Page 4 of The Marriage Method

Across the office, the fringe on the bottom of the sofa twitched. Shadow poked her gray striped head out to listen to their conversation.

Miles cast an absent glance in the little tabby’s direction. He had found her only last week here in Fleet Street. Small and thin, with a battered ear and weeping eye, she had summoned up the bravery to eat from one of the dishes he regularly put out for the other street cats. He’d really had no choice but to rescue her.

She’d been living in his office ever since, spending most of her time hiding while she healed from her wounds. Miles intended to remove her to his house in St. James’s Square as soon as she was stronger. He had four strays already in residence. Cats were his weakness.

His only weakness.

“Not just any lady,” he said. “The lady who Compton jilted and defrauded. His crimes against her are what ultimately led to his undoing.”

“Elizabeth Wingard,” Miss Trewlove mused. She adjusted her voluminous skirts. “Yes, I read your articles. She was treated abominably, as far as I can tell.”

“She was,” Miles acknowledged. “Rumor has it that she died abroad. Instead, as I discovered, she returned to England, armed with a new identity, and a new purpose.”

“This is all quite fascinating—”

“She founded a charity school for girls. One of those girls—now Mrs. Royce—played a role in bringing about Compton’s political demise. Do you dispute that there was a relationship between her actions and the mission of Miss Corvus’s Academy?”

“I’m sorry, are you implying that Miss Corvus founded a school solely to raise up a generation of girls to settle a score with her former fiancé?” Miss Trewlove smiled, revealing a startling glimpse of a crooked front tooth. The unexpected flaw lent a roguish quality to her expression. “I am not a worldly woman, Mr. Quincey, but that does seem excessive.”

“Not only Compton,” Miles said. “All men who have wronged women.”

“All men? How very ambitious of her.”

“You don’t deny it?”

“On the contrary. It sounds an admirable goal. I heartily endorse it.” Her face reverted to solemn lines. “Truly, sir, in all seriousness, if that is what you believe, your imagination has run away with you.”

Miles repressed a flare of aggravation. He had long learned not to judge people too quickly, and Miss Trewlove provided ample evidence as to why. She sat across from him, ladylike and subdued in her faux widow’s weeds, and yet she was sparring with him as effectively as one of the bruisers he often faced in the ring at the boxing saloon.

“I have no imagination,” he said. “I concern myself with facts and only facts. It’s what makes me so good at my job.”

“Facts, then,” she said. “It’s just as I told you in my letters—”

“Your very brief letters.” None of them had been more than a few sentences in length.

She ignored the criticism. “Our charity school is wholly reputable, and the character of both our students and our teachers is beyond reproach. Any member of the local parish council can verify that fact, and that body is uniformly male and hardly what one would label progressive.”

That much Miles did know. He had an appointment with one of its members later this morning. A Reverend Pettiman. Miles had arranged the meeting the prior month in a last-ditch effort to get information about the Academy after Miss Trewlove had repeatedly rebuffed his requests for an interview.

“As to the role of our girls once they enter society,” she went on, “I can give you the current locations of as many as ten of them who have, after leaving our care, found genteel employment. They are governesses. Schoolteachers. And one is private secretary to a gentlewoman of some stature. None of them can be classed as avenging furies.”

“What about the rest of your graduates?”

“You already know Mrs. Royce.” Miss Trewlove’s impossibly provocative mouth tipped slowly at one corner. The expression was uncannily feline. “And now you know me.”

Miles held her gaze, ignoring the pulse of heat that threatened to dull his senses. He could see what was happening here. Miss Corvus and Mrs. Royce had clearly believed that Miss Trewlove’s astonishing beauty would be sufficient to distract him from his questions. And it was distracting. But he’d faced worse obstacles in getting a story, and overcome them, too.

“Not yet, ma’am,” he said. “But I intend to.” Again, he picked up his pen.

Miss Trewlove may not be the proprietor of the charity school, but she had been one of its orphans and was now one of its teachers. If there were secrets to be had, she must be in possession of a few of them. All that remained was to wrest them from her.

“At what age did you come to the orphanage?” he asked briskly. “And under what circumstances?”

“I doubt my humble history can be of interest to your investigations.”

“Quite the opposite. You interest me exceedingly. If Miss Corvus has deployed you to the front lines—”

“A troubling metaphor.”