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Clara tore open the letter, wondering if this was some new form of communication from her publisher. Or the Spinsters.

It most decidedly was not.

I know who you really are.

She stopped in her tracks.

Not again.

Chapter Five

Clara was not about to let a little blackmail sour her mood.

She reminded herself of that fact several times between washing her face, making sure her trunks were securely locked, and trying on three different pelisses and then deciding they were all an unfortunate shade of mud brown, so what did it matter which she chose, really?

And as far as blackmail notes went, it was fairly vague. But it still felt threatening, try as she might to convince herself otherwise. Someone had described her accurately enough to a street urchin for him to deliver the note, or else pointed her out on the street. Had he been watching her? Was he watching her now?

All the more reason to go to the marquis’s estate.

It was bad enough that the first note had been slipped under her front door. She shivered just to think about it, and then scowled because this shadowy villain did not deserve her attention.

Even if he very much had it.

She had gone through her very short list of suspects: her publisher, her solicitor, Kitty. All people who knew how very much she wished to keep it confidential. All people who had more to benefit from keeping her secret.

Her publisher and her solicitor had signed contracts, and Kitty was her friend. Who else, then? Someone at the print shop or a delivery boy who had made a happy accident? Someone else at the publisher, such as a bookkeeper?

The list was both far too short and far too long.

Clara considered hiring a Bow Street Runner, but if she could not solve her own mysteries and avenge herself, how could she convince Priya to keep investigating for the Society?

And technically, no threats had been made. No demands. She supposed those would come next. All the more reason to leave London. Several weeks at a country house party was never something she looked forward to, but it seemed downright providential at the moment. Marquis of Eastbourne notwithstanding.

Bolstered, she pulled on her gloves and tied on her bonnet even though she detested wearing the thing. The Nightingale wouldn’t wear frippery that itched her scalp.

But Lady Clara would.

Crisp spring sunlight glittered off windowpanes and chimney stacks. Off a black iron lamppost and silvery water melted from the vanishing frost.

Off Bram, pushing away from said lamppost, where he had been leaning when she came down the front steps to the sidewalk.

She blinked at him in case he was a mirage conjured by a fevered mind. She thought of him entirely too often, and now she had summoned him from the ether. It probably did not bode well for her state of mind. Blackmail threat or no blackmail threat.

“What are you doing here?” she blurted out. “I’m sorry, that was rude of me. How do you do, Captain Thorn?”

“I like it when you’re rude.”

She highly doubted that but did not say anything else, not until he strode toward the carriage Priya had sent for her as if it were a perfectly normal thing for him to do.

“Are you coming?” he asked. “I did not take you for someone who was tardy.”

She did not move. “Did Priya send you?”

“She did not.”

She was flummoxed. “She didn’t?”

“No.”