“We won’t leave for a few days. I have some business to attend to first.”

Curry waited for Ian to indicate what business, but Ian returned to studying the ring in silence. He lost himself contemplating the sparkle of every facet on each tiny diamond until the water turned cold, and Curry worriedly pulled the plug on the drain.

Detective Inspector Lloyd Fellows paused before he rang the bell of the Park Lane home of Sir Lyndon Mather. Detective Inspector, Fellows reminded himself, recently risen from the subordinate gloom of sergeant despite the last chief’s determination to keep Fellows humble.  But all good chief inspectors were called to peaceful retirement, and the incoming chief had found it incredible that Fellows had languished so long as a mere sergeant.

So why had Fellows risked all by rushing to Park Lane to Mather’s summons? He’d read the note in rising excitement, burned it, then left the office. He’d grated his teeth at the slowness of hansom cabs until he stood on the doorstep of the palatial house.

Fellows hadn’t bothered to mention the journey to his chief. Anything to do with the Mackenzies was verboten to Detective Fellows, but Fellows reasoned that what his chief didn’t know would not hurt him.

A stiff butler with his nose in the air answered the door and directed Fellows into an equally stiff reception room.  Someone had crammed the room with draped tables and costly objects d’art, including photographs in silver frames of stiff people.

The reception room said, We have money, as though living in Park Lane hadn’t already conveyed the same. Fellows knew, however, that Sir Lyndon Mather was a bit up against it.  Mather’s investments had been volatile, and he needed a large infusion of cash to help him out. He’d been about to marry a widow of means, which ought to have kept him from bankruptcy. But a couple of days ago, a notice had appeared in the newspaper that the wedding was off. Mather must be feeling the pinch of that.

The butler returned after Fellows had paced for half an hour, and led him to a lavish sitting room across the hall.  More draped tables, gilded knickknacks, and people in silver frames.

Mather, a blond and handsome man that the French might call debonair, came forward and stuck out his hand.  “Well met, Inspector. I won’t invite you to sit down. I imagine that when you hear what I’ve got to say, you’ll want to hurry out and make arrests.”

Fellows hid his annoyance, hating when other people told him his job. The average man obtained his knowledge of Scotland Yard from fiction or the newspapers, neither of which was very accurate.

“Whatever you say, sir,” Fellows said.

“Lord Ian Mackenzie’s gone to Paris. Early this morning.  My butler had it from my footman, who walks out with a girl who worked in Lord Ian’s kitchen. What do you make of that?”

Fellows tried to conceal his impatience. He knew Ian Mackenzie had gone to Paris, because he made it his business to know exactly what Lord Ian Mackenzie was doing at all times. He had no interest in servants’ gossip, but he answered, “Has he indeed?”

“You know about the murder in Covent Garden last night?” Mather watched him carefully.

Of course Fellows knew about the murder. It wasn’t his case, but he’d been briefed on it early this morning. Body of a woman found in her room at a boardinghouse near the church, stabbed to death with her own sewing scissors. “Yes, I heard of it.”

“Do you know who went to that house last night?”

Mather smiled triumphantly. “Ian Mackenzie, that’s who.” Fellows’s heart started to race, his blood tingling as body as when he made love to a woman. “How do you know that, sir?”

“I followed him, didn’t I? Bloody Mackenzies think they can have everything their own way.”

“You were following him? Why was that, sir?” Fellows kept his tone calm, but he found breathing difficult. At last, at long last.

“Why isn’t important. Are you interested in the details?” Fellows removed a small notebook from his coat pocket, opened it, and retrieved a pencil from the same pocket. “Go on.”

“He got into his coach in the wee hours of the morning and went to Covent Garden. He stopped at the corner of a tiny lane, coach too big to go into it. He went down the lane on foot, entered a house, stayed maybe ten minutes, then hurried out again. Then he goes to Victoria Station and takes the first train out. I returned home to hear my butler say that Mackenzie had gone to France, and then I opened my morning paper and read about the murder. I put two and two together, and decided that rather than tell a journalist, I should consult the police.”

Mather beamed like a schoolboy proud to tattle on another schoolboy. Fellows digested the information and put it with what he already knew.

“How do you know Lord Ian entered the same house where the murder was committed?”

Mather reached into his frock coat and pulled out a piece of paper. “I wrote down the address when I followed him. I wondered whom he was visiting. His fancy piece Ithought.  I wanted to give the information to Mrs.... to another person.” He handed the paper to Fellows. Number 23 St. Victor Court. The very address at which a former prostitute called Lily Martin had been found dead early this morning.  Fellows tried to keep his excitement in check as he slid the paper into his notebook. He’d been trying to land Ian Mackenzie in the dock for five years, and maybe this new development would let him.

He calmed himself. He’d have to pursue this carefully—no mistakes, make certain everything was proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. When he presented the evidence to his chief, it would have to be something that Fellows’s superiors couldn’t dismiss, couldn’t ignore, couldn’t keep quiet, no matter how much weight the duke, Hart Mackenzie, tried to throw around.

“If you don’t mind, sir,” Fellows said. “Please keep this information to yourself. I will act upon it, rest assured, but I don’t want him warned. All right?”

“Of course, of course.” Mather tapped his nose and winked. “I’m your man.”

“Why did you quarrel with him?” Fellows asked, putting away his notebook and pencil.

Mather’s hands balled in his pockets. “That’s rather personal.” “Something to do with breaking your engagement with Mrs. Ackerley?” Who had also gone to Paris, Fellows knew from checking up on Mather.

