It didn’t mean she must forsake her love of fine things. Even if it was only playacting at being a lady of wealth and refinement. The desire was no less real. To be a well-to-do lady was to have beautiful clothes. To eat delicately iced petits fours and pastel-colored macarons. To smell of French parfum and to ride in lacquered carriages with velvet-upholstered seats. Being a lady meant safety, satiety, luxury.

If Effie hadn’t a weakness for the accoutrements of the role, she wouldn’t be here. Miss Corvus had recognized that weakness only too well. It’s why she’d promised that, if Effie was successful in her mission, she could keep all of her clothes.

“Sentimental is exactly how I would describe my attachment to it,” Effie said. “I was certain it must have fallen on the floor of your dressing room. Is that where you found it?”

“It wasn’t on the floor. It had slipped between the cushions of a chair. My maid, Meacham, discovered it last night before I retired.”

“Then you must convey my thanks to Miss Meacham.” Effie paused for a long moment, still holding Miss Compton’s challenging gaze. “Is that the only reason you’ve come?”

“No,” Miss Compton said, raising her chin a notch. “It is not.” She said nothing more, only glared at Effie with a look of kindling fury.

She plainly expected Effie to question her further on the subject, or—more likely—for Effie to offer up some clumsy, premature apology for whatever imagined offense she’d caused.

Effie did neither.

A taut silence vibrated between them.

Effie felt no great urgency to fill it. There was power in saying nothing. It generally prompted one’s opponent to stumble into the conversational breach, saying too much. Revealing too much.

In the end, Miss Compton couldn’t resist.

“You left the drawing room during my performance,” she said accusingly.

Effie’s brows lifted slightly.

“And I know you weren’t searching for that hairpin, for you didn’t return until the end of the musicale.” Twin spots of color blazed in Miss Compton’s cheeks. “Neither did Lord Mannering.”

Ah.

Effie began to understand. “Oh?” she replied. “Were we the only ones absent?”

Miss Compton’s gloved hands clenched into fists on her lap. “There were others,” she acknowledged. “But you and Lord Mannering have a prior connection. You were sat next to him at dinner.”

“For that, you must blame your mother. I had no control of the seating arrangement.”

“It isn’t only his placement at the table. It’s what’s been happening while I’ve been in Hampshire.”

Effie recalled Miss Compton referencing Lord Mannering and Lord Powell when Effie had come to her dressing room. Something about Effie entertaining the two gentlemen in Miss Compton’s absence. Then, Effie had presumed the comment to be cattiness. Now, she recognized it as jealousy.