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T he next morning, after sleeping on a truckle bed set up in the partly papered bedchamber, Lucinda packed her few belongings and wrote a quick note to be sent to her mother, saying only that she had arrived safely (and not where she was going now).

The kitchen boy went to fetch a hack, and she and Mrs. Boston waited by the drawing room window.

“Are you quite sure your friend will have room for you?” asked Mrs. Boston. “You’re welcome to spend another night here, dear.”

“I’m sure, but if for some reason she cannot, I’ll return here. Thank you for—"

Mrs. Boston interrupted. “Who is that across the street? I haven’t seen her before.”

“Which one?” A woman in a dove grey gown, carrying a marketing basket, was speaking to a maid leaning on her broom.

“The one with the basket. I don’t like the look of her.”

“Why not?” Lucinda asked.

“Because she doesn’t belong here, and she’s chatting with my neighbor’s maid. She may be asking innocent-sounding questions with a view to burgling the house.”

“Or she may simply be asking directions,” Lucinda said. The woman held on to her wide-brimmed bonnet, from under which wisps of fair hair danced in the breeze.

“You don’t live in London, dear,” Mrs. Boston said. “It’s not like in the country, where everyone knows everyone else.”

A hackney drew up, the kitchen boy clinging on behind. The boy jumped down to open the coach door for Lucinda, and Mrs. Boston said, “Do write to let me know you’ve arrived safely, dear.”

“I shall,” said Lucinda, thanking her again. She went out the door, eyeing the woman with the basket despite herself. The woman said a cheery goodbye to the maid and began to cross the street. What if...?

If Lord Restive were a spy and had realized that he’d been foiled, might he have someone watching her? Someone with a nefarious plan.

No. She wasn’t living in an adventure novel. This was mundane old London...

There was nothing mundane about a secret code. On impulse, she told the jarvey, “Harley Street,” and climbed in. The woman with the basket passed the coach and hurried away in the opposite direction.

“I’m imagining things,” Lucinda told herself, but since she was now committed to going to Harley Street, she resigned herself to visiting the family solicitor and her trustee, Mr. Williams.

Progress through the busy streets was slow, but eventually the hackney came to a halt. The jarvey said, “What number, miss?”

“It’s not far. I’ll walk from here.” She paid the jarvey and walked slowly down the pavement, wondering how much she would be obliged to tell Mr. Williams. Just the blunt truth about her sister, she thought.

He would frown and tut, like Mrs. Boston.

It would be years before Susannah—and her mother and herself—lived this elopement down.

She could only hope it wouldn’t prevent her from finding suitable work.

She rapped on the door and waited, glancing idly about. At the corner, a woman with a basket, holding onto a tiny cap from which her fair hair flew every which way in the breeze, descended from a coach.

Basket, blond hair, grey gown, even the way she stood were the same. Only the hat was different.

Heart thudding, she faced the door again.

Her business with Mr. Williams took too long, including as it did two pots of tea, a plate of macaroons, and reminiscences of respectable, sadly deceased family members such as her father.

Mr. Williams tried to call her a hack, but Lucinda refused, saying it was only a short distance to Dorothea’s house.

“I have just enough money to get home,” she said.

“I refuse to waste it on a walk of less than a mile.”

He offered to give her an advance on her inheritance to pay for the hack, but she refused that as well. “I shall need every penny when I come of full age.”

He sighed his disapproval but rang for the maid to show her out.

“Is there a mews behind the house?” she asked the maid. “I’d rather go that way—it will be quicker.”

The obliging maid helped Lucinda remove her cloak and replace it with a shawl and a lace cap. She probably looked dreadful, but different, which was all that mattered. She hurried down the mews and took a circuitous route to Dorothea’s house.

~ * ~

“H ow many people have had access to this book?” Restive demanded, pacing back and forth in Dorothea Hale’s drawing room, one of the few places where he could be himself. He liked Dorothea, a stunningly beautiful fair-haired lady who had never attempted to reel him in.

He counted on his fingers. “The chap in France who wrote the message. Davis. Me. Miss Belair, and God knows who else in her house, but if her sister really did elope—”

Dorothea interrupted him. “Her sister is the sort who would elope, heedless of the effect on others, and her mother is a ninny. The servants are just that—servants who’ve been there forever.”

He already knew all this, which was the opposite of reassuring. “Then it’s Miss Belair who replaced the message.”

“Why would she do that? Did you read it? How can you know it’s not the same?”

