The Governess's Guide to Arson

• Chapter 1: A Measure of Propriety
• Chapter 2: The Earl in Disgrace
• Chapter 3: Letters in the Dark
• Chapter 4: Chemistry and Needlework
• Chapter 5: An Indelicate Proposal
• Chapter 6: The Anatomy of a Flame
• Chapter 7: Waltz of the Co-Conspirators
• Chapter 8: Blueprints and Breadcrumbs
• Chapter 9: Flirtation by Firelight
• Chapter 10: The Art of Combustibles
• Chapter 11: Carriage Rides and Whispered Sins
• Chapter 12: Scouting Blackthorn Hall
• Chapter 13: A Governess's Discretion
• Chapter 14: Rumors in Mayfair
• Chapter 15: Sulfur and Silk
• Chapter 16: The Alibi Ball
• Chapter 17: A Midnight Infiltration
• Chapter 18: The Blackmailer's Study
• Chapter 19: Sparks in the Gallery
• Chapter 20: A Blazing Reckoning
• Chapter 21: Flight Through the Smoke
• Chapter 22: Ashes and Morning Light
• Chapter 23: The Inevitable Inquiry
• Chapter 24: The Mask Begins to Slip
• Chapter 25: A Scandal Defied
• Chapter 26: The Final Conflagration

To the casual observer, Miss Abigail Finch was a triumph of domestic engineering. She was a woman constructed entirely of whalebone, starched linen, and unyielding moral rectitude. Her posture was so perfectly vertical that gentlemen of a geometric persuasion had been known to look upon her spine with a sense of professional envy. Her bonnet was always pinned at precisely ninety degrees to her jawline, her gloves were devoid of ink-stains despite her constant correction of young ladies' copybooks, and her expression possessed the serene, bloodless chill of a marble bust in an unheated country church.

In the drawing rooms of Berkshire and the respectable townhouses of Bloomsbury, she was spoken of in tones usually reserved for reliable clocks or exceptionally draft-free windows. She was, as the Dowager Lady Sterling had once observed over a cup of hyson, a creature of absolute predictability.

"Give Miss Finch a recalcitrant girl of fourteen," the Dowager had pronounced, "and in six months she will return to you a silent, embroidering ornament incapable of an unseemly thought."

What the Dowager did not know—what no employer had ever suspected throughout Abigail’s eight impeccable years of service—was that while Miss Finch sat beside her pupils, measuring the exact depth of their curtsies and the neatness of their French knots, her mind was occupied with matters far less delicate than silk thread and deportment.

At present, as fourteen-year-old Miss Clementina Bainbridge struggled through a particularly tedious passage of Czerny’s piano exercises, Abigail sat in the window seat of the Bainbridge manor house, holding a silver pocket watch in her left palm. Outwardly, she was timing Clementina’s tempo. Inwardly, she was calculating the volumetric airflow of the schoolroom hearth and assessing the accelerant properties of cheap pine kindle against seasoned oak.

A draft from the northern sash, Abigail noted mentally, her face a mask of placid indifference as Clementina struck a resounding wrong note in C major. If one were to pack the flue with dry willow twigs soaked in spirit of wine, the updraft would consume the upper mantle before the smoke ever reached the lawn. A most inefficient chimney construction. Highly flammable, if one were so inclined.

"The thumb, Clementina," Abigail said aloud. Her voice was cool, smooth, and entirely free of emotion, like water poured over river stones. "Under the third finger, if you please. Not over. A lady’s hands do not leap across the keys like startled hares; they glide."

"Yes, Miss Finch," Clementina muttered, pulling her shoulders back with a sigh that threatened the seams of her sprigged muslin dress. "Must I play it again?"

"You must play it three times again, with proper emphasis on the third beat. Precision, my dear, is the only barrier separating civilized society from the wild beasts of the forest."

"The beasts do not have to practice Czerny," Clementina grumbled under her breath, though she obediently reset her fingers upon the ivory keys.

