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* * * *

Harriet, dressed for travel, let Cat lead the way. It would be a farewell outing, a leave-taking of the neighborhood. Cat headed south through ankle-deep snow, crunching a path through the powdery drifts, shaking his paws every now and then, and lifting his nose in the air to catch a scent. Smoke rose from dozens of chimneys. Servants shoveled walkways, and an old man, his donkey sending steaming breath into the air, his cart mounded with holly and mistletoe, his face and head swathed in a long green scarf, stood negotiating with a housekeeper at a kitchen door over a basket of green branches and bright red berries. Another Christmas was nearly come, and Harriet could peer in the windows of London to see it as she passed.

She stroked the donkey’s nose, and the holly man called after her.

“Miss, ’ave a branch of ’olly.”

Harriet started to shake her head, but the man whistled, and Cat came to him. He tucked a short bough in Cat’s collar. “Merry Christmas, miss,” he said, holding out a sprig of mistletoe.

Harriet took it, laughing. The stuff was inescapable. She stuck the sprig in the ribbon of her sober gray bonnet.

“Merry Christmas, sir.” She could not help replying. She dropped Cat’s lead and reached for a coin from her reticule, but the holly man waved her off and mounted his cart.

She turned to follow Cat, who had reached a familiar corner. There was no danger in it today. Wynford, the spy, was off in pursuit of his enemy. Cat kept going. There was no hurry. Today the rest of the Luxborough staff would leave for the country. She would send her letter of resignation with them and summon a hack for a posting house and the north, where she was sure she would find her next employment.

She was fixing this resolution in her mind when they reached Albemarle Street. The austere and regular yellow stone façade of the Royal Institution dominated the street. With a pang, she realized that it was a part of her London life that she would miss. In front of the building, Cat halted and lifted his quivering nose to catch a scent, his body tense with awareness. Abruptly, he bounded toward Piccadilly, indifferent to Harriet’s calls. At the odd canvas-shrouded building Octavia and Harriet had remarked on days earlier, Cat darted under a large gray flapping canvas and disappeared.

“Oh, Cat, not today,” Harriet cried. She quickened her step. Wynford could not be there, of course. He was off in pursuit of Octavia or the marchioness or Fanshaw. She didn’t know. When she reached the building, she could hear the dog’s deep-voiced howl receding into the interior.

She ducked under the canvas and found a great door standing open on a vast empty marble foyer from which a grand staircase rose. Somewhere up the stairs, Cat’s howls echoed.

* * * *

Charles recognized the dog’s howls instantly. There was no mistaking the deep-voiced baying. The surprise was that the unholy sound came from within the club as the cries came up the stairs and into the passageway. Charles had thought his failure complete, but he was wrong. Cat was leading Harriet Swanley into the marchioness’s trap. His enemy’s face changed at the first howl, her mood of triumph vanishing in cunning wariness. Her grip on the pistol instantly tightened. Charles saw his advantage vanish.

The marchioness spoke in rapid bursts to her two accomplices. The man holding Charles shoved him forward toward Perry. The fellow at the files left them and closed the valise and dropped it by the door. He crossed to Goldsworthy’s desk and removed the glass from the lamp.

A heavy thud shook the door. Cat’s howl filled the room.

“Apparently, we must part sooner than I expected.” The marchioness stood at the corner of the big desk, beside Goldsworthy’s slumped body. “The tragedy, you understand, must deepen. You English like a good Christmas fire, do you not? Mr. Goldsworthy, you see, set fire to his office, and you and your friend, coming to his aid, were consumed in the flames.”

She nodded to the man in front of the desk. He tipped over the lamp. The papers at the edge of the desk blackened and smoked, a small flame danced above the curling paper.

Perry strained against the bonds that held him in the chair.

A second crash shook the door. The howling became frantic. The pistol at Charles’s head wobbled slightly. “Wot beast is that?” asked Charles’s captor, glancing over his shoulder.

“The beast’s name is Catapult,” Charles said.

“It’s just a dog, you fool,” said the marchioness.

The door shuddered under a third blow. Then it opened. The dog hurled himself at the man holding Charles, knocking him to the floor. The man shrieked and writhed, tangled in Charles’s greatcoat, trying to cover his face with his arms. Cat pinned him down, snarling and tearing at the coat. The pistol went flying, discharging a bullet into the molding at the base of the wall.

The marchioness ignored her henchman, looking over Charles’s shoulder. “Ah,” she said, “Miss Milk and Water. You are just in time to join the tragedy.”

Charles turned to the door as Harriet Swanley entered the room. He saw at once how wrong the marchioness was about his love. Harriet Swanley was a woman of pearls and steel. She appeared breathless from the stairs, but her remarkable gray eyes were as clear-headed as ever. With a glance, she surveyed the scene. Then her gaze, wry and resolute, met his. Her eyes declared that she understood his part in leading them to this moment, and she loved him in defiance of sense and self-interest.

She offered the marchioness a steady, fearless smile. “I take it you’ve been exposed,” she said, stepping boldly forward and reaching up to untie the strings of her gray bonnet. Charles noted the mistletoe stuck in the band of ribbon on her hat.

“You had a French governess, perhaps,” Harriet continued. “A woman who ate frippe and taught you her maxims. You thought you could use her past to create the fictional marchioness from Saumur who had a family tie to the Davenhams.”

“Miss Swanley,” Charles said, “may I present Russian agent Sophia Dashkova.”

“You English, so little understanding of the world beyond your tiny island.”

“And yet,” said Harriet, “we are able to unmask an imposter.”

“Get the dog off me,” cried the man on the floor, still pinned under Cat.