It was hot.

It was way too hot to stay inside a small room, filled with girls in frilly dresses who kept talking and ignored the flowers they were supposed to be embroidering on cloth.

So, as soon as Madam Clarisse said the word, I bolted out of the room to the front of the house, just a few feet away from the road.

After a few hours, I raised my embroidery cloth and beamed. This was the only place I could be grateful for Imelda's muscle memory. I went to present my work to Madam Clarisse.

"Beautiful as always," she said before proceeding to yell at the other girls to be more like me, asking how they planned to get husbands with their lackluster needlework.

I clicked my tongue and shook my head as I walked away.

A for effort, Madam Clarisse. A for effort.

As soon as I stepped on the road, a woman hurried past me.

Normally, I would have kept walking but you don't see a lot of women in the 19th century dressed in black cloaks like Voldemort's death eaters, walking as if fire were licking their heels and even less, looking so familiar while doing so.

As she turned the street corner, her cloak brushed the wall of a house and a small bundle of papers tied with a string dropped from her cloak. I picked it up and just before I opened it, a voice startled me.

"Did a woman in dark clothing walk past here?" Henry asked.

I clutched my chest. "You startled me." He kept looking over my heart with a deep frown. I held the papers between us, realising that he might have been following the woman. "I-"

"Children, what are you doing here?" someone asked behind us in a strained voice.

I immediately stuffed the papers into my dress pocket. Taking a deep breath, I turned around. "Mother."

Her hands clenched into fists. The first thing I noticed was that she looked terribly underdressed than usual. "Henry, don't you have work? Let him be, Imelda."

Her sharp yet shivering voice gave me a reason to hold on to Henry's shirt and move slightly behind him to make it seem like I was 'terrified'. "I-I ran into Henry as I was leaving my classes. We were discussing him taking me out for a treat."

Antoinette visibly relaxed in relief. Suddenly, she sighed and looked up at me as if just remembering that as a good mother, her child shouldn't be scared of her. "Imelda, stop this foolishness and return home tonight. I have many important things to discuss with you."

Like the number of men I can be sold to.

Fortunately, one of the girls nearest to us who could probably hear our conversation coughed. In the brief moment that Antoinette turned to look around to see if anyone else was paying attention—which was a little unnecessary since we were in the middle of a busy street—I forced Henry to turn around and we began to walk away swiftly.

After we had basically run two streets, Henry held my hand to stop me. "Why did you lie?"

I pulled out the scrunched-up papers from my pockets. "I think Antoinette might have had something of interest to you."

Henry looked at me with scrutiny at first. I gestured with my chin to the papers in my hand. He took them from me gently like it was a letter bomb. His eyes glazed over the content of the papers then flashed in triumph. "Let's get to Bow Street."

Having two brothers in law enforcement in the same station meant all the men at the station called out greetings as I passed. The first time I visited here, I found two of the men playing cards. After joining the game and beating them, inadvertently drawing an audience, the men declared me as their honorary little sister. I loved being around them. They made me feel like I was among my military buddies again.

"When are you coming over again, Miss Danbury? My wife and daughter miss you so," Mr. Franklin said, peeking around a tall stack of papers.

"I'm a little busy right now but I'll be sure to make time for little Mary real soon. Also, tell Victoria I've been craving her pudding since the last time I had it." I looked to my left to find my favourite blonde-haired boy. "James, there you are. I saw you and a certain pretty woman enter the theatre the other day."

James' cheeks tinted. "Her father has given us his blessing. Paul was there."

I gasped. "Congratulations. My invitation's in the mail, right?"

"Not yet." When he saw my narrowed eyes, he raised his hands. "But Paul and I were working on yours yesterday. I promise."

"That's better. Tell the military brat I said hi, even though I'm definitely sure he's not supposed to be home right now."

James itched the back of his head. "That is causing a bit of a ruckus back at home. Paul says he hates the smell of gunpowder."

"Imelda, come. You can chat with them on your way out," Henry said, standing in front of Harry's door near the back of the building.

Without knocking, we entered the small brown minimalist room. My eyes immediately got drawn to the disturbing yet intriguing painting on the left wall.

Harry looked up. "Henry, Imelda, what brings you here?"

I shrugged. "Ehn. Nothing much. Antoinette might be a criminal though."

"What?"

Henry closed the door behind him. "Can we talk?"

