Her friends did not even pretend to hear the question. Of course they didn’t. They saw too much. Understood too much. Such was the work they did, was it not?

  “Not a Bully Boy,” Imogen said.

  Adelaide shuddered. “Definitely not.” He’d said he was protecting her.

  “Old friend?” Sesily offered.

  “Absolutely not,” Adelaide said, and that much was true. She and the Duke of Clayborn had shared no more than twenty words on the north side of the river, and during those short, awful moments, she’d vowed never to make a friend of the horrible man. Indeed, she’d spent more than a normal amount of time attempting to uncover the man’s secrets so as to hold them against him.

  She’d been under the impression that his only secrets weren’t his at all, but his brother’s, enumerated in the folder in her hand. Adelaide made a show of flipping through the dossier, as though she had not already committed the entire thing to memory. “He was . . . nobody.”

  The pair blinked at her, blank-faced, before Sesily burst out laughing. “We are to believe that you—Adelaide Frampton—kissed some . . . nobody?”

  “For . . . no reason?” Imogen added.

  “In broad daylight?” Sesily again.

  “It was dusk, actually,” Adelaide interjected.

  “While waiting for us to collect you?” Imogen replied.

  “After you’d committed a bit of light crime?”

  Adelaide set her teacup down and stood, removing her cap and working at the buttons of the form-fitting waistcoat the group’s seamstress had created for her.

  Sesily watched her for a moment before adding, “. . . in trousers.”

  Adelaide adjusted her spectacles. “I’m perfectly well covered.”

  “Oh, yes, no one would blink at a lady racing around the riverbank in trousers,” Sesily teased with a salacious grin. “Especially not when she’s kissing handsome men at dusk.”

  “Why would they?” Adelaide quipped. “You’ve surely done all of that before.”

  Sesily’s smile broadened, revealing a row of shining white teeth. “Indeed I have. But they expect it from me.”

  That much was true. Sesily was a renowned scandal—daughter to a recently minted earl and his brash countess and, until several months earlier, unmarried, thirty, rich, beautiful, and with the absolute fearlessness that every woman on her own deserved to claim. Of course, society didn’t care for fearless women, so they’d spent years trying to beat Sesily down, calling her Sexily behind her back . . . never realizing that the name simply gave her more freedom. More power.

  The other woman did not kiss handsome men at dusk any longer, however. She kissed handsome man. Caleb Calhoun, who captained the boat from the deck beyond.

  Adelaide leveled her friend with a look. “Would you believe I stood upon that dock, waiting for you to arrive, and wondered, Now, Adelaide, what would Sesily do?”

  Sesily laughed and retorted, “In that case, you did the absolute right thing.”

  “If you both are through,” came a new voice from the far corner of the cabin, the Duchess of Trevescan, known simply as The Duchess in many of Mayfair’s finer circles, as though she was the singular representation of the title—beauty, grace, money, power . . . and a long-absent duke who cared not a bit what his wife did with her days or with his funds, as indicated by the vessel upon which they all traveled at that very moment.

  Adelaide turned toward The Duchess, her gaze falling to the newspaper in the other woman’s hands, emblazoned with a bold headline that read:

  PETTICOAT JUSTICE? OR PRETTY VIGILANTES?

  “They still attribute crimes across London to us, I see,” Adelaide said. “So all is right with the world.” After several years of working beneath the notice of Scotland Yard, the foursome had caused a minor scene at Whitehall one year earlier, drawing the notice of the new Metropolitan Police and, by extension, the papers. Surely there was no one who loved a rumor about ladies causing trouble like a newspaperman.

  “Not crimes today,” Duchess said. “A particular crime.”

  “Which one?”

  “Lord Draven’s tumble at the Beaufetheringstone ball.” It was a gentle way of referring to the man falling three stories to his death. “Apparently there was a woman seen fleeing the scene,” Duchess continued. “As we all know.”

  Lady Helene, daughter of the Marquess of Havistock, who had also been at the scene of the crime that had left one Lord Draven—odious, unpleasant man—dead as a doornail in Lady Beaufetheringstone’s prized rosebushes two weeks earlier.

