Lady Killer by Michele Jaffe

proposing. I already have a client. Why?” Clio looked at him challengingly, and her look was mirrored by Toast. “Don’t you think me capable of it?”
    Elwood sank into a seat opposite her. “I think you capable of anything, Clio. It is just that the Special Commissioner will not like your involvement.”
    “As a matter of fact, I have had a message from him this morning on that very topic.”
    “Then he knows? And he does not mind?”
    “Not terribly,” Clio said. Her eyes slipped away from Elwood’s and she went sort of sideways in her chair. Toast, deciding things were getting dicey, leapt from her shoulder to the bust of King Henry the Eighth that stood behind her, and sat on his head. “He said something about my ‘getting any help from his office’ I might desire, and him wishing me the best of luck if I should choose to undertake the inquiry.”
    Elwood eyed her. “I assume the word that proceeded the phrase ‘getting any help from his office’ was ‘never’ and that his wishing you the best of luck was intended as more of a threat than an encouragement.”
    Clio shrugged and tried to look innocent. “Who can say. Words are so tricky and I am just a stupid woman.”
    Elwood sat forward, genuinely concerned. “Look, Clio, I know how you feel about the commissioner, but this is not the sort of investigation to undertake as a personal vendetta. I know he said some dreadful things to you—”
    “He said that I was not fit to find anything besides puppies and even those might prove too taxing for me,” she quoted. “He said that women should stay at home and look lovely, and since I did not have a proper home and could not look lovely if I tried, then I should throw myself into the Thames.”
    Elwood winced. “Yes. Well, you have to admit you provoked him.”
    “By solving six of his last eight cases before he even had any idea where to look?” Clio demanded.
    “I was more thinking of the part when you described him as a corrupt and contemptible cur—”
    “I only did that because of what he said about the dogs,” Clio interrupted, sitting up straight.
    “—whose powers of observation were worse than those of a tit mouse, and whose mind made caterpillars look intelligent,” Elwood finished the quote.
    “I do not see how he could be annoyed with me for that. If he had an ounce of sense he would admit it was all true. Anyway, in the interests of not overtaxing what little mind he has, I thought I would direct my questions to you rather than him. He must be very busy.” She smiled convincingly at Elwood. Behind her Toast, who shared his mistress’s estimation of both the Special Commissioner and dogs, clapped approvingly.
    Elwood cleared his throat and tried to seem stern in the face of her smile and the monkey’s encouragement. “What did the commissioner’s message say, Clio?”
    Her shoulders sagged. “Everything I already told you, plus what you guessed about him never helping me, and, for added measure, that they had a ‘very good man, a very special man’ working on finding the vampire, who would work better and find the fiend faster without any ‘infernal assistance from foolish and meddling females.’ He closed by suggesting that there were probably puppies lost in London that needed my help finding their way home.”
    Elwood pressed his lips together for a moment, deep in thought. Then he sighed, looked into her lovely face, and said, “What do you want to know?”
    Miles had awakened with a pounding headache and a gnawing feeling of unease, neither of which he could recall acquiring. Nor was he quite sure how he found himself in bed. Or, for that matter, who was breathing deeply next to him.
    He threw open the bed curtains and was blinded by a wave of brilliant sunlight. Squinting, he looked over at the adjacent pillow. Golden hair curled over a small face, from which one brown eye peeked at him. His companion seemed to smile, then started to pant.
    “Corin,” Miles