"Of course, sit." Harry looked at Henry, demanding an explanation. "What is Immy talking about?"

Henry laid the papers before Harry. "I think you had better see for yourself."

Harry read through them and his eyebrows shot up, "Where did you get these? We've been searching for some of these papers for months."

"I didn't. Immy did. Remember the lead Andrew found this morning. I went to the old school building and had no luck until I saw a woman in dark clothing leave through a hidden exit. I tried following her but I lost her. Then I met Immy."

Henry's eyes turned to me to continue the story. "Erm...so Antoinette walked past, looking all worried, and something—that bundle—dropped from her cloak but she didn't notice-"

"Our mother?" Harry asked.

Andrea gives him an 'are-you-serious' look, "Do we all know any other Antoinette? Of course, our mother."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Enough with the sass. It's a little shocking that a simple-minded woman like Antoinette would be involved in organised crime."

"Is it? A woman driven by money and power bought over by people with those two things. I mean, she's willing to sell her own daughter. It's not rocket science"

"You make a good point." Henry relaxed in his chair and crossed his arms, staring at me. I mimicked his actions down to the scrutinizing gaze, causing him to chuckle. "There is a minor inconsistency in this story. Mother appeared a few seconds later in clothing different from the woman in the shawl."

"Men. She took off a shawl and a cloak and suddenly has a new outfit?"

This was why they needed women in jobs like this. I have met more women with very keen attention to detail than I have, men. Besides, only a woman would know how fast a fellow woman can change her clothes and demeanour, despite what the men think.

My brothers looked at each other and shrugged before returning their attention to me.

I smacked my forehead with the heel of my palm. "Think about it. What are the chances of her hovering around the place where I could embarrass her with my disrespect when she could be currying favours with noblemen?" I looked between their facial expressions and realised that my female logic wasn't convincing them.

I guess I should stick to their language.

"When she came out, she kept pressing her fingernails into her palms and struggling to control her breathing, both of which are common signs of nervousness. Trust me, I know nervousness. When I, the model stupid daughter pretended not to have seen her, her worry evaporated. She was also not wearing her choking perfume to remain unnoticed but she made a mistake." I picked up one of the papers between my thumb and index finger and sniffed. "That disgusting thing is all over these papers."

They took sniffs in turns. It was unmistakable; that was their mother's perfume.

"We didn't talk to her for up to a minute. How did you figure all that out?" Henry asked.

A working brain, endless hours of emergency response—like that one time a communication shuttle went offline and was about to crash into Washington State University—and twelve years of detective and crime thriller documentaries.

"I have an eye for observation," I replied vaguely.

"I still feel like we're missing something. This hastens the case we've been working on for months. However, the numbers on these papers were not what I was expecting," Harry said.

Henry nodded. "I thought so too. A notable thing about organised crime in this district is that it has become underfunded over the years. The ammunition and miscellaneous expenses are too high for a petty crime group."

I looked at the paper nearest to me, trying to translate the currencies to American dollars. I had no success. My grasp of British currency was as good as my grasp of biomedical engineering—not bad but not good enough to mention anywhere outside the solitude of my bedroom.

"How rich would a person have to be to sponsor these amounts?" I asked.

"Several of these for months? Nobility or extremely successful businessmen."

A name flashed through my mind. "Tch."

"What?" Harry and Henry asked in unison.

"You know what I'm thinking about. Or better still, who I'm thinking about."

Harry hummed. "Coincidences like this hardly occur."

"It won't matter if we don't find a way to confirm where the money is coming from. All we have now is a hypothesis that cannot be said out loud," Henry said.

"What other way is there?"

"What'd you mean?"

I leaned forward with a smile, happy that things were finally picking up from the boring slump we were in. The only exciting thing that had happened all week was Lincoln kissing me at every opportunity he got. "We ask Antoinette."

"Although that sounds like a risky idea, I'm surprisingly in support of it. It's the fastest way," Harry said.

"How about the old school building? Are we going to find out who Mother was meeting there? A future marquess wouldn't want to be caught in a palace as decrepit as that."

I scoffed. "The marquess probably has a fancy for old, decrepit places since I've run into him near the collapsed church on the outskirts of town twice now."

Henry sat up, causing his chair to skid slightly across the floor and skid. "The collapsed church?"

"Is there a problem?"

Henry smiled. "None. Only that you just confirmed our theories. The collapsed church is directly opposite the old academy."