It was lately the truth. On the rare nights when she and Lady Belwood weren’t engaged elsewhere, Effie had been spending her evenings working on a series of samplers. They contained the alphabet in neat lines at the bottom, various scenes from town at the top, and the requisite raven with its white-tipped wing.

Effie didn’t enjoy the exercise as much as Nell surely did, but the samplers were ready should Effie require them. All that remained was to add in the necessary code. It could be numbers stitched outright, or numbers displayed in the form of a flock of birds, depending on the length of the message. To make it less easy for strangers to solve should the sampler fall into the wrong hands, the special girls at the Academy knew to transpose threes and sixes, nines and twelves, and the letters E and W.

With luck, Effie would be sending off a sampler to Nell within a day. It all hinged on what she might find in Compton’s study.

After the final course had been served, and the guests had partaken of even more wine, Lady Compton rose from her place at the top of the table and signaled for the ladies to join her in retiring to the salon for coffee. The gentleman stood, remaining on their feet until the ladies had withdrawn from the room. As Effie passed Gabriel, their eyes met. There was no sign of warmth or familiarity in his gaze. To be sure, he looked at her rather as he had on the first occasion they’d met. There was a certain coldness and distance about him, which she hoped was more for the other guests’ benefit than it was for her alone.

Either way, it was the least of Effie’s concerns. She had her visit to the library with Miss Compton to get through, and then a short period spent with the other ladies in the salon, before she could set her plan in motion.

Miss Compton dutifully—and rather impatiently—collected Effie on the way out of the dining room. “We don’t have long,” she said.

True to her word, her tour of the library was both brief and perfunctory. Effie had expected nothing less. She wandered obediently behind her young hostess, taking private note of the room’s cabinets, corners, and groupings of overstuffed leather sofas and chairs. Among them was the same chair Gabriel had been seated in last week, watching her from across the room, his face lit by the infernal smolder of his cigarette. A prickle of awareness lifted the fine hairs on the back of Effie’s neck to recall it.

But the library wasn’t dark this time, and there was no ravening wolf lurking in the shadows. The gaslights were turned up, revealing a room that was, in essentials, no different from the libraries in dozens of other fine houses.