Abigail allowed herself the faintest, almost imperceptible twitch of her right eyebrow—her sole outward allowance for humor. In truth, she sympathized entirely with the child. Czerny was a tyrant, and the Bainbridge family’s Broadwood square piano was woefully out of tune. But sympathy was not a commodity for which governesses were paid thirty pounds a year plus board. Governesses were paid to enforce order upon the chaos of youth, to iron out individuality until it shone with the uniform, dull luster expected of marketable young women.

She adjusted her lace collar, ensuring it met the exact base of her throat. It was a suffocating garment, but it served its purpose. A high collar signaled restraint; a plain gray silk gown signaled poverty accepted with dignity; a pair of spectacled eyes focused entirely upon copybooks signaled an absence of dangerous ambition.

No one looked closely at a proper governess. That was her greatest asset. A governess was a piece of furniture that happened to speak fluent French and could play the harp without grimacing. She was present in every room, heard every conversation, observed every habit, and was forgotten the moment she stepped behind the velvet draperies.

Clementina’s fingers stumbled again, her thumb catching awkwardly on F-sharp.

"Stop, if you please," Abigail said gently. She rose from the window seat, her skirts falling in straight, unblemished folds that made no sound against the Wilton carpet. She crossed the room, every movement measured to convey an atmosphere of absolute, unshakeable calm.

She stood beside the piano, taking the slender ivory ruler from the music stand. Rather than using it as an instrument of punishment—a vulgar practice employed by less accomplished instructresses—she held it horizontally, using it to demonstrate the correct angle of the wrist.

"The wrist must remain level, like the surface of a quiet pond," Abigail explained, adjusting the girl's arm with two light fingertips. "Energy must flow from the shoulder, through the elbow, into the fingertips. Violence achieves nothing, Clementina. Uncontrolled force merely produces a discordant noise and damages the instrument."

Though, Abigail added silently to herself, a controlled application of heat beneath the soundboard would reduce the entire instrument to ash in less than twelve minutes, leaving behind nothing but the iron frame and a handful of ivory keys.

It was a habit of mind she had inherited from her father, the late Mr. Thomas Finch.

Publicly, Thomas Finch had been a respectable, if financially disastrous, apothecary in a small town in Sussex. Privately, he had been an obsessive, brilliant philosopher of the natural sciences, a man who viewed the physical world not as a collection of static objects created for man's comfort, but as a vast, shimmering web of chemical reactions waiting to be triggered. His laboratory, situated in the damp cellar beneath his shop, had been Abigail’s true schoolroom.

Where other girls learned to press flowers into heavy albums, Abigail had learned the precise proportions of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal required to produce a clean, smokeless deflagration. Where other maidens memorized the language of flowers—a yellow rose for jealousy, a violet for modesty—Abigail had memorized the ignition temperatures of various hardwoods, the corrosive properties of vitriol, and the fascinating, terrible beauty of thermal expansion.

When her father died, leaving behind three hundred unbound treatises on combustion and a mountain of unpaid debt to the local tallow-chandler, Abigail had possessed two choices: enter the workhouse or assume the mantle of ultimate propriety.

She had chosen the latter. She had packed away her father’s glass retorts, iron mortars, and handwritten leather journals, buttoned herself into a high-collared dress of slate-gray wool, and offered her services to the wealthy as a paragon of female decorum. For eight years, she had buried the fire of her intellect beneath layers of etiquette, Latin verbs, and embroidery floss.

"Better," Abigail observed as Clementina managed three bars without disaster. "You see what can be accomplished when passion is subordinated to method?"

Before Clementina could answer, the schoolroom door flew open with a violence that made the crystal drops on the wall sconces chime softly.

Mrs. Bainbridge stepped into the room. She was a woman constructed on a far grander scale than Miss Finch, draped in yards of amber-colored silk that rustled like dry autumn leaves in a gale. Her face, usually settled into an expression of comfortable complacency, was flushed with the unmistakable crimson of high-society agitation. In her plump, ringed hand, she clutched a folded piece of heavy cream paper bearing a dark red wax seal.

