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“No, but my grandfather was.”

“Your youngest sister’s name was Marielle, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. She had that spot of trouble while I was away. Priya stepped in.”

“And that’s why you help the Spinsters.”

“Partly.”

She could think of at least a hundred more questions she wanted to ask him. She had not met his sister, as she was not part of the Society at the time. But if she asked, he would ask questions of his own.

The blackmail note she had shoved in her sleeve itched accusatorily.

She crossed to the main bedroom, which had to belong to Heloise, with its canopied bed, dressing table, cheval glass. The water pitcher and bowl were painted with a red dove. Sybil had trusted Heloise.

Little clues everywhere, and still Clara could not see the whole picture.

She checked under the bed and found a hatbox containing love letters, a gold bracelet, and three Nightingale books. The small, attached bedroom would have belonged to a nursemaid and then to a governess as the children grew older. It had a bed, a chair, and a windowsill cluttered with a collection of shiny river pebbles under a sloped ceiling.

“Nothing,” Bram announced from the doorway. “You?”

“More doves—nothing clear, though.” Had Sybil realized she would have to flee soon and was not sure who would follow her and how? Why the keys and the doves and the riddles?

But Clara also knew something about hiding secrets, both metaphorically and physically. She never kept her manuscripts under her mattress or rolled up in the flour canister. If one was serious, one had to be cleverer than that.

And Sybil was very clever. She would not hide a key near the item it unlocked. Assuming she had not just sent Clara random keys that could have opened anything from the privy to the tea caddy.

Chaperones, like governesses, occupied a kind of in-between space. Not servant enough to eat in the servants’ hall, not high enough in the instep to eat with the family. They moved from nursery to schoolroom to bedroom with very little access to the rest of the house. Not that that would stop Sybil. Very little stopped Sybil: not storms or fire, not the Thames or the Prince of Wales himself.

Clara was beginning to get nervous again.

“What are you looking for?” Bram asked in that honey-rough voice of his.

“I’m not sure,” she replied, still floating from room to room, corner to corner. “But she must have hidden something here as well. Although if it’s another key, I don’t see how that will help.”

“Right under everyone’s noses?”

“She might not have had enough time for anything else. She might have stopped in the village while she was running. It was luck for us that Granny Mab spotted her.” Or more likely, Sybil had chosen Granny Mab to spot her. Just in case.

Clara followed the doves because it was all she could think to do in the moment. There were three red doves and the rest were black, all facing in the same direction. From the classroom, the chest, the wall. All facing toward the chaise longue.

And the blue dove above it, crowning the window just above the curtain frippery.

It matched the others, down to the little spiral at the end of its talon. Sybil’s personal mark.

And it was the same blue, incidentally, as the velvet coats the marquis preferred.

Bram followed her gaze. “You’d have done well in a bird’s nest, love, with those sharp eyes.”

She would not be distracted by the flush of pleasure at his praise.

Clara went to the window and lifted the glass. A clean breeze snuck past her, rustling the curtains. The hills were a vibrant green, crossed with gray stone walls and towering oak trees. Below, gardens bursting into color, a wandering guest here and there, none looking up.

She leaned out and found she was considerably higher up than that Mayfair mansion was, and sincerely hoped she would not have to crawl out. When she inched forward, Bram was very suddenly at her side. “Don’t even think about it,” he said between his teeth.

She looked up, to the right, to the left. It was mostly thick, trailing ivy clinging to the white stone. But just there, tucked into the green tangle—the glint of brass.

“I have something!” she squeaked, excited.