herself that James was such a man. Yes, he had wanted her to forgo her work, but not because she earned money or had her own business, but because he feared the outcome of some of her cases, which often took her into dangerous territory. Her own father preferred not to think about it, knowing his headstrong daughter was adamant about keeping her job, even though he hated to consider what might happen if she crossed paths with the wrong person at the wrong time. “We can all do that, Dad,” she’d argued. “We can all cross paths with the wrong person. Wasn’t there an old man hit over the head for the tuppence in his pocket, in Tunbridge Wells, of all places? He was walking down the street in the middle of the day, not even at night.” Frankie Dobbs had conceded to her argument and rarely mentioned his worries.
James Compton was a Mr. Jones. James was a dependable man. A man who would put her on a pedestal and call her Mrs. Quite Lovely Dobbs-Compton, if that would please her. But she wouldn’t be a Mrs., would she? Marriage to James would come with strings attached; strings that tied her to a long history, to a big house, to the kind of people she did not always care for—though his parents were an important and much-valued part of her history, and she had great affection for Lady Rowan in particular. Having the Compton name would tie her to a different kind of life. She sighed. But hadn’t that happened already, to some extent? Had not the wealth inherited from Maurice set her apart from others? Or had it simply been a different sort of apart, for hadn’t she created a moat around her separateness years ago? In fact, if she was to be honest, being with James had helped soften the edges around the protective circle of her own making. She had found that some of those people she thought too wealthy to be aware of those less fortunate were indeed philanthropic with their time and money—not all, granted, but more than she might have imagined. And there were people she’d been introduced to who had welcomed her into their group, not simply because she was with James, but because they had a generosity of heart and could see the same in her. Did her money make a difference? Yes, she allowed that it obviously made a difference, not least because she knew she would not have had access to such company if she had been simply an educated, very fortunate woman who had been born in Lambeth.
She set down the note, rubbing her eyes. Priscilla had always said that Maisie saw all the gray areas. Now she was seeing even more of those gray areas, along with some stark black and white. Her education and her work with Maurice Blanche had set her at the foot of the mountain. His money—her money now—had allowed her to ascend almost to the summit in terms of her place in society and the company she kept, though she felt as if she wandered back and forth a lot, if only to remember the strength in her roots.
Mrs. Quite Lovely Just Jones. She wanted to meet this woman, and not just to ask her about her life in London, or about the way she was perceived as a woman whose complexion, whose mode of dress, of speech—or the luster of her hair and the deep red bindi smudged upon her forehead—conspired to set her apart. She wanted to ask for her help in understanding a culture that was as complex as the patterns at the edge of a wedding sari. She wanted to know how this woman could hold on to the Chaudhary in her while embracing the Jones.
Maisie picked up another file left for her by Sandra. Oh dear. She had almost forgotten Billy’s case of the missing boy, which she had committed to working on in his absence. She opened the file. And as her eyes took in the pages of notes, she realized the extent of the damage Billy had sustained when attacked and left for dead that spring. Words not formed, unfinished sentences, numbers of houses without full addresses. Hurried scribbles, an ill-executed sketch of the front of a building. A map with no address and nothing pointing to a significant location. But not the usual format of notes, with a date listing an address, a name,