"Miss Finch!" Mrs. Bainbridge gasped, pressing her free hand to her ample bosom as though she had just climbed the Alps rather than the secondary staircase. "Leave the piano, Clementina. Go to the nursery at once."

"Mama?" Clementina blinked, astonished by this sudden reprieves from Czerny.

"Do as your mother bids you, Miss Clementina," Abigail said smoothly, stepping between the girl and her mother. "Shut the piano fall board gently, if you please. Never drop the lid."

Once the girl had hurried from the room, leaving the door unlatched in her haste, Mrs. Bainbridge began to pace the length of the schoolroom carpet, her amber silk skirts swirling around her ankles like an angry sea.

"A catastrophe, Miss Finch," Mrs. Bainbridge declared, fanning herself with the letter. "A disaster of the first magnitude. The London Season begins in less than three weeks, and my sister writes to me from Mayfair with news that will simply ruin every plan I have laid for the summer!"

"Indeed, madam?" Abigail inquired politely, her hands folded over her apron in the stance of respectful attention. "Has the price of opera boxes risen again?"

"If only it were so simple!" Mrs. Bainbridge stopped, turning her gaze upon Abigail. "It is Lord Ravenscroft. He has returned."

Abigail maintained her serene expression, though behind her spectacles, her eyes sharpened. The name was not unknown to her. Even within the quiet confines of country schoolrooms, the name of Julian Thorn, the Earl of Ravenscroft, carried a certain dark weight. He was a figure spoken of in hushed, scandalized tones by the ladies' maids and discussed with sharp, cynical murmurs by the gentlemen over their port after dinner.

Two years ago, Lord Ravenscroft had been one of the brightest luminaries of the ton—wealthy, titled, blessed with an ancient name and an estate in Hampshire that produced an enviable rental income. Then had come the ruin. It had not been the usual ruin of cards or horses, which society was always ready to forgive in an earl, but something far more dark and shadowy.

There had been rumors of disgraced honors, betrayed confidences, a duel fought at dawn in a muddy field near Richmond, and allegations of treason or financial fraud that had sliced through his reputation like a razor through velvet. He had not been formally charged—the aristocracy possessed subtle ways of burying its own filth beneath the rug—but he had been cast out. Exiled to the continent, stripped of his offices, his name rendered toxic in every drawing room from Grosvenor Square to Piccadilly.

"I had understood his lordship was residing in Florence," Abigail remarked, keeping her voice light, disinterested, and perfectly proper.

"He was! He should have stayed there!" Mrs. Bainbridge exclaimed, waving the letter. "But he has returned to London. Worse still, he has taken possession of his town house in Berkley Square, and my sister reports that he intends to attend the Marquis of Albright’s ball next Tuesday. The utter brazenness of the man! A disgraced earl walking among honest society!"

"A situation that must cause considerable discomfort among the hostess committee," Abigail agreed softly.

"Discomfort? It is sheer madness!" Mrs. Bainbridge sat down heavily in the armchair usually reserved for Abigail’s needlework instruction. "And that is not the worst of it. The gossip, Miss Finch! The scandal-mongers are revived. They say he has brought back evidence—letters, papers, heaven knows what—intended to clear his name and drag half the peerage into the mud with him. My sister says that Mr. Jasper Blackwood is beside himself with fury."

Abigail’s mind filed the name away with automated efficiency. Mr. Jasper Blackwood. A man of vast, newly acquired wealth, a financier whose political influence had grown exponentially over the last five years. He was a frequent visitor to the Bainbridge estate, a man whose cold, slate-colored eyes always seemed to be calculating the exact cost of everything in the room, including the servants.

"Mr. Blackwood is a friend of the family, is he not?" Abigail asked, adjusting a pile of slate pencils on the table so they aligned perfectly with the edge of the mahogany desk.

