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Her brother, Jack, must have known. Sleaford must have known. Umfreville and De’Ath—brothers! And yet Sleaford had sold the duke Jack’s worst work. Three more of Jack’s Dutch knockoffs were hanging in the duke’s picture gallery. And three of her landscapes. She’d glimpsed them the day she’d arrived, the day before yesterday, when Mrs. Fletcher, the housekeeper, had toured her through the wings.

What had they been thinking? Had their greed overridden their sense of self-preservation? Sleaford’s carelessness was the reason she was here in the first place, sneaking about, risking her own neck. She hadn’t blamed Sleaford, precisely. Anyone might put a note in the wrong envelope.

He’d sent a letter intended for Jack to the duke. It was only a short note, nothing incriminating on the face of it. Except for the tongue-in-cheek salutation: My dear Dutchified Dauber. Likely, the duke would have glanced at the note with a moment’s puzzlement and put it aside. He wasn’t the type to keep Jack’s nickname in his mind. After all, more than a decade had passed since the Dutchified Dauber had figured hugely in the papers, during and immediately after the trial. Still, it didn’t do to leave in his possession a document connecting Chips Sleaford, the art dealer, to Jack Reeve, the convicted art forger.

Just after the luncheon, she’d breached the duke’s study, and, by the grace of God—or more likely the devil—she’d retrieved the blasted letter. A triumph. But for what? They had bigger problems if Alan De’Ath was prowling the grounds like a wolf in the fold.

“Nina.” Clara stepped away from Amy, swiping at her nose. “What are you doing?”

Nina glanced down the length of the table to where Mrs. Henderson stood, chopping furiously. She didn’t want to embarrass the cook.

“Mrs. Henderson needed an extra pair of hands with the Victoria sponge.”

In fact, Mrs. Henderson’s Victoria sponge had failed to rise, and, seeing the woman’s stricken expression, Nina had offered to help. But for that, she’d be halfway to Hatton Garden by now, and good riddance to this miserable household.

The horrid, pinch-lipped duchess was entertaining for tea and dinner. Mrs. Henderson had fallen desperately behind, even more so with the failed teatime dessert.

She couldn’t help but help. For Mrs. Henderson’s sake. And because she’d longed to bake something in this magnificent kitchen, enormous, whitewashed, and orderly, with an iron double range and stacked ovens, all plumbed with gas. Shelves and racks lined one wall and held more molds, pie pans, wire sieves, bowls, quart and pint measures, rolling pins, graters, ladles, and dippers than she’d ever seen.

Someday soon, she’d have a kitchen of her own, housed in a little bakery in the village of Hensthorpe. Far more modest, and far better suited to her needs.

But an opportunity to handle equipment in a kitchen such as this might never come again.

Clara was nodding uncertainly. She looked down at the tea tray, and her chin started trembling.

“I can’t go in there,” she said again.

The past two nights, Nina had shared Clara’s room, and they’d whispered before going to sleep. She knew that Clara had only recently arrived at Umfreville House herself.

If she were fired without a reference, she might not find another place.

“Don’t,” said Nina firmly. “I’ll take the tray. Only let me get this in the oven.” She’d already sifted together the dry ingredients, prepared the tins. It would be the work of a moment.

Clara flashed her a grateful look, then just as quickly shook her head.

“Then he’ll send you packing,” she said. “Better no one takes it.”

“Then Mrs. Fletcher will get the licks, and she’ll make everyone suffer.” Nina frowned as she added the flour, leavening powders, and salt to the wet mixture. She’d begun to learn the roles and relationships of the different members of the staff. And to learn something of the complex system of reprisals. Mostly, reprisals were deferred down the chain, from those ranking highest to those ranking lowest. Sometimes they reversed direction. Regardless, they always found a target.

Just this morning, the duchess had sacked Nandini, the nursemaid, because the evening before, the youngest of the three children had refused to press a ritual good-night kiss upon her cheek. And she’d sacked Harriet, the new kitchen maid, because the eldest had received a pot of hot chocolate with his breakfast, the same as his sisters, which in his case violated the doctor’s edict.

Jack’s tyranny seemed rudimentary by contrast.

“The situation is my fault for dropping the first tray.” Nina couldn’t help but blink as she said it. When De’Ath had latched his strange silver eyes on Jack’s picture and said fake, her heart had stopped beating. Her fingers had stopped gripping.

“Two minutes,” she said. “And off I go.”

And off with my head.

But it didn’t matter. Like Clara, Nina was an orphan, or at least she preferred to think so. It was worse to imagine that her father had abandoned her mother when Nina was just four years old—nearly twenty-two years ago now—and never thought once to reunite with his daughter. That he’d never inquired what had become of his wife, who’d died a week before Nina’s tenth birthday. For all practical purposes, she was an orphan. No stranger to hard work. But unlike Clara, she hadn’t made a life in service.

She’d made a life of crime.

Or rather, Jack had made it for her. In any case, she planned to leave Umfreville House today. Whether she quit or was fired, it was the same to her.

“Thank you!” breathed Clara.

Nina nodded, looking into her bowl, away from the gratitude and guilt playing over Clara’s wan face.