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sensuality?"
    Hadrian folded his arms across his chest. "I wouldn't know." He had, in fact, taken the girl to bed on any number of occasions, but he'd be damned before he'd expose his private life to satisfy a stranger's prurient curiosity. At the end of his patience, he added, "It's late, Mr. Dandridge. Perhaps you should tell me how I can be of service."
    "Very well, then. What I have in mind is for you to make me a photograph such as this only I've a very particular model in mind."
    So finally they were to get to the bottom of all this hemming and hawing. The old goat must have a mistress set up somewhere and wanted a nude portrait of her. Feeling on firmer footing, Hadrian walked over to his pine worktable. "If you'd care to take a seat, we can discuss the specifics of--"
    "I want the most damning photograph you can possibly make. Beyond that I shall leave the details in your capable hands."
    Hadrian halted from pulling out a chair. "If this is meant to be some sort of joke . . ."
    "It's no joke, of that you may rest assured. I want the subject stripped bare, St. Claire. I want her utterly denuded and humiliated, exposed to the world for the filthy slut I know her to be."
    Hadrian shook his head and turned away. "If it's a private detective you want to spy on your mistress, I have a barrister friend who can recommend you to one of the better firms."
    "Damn it, man, I don't want some snitch's blurred snapshot. I want a portrait, a portrait such as only someone with your expertise can make, and I am prepared to pay handsomely for it."
    Desperation warring with decency, Hadrian turned back. "How handsomely?"
    Dandridge's smile would have befitted Lucifer himself. "What say you to five thousand pounds?"
    Five thousand pounds! Hadrian's mouth went dry. To someone such as him, it was nothing short of a fortune. For a handful of seconds, he allowed himself to imagine Sykes's and Deans's crestfallen faces when they learned he'd cleared his debt with Boyle, that they wouldn't have the pleasure of carving him up after all. He glanced down at his hands, still stained with the silver nitrate solution that never seemed to come entirely off, and considered all he might accomplish if he could afford an assistant to help with developing the exposures and maintaining the apparatuses and generally keeping the shop in good order. Who knew, but perhaps down the road he'd even bring on another photographer to handle the commissions too small or too mundane to interest him.
    Finding his voice, he said, "That is a very large sum, Mr. Dandridge. Even if I agreed, what makes you think the lady in question will consent to sit for me at all, let alone disrobe to do so?"
    Dandridge raked his gaze over Hadrian as though he were assessing goods at Fleet Market. "Don't be overmodest, St. Claire. You're devilishly handsome, and you have a certain rough charm that is not without appeal. I'd wager you can be persuasive indeed when it serves you. If even half of the rumors circulating about you are true, you'll have the slut spreading her legs for both you and your camera within a fortnight. Unless, of course, she fancies girls--some of them do, you know."
    Hadrian tried to ignore the ice water trickling its way through his veins. "Them?"
    "Suffragists." Dandridge spat out the word. "They are like a plague of locusts descended on the nation, a cancer that spreads with the growth of a single cell. And like a cancer, our only hope for a cure is to root them out, starting with their leaders."
    Half-hoping Dandridge would withdraw his offer, he pressed, "And you think to accomplish so much with a single photograph?"
    "Not just any photograph, St. Claire, but
the
photograph, the one that will take down Caledonia Rivers once and for all."
    Caledonia Rivers! Like exposures brought out in the development process, the impressions took ghostly shape before Hadrian's mind's eye: a tall statuesque form swathed in an old-fashioned coat, a proud head hidden beneath a