"He is a gentleman of the highest standing!" Mrs. Bainbridge declared. "He has been most generous in offering to assist Mr. Bainbridge with his investments in the canals. And now this... this ruined creature, Lord Ravenscroft, threatens to cast a pall over the entire Season with his ugly vengefulness. My sister says Blackwood has vowed that Ravenscroft will not be permitted to display his treacherous documents to the public. There will be war in Mayfair, Miss Finch. Absolute war."

"How distressing for the hostesses," Abigail said, her tone as dry as bone. "The arrangement of the seating charts will require unprecedented tact."

Mrs. Bainbridge looked at her governess, momentarily thrown off balance by Abigail’s profound, unyielding calm. She blew out a breath, her bosom settling once more into its accustomed contours.

"Yes. Well. I suppose it does not directly concern us here in Berkshire," Mrs. Bainbridge murmured, rising from the chair and smoothing her silk dress. "Though Mr. Bainbridge and I shall be going up to London next week for the opening festivities. We shall be taking Clementina with us for her wardrobe fittings."

"And my presence will be required?" Abigail asked.

"Of course. Someone must ensure Clementina does not slump her shoulders during her fittings with Madame Laurent, and I cannot be bothered with managing her copybooks while I am calling upon Lady Albright. You will pack the schoolroom materials, Miss Finch. We leave on Monday."

"As you wish, madam." Abigail bowed her head in a gesture of immaculate submission. "I shall ensure all Miss Clementina’s lessons are prepared for the journey."

Mrs. Bainbridge nodded, satisfied that order had been maintained in her small corner of the world, and swept out of the room, her amber skirts rustling loudly as she retreated down the corridor.

When the door clicked shut, Abigail did not immediately return to the piano or her pocket watch.

She walked slowly to the schoolroom hearth. The fire had burned down to a pile of glowing red embers, banked beneath a layer of white ash. It was a dying fire, quiet and subdued, contained safely within its iron grate and marble surround.

She took the long iron poker from its brass stand. With a gentle, deliberate pressure, she thrust the point into the heart of the embers and pried them open.

A sudden draft of air rushed into the cavity. The dormant heat found the unburned wood beneath the surface. Instantly, bright yellow flames erupted from the dark ashes, leaping upward toward the chimney with a sharp, crackling roar that filled the quiet room.

Abigail watched the flames reflect in her spectacles, her face entirely motionless.

London. The Season. A disgraced earl returned from exile with secret papers. A wealthy financier desperate to preserve his reputation.

It was the sort of explosive mixture her father would have loved—a delicate arrangement of volatile elements, contained within a tightly sealed pressure vessel, merely waiting for the application of a single, precise spark.

She drew the poker back and set it neatly in its stand, ensuring the brass handle aligned with the tongs at a perfect right angle. Propriety, after all, was everything.

"Precision," Abigail whispered into the empty room, watching the fire lick at the soot-blackened bricks of the hearth. "It is all a matter of precision."

The rain in Mayfair did not fall in clean, dramatic sheets; it drifted in a miserable, greasy soot-laden fog that clung to the iron railings of Berkeley Square like a damp shroud. It was the sort of weather that made the horses cough, the link-boys curse, and the aristocracy retreat behind their thick mahogany doors to huddle over coal fires that smelled faintly of sulfur.

Inside the library of Ravenscroft House, the atmosphere was scarcely warmer. The room had been closed for two years, and despite three days of frantic scrubbing by a skeleton staff of hastily hired servants, it still retained the stubborn, melancholic odor of dry rot, damp leather, and neglected inheritance. Dust motes drifted through the pale, watery light that managed to squeeze through the tall, unwashed sash windows, settling upon the gilded spines of books that no one had read since the late regency.

Julian Thorn, the Earl of Ravenscroft, stood before one of these windows, his forehead pressed against the cold glass. In his right hand, he held a glass of brandy—not the fine French cognac he had grown accustomed to during his forced sojourn in Tuscany, but a harsh, fiery domestic spirit that burned the throat and did very little to warm the blood.

