Secrets prove deadly in this new novel from Tasha Alexander featuring Lady Emily Hargreaves. Some very prominent people in London are waking up to find their doorsteps smeared with red paint, the precursor to the revelation of a dark secret – and worse – by someone who enjoys destroying lives Newly returned to her home in Mayfair, Lady Emily Hargreaves is looking forward to enjoying the delights of the season. The delights, that is, as defined by her own eccentricities―reading The Aeneid, waltzing with her dashing husband, and joining the Women's Liberal Federation in the early stages of its campaign to win the vote for women. But an audacious vandal disturbs the peace in the capital city, splashing red paint on the neat edifices of the homes of London's elite. This mark, impossible to hide, presages the revelation of scandalous secrets, driving the hapless victims into disgrace, despair and even death. Soon, all of London high society is living in fear of learning who will be the next target, and Lady Emily and her husband, Colin, favorite agent of the crown, must uncover the identity and reveal the motives of the twisted mind behind it all before another innocent life is lost. “At the start of Alexander's enchanting sixth late Victorian novel of suspense (after 2010's Dangerous to Know), news of a fire in Southwark prompts British intelligence agent Colin Hargreaves to leave Lady Londonderry's ball, to his wife Emily's dismay. Colin returns home to Mayfair that night to announce that Michael Dillman, who ran a successful export business, has been cruelly burned alive in his warehouse by an unknown perpetrator. The week before, according to Michael's fiancée, someone threw red paint on his front door. The Sanders family receives similar treatment shortly before the rumor breaks that daughter Polly's mother was, in fact, a maid impregnated by her father. Subsequently, other respectable London families find red paint splashed on their houses, presaging some scandalous revelation in each case. Can Emily help Colin solve the crimes without risking her reputation--or becoming a target herself? Alexander keeps readers guessing to the very end.” ― Publishers Weekly The daughter of two philosophy professors, I grew up surrounded by books. I was convinced from an early age that I was born in the wrong century and spent much of my childhood under the dining room table pretending it was a covered wagon. Even there, I was never without a book in hand and loved reading and history more than anything. I studied English Literature and Medieval History at the University of Notre Dame. Writing is a natural offshoot of reading, and my first novel,  And Only to Deceive , was published in 2005. I'm the New York Times Bestselling author of the long-running Lady Emily Series as well as the novel  Elizabeth: The Golden Age . One of the best parts of being an author is seeing your books translated, and I'm currently in love with the Japanese editions of the Emily books.  I played nomad for a long time, living in Indiana, Amsterdam, London, Wyoming, Vermