PROLOGUE
KINGS CROSS STATION, LONDON
Lily Montgomery
“You have just enough time to board before departure, miss,” the station clerk behind the counter informed me. He looked up when I did not immediately respond.
“The train is crowded today...” He paused, then added, “I can provide you with a private compartment.”
It was tempting. Yet, I was mindful of the additional expense. The train ticket was expensive enough, and I had no way of knowing how long I would need to remain in Edinburgh.
“The compartment it is then,” the clerk announced before I could tell him that a chair in the passenger car was sufficient.
He retrieved the ticket card from the machine, checked the information, then handed it to me with an engaging smile.
“No additional charge.”
When I started to protest he shook his head.
“There will be only three other passengers in the compartment today. No sense in having empty places when there are those that need to make the trip.”
I thanked him.
“My pleasure, miss.”
I found the rail car at the appropriate platform. The porter made note of my ticket, then nodded. I climbed aboard and entered the passageway, then found the compartment. It was empty as the other passengers had not yet arrived.
I set the portmanteau on the floor nearest one of the outside windows, then placed my travel bag on the long seat beside the window.
I had previously travelled from London to Edinburgh before and made the return trip back through the city from the north of Scotland and a place called Old Lodge.
The country estate belonged to Lady Antonia Montgomery, great aunt of Lady Mikaela Forsythe, who became my guardian after a chance encounter in Edinburgh. Although, as I had learned, few things were left to chance.
Miss Mikaela was an accomplished traveller, successful author, and shared a private inquiry business with Mr. Brodie. She always carried a travel bag that contained notebook and pen, along with other pieces of information discovered in the cases they pursued.
“One never knows what clues might be learned that could be important to an inquiry case,”she once told me. “I write everything down.”
It was a previous inquiry case where our paths had first crossed. Information had taken her toThe Church, the whorehouse where I lived and worked as a ladies’ maid.
In an unexpected turn, I was able to assist her with information she was looking for. That encounter had changed the course of my life.
At the conclusion of the case, Lady Mikaela Forsythe made a proposition far different from the usual ones made to the ladies atThe Church.
If I came to London, she would provide me an education, an opportunity for a better life than that offered on the streets, and the possibility of travel that she had spoken about.
She was not at all what the ‘ladies’ I worked for described,nobs, as they called them. Those with titles and wealth who had no time or regard for those who worked the oldest trade in a place likeThe Church.
With the loss ofThe Churchduring a fire and the ladies put out on the street, I made my first trip to London by train.
Now I was going back. Not a stop-over trip on the way to Old Lodge in the north of Scotland. I was returning to learn secrets of my past.
Who was I? Why had I been abandoned to the Foundling Hospital without so much as a name other than the one I was given there by the nuns? Who were my parents? What had happened to them?
Miss Mikaela had cautioned me against it when I first spoke of it. She had experienced her own pain in the past from family secrets and had warned that some were best left in the past as they could not be undone.
Yet the questions persisted, like shadows that were always there, pulling me back.
I had left a letter each for Miss Mikaela and Lady Montgomery and explained my reasons for leaving. I owed them both so much and could not bear the thought of the disappointment I might cause when they read the letters.