He was a man who looked older than his eight-and-twenty years, though the aging was not a matter of graying hair or sagging flesh. It was written instead in the hard, cynical lines around his mouth and the flat, guarded stillness of his dark eyes. His coat of bottle-green wool was of excellent Italian cut, but it hung somewhat loosely upon his shoulders, a testament to the erratic meals of a traveler who had spent the last fortnight racing across a continent with vengeance as his only reliable companion.

"You are staring at the street again, Julian," a voice spoke from the shadows near the hearth. "If you continue to do so, the gossips will say you are waiting for a lover. Or worse, a creditor."

Julian did not turn around. He knew exactly what his companion looked like without looking. Lord Robert Vance was sitting in the room’s only comfortable leather armchair, his long legs stretched toward the meager fire, his cravat tied with an effortless, insolent perfection that Julian had long since ceased to care about. Robert was the only gentleman of Julian’s former acquaintance who had not conveniently developed a sudden blindness when they crossed paths on the street.

"Let them say what they please," Julian murmured, his voice low and raspy from the London damp. "They have already accused me of treason, forgery, and the seduction of a bishop’s niece. I hardly think a creditor will damage what remains of my reputation."

"The bishop’s niece was a particularly inventive touch," Robert observed, taking a delicate sip from his own glass. "Though I believe the lady in question was actually a canon’s sister, and she was sixty-two and had a squint. Still, one must admire the imagination of the print-shops in St. James’s."

Julian took his forehead off the glass, turning slowly to face the room. The movement revealed a thin, pale scar that ran from the corner of his left temple down to the jawline—a souvenir of a cold morning in Richmond Park two years ago, when a lead ball had come within two inches of ending the Ravenscroft line permanently.

"Has Blackwood returned to town?" Julian asked, his tone dropping the dry irony and hardening into something cold and functional.

Robert sighed, his playful demeanor vanishing like mist. "He has. He arrived from Berkshire yesterday. He has taken a magnificent house in Cavendish Square for the Season, no doubt paid for with the interest from your confiscated northern rents. He has already been seen riding in the park with the Duke of Devonshire’s second cousin. The man is practically royalty now, Julian. You cannot simply walk into the Carlton House and demand he return your name."

"I have no intention of demanding anything from him," Julian said, walking over to the massive mahogany desk that occupied the center of the room.

On its scarred surface sat a small, iron-bound strongbox. It was a sturdy thing, secured with a complex double-tumbler lock that Julian had commissioned from a locksmith in Milan who specialized in bank vaults. Inside that box lay the justification for his return to England: three bundles of letters, written in a cramped, neat hand on paper bearing the watermarks of the Treasury office.

These were not love letters, nor were they the harmless musings of a country squire. They were a precise, chronological record of how Mr. Jasper Blackwood, along with two highly placed officials in the Admiralty, had conspired to inflate the costs of naval timber contracts, pocketing the surplus while laying the blame for the missing funds squarely at the door of the young, newly inherited Earl of Ravenscroft.

It had been a masterfully executed piece of villainy. Julian, young, arrogant, and entirely ignorant of the labyrinthine ways of government contracts, had signed the authorizations without reading them, trusting the older, respectable friend of his late father. When the discrepancy was discovered, Blackwood had vanished into the background, leaving behind a trail of ink that pointed directly to Julian’s study.

"Those letters are your life, Julian," Robert said softly, eye-ing the iron box with a look of genuine concern. "But they are also your death warrant. If Blackwood suspects you have them—"

"He does not suspect. He knows," Julian interrupted. He sat down behind the desk, leaning back into the creaking leather chair. "I received a visitor this morning. A very polite, very quiet gentleman who smelled of cheap gin and damp wool. He was waiting for me when I went to the stables. He did not speak, but he showed me the tip of a cudgel beneath his oilskin coat. It was a very effective demonstration of local interest."

