Chapter 17: The Hadley Underworld Estate Receives Invitations to the Season's Most Exclusive Ball

The invitations arrived on a Tuesday, which was the sort of detail that would later seem significant and was not.

They came by courier to Gay Street, where the group had reconvened after the Highland interlude—Petra and her mother installed in their rented rooms, Miss Chase in the superior lodgings she had retained throughout with the quiet efficiency of someone who never expected to leave them, Fennwick in the cheaper rooms on the floor above where the ceiling slanted at an angle he had learned to anticipate and the landlady brought breakfast punctually whether or not he had slept. They had been back in Bath four days. The investigation had resumed. Lord Stormcroft had returned to his own lodgings on Milsom Street without discussion, which everyone in the party understood to mean that propriety had reasserted its claims after the gamekeeper's cottage, as propriety invariably does when given four days and access to separate addresses.

Petra was attempting to write a letter to her mother's solicitor regarding a small matter of quarterly income when the knock came.