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Rosalind Thorne treads a knife edge in Edwardian London. Working for pay would erase her claim to gentility. But, since her father left her penniless, she maintains her small household by helping more prosperous members of the haute ton solve their problems—domestic, romantic, and occasionally legal—and relying on their good breeding to reward her discretion with an appropriate sum. Her latest commission is no exception. Her old school friend Bethany Hodgeson, now Mrs. Gerald Douglas, implores Rosalind to discover who stole a valuable pearl necklace from her dressing room while pretending to help Bethany’s sister-in-law, Penelope, prepare for her London season. The Hodgeson family, including Bethany’s feckless father and malingering mother, moved to London when Gerald’s wealthy uncle, Sir Jasper, made Gerald his heir. Their situation is stressed not only by Sir Jasper’s demands for attention, but by the presence in the household of Bethany’s disgraced sister, Nora, who returned to her family after a failed elopement. Rosalind’s desire to earn the expected gift from Bethany is complicated by her pain at watching her friend struggle to adjust to a world more socially fraught than the one she grew up in. Wilde springs a series of surprises that prove that the planning of every successful fraud goes back far longer than the victims could ever suspect. The jolts provide a series of tests for Rosalind that are also opportunities for the reader to bond with her, hoping that she has the acuity to fit each piece of the puzzle into place, the heart to do right by her friend, and the strength to face down the tide of social convention.

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