Robert sat up, his brow furrowing. "In Berkeley Square? In broad daylight?"

"Blackwood is not a man to let local geography stand in the way of his peace of mind," Julian said, staring at the strongbox. "He knows I cannot simply go to the magistrates. The moment those letters are made public in a court of law, the Admiralty will step in to protect their own reputation. The papers will be seized under the guise of national security, and I shall find myself boarding a ship for Botany Bay before the ink is dry on the indictment. Blackwood has friends in high offices; I have only a title that people use to scare their children into eating their porridge."

"Then what is your plan?" Robert asked, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees. "You cannot keep them in this house. This place is as secure as a sieve. Half your servants are probably on Blackwood’s payroll already."

Julian reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy, brass key. He turned it over in his hand, watching the dull metal catch the firelight. "The letters must be shown to the Prime Minister. Privately. At a venue where Blackwood cannot intervene, and where the peerage is present in sufficient numbers that the scandal cannot be easily buried. I intend to bring them to the Marquis of Albright’s ball on Tuesday."

Robert let out a sharp, incredulous laugh. "Albright’s ball? You are mad. You won’t even get past the hall-porter. You are struck off the list, Julian. You are persona non grata. If you attempt to enter the house, Albright’s footmen will throw you into the gutter, and the Morning Post will have three columns of amusement at your expense."

"I have an invitation," Julian said, a cold smile touching his lips.

"From whom? The cook?"

"From Albright’s aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Merioneth. She was a great friend of my mother’s, and she is eighty-four and thoroughly dislikes Jasper Blackwood’s teeth. She believes he looks like a provincial attorney who has stolen a gentleman's wardrobe. She sent me the card yesterday, wrapped in a pair of knitted stockings to bypass the butler."

Robert shook his head, though a reluctant spark of amusement shone in his eyes. "The Duchess is a menace to the constitution. But even with the card, Julian, you cannot simply carry a strongbox into a ballroom. You will look like a clerk from the Bank of England who has lost his way to the vaults. And the moment you step into the crowd, Blackwood’s agents will be upon you. He has hired half the Bow Street runners as private guards for his own property, and he will have his own bullies in the gallery."

"I am aware," Julian said. He stood up again, pacing the length of the rug. "Which is why the letters must not remain in this house, nor can they be carried on my person. I need a place of safety. A neutral territory where Blackwood’s men cannot search without causing a domestic scandal that would ruin him."

"And where, pray tell, is this mythical sanctuary? The Archbishop’s palace?"

"No," Julian said, stopping by the window. "The Bainbridge town house. In Upper Grosvenor Street."

Robert stared at him as though Julian had just suggested they dress as fruit-merchants and sell oranges in Covent Garden. "The Bainbridges? Are you entirely out of your senses? Bainbridge is Blackwood’s creature! He is practically his lapdog. He has invested every penny of his wife’s dowry in Blackwood’s canal schemes. If you put those papers in his house, you might as well hand them to Blackwood on a silver salver."

"Bainbridge is a fool," Julian agreed, "and his wife is a social climber of the most predictable sort. But precisely because they are so eager to please Blackwood, their house is the last place anyone would look for my defense. Blackwood would never dream that I would trust his closest associate with the very documents that could hang them both."

"And how do you propose to smuggle several pounds of treasonous correspondence into a house filled with twenty servants and a mistress who spends her entire day looking for social slights?"

"I don't know," Julian admitted, his voice flat. "But I shall find a way. I must."

He walked back to the desk and picked up a heavy silver pocket watch, checking the time. It was nearly three o'clock. The afternoon was dying fast, the greasy fog outside thickening into a true London pea-souper that would make carriage travel nearly impossible by nightfall.

"Go home, Robert," Julian said, his tone softening slightly. "There is no need for you to be seen here more than necessary. If Blackwood’s men are watching the house, your presence will only draw more eyes to my door."