  The lady’s father hadn’t simply been at the scene of the crime, however. He’d been the one doing the killing. The rotten man came from an aristocratic family that had built a fortune through the mistreatment of people across the globe. In London alone, he was invested in several private prisons that boasted abominable conditions and a half-dozen factories that “borrowed” their workers from South Bank workhouses, forcing them to labor in unbearable situations. Workers. They weren’t workers. They were children—vulnerable and forgotten . . . considered disposable by men like Havistock.

  Like many others, the Marquess of Havistock had been on Adelaide’s list for years. She’d been waiting for the man to do something that would see him sent away forever, and here it was. While most of the aristocracy happily ignored the truth about how Havistock had built a fortune, they would not be able to stomach the murder of one of their own, by one of their own.

  All the group needed was proof—which Lady Helene, Havistock’s own daughter, would be able to provide, just as soon as she was liberated from the gilded cage of her father’s London home.

  Which was where Adelaide and the others came in. “So they think it was us who gave Draven the push.” When Duchess nodded, Adelaide added, “And it was you who made sure of it.”

  “I called upon Mr. and Mrs. West last Tuesday.” Duncan West, owner of the News of London, and his wife, who knew everyone and everything one might wish knowing in Britain. “It may have slipped that I heard that it was not one woman seen fleeing the scene, but a pack of them.”

  Sesily raised a brow at that. “Surely we can come up with a better collective than pack?” She paused. “Pride? Bevy?”

  “A group of ravens is called an unkindness,” Imogen offered.

  Sesily’s brows rose. “Now that I can support.”

  Adelaide laughed, but kept her attention on Duchess. “I picked Havistock’s pocket that evening. That’s when we got the accounting of his factories.” A little book, not unlike the one she’d just lifted in Lambeth, that the marquess rarely let out of his sight, with information on each of his five factories, including worker counts, schedules, funds paid to workhouses for the workers’ day labor, and more.

  “And there hasn’t been a peep of that at Whitehall,” Sesily spoke up. “Havistock no doubt decided not to report our minor crime in order to stay clear of the attention of his major one. Honestly, I’m a bit offended. If we mean to be rid of someone, we do it publicly. Not by tossing someone from a balcony.”

  Adelaide agreed. The group might take joy in punishing men who took joy in punishing those who held less power, but they did what they could to avoid trial for murder.

  “Nonetheless,” The Duchess continued, “the papers like the story of mysterious women scorned.”

  Adelaide scoffed. “As though the only way to see the truth of the world is to be scorned by a man.”

  “As though being scorned makes one mysterious,” Sesily added.

  “Are we mysterious?” Imogen asked.

  “Not if you have anything to say about it, Imogen,” Adelaide replied.

  Imogen, wild about explosives, smiled broadly. “I like to make an entrance.”

  “You like to make a scene,” Duchess said. “Lucky for you, no one ever expects you can actually pull one off.” Adelaide couldn’t help the little smile that came at the words. No one ever expected women when real damage was done.

  No one ever expected women, period.

  “The point is,” Duchess added, “Havistock is both mad and cunning, and I don’t expect him to rest until he discovers who witnessed his murder of Lord Draven. That person—Lady Helene—is in danger. It won’t matter she’s his daughter; he will absolutely end her if he discovers what she saw. And if he discovers that she’s run off . . . he’ll stop at nothing to fetch her back.”

  Adelaide winced at the words, shuddering at what came next. “Or silence her.”

  The quartet went quiet. They’d spent years fighting the worst of London—those who misused money and power to keep those who were weak under their thumb, and during that time, they’d come up against more men than they could count who would happily disappear their child to keep their power.

  Lady Helene knew what her father was capable of and had come to them, following the network of whispers about the mysterious quartet of women who meted out justice to men who were too powerful for the regular channels.

