“Should I fetch your maidservant?” he asked solicitously. “Would you like to rest in the sofa?”

As she tried to stand, she felt her legs shake so much that she dropped back down on her chair, as if she’d been knocked back. She began counting slowly back from ten, remembering something she’d heard from the doctors her husband had recently invited for dinner, about how to regain one’s focus when one was confused.

She willed herself to pick up her cup of the unique coffee that Vienna was known for, and swallowed some coffee, concentrating on her hand that picked up the cup so that it wouldn’t shake so badly.

Step by step, Beatrice!

“Um… that won’t be necessary, Mr Mayne. But thank you kindly, for your concern,” she managed to rasp out after swallowing the coffee.

“It was a passing reaction to the heat. And to the, um… unusual aspects of your story,” she added.

It was enough to distract Mr Mayne. “I do apologize, Lady Beatrice. I hesitated greatly, earlier, if you recall, about what I ought to tell you. But you seemed to wish to know what had really happened to him …”

His voice trailed off. Perhaps, in some way, she returned Edward’s affection. This could be why she reacted so strongly just then.

After ten minutes or so, when it seemed polite to do so, Lady Beatrice excused herself, and thanked Mr. Mayne for his efforts in hand-delivering Mr. Harranby’s papers.

After he left, she shut herself in her bedroom, and asked not to be disturbed. Her husband was attending the opera that evening, and she’d already asked that she be excused, citing tiredness from the horse-riding she’d done the day before with a group of men and women they’d formed an early friendship with.

She quickly slit open the seal of the envelope that seemed the most voluminous. A long letter from Edward was inside it, and it enclosed a slim leather notebook.

Edward stated the obvious calmly: since she was now reading this letter, something had happened to him. So Edward asked her to help John decide what to do about the gold. The insurance companies would likely have fully paid the value of the gold Mr Pimms would have tried to steal, and which they, in turn, would have stolen from Mr. Pimms, he said.