Lady Jane was a lovely woman, with fine skin that in the sunless winter had gone quite pale, though her lips were ruby red. Her eyes were lively and gray, often amused but never cynical, with the generous cast of someone more accustomed to listening than speaking. Her intelligence shone out of them. A dark corona of hair was piled atop her head, precariously designed for the dinner party. Lenox liked it best when it shook down in curls across her shoulders, however. She dressed plainly and well; the widow of James Grey, Lord Deere, she had lived these fifteen years next door to Lenox, his closest friend in the world. Only recently, however, had he found the courage to declare his love-and found to his ongoing elation that she returned it.

Far more so than Lenox, she was a member of London’s very highest society. In that caste there were two types of ruling women: those who campaigned, gossiped, and mocked, and those who through natural grace and intelligence gradually became arbiters of taste. Lady Jane belonged definitely to the second group. Her closest friends were Toto McConnell and the Duchess of Marchmain, and the three of them formed a triumvirate of power and taste. Their houses often hosted the defining parties of a season or the most select evening salons. Yet it was typical of Lady Jane that she was going to marry a man who would much rather be searching for clues in the alleyway of a slum than having supper in one of the palaces of Grosvenor Square. She never let her place in society determine her actions or thoughts. Perhaps that was the secret of having her place there to begin with.

This was the woman Lenox was to marry, whose counsel he valued above any other, and who was to his spirit both sun and moon, midnight and noon.

“Shall we take anything to supper?”

“Oh-yes-they asked me to bring wine, didn’t they? Bother, I forgot.”

Lenox perked up. “Let’s go by Berry’s,” he said.