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be the slightest use. “I shall merely gather information.”
    He looked at her skeptically, having been involved in several of her past meddlings, but he relaxed his grip and escorted them to the door and out into the sunlit street where Emily’s carriage was waiting.
    As soon as the horses began to move Emily spoke.
    “I shall discover whatever I can about Mrs. Shaw and her struggles to have new laws passed to disclose who owns derelict property. I am sure if I think hard I must have some acquaintances who would know.”
    “You are a new bride,” Vespasia cautioned her gently.
    “Your husband may have rather different expectations of his first weeks at home from honeymoon.”
    “Ah—” Emily let out her breath, but it was only a hesitation in her flight of thought. “Yes—well that will have to be got around. I shall deal with it. Charlotte, you had better be discreet about it, but discover everything you can from Thomas. We must be aware of all the facts.”
    They did not wait at Vespasia’s house but wished Vespasia good-bye and watched her alight and climb the steps to the front door, which was opened before her by the waiting maid. She went in with an absentminded word of thanks, still deep in thought. There were many social evils she had fought against in the long years since her widowhood. She enjoyed battle and she was prepared to take risks and she no longer cared greatly what others thought of her, if she believed herself to be in a just cause. Which was not that the loss of friends, or their disapproval, did not hurt her.
    But now it was Emily who occupied her mind. She was far more vulnerable, not only to the emotions of her new husband, who might well wish her to be more decorous in her behavior, but also to the whims of society, which loved innovations in fashion, something to marvel at and whisper about, but hated anything that threatened to disturb the underlying stability of its members’ familiar and extremely comfortable lives.
    Charlotte parted from Emily at her own door after a brief hug, and heard the carriage clatter away as she went up the scrubbed steps into the hall. It smelled warm and clean; the sounds of the street were muffled almost to silence. She stood still for a moment. She could just hear Gracie chopping something on a board in the kitchen, and singing to herself. She felt an overwhelming sense of safety, and then gratitude. It was hers, all of it. She did not have to share it with anyone except her own family. No one would put up the rent or threaten her with eviction. There was running water in the kitchen, the range burned hot, and in the parlor and bedroomsthere were fires. Sewage ran away unseen, and the garden was sweet with grass and flowers.
    It was very easy to live here every day and forget the uncounted people who had no place warm enough, free of filth and smells, where they could be safe and have privacy enough for dignity.
    Clemency Shaw must have been a most unusual woman to have cared so much for those in tenements and slums. In fact she was remarkable even to have known of their existence. Most well-bred women knew only what they were told, or read in such parts of the newspapers or periodicals as were considered suitable. Charlotte herself had not had any idea until Pitt had shown her the very edges of an utterly different world, and to begin with she had hated him for it.
    Then she’d felt angry. There was a horrible irony that Clemency Shaw should be murdered by the destruction of her home, and whoever had caused it, Charlotte intended to find and expose, and their sordid and greedy motives with them. If Clemency Shaw’s life could not bring attention to the evil of slum profiteers, then Charlotte would do all in her power to see that her death did.
    Emily was bent on a similar purpose, but for slightly different reasons, and in an utterly different fashion. She entered the hallway of her spacious and extremely elegant house in a swirl of skirts and