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dispense his questions and advice as well. “You may go back to Oxfordshire if all you’re going to do is interrogate me about my dancing partners, Valentine.”
    He studied her for a long moment, green eyes seeing far more than Maggie was comfortable with. “Dev and Emmie? Their Graces?” he said. “Their lives have meaning , Maggie, and they have somebody to love them. God willing, that’s what I’m building with Ellen, and Gayle with Anna.”
    “I love you,” she said, her concern now for him. “I love all my siblings.”
    “And we love you,” he replied, his smile sad, “but I’m not sure that’s enough, Mags. Not for you—it wasn’t for me, though I couldn’t have said as much to save myself. You’ll give Gayle my direction?”
    “Of course. You left it with Their Graces?”
    “I’m off to the mansion once I change, and yes, I’ll pass it along to them.”
    Val stayed long enough to finish his breakfast, but for the second time, he left without even sitting down at Maggie’s piano. When he was gone, Maggie went upstairs, promising herself she would not panic. Methodically, she searched her rooms again—bedroom, sitting room, dressing room.
    No reticule.
    She searched her back hallway and the closet off the foyer. She traced her usual path from the kitchen to the mews and then wandered every inch of every walkway in her gardens.
    No reticule.
    She took a break and read the financial pages of the paper, something she’d been doing since the age of twelve, and then repeated her entire search.
    Still no reticule.
    Her brother Gayle, Earl of Westhaven and the Moreland heir, chose to stop by and share luncheon with her. All the while she was smiling and nodding at his conversation, Maggie was also trying not to panic.
    Where in all of perishing creation could that reticule be?

Two
     
    William the Conqueror had been a bastard.
    King Charles II had sired twelve bastards at least, raising three of them to dukedoms with a flourish of the royal pen.
    More recently, the Duke of Devonshire had raised two—or was it three bastards?—in the miscellany sharing a roof with him, his duchess, and his mistress.
    One of the royal princesses was more than rumored to have a bastard son being raised by the boy’s father, and the royal dukes had propagated bastards at a great rate in response to their dear papa’s Royal Marriages Act.
    These facts and more like them had been imparted to Maggie at her first private tea with Esther, Duchess of Moreland. Maggie had been thirteen, a year into the ordeal of having her courses among a houseful of brothers over whom she towered, a year into the mortification of needing a corset before any of her friends had confessed to same.
    With almost two decades of hindsight, Maggie could see Her Grace had been trying to impart reassurance, but what had come across to a young girl floundering for confidence was something on the order of: “Sit up straight, quit feeling sorry for yourself, and stop tapping your spoon on your teacup.”
    Private teas could still be harrowing to her and her sisters both.
    Maggie had only recently begun to suspect private teas were just as harrowing for Her Grace, except that good lady had raised ten children and survived three decades of marriage to Percival Windham. When Esther Windham took a notion to see a thing done, Wellington’s determination paled by comparison.
    So it was to Esther’s example Maggie turned when her reticule remained missing for a third day.
    ***
     
    The life of an investigator wasn’t easy. Gathering information in the ballrooms kept a man up late of an evening, and meeting clients at breakfast or while riding at dawn had him out of bed before first light.
    Hazlit often solved the dilemma by spending the waning hours of the night at his desk, reading reports and getting the bulk of his sleep in the daylight hours. He was no different from many of his peers in this regard, at least during the spring Season.
    Lady Norcross