“As dreadful as it is commonplace. Men take advantage of women every day. The worst was that Miss Corvus had no one to defend or protect her. Only the same dissolute half brother who, from what I can discern, was all but complicit in Lord Compton’s crime. It was he who took the evidence away before she could use it. She said as much in one of her letters to him.”

“Her own brother betrayed her?” Effie was appalled.

Franc uttered a yip of complaint from across the room, interrupting their conversation. He had unwittingly wrapped his lead around the leg of the wardrobe. A frequent complaint of his. In Paris, he’d often tangled his lead on the cluttered furnishings in Madame Dalhousie’s apartment.

Effie had taught him a command for the purpose. “Faire le tour, Franc.”

The little poodle immediately obeyed, turning three times around the wardrobe leg in the opposite direction. His lead came free.

“Bon travail,” she praised him.

Franc’s tail quivered in response. He trotted to Effie, his lead trailing behind him.

“That’s a useful trick,” Nell remarked.

“It is,” Effie agreed as she picked Franc up. “And for more than unwinding his lead.” She pressed a distracted kiss to his beribboned head, her thoughts returning to the subject at hand. “I didn’t even know Miss Corvus had a brother. Or any family, come to that.”

“Nor did I,” Nell said. “I’d always imagined she’d sprung fully formed from Zeus’s head, like the goddess Athena.”

Effie smiled slightly. “In battle armor, as well.”

“Quite so,” Nell said. “Speaking of which…” She extracted a folded newspaper from a drawer in her secretary. “There’s a report in this morning’s Courant that troubles me.” She returned to Effie, pointing to the offending lines as she passed her the paper. “Just there, at the bottom of the society column.”

Effie read it, frowning:

Whispers about the affairs of the late Mr. Wingard have lately reached your humble correspondent’s ears. Rumors of a trove of important documents, which, if made public, could cause trouble for more than one of my gentle readers. Old sins, it is said, cast long shadows, and never more so than when those sins have been set down in ink and paper.

“Who is Mr. Wingard?” Effie asked, lowering the newspaper.

“I don’t know who this Mr. Wingard is,” Nell replied. “Only that Miss Corvus’s half brother bore the same name.”

“Perhaps it’s a common one?”

“What I fear it is, my dear, is another complication.” Retrieving the paper, Nell took it back to her desk. “If the need arises, you shall have to deal with it, just as you’ll have to deal with this Mr. Royce fellow. We can let nothing stand in the way of toppling Compton.”

“Given her supposed history with the man, I wonder that Miss Corvus trusts me to do it.”