  Like dozens of other young women before her who’d witnessed horrific events, Helene had sent word through one trusted servant to another and another and another down the line to the Duchess of Trevescan, who had immediately sprung into action and ensured that the young lady would never have to sleep under her father’s roof again.

  The Duchess had returned the missive instantly, instructing the lady to be prepared at precisely seven o’clock that evening. Lady Helene was to wait, bag in hand, to be removed from Havistock House.

  As a diversionary tactic, Adelaide would meet with the young woman’s mother at the same time, ensuring that Lady Helene would have a touch of a lead before the whole of Havistock House came looking for her. Including her terrible father.

  Of course, by the time London realized she was missing, the girl would be happily ensconced just under its nose in The Duchess’s Mayfair town house, no one in the aristocracy the wiser as she delivered a witness statement to Scotland Yard and had several lovely long luncheons with the man she was to marry, while Duchess, Sesily, Adelaide, and Imogen completed months’ worth of work to bring her father to justice.

  The whole thing would be sorted in ten days if it all went to plan, which it would. No plan would ever defy Duchess.

  “Now. Where are we? Adelaide, I assume your visit to The Bully Boys was a success?”

  Adelaide reached for the little book on the table and tossed it to Duchess, who caught it with ease. “Well done,” Duchess said, thumbing through the scribbled notes as Imogen leaned forward to lift the cube from the table while Sesily helped Adelaide with her clothes. “I imagine Alfie Trumbull won’t enjoy having lost the location of every weapons cache in twenty miles.” She looked up. “No trouble?”

  “A few surprises, but nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  Duchess’s blue eyes narrowed. “What kind of surprises?”

  The Duke of Clayborn was there.

  She should say it. It was important. He was not a fool. She had taken his mysterious wooden cube and it would not be long before he was asking questions about her, trying to understand the full scope of her affairs on the South Bank—questions that would put them all, and their work, in danger.

  The box would only buy his silence for so long.

  But somehow, when Adelaide opened her mouth, all she said was, “Alfie has a new desk—locks and false-bottomed drawers.”

  “Does he?” Duchess quipped. “If he’s not careful, someone might think he’s a businessman. Anything else?”

  “The Bully Boys gave chase.”

  The whole room stilled, the only sound Adelaide’s waistcoat sliding off, each woman staring at her as though no one inside had ever considered the possibility that Adelaide might be seen. Chased. Caught.

  Noticed.

  Even Imogen halted her inspection of the wooden box. “What do you mean, gave chase?”

  Adelaide pretended not to notice her friends’ surprise, instead shrugging one lean shoulder. “They saw me. They chased me. I escaped.”

  More silence. Then Sesily said, “They saw you?”

  Adelaide yanked her shirt over her head, exchanging it quickly for the chemise in Sesily’s hands. “Yes. It was, as you pointed out, the broad light of day.”

  “I thought it was dusk?” The Duchess asked, dry as sand.

  “But you’re . . . you,” Sesily said, moving to quickly lace a corset over the undergarment. “No one sees you, Adelaide.”

  “Well, today they did,” Adelaide replied, disliking the heat that flooded her cheeks at the words. “Today I was . . .” She paused, considering the earlier events. She’d been distracted. By a man. Spoken to him. Accepted his assistance. Enjoyed it, if she was honest. And then she’d done the most un-Adelaide-like thing she could imagine; she’d kissed him. Not thinking of the repercussions. Not thinking at all. She pushed her spectacles high on her nose. “I was . . . not myself.”

  “I should say not,” Imogen said, returning her attention to the wooden cube.

  “I told you the appointments were too close together,” Duchess said, turning, a mass of silk in her arms. “We could have sent Imogen.”

  Approaching, The Duchess shook out the black silk, revealing a lush gown. Adelaide removed her spectacles and tossed them to a nearby chair before raising her arms and allowing Sesily and Duchess to pull the frothy garment over her head, speaking through the crinoline and petticoats within. “Imogen would have been noticed.”

  “Oh, unlike you, moving like the fog?” Imogen retorted.

