Penelope Trewlove followed the harried young clerk down the hall of the Fleet Street offices of the London Courant. Similarly harried-looking newspapermen bustled in and out of the small offices they passed, shuffling papers and addressing each other in urgent tones. At the sight of her, some of them faltered, their attention caught between the fluttering black veil that shrouded her face and the pronounced limp that marred her gait.

Nell’s gloved fingers tightened reflexively on the raven’s-head handle of her ebony cane. It was her first visit to London, and not a willing one by any means. She had been putting off the paper’s editor, Mr. Quincey, for weeks, each of her exceedingly formal replies to his letters penned with an effort to discourage his relentless curiosity. But she could put him off no longer. His last letter had made that abundantly plain. Either Nell travel to London to answer his questions about Miss Corvus’s Academy for the Betterment of Young Ladies, or Mr. Quincey would come to the isolated stone manor house at the edge of the Epping Forest and put his questions to Miss Corvus herself.

As if Miss Corvus would ever risk allowing a journalist inside the charity school’s iron gates! She had, instead, sent Nell to deal with the situation. To come here today, in her role as deputy headmistress, and put an end to Mr. Quincey’s problematic inquiries once and for all.

A painted door at the end of the hall bore the vexing man’s name in stenciled letters. The clerk opened it without knocking. He ushered Nell into a moderately sized office distinguished by a wall of overstuffed bookcases; a small, threadbare sofa with a fringed skirt; and a massive desk covered with chaotic piles of papers and three open bottles of ink. The great leather chair behind the desk stood conspicuously empty.

“Mr. Quincey is engaged at present,” the clerk said. He gestured to one of the two slat-back wooden chairs that were arrayed in front of the desk. “If you would care to wait?”

“Not at all.” Nell gratefully availed herself of a seat, propping her cane beside her. After two hackney cab rides and a railway journey of nearly twenty miles, her left hip and thigh were aching like the dickens. She did her level best not to betray the fact. Her spine remained ramrod straight, her veil still firmly in place as she arranged the full skirts of her black bombazine carriage gown over the imposing frame of her wire crinoline.

Miss Corvus wasn’t a woman given to fashionable indulgences, and she had no patience for excess frills or frippery, but she had made an exception for the controversial cagelike undergarment. All of her teachers donned them like armor, as did many of the older orphans.

It was no mystery as to why.