Knowing Lucien, he wouldn’t mind if she took every last item in the room. Indeed, he might even insist on it. But, he would say, she wouldn’t have to because he was going to make sure she was able to stay. Evie didn’t believe for a single moment that he would be able to stop what was happening, not without giving Millie what she demanded.

Evie pounded her fist on the desktop. She braced her hands on the wood and hung her head in defeat. She’d vastly underestimated Millie. A woman with her measure of entitlement was never going to simply allow Evie or the Phoenix Club to deny her what she thought she deserved.

And Evie had been a fool for thinking she deserved any of this. She pushed up from the desk and fell into her chair, which was positioned so that she could easily look out the window at the garden, lit with dozens of torches, below. She stared at the reflecting pool for some time.

She thought of Nadine, who’d been the only parent she’d really known. As she lay sick and dying, she’d apologized repeatedly for how things had turned out after they’d come to England. Their father had wanted them to find someone who would help them, but that hadn’t happened, perhaps because their mother had been too despondent and couldn’t recall everything he’d told her. She’d been absolutely brokenhearted after leaving her husband in France. Then, about two years later, when she’d seen his name on a list of people who’d died, she’d become a shell of a person until she’d followed him into death.

Nadine had done her best to raise them, working hard as a seamstress to provide for them. Still, they’d lived in poverty, so far beneath where they belonged, or so Nadine had always said. When you heard that all the time, Evie realized, you began to believe it. She and Heloise had hoped and dreamed of a better life. Going to work in a fancy brothel had given them that opportunity. They’d been young, pretty, and they both spoke French. That had made them desirable, and, as a result, successful. It had seemed they did deserve a better life.

But who really deserved anything? There were plenty of girls in their neighborhood who were just as deserving, but who hadn’t escaped poverty or hard work. Why was Evie any better than them? She wasn’t.

She didn’t deserve any of this, and she’d be fine without it. There would be plenty to miss, primarily her friends who had become her family. But she couldn’t stay here in London, even though leaving would break her heart. It was the only home she’d ever known.