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not conducive to clear thinking.
    He wrestled the other self into a dark corner in the back of his mind and focused on watching the lady ignore the chair Westcott had offered and her maid had scoured.
    Lady Clara remained where she was, posture upright—­
    Horizontal would be better , said the inner voice of unreason.
    He ignored it and listened to a tale told with a conciseness he would have believed incompatible with the female brain, such as it was. In a shockingly few words, she contrived to explain what the Milliners’ Society was and who Bridget Coppy was.
    â€œHer father is dead,” she said. “The mother is a hopeless drunkard who takes in mending on the rare occasions she’s sober. The Milliners’ Society has taught Bridget to read and write a little. She persuaded her brother to attend a ragged school. I know I needn’t explain to you what that is.”
    Ragged schools were pitiful attempts to teach pauper children the basics they needed to improve their lot in life. The teachers were unpaid, many of them nearly as ignorant as the children. All the same, it was better than the nothing otherwise available to London’s impoverished masses.
    Most members of the upper classes had never heard of ragged schools. Being a duke’s great-­grandson, Radford was, technically, a member of the upper classes. His life had been different from most, though, and he knew all about these schools.
    The note of distress in her voice told him the schools were a very recent and disturbing discovery for her.
    She had no idea how some ­people lived in London, practically under her nose.
    But why should she? And how odd it was, her having discovered even so much.
    She was saying, “With Bridget’s help, Toby was learning to read and write and do sums. But as you know, less reputable types hang about the ragged schools. Bridget says a gang of thieves has lured him out of school, and she hasn’t seen him for more than a week.”
    The day, which had brightened remarkably when Her Majesty sailed into his chambers, reverted to its customary grey.
    A missing child of the lower orders. Radford knew where this story led. Not to a happy ending.
    First the accursed ducal letter.
    Now another boy lost among London’s teeming thousands of unwanted children.
    Why couldn’t she have come to him because she’d murdered somebody?
    That would have been so much more promising, not to mention stimulating.
    â€œBridget wishes to remove him from the gang before they get him hanged,” she went on. “She’s sure the police will take him up in short order. She does not believe her brother has the intelligence or dexterity to be a successful thief—­not for long, at any rate.”
    Oh, better and better.
    Very likely there was more to this than met the eye. It didn’t matter. The boy was doomed.
    She was wasting her time as well as Radford’s. She was completely deluded if she thought the brat could or ought to be rescued. But of course she wouldn’t believe him. She hadn’t the least idea what she was about.
    He said, “Do you know which gang, precisely?”
    â€œFenwick has been unable to find out,” she said.
    â€œDoes that tell you anything?”
    â€œThat London holds a great many gangs.”
    â€œAnd therefore . . . ?” he led the witness.
    She regarded him with a polite expression, her gracefully arched eyebrows slightly raised.
    By now Westcott ought to have leapt in to state the obvious or at least give the don’t signal, warning Radford he went too far. He glanced at his friend.
    Westcott was gaping at her as though he’d never seen a girl before.
    No, in point of fact, he was doing the opposite: what men always did when they looked at women. He was admiring her breasts in what he must suppose was a surreptitious manner, and had become fully absorbed in that endeavor.
    Hers, Radford would readily admit, were