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chair. “Bloody hell, he knows who I am. He knows my blasted name.”
    “I always said you’d better use a nom de plume.”
    “You know my opinion of that. There are too many books by ‘A Lady’ circulating now. I have no idea how to even catalogue them anymore.” She tugged on a piece of her hair, nervous.
    “Perhaps you shouldn’t go to the Dove tonight,” Sally said with a tinge of worry.
    Josephine sighed the fat sigh, the one she reserved for dire situations, the one that expanded to fill entire rooms. This room, for certain, and perhaps the whole block.
    “That is impossible. I have to play tonight for Mother Superior’s annual pageant; she would murder me if I missed it. It is a highly anticipated event. You know we both have to go.” She stared at the wall, the weight of her actions finally settling in her gut. “What a fool I am.”
    “No, no, Josie! Never say that! You are the bravest woman I have ever known. You do
real
good. Most so-called accomplished ladies simply play at charity work.”
    Josephine never felt like it was charity work. It felt strange that Sally should call it that. Women’s lives were on the line and Josephine had found a way she could help. Over time, it had become obvious that the mysterious disappearance of girls from the brothel was connected with the appearance of certain groups of men that Mother Superior fawned over. If you watched the crowd, which Josephine did, you could figure out what girl they set their sights on. Always an orphan, always homeless, always without family or friends. It was nearly guaranteed that if a susceptible girl spent the night at the Dove when those men visited, she would be gone on the morrow and Mother’s pockets would be flush.
    From what Josephine could glean, Mother Superior had at least three groups of gentlemen with whom these transactions occurred, gentlemen with noble titles and exotic proclivities. She didn’t know what they were doing with the girls, but since none were ever heard from again, she had to assume that they had not met a good end. So, Josephine did what she thought anyone with the means would: she started taking in girls who had nowhere else to go. The Paper Garden was cramped, stifling, and smelled of rotting books, but it was a place to stay.
    She had begun writing
On Society’s Ills
as she slowly learned of Mother Superior’s hidden purposes. It was written from a place of anger at the world she lived in and published in a foolish fit of optimism. Josephine had never thought that a patron of the Dove would read the book, but now it was in the duke’s hands. He knew where they lived and worked.
    “This has to stop,” Josephine declared. “We cannot allow Lennox to sniff around here. Who knows if he is connected to one of the gentlemen Mother works with?”
    “That seems unlikely,” Sally said, brow furrowed. “He’s Nicholas’s friend and we know that Nic is not one of them. Besides, if he wants to pursue you, how would you presume to stop him?”
    Josephine picked up her cup of tea and started up the staircase. “I’ll think of something.”

C HAPTER T HREE
----
    “The men of the nobility often become bored with their lives of leisure and excess of money, so they must find an outlet to manufacture drama in their lives. Instead of working to improve our great country, they waste away, drunk on both liquor and power in houses of ill repute. But what of the women that serve them in these establishments? Much is said of the plight of the noble lady, but what of her sister in the gutters within earshot of the bells of St. Mary’s?”
    —F ROM
O N S OCIETY ’ S I LLS AND THE R EAL P RICE OF P ROSTITUTION
BY J OSEPHINE G RANT
    Elias left his mother at the clothier’s and went back to Ashworth Hall. He spent the majority of the afternoon reading the high-and-mighty ideas of one Miss Grant, a bluestocking indeed. He doubted she was actually a member of the society, but she had some radical social ideas. He