  She had been moving like the fog. It wasn’t her fault Clayborn had just appeared there. Uninvited. She poked her head out of the neck of the dress. “You would have been noticed when you exploded the place, Imogen.”

  Imogen Loveless was the kind of woman people noticed because it was impossible not to notice her. She was a whirling dervish—a book that could absolutely be judged by its cover. Short and plump, with a head of riotous black curls and a taste for chemistry experiments that were as likely to save the day as they were to destroy it, Imogen was a friend who was, by turns, exciting and absolutely terrifying.

  Suffice to say, she was a delight at parties.

  “Explosives can be a useful diversion!” Imogen said, brandishing the box in Adelaide’s direction. “What’s this?”

  Adelaide held out a hand as Sesily began tightening the laces at the back of the gown. “Give it to me.”

  Imogen’s gaze lit up. “What is it?” She relinquished the box to Adelaide, who immediately turned it over, considering the simple oak cube from all angles.

  From over her shoulder, Sesily said, “It looks like a child’s toy.”

  And it did. A simple block of wood, six inches square, with no keyholes, no discernible latches or seams, no evidence at all that there was a top or bottom or inside to it. “It’s not.”

  “How do you know?”

  Because it belongs to the Duke of Clayborn.

  Again, she didn’t say it.

  “Because Alfie Trumbull has no reason to keep a child’s toy in the false bottom of his desk drawer. I would wager all I have that there’s something valuable inside it.” A safe wager, as secrets belonging to one of the most respected, powerful aristocrats in Mayfair were one of the most valuable currencies in the world. Adelaide liked nothing more than a puzzle, and this one was magnificent. She tumbled the cube over and over in her hands.

  “The question is, how does it open?” Imogen asked.

  “I don’t know,” Adelaide said softly. But she would.

  “Absolutely no way that was made by a Bully Boy,” Sesily said, the words distant as Adelaide pressed and pulled at the box, to no avail.

  “Dammit,” she whispered, wincing at the sting in her scalp as Sesily pulled her hair into a wickedly stern coif, seating hairpins as far and tight as they might go. “Ow! Go easy, Sesily.”

  “I can’t help it,” the other woman clipped, shoving another pin into Adelaide’s unyielding hair. “It was all falling down.”

  Adelaide’s cheeks warmed at the words. At the memory of Clayborn’s gaze on the lock that had been loosed from her cap. At the soft relief in his voice when he’d whispered Red, as though he’d been waiting a lifetime to know what color her hair was.

  “We could explode it!” Imogen offered.

  “I think we want to know what’s inside such a curious container,” Duchess said, returning Adelaide’s eyeglasses. “Something important enough that The Bully Boys thought it worthy of hiding.”

  “Worthy of stealing to begin with,” Adelaide said, the words urgent and eager. “Which is why I’m going to get it open.” She wanted to open the thing. And then she wanted to march into Clayborn’s Mayfair town house and show off her skill. She imagined she’d shock him again, just as she had with that kiss.

  That kiss.

  The one he’d thought was a mistake, she reminded herself before looking up again to discover that all three of her friends were watching her. “Out of curiosity,” she added, though none of the three looked convinced.

  “Well,” Duchess said, coming forward, passing Adelaide a new set of gloves, waiting for her to pull them on before following the movements with a button hook. “We shall return to the mystery of the wooden cube when we are done with our current performance, ladies, which I like to call Protecting Lady Helene from Her Odious Father, and Keeping Her Safe Until We Can Deliver Him to Scotland Yard.”

  “It’s not the drollest of titles,” Sesily remarked.

  “Agreed,” Adelaide replied. “It doesn’t exactly trip from the tongue.”

  “Though I am looking forward to the bit where I flummox Tommy,” Imogen said, happily.

  Adelaide grinned as Duchess worked on her gloves. “I don’t imagine the detective inspector would take kindly to you calling him Tommy, Imogen.”

  “Nonsense,” Imogen retorted. “We’re good friends now. I’m thinking of having him round for dinner.”

  Sesily spoke around a tea cake she’d found. “You blew up his jail, Im.”