Lord Compton’s bedroom was awash in darkness. Effie stopped inside, the door clicking shut behind her. She blinked into the murk, willing her eyes to adjust.

This time, there was no Gabriel Royce to light a friction match. Fortunately, Effie hadn’t come unprepared. Raising her skirts, she felt for the small taper candle she’d tied to the wires of her cage crinoline. It was still there, along with the small candleholder, and the silver vesta case.

Unlike regular friction matches, vesta matches were made of wax, with red phosphorus tips. One could strike them anywhere. Effie waited to do so until she was certain there was no one else in the room. Only then did she light her candle. It produced just enough of a flame for her to see in front of her.

Like his daughter’s bedroom, Lord Compton’s chamber was of an enormous size. In the dim glow of the candle, Effie beheld a monstrous mahogany four-poster bed, several towering wardrobes, and a full-sized sofa and chairs arranged around a marble fireplace. A bank of windows lined the opposite wall, the glass covered in thick folds of velvet draperies.

Effie moved past them toward the open door across the room. It led to his lordship’s dressing room and bathing chamber, the luxury of which seemed to her even greater than in his bedroom. But Effie didn’t have time to reflect on Compton’s propensity for extravagance, nor on the possibility that some of that extravagance had been funded by Miss Corvus. She kept her eyes ahead of her, scanning every surface as she went, lest—like that night in the library—she should be taken unaware.

She found Compton’s study on the other side of his bathing room. Entering it in the tiny halo of candlelight, Effie’s already fizzing pulse surged with a mixture of anxiety and anticipation. She couldn’t think when she’d have another opportunity such as this. She was determined to make the most of it.

The study was small in comparison to the other rooms. It contained a secretary desk, a chest of drawers, and several leather chairs. Two bookcases rose on either side of the desk. They held row upon row of thick, leather-bound volumes, their titles stamped in gold on the spines. No medieval texts, these. They were books on geography, history, and law.

Effie skimmed the titles on her way to the desk. Were these books more personal to him than the ones in his library? If they were, it wasn’t readily apparent why.