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know.”
    “Dyspeptic?” supplied Devellyn. “That’s because I am. But I’m sober, right enough.”
    “And?”
    Impatiently, Devellyn began to tap one finger on the table. “And now I realize what’s been lost,” he finally said. “Moreover, it is not a matter for public discussion, Alasdair, or I swear to God, I’ll gut you from neck to knackers with a rusty letter opener.”
    Alasdair nodded effusively. “Wouldn’t dare mention it, old boy.”
    Devellyn kept tapping his finger, faster now. “The Black Angel took my watch, my snuffbox, and every sou in my pocket,” he said grimly. “But she took something far more valuable than that, Alasdair. Something irreplaceable.”
    Alasdair’s eyes widened. “Good Lord, what?”
    Devellyn felt like a fool. “A miniature of Gregory,” he finally admitted. “And…well, and a lock of his hair. I carry it, you see, in my pocket sometimes.”
    Sometimes! he thought. All the time. Every bloody second of my life. Just like I carry the guilt that goes with it.
    Alasdair was looking at him strangely. “Why, Dev?”
    Devellyn was immediately on the defensive. “Damn it, I don’t know why. I just do sometimes, that’s all.”
    Alasdair shrugged. “Well,” he said pragmatically. “A chap doesn’t need a reason. Perfectly natural thing, your dead brother and all.”
    “It was the only likeness I had of him,” growled Devellyn at the tablecloth. “And now that bitch the Black Angel has it. And for what, I ask you? For what? Why ever would she want such a thing? Of what use can it possibly be to her?”
    Alasdair shrugged. The coffee came. “Dashed sorry, Dev,” he said again as he slid one cup in Devellyn’s direction. “But she’s been at it for months, and no one knows who or what she is. No one can catch her.”
    The marquess eyed his friend over his steaming coffee cup. “Oh, you think not, eh?”
     
    Two days after her rash encounter with the Marquess of Devellyn, Jean-Claude met with Sidonie. This was always done by prior arrangement, and they varied the time and the location. Often, Sidonie concealed her appearance, but today they were meeting at the British Museum, but a few blocks from her home. It was an innocent enough place for either of them to be seen, and not apt to be frequented by the sort of gentlemen the Black Angel targeted.
    They had taken a table by a window in a little-used corner of the reading room and piled both sides with books they’d no intention of opening. While Sidonie kept one eye on the passageway between the shelves to ensure that no one approached, her brother’s assistant slipped a jeweler’s loupe into his right eye and began an assiduous study of Lord Francis’s sapphire pin.
    “Ah, Madame Saint-Godard!” whispered Jean-Claude. “Thees eez a very fine piece, indeed. Better, even, than the diamond pin you bring last month! In Paris, thees will fetch a fat price on the—the—how you say au marché noir?”
    “On the black market.”
    Jean-Claude smiled. “Oui, the black market,” he echoed. “The watch, I will also take. And the snuffbox! Eet eez very excellent indeed.”
    Sidonie looked across the table at Lord Francis’s snuffbox. “I’m afraid, Jean-Claude, that it is only silver,” she answered.
    He gave a Gallic shrug. “Oui, but chased inside with gold,” he said. “And the engraving! Très élégant.”
    “Yes, well, get what you can for it,” Sidonie instructed. “Lord Francis’s parlor maid needs money desperately.”
    “I will do my best for madame,” he assured her. “There eez a shipment en route through Calais in two days’ time.”
    Sidonie felt panic surge. “Jean-Claude, remember you mustn’t involve George,” she insisted, not for the first time. “If we get caught fencing this, his name cannot be mentioned.”
    Jean-Claude lost a little of his color. “Mais non, madame!” he said, slipping the glass from his eye. “Monsieur Kemble, he would cut off my—my testicules,