You’re asking the wrong question. She tapped her pen against the table and let her eyes drift to the letter that had been waiting for her when she got home, as usual. Quite a stack of them had grown on her desk in the last few weeks, as November had marched into December. Each one somehow made her feel as though she knew Drake a little better. Understood the workings of his mind a bit more. He never wrote questions in them—those he seemed to save for their thrice-weekly meals together. They were filled instead with his insights. What he’d learned from each thing he asked her.

She pulled forward the stack and flipped through a few. Frowned. They were out of order. Why were they out of order?

She certainly had no one to blame for it other than herself—she must have been careless last night after she’d reread them. Not her usual state . . . but then, he muddled her. Made her think of a future she hadn’t before. Entertain ideas she’d always dismissed.

He knew how to ask the right questions. And with each day that went by, she admired that more. It wasn’t an easy thing, wasn’t really a natural thing.

It wasn’t a thing she was so sure she was good at. A few months ago, she would have claimed the opposite. Because a few months ago, God still spoke to her whenever she asked Him for direction.

With a huff, she pushed up from her chair. After dousing the gaslights, she strode to the window and pulled back the blackout curtains. Winter darkness, virtually untouched by the few dim streetlights here and there, stared back. She rested her forehead against the cold glass pane.

It seemed like the cold radiated into her flesh. But was it that, or was it the heat transferring out of her skin?

Was it Margot’s predisposition to see numbers in the chaos that had led to Maman’s death? Or Maman’s death that had made Margot see an order where there was none?

What if it was random? A heart attack?

But what if it wasn’t, and she gave up the search, and the killer struck again?

Groaning, she pushed her forehead off the window and rubbed at the cold spot on her head. She didn’t know what questions were right, what answers were worth pursuing. She just knew that the evening stretched out long and endless before her, and she didn’t want to spend it alone with her newspapers.

The duchess had sent round another journal. She could read that. Once upon a time, a free evening plus a new scientific journal equaled guaranteed happiness.

But that was when Maman would be there on the couch, knitting. Somehow having that company, even when silent, made a difference.