Circle of Spies by Roseanna M. White

rest of the way. “I sure ain’t gonna tell him.”
    â€œWell, then.” She rolled her hair back, secured it with the combs and lace, and then headed downstairs.
    Cigar smoke clung to the study. From Lucien, or had Dev beenenjoying his brother’s collection of Cubans? A thick layer of dust covered the shelves, motes danced in the air.
    Her eyes slid shut, but she still saw the room. Only now Lucien sat behind the solid mahogany desk, sunlight catching on his burnished blond hair and twining around the tendrils of smoke from his cigar. How many times had she come in here and found him in almost exactly the same position?
    Three hundred twenty-two.
    And each time he had looked up and shot her the grin that had made her determine to marry him. The one that said she was all he wanted, all he needed.
    How she had wanted that to be true, at first. And then feared it when she realized her heart was not so steady. Not so faithful.
    But then, had his been either? He had a mistress, as did Dev—their beloved KGC.
    She opened her eyes again and moved into the chamber, letting her fingers trail through the dust on a shelf. His desk, at least, looked clean. Dev wouldn’t want to soil his clothing.
    The bottom drawer on the left-hand side of the desk. That was where she had seen them both slipping things when she came to the door. Sometimes they would leave their work out—railroad papers. What, then, did they put away?
    The drawer would be locked. She had asked Lucien about that once, early in their marriage, and he had smiled, pulled her onto his knee, and said their company had enemies who weren’t above bribing servants, which was why he kept his important documents locked away.
    But it wasn’t company files in that drawer. So then. The key.
    She sat in his chair, reaching as she had seen him reach under the desktop. His arm had moved like so…but his was longer. His hands larger, so if she stretched hers out…
    Cool metal brushed her fingertips. Clever—a little shelf had been built for it, a thin veneer of wood that the tip of the key hung over. She slid it out and turned it over in her palm as she retracted her arm.
    Dusty. Dev must use the other key that Lucien had kept on his ring, the one she had handed over the day of the funeral, knowing most of the keys opened doors at the rail office.
    Perfect. She could keep this one to herself. She unlocked the drawer and then took off her necklace, sliding the key down the gold chain until it settled against the cameo.
    The clock in the corner hadn’t been wound, so she glanced at the sun outside the window. Still several hours until Dev’s carriage should rumble back over the cobblestones, but she wasn’t about to be caught by surprise like the wolf. She opened the drawer and studied its contents.
    Files hung, unlabeled. Ever-organized Lucien would have had everything in a very particular order. And more-organized Devereaux would know exactly what that order was.
    He could discover she was in this room, and she could talk her way out of it without any trouble. But if he found her in a locked drawer where he kept sensitive information…that could get dangerous. She would keep things in their proper places, down to that single sheet raised a sixteenth of an inch higher than the others, and the file in the back that looked as though it had been rifled through.
    She pulled out the first file, flipped it open, and drew in a deep breath.
    She needn’t read anything now. Instead she opted for speed, flipping page after page, glancing at each only a second.
    A second was all she needed. Each paper’s image seared itself into her mind’s eye.
    One file finished, she moved to the next. Then the next and the next, until she had looked at every sheet within the drawer and had replaced them all. She compared the image before her to the one within her mind of how it had been forty minutes prior. Adjusted the height of this,