Robert stood up, adjusting his gray beaver hat with a sigh. "I would tell you to be careful, Julian, but you have always been singularly bad at taking advice. Just remember that Blackwood is not the man he was two years ago. He is hungry. He has tasted the sort of power that only money can buy in this country, and he will not let a ghost from Italy ruin his feast."

"I am no ghost," Julian said, his hand tightening around the brass key until the metal bit into his palm. "I am the reckoning."

Once Robert had departed, his carriage wheels clattering away into the damp gloom of the square, Julian returned to his desk. He did not sit. He stood looking down at the strongbox, his mind working through the various calculations of risk and opportunity that had kept him alive during his exile.

He had survival skills now that his younger self would have found utterly vulgar. In Florence, he had lived in a small, damp apartment overlooking the Arno, sharing his quarters with a retired captain of the French artillery who had taught him the properties of gunpowder, the mechanics of locks, and the curious, mathematical beauty of fire.

"The English," the captain had often said over their sour red wine, "they believe in their laws and their titles as though they are made of stone. But everything, mon cher, is organic. Everything can be dissolved, burned, or broken if you apply the correct agent of change at the correct temperature."

Julian had learned that lesson well. He had learned that when a man’s reputation is stripped away, he is left with nothing but his wits and his capacity for survival. He had learned to observe, to wait, and to strike only when the target was fully exposed.

He reached down, unlocked the strongbox, and lifted the lid. The three bundles of letters lay inside, tied with ordinary green butcher's twine. They looked remarkably insignificant for things that carried the power to destroy lives.

As he touched the top bundle, a light tapping sound came from the library door.

Julian closed the lid of the box with a soft click and slipped the key into his pocket before turning. "Come."

The door opened to reveal his butler, an elderly man named Henderson who had survived the transition from Julian’s father’s reign to the present disaster. Henderson’s coat was threadbare, and his eyes were watery from the drafty corridors of the half-empty house, but his posture remained as rigid as if he were serving the Prince Regent himself.

"A letter, my lord," Henderson said, presenting a small, folded sheet on a silver tray that was spotted with tarnish. "It was delivered by a footman in the Bainbridge livery. No reply was requested."

Julian took the paper, his heart giving a single, hard thud against his ribs. "Thank you, Henderson. You may go."

Once the butler had retreated, Julian broke the seal—a simple, wax imprint of a flower that looked suspiciously like a marigold. He unfolded the paper and read the short, neat lines written in an elegant, running hand that was entirely unfamiliar to him.

My Lord,

I am instructed by Mrs. Bainbridge to inform you that the family will arrive at their residence in Upper Grosvenor Street on Monday next. As her daughter’s education must proceed without interruption during our stay in the capital, I shall be required to conduct lessons in the schoolroom daily between the hours of ten and two.

I am, my lord, your obedient servant,

A. Finch (Governess)

Julian stared at the letter for a long moment, his brow furrowing in confusion.

Why would Mrs. Bainbridge’s governess write to him? It was a breach of etiquette so vast as to be almost comical. A governess did not write to an earl, let alone a disgraced one, to inform him of her teaching schedule. Such matters were handled by housekeepers or secretaries, if they were handled at all.

He held the paper up to the failing light of the window.

The handwriting was indeed elegant, but there was a strange, geometric precision to the letters. The strokes of the pen were perfectly uniform, as though drawn with the aid of a ruler. And then, as he turned the paper over, he noticed a small, oily smear on the corner of the sheet, near the wax seal.

Julian brought the paper to his nose.

It did not smell of lavender water or the cheap rose-scented powder that ladies' maids used to scent their mistresses' correspondence.

It smelled of vinegar, sulfur, and the distinct, bitter tang of camphor.

He looked back at the signature. A. Finch.

He did not know who Miss Finch was, but as he stared at the small, oily mark on the paper, Julian felt a sudden, strange sensation in his chest—the distinct, unmistakable feeling of a spark landing on dry tinder.