbelief as several things happened around her. She felt useless, like she was discovering just how much she’d falter in a real threat.

Ember was on her knees in front of Miss Lazarus, whispering fierce reassurances to her, holding Hannah’s tear-streaked face in her freckled hands. Dot was issuing sharp, whispered orders to her most trusted servant, “Get them inside immediately , no one must see! Call for Dr. Grady. Quietly.”

And Millie? She just sat there. She did not know what to do.