“Compton is hosting a ball to start the season. Lady Belwood will take you as her guest. Ingratiate yourself with Compton and his wife. Curry invitations to their parties. They entertain widely. You will have ample opportunity to search their house in town and their estate in the country. The evidence of his true character will be there. A leopard doesn’t change his spots. Find something we can use against him.”

“Anything? Or—”

“Something damning.” Miss Corvus’s fingers clenched on her handkerchief so tightly her knuckles turned white. “I want Compton’s name to become a byword for everything that is low and contemptible in society. I want all he touches to fall to cinders. And all he opposes to rise in triumph over him. His ruination will be the salvation of this proposal. And that ruination depends on you.”

“You presume I can do it.”

“You will do it. And I shall give you ample incentive.” Miss Corvus took a rattling breath. Twin spots of color bloomed in her waxen cheeks. “Accomplish this task, and I shall discharge your debt to me. You will be at liberty to leave this place with your honor intact, with all I have given you, and with a modest sum deposited into an account of your choosing. It will be enough to set you safely on an independent path.”

Effie’s pulse quickened. Such an offer was surely too good to be true. “How much of a modest sum?”

Miss Corvus named a figure.

Effie blinked in astonishment. The amount far surpassed that of the long-ago promised stipend. “And all I must do in return is find the evidence to instigate Compton’s downfall?” She could scarcely believe it could be so easy. “Is that all?”

“My dear Miss Flite,” Miss Corvus said. “That is everything.” She reached for her bottle of tonic. “Well, girl? What say you?”

Effie didn’t hesitate. She desperately wanted her freedom. She wanted to keep all of her beautiful things, too.

And, of course, there was the money.

“Very well,” she said. “I accept your terms.”

1

May 1864

Gabriel Royce leaned back in the oxblood leather wing chair behind Viscount Compton’s carved walnut desk as though the desk, the library, and the stately Grosvenor Square mansion itself belonged to him. The jacket of his immaculate black-and-white evening suit was open, exposing the white tie and black silk waistcoat beneath. “Seems easy enough to me,” he said.

His casual posture was belied by the menace of a Birmingham drawl edging his words. Over the past decade, he’d taken great pains to cultivate an upper-class accent—a necessary skill when dealing with the narrow-minded aristocrats with whom he regularly did business—but whenever his temper threatened, the truth of his origins always managed to seep out.