“Because I couldn’t decipher it.” He took his coat, which he had thrown over the back of a chair upon arriving a few minutes earlier, and began to empty the pockets.

“I spent half the night working on it and got nowhere. My contact in France wouldn’t send me nonsense.

” Except the nonsense of the love letter by an apocryphal mistress.

There was always a red herring in his contact’s messages, and in this case, it was also his idea of a jest. “She must have replaced it.”

“For heaven’s sake, why would she? She’s a loyal Englishwoman, not a French spy.”

“She says she has a small inheritance to look forward to, but until then she must find work as a teacher.” He paused. “If she wasn’t lying, that is. I don’t trust her.” He pulled out a folded wad of papers.

“Why not? She’s a lovely girl and a good friend. She trusted you to bring her safely to London, despite your reputation.”

“That’s part of the problem. She didn’t flirt, she didn’t simper, and she recovered immediately from what little confusion I could induce in her. She didn’t behave like a woman usually does, and—”

Dorothea broke into laughter. “You’re upset because she wasn’t trying to trap you.” She doubled over with hilarity.

“Not exactly,” he protested, smiling despite himself.

Dorothea was married to his closest friend, Cecil Hale, and was one of the few ladies with whom he could relax.

“Very well, I’m used to being fawned over, but.

.. You know what it was? It’s that I knew her as a child, and that she’s intelligent and quick-thinking, and she was so convincing in her frankness that I simply couldn’t believe it.

I’d much rather believe her innocent, but when the message made no sense. ..”

He dug in the other pocket and pulled out more folded papers and a pistol.

Cecil Hale appeared in the doorway. “Look who’s here to see you, Dot!”

Lucinda Belair walked into the room.

~ * ~

L ucinda first saw Lord Restive—and then the pistol. Terror rolled over her like a heavy mist. The valise slipped to the floor.

She would not faint, she would not . She grabbed a chair until it passed.

“Lucy, dear!” Dorothea said. “How lovely to see you. Ah, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she protested, her heart thudding so fast she could hardly breathe. “Just—just sudden fatigue. I walked all the way from Mr. Williams. Our solicitor, you know. To—to tell him about my sister’s elopement. But of course you don’t know about that.”

“I do know, darling. Lord Restive told me. He said he left you with your old governess. I’m so glad you’ve come to call, or...” She noticed the valise. “To stay awhile?”

“Yes, if you’ll have me. Miss Pringle is not in town, and I didn’t like to trouble her sister for more than one night.” Lucinda composed herself and nodded to Lord Restive. “We meet again, my lord. How unexpected.”

“Isn’t it,” Restive said flatly. He pocketed the pistol and eyed her, his sardonic expression harder and colder than ever.

“Excuse me,” Lucinda said politely, “I hesitate to disturb you, but I should like to speak privately with Mrs. Hale. I’m afraid it’s rather urgent.”

Dorothea shooed the men out of the room and shut the door. “What is it, Lucy?”

Lucinda glanced at the door and moved to the far side of the room. “I don’t want him to hear,” she said just above a whisper.

“Who? Lord Restive?”

Lucinda nodded, glancing back at the door. “I don’t trust him. I’m afraid that...”

“Calm down, Lucy. There’s nothing to fear.” Dorothea led her to the sofa.

“I can’t be calm,” Lucinda said. “I borrowed a book of his, and it had a secret message in it in code. Can you bring it to your father? I don’t know anyone else in the Home Office, and I—”

Dorothea interrupted. “How did you know there was a message in code?”

She flapped a hand. “My father taught me a lot about codes. This one was quite simple. I decoded it before I returned the book to Lord Restive.”

“You did? Oh, you clever, clever girl!”

Lucinda dug in her reticule and passed a slip of paper to her friend.

“Here it is. I have no idea what it means. It’s a verse from the Bible in Anglo-Saxon—very old English—with a few extra words inserted.

I underlined the words which don’t belong; perhaps they are the message, but it doesn’t make any sense.

In any event, I thought you might know to whom to give it.

” She glanced at the door again. “I’m afraid Lord Restive is a traitor. ”

Dorothea read the message, frowning. “I too wonder what it means.” She shook her head. “He’s not a traitor, darling. Unfortunately, I can’t say more, but—”

“If he’s not a traitor, why is he receiving secret messages? Why was he helping a fugitive—one who wouldn’t hesitate to shoot someone to protect himself?”

“The fugitive pulled a gun on you?”