Mather went scarlet. “Blackguard stole her out from under my nose, telling her some pack of lies. The man is a snake.”

Likely the lady had found out about Mather’s longing for his old school days of corporal punishment. Fellows had learned that Mather kept a house of ladies where he indulged in that sort of thing. Inspector Fellows liked to be thorough.

Mather looked away. “I shouldn’t like that to get about. The newspapers . . .”

“I understand, sir.” Fellows tapped his nose in imitation of Mather. “It will be between us.”

Mather nodded, his face still red. Fellows left the house in great spirits, then returned to Scotland Yard and requested leave.

After five long years, he at last saw a chink in the armor that was the Mackenzie family. He would put his finger in the chink and rip their armor to shreds.

“How very vexing.” Beth carried the newspaper to better light at the window, but the tiny print said the same thing.

“What is, ma’am?” Her newly hired companion, Katie Sullivan, a young Irish girl who’d grown up in Beth’s husband’s parish, looked up from sorting the gloves and ribbons Beth had bought from a Parisian boutique.  Beth threw down the newspaper and lifted her satchel of art things. “Nothing important. Shall we go?” Katie fetched wraps and parasols, muttering darkly, “ Tis a long way up that hill to watch you stare at a blank piece of paper.”

“Perhaps today I will be inspired.”

Beth and Katie left the narrow house Beth had hired and climbed into the small buggy her French footman had run to fetch. She could have afforded a large carriage with a coachman to drive her, but Beth was frugal by habit. She saw no reason to keep an extravagant conveyance she didn’t need.  Today she drove distractedly, her gloved hands fidgety, much to the horse’s and Katie’s annoyance.  The newspaper she’d been reading was the Telegraph from London. She took several Paris newspapers as well, her father having taught her to speak and read French fluently, but she liked to keep up with what was going on at home.  What vexed Beth today was a story about how lords Ian and Cameron Mackenzie had nearly come to blows in a restaurant, fighting about a woman. The woman in question was a famous soprano, the very one who’d enchanted Beth at Covent Garden the week before. Many people had witnessed the event and related it to the newspapers with glee.

Beth shook the reins impatiently, and the horse tossed his head. While Beth didn’t regret turning down Lord Ian’s proposal, it was a bit galling to find that he’d been quarreling with his brother over the heavy-bosomed soprano shortly after Beth had refused him. She’d have liked him to feel a little bit sorry.

She tried to forget the story and concentrated on maneuvering through the wide Parisian boulevards that became the jumbled streets of Montmartre. At the top of the hill she found a boy to watch the horse and buggy, and she trekked to the little green she liked, Katie grumbling behind her.  Montmartre still had the feeling of a village, with narrow, crooked streets, window boxes bursting with summer flowers, and trees dotting slopes down to the city. It was a far cry from the wide avenues and huge public parks of Paris, which, Beth understood, was why artists and their models had flocked to Montmartre. That and the rents were cheap.  Beth set up her easel in her usual place and sat down, pencil poised over a clean piece of paper. Katie plopped onto the bench next to her, listlessly watching the artists, would-be artists, and hangers-on who roamed the streets.  This was the third day Beth had sat here studying the vista of Paris, the third day her paper had remained blank.  She’d realized after her initial excitement of purchasing pencils, paper, and easel that she had no idea how to draw.  Still, she’d come up the hill each afternoon and set out her things. If nothing else, she and Katie were getting plenty of exercise.

“Do you think she’s an artist’s model?” Katie asked.  She jerked her chin at a lovely red-haired woman who strolled with several other ladies on the other side of the street. The woman wore a pale gown with a gossamer overskirt pulled back to reveal a beribboned underskirt. Her small hat was tastefully trimmed with flowers and lace and tipped provocatively over her eyes. Her parasol matched her dress, and she carried it at a becoming angle.

She had an air of allure about her that made heads turn when she passed. It wasn’t anything she did on purpose, Beth decided with a touch of envy. Everything about her enticed. She was simply a joy to look at.

“I couldn’t say,” Beth replied after an all-over surveillance.

“But she certainly is very pretty.”

“I wish I were beautiful enough to be a model.” Katie sighed. “Not that I would. Me dear old mother would whip the skin off me. Dreadful wicked ladies they must be, taking off their clothes to be painted.”

“Perhaps.” The woman disappeared around the corner with her cluster of friends, lost to sight.

“And what about him? He looks like an artist.”

Beth glanced to where Katie indicated, and froze.  The man didn’t have an easel—he lounged on a bench with one foot on it and moodily watched a twitchy young man glob paint on a canvas. He was a big man, barely fitting on the delicate stone bench. He had dark hair touched with red, a square, hard face, and enticingly broad shoulders.  Beth’s breath poured back into her lungs as she realized the man was not, in fact, Lord Ian Mackenzie. He looked very much like Ian, though, the same forbidding face, the same air of power, the same set of jaw. But this man’s hair shone redder in the sunlight, he having set his hat on the bench next to him.

He was definitely another Mackenzie. She’d read that Hart, the Duke of Kilmorgan, had traveled to Rome on some government business, she’d met Lord Cameron in London, so by process of elimination, this must be Lord Mac, the famous artist.

As though he felt her scrutiny, Lord Mac turned his head and looked straight at her.

Beth flushed and snapped her eyes back to her blank paper.  Breathing hard, she put her pencil to the page and drew an awkward line. She let herself become absorbed in the line and the next one, until a shadow fell over her paper.  “Not like that,” a deep voice rumbled.