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and were I not familiar with the lady, I might have thought it an unavoidable blunder. “Forgive me,” she added. “I am still unused to your new title.”
    There was no disdain there. Only the cautious prod of a scar still tender, in the interested manner of a scientist seeking reaction.
    I ensured that my features remained carefully blank. “A widowed countess in Society’s poor graces bears little enough say in such matters,” said I, bland as could be. “Call me what you will, my lady, I have naught but respect for you and will answer.”
    A direct hit. I watched approval bloom beneath her smile. She smiled rather more than when I’d come across her in the various soirees I’d been forced to attend.
    “I did so take note of you early on,” she said in tones of smug satisfaction. I thought it to be meant a compliment.
    I paused at a still, a colored photograph as made popular by Hermann Wilhelm Vogel.
    While hardly as groundbreaking as Mr. Finch’s aether engine, the art of photography—especially that of color—was an intriguing one.
    I studied the large stone arrayed on velvet, puzzled by the blot marring the still. “And so we are at the topic at hand,” Lady Rutledge said. She did not invite me to sit anywhere, nor to locate a place where tea may be served. There was no hint of comfort here.
    Only that transaction as forged between employer and, as I suspected I was meant to be, servant to the Crown.
    “Is this diamond the stolen piece in question?” I asked.
    “It is. You may not recognize it,” she added, “as it was recut to a brilliant by the Prince Consort some years ago.”
    As she spoke, a memory surfaced—one of many bits of minutiae rattling about in my skull. I had often spent my mornings reading over the periodicals, and while Fanny insisted I maintain focus upon the gossips and other such drivel, I preferred to be rather more current on modern topics.
    I remembered dimly an article written describing the brilliance of a diamond so large that it shone with a light of its own. The diamond had initially been much larger, but after it had been cut, it had lived up to its name. What was it? Some mystical title fraught with hyperbole. I searched my mind for the words.
    “Ah, of course.” I tipped my head, caught myself before she could, and righted it once more. “The Mountain of Light.” As I recalled, it had been recorded as a monstrous 793 carats in its storied history. “The Koh-iNoor.”
    “Well educated,” Lady Rutledge said, but in the manner of an expectation rather than praise. “Tell me what you know of it.”
    This was altogether too similar to the game she had instigated in her own salon in autumn of last year. I had been given the part of the great detective, and the clues had come first at her hand, then later through other means.
    Was it because of her role as an agent of the Crown? Or did this interest come naturally to her?
    I could not ask. It would be considered cheating. Say what one might of the lady’s eccentricities, her rules were quite simple to grasp. A game was afoot, and she expected me to play.
    Now that I’d grasped the topic, the details came quickly. “Although it had been quite large in its history, it never did appear to look like anything more than rough stone. When many visitors remained disappointed in the dull color of the diamond, the Prince Consort had it cut into a brilliant.”
    “I said as much already,” Lady Rutledge said. Obvious chastisement.
    I turned the photograph around. “This capture does the current gem no justice. It is the larger of two sister stones. However, only the one was acquired from the East India Company.
    When he was still a child, and a ward of the Crown, Maharajah Dulīp Singh officially gifted it to Her Majesty. It is,” I added with some primness, “reputed to be cursed.”
    “And what say you to that?”
    Once upon a time, I might have declared such matters to be little more than bollocks— and had done