“Come to us for all your clandestine needs,” said Iris. “You know our rates.”

Lady Matheson walked towards the door, which the bodyguard opened before she even reached it.

“I’ll need those back,” said Mrs. Fisher, indicating the letters.

“Lady Matheson,” called Iris.

The woman stopped and turned.

“Do you have any letters that you know to be written by Princess Alice?” asked Iris. “We should have them for comparison.”

“We’ve already thought of that,” said Lady Matheson. “Fortunately, she kept up correspondence with her family here after marrying. We retrieved a set from the archives. We’ll bring them with us.”

“Until tomorrow, then,” said Iris.

“Goodbye,” said Mrs. Fisher.

Iris and Gwen waited until the footsteps receded down the stairwell and the front door opened and closed. Then Iris went out to the landing and peered out the window in time to see the bodyguard holding open the door of a black Bentley.

“They’re gone,” Iris reported as she came back into the office. “Now, tell me what that was all about.”

“I realised that I don’t trust my cousin,” said Gwen.

“Neither do I,” said Iris. “Not from the first. What changed?”

“You asked where our loyalties should lie,” said Gwen. “Well, I thought about that while we were all in here. What is it that we are doing at The Right Sort, Iris?”

“We run a marriage bureau,” said Iris.

“Exactly. We bring people together. We each came to this enterprise from a different direction but with the same goals—part altruism, part fun, part profit, part whatever. Part friendship, I would hope.”

“That, for me, is the largest part.”

“For me as well,” said Gwen. “But what we do here is in the service of love. It sounds corny, I know, but it’s the truth. Don’t you agree?”

“I suppose I do,” said Iris. “I’ve never put it so bluntly. And it has been pointed out that I am working towards that goal having never experienced it myself.”

“That was pointed out by your ex-fiancé under circumstances that were rather heated, as I recall,” said Gwen. “I would not accept that as an accurate description of the Iris Sparks that I know. I think that you are entirely capable of love, and that you did love him, at least for a time.”

“Then I destroyed that love in the service of King and country.” Iris sighed. “C’est la guerre, n’est-ce pas?”

“But the war is over,” said Gwen. “Now we are being asked to possibly thwart a relationship, one that could happily continue if the ignorance of the parties is maintained. Patience was lying about burning the letters. I could see it in her eyes. I don’t believe for a moment that she would hesitate to destroy the royal romance if she saw fit, whether it suited the Crown’s purposes or not.”

“And you object to that.”

“I do. Strenuously. And there’s another thing.”

“What?”

“These letters don’t belong to her,” said Gwen. “They didn’t belong to Gerald Talbot, they don’t belong to the blackmailer, and they don’t belong to the Crown. The only person with proper rights to them is Princess Alice. That is why I said the two of us should handle the exchange. Once we retrieve the letters, we should return them to her and no one else.”