The chamber was decorated in garish crimson, gold, and green in the faux Egyptian style, with divans, chairs, and ottomans upholstered with cheap fabric meant to look like brocade. The gilded frieze that marched around the top of the walls had been sloppily done, and depicted nude Egyptian maidens adoring fortunate, and well-endowed, Egyptian males. Under these scenes of debauchery hung incongruous landscapes painted by someone attempting-and failing-to imitate Turner.

I paced beneath these bad paintings trying to decide what I would say to Horne if he agreed to see me. He didn't know me, I had no appointment, and we'd never been introduced. He could very well have the butler toss me out again, and my errand would be for naught.

But I'd been driven here as sure as January wind drives the snow, because the maid Alice had told me about Jane Thornton.

Jane was the Thorntons' daughter, an ordinary girl of seventeen: pretty, quiet-spoken, dreaming of a husband and family of her own. Sometimes Jane would visit a young lady in Mayfair, daughter of a family called Carstairs. The young lady would frequently send her father's carriage for her poorer friend so that the two could enjoy a visit or an outing. One day Jane and her maid, Aimee, had set off to meet the young lady for an afternoon of shopping. They'd never arrived. When the carriage reached the young lady's home, Jane and her maid had not been in it.

The coachman had professed shock and astonishment and appeared as baffled as anyone else. Traffic in London streets often slowed to a crawl or halted completely; the two girls could have descended at any time without the coachman's knowledge. But for what reason? It made no sense for a girl to leap from a carriage into the perilous streets of London instead of allowing herself to be safely taken to the home of her friend. A search was made, but Jane and Aimee had never been found.