The Mystery Woman

Under Miss Beatrice Lockwood's plain gray gown, a pistol waits at the ready. For Beatrice is a paid companion on a secret mission — and with a secret past — and she must be prepared to fight for her life at any moment. Yet she is thrown off guard by the fierce-looking man who joins her in foiling a crime outside a fancy ball — and who then disappears into the shadows, leaving only his card. Joshua Gage is a cipher in the shadows with a hypnotically calm voice and an ebony-and-steel cane... Joshua, who carries out investigations for the Crown, is equally intrigued. He has a personal interest in Miss Lockwood, a suspected murderer, not to mention a fraudster with claims of psychical powers. The search for her has pulled him away from his mournful impulses to hurl himself into the sea — and engaged his curiosity about the real Beatrice Lockwood, whose spirit, he suspects, is not as delicate as her figure. He does know one thing, though: This flame-haired beauty was present the night Roland Fleming died at the Academy of the Occult. Guilty or not, she is his guide to a trail of blood and blackmail, mesmerism and madness — a path that will lead them into the clutches of a killer who calls himself the Bone Man...