Miles repressed a flare of aggravation. He had long learned not to judge people too quickly, and Miss Trewlove provided ample evidence as to why. She sat across from him, ladylike and subdued in her faux widow’s weeds, and yet she was sparring with him as effectively as one of the bruisers he often faced in the ring at the boxing saloon.

“I have no imagination,” he said. “I concern myself with facts and only facts. It’s what makes me so good at my job.”

“Facts, then,” she said. “It’s just as I told you in my letters—”

“Your very brief letters.” None of them had been over a few sentences in length.

She ignored the criticism. “Our charity school is wholly reputable, and the character of both our students and our teachers is beyond reproach. Any member of the local parish council can verify that fact, and that body is uniformly male and hardly what one would label progressive.”

That much Miles did know. He had an appointment with one of its members later this morning. A Reverend Pettiman. Miles had arranged the meeting last month in a last-ditch effort to get information about the Academy after Miss Trewlove had repeatedly rebuffed his requests for an interview.

“As to the role of our girls once they enter society,” she went on, “I can give you the current locations of as many as ten of them who have, after leaving our care, found genteel employment. They are governesses. Schoolteachers. And one is private secretary to a gentlewoman of some stature. None of them can be classed as avenging furies.”

“What about the rest of your graduates?”

“You already know Mrs. Royce.” Miss Trewlove’s impossibly provocative mouth tipped slowly at one corner. The expression was uncannily feline. “And now you know me.”

Miles held her gaze, ignoring the pulse of heat that threatened to dull his senses. He could see what was happening here. Miss Corvus and Mrs. Royce had clearly believed that Miss Trewlove’s astonishing beauty would be sufficient to distract him from his questions. And it was distracting. But he’d faced worse obstacles in getting a story, and overcome them, too.

“Not yet, ma’am,” he said. “But I intend to.” Again, he picked up his pen.

Miss Trewlove might not be the proprietor of the charity school, but she had been one of its orphans and was now one of its teachers. If there were secrets to be had, she must be in possession of a few of them. All that remained was to wrest them from her.

“At what age did you come to the orphanage?” he asked briskly. “And under what circumstances?”

“I doubt my humble history can be of interest to your investigation.”

“On the contrary. You interest me exceedingly. If Miss Corvus has deployed you to the front lines—”

“A troubling metaphor.”

“But an apt one, I discern. You’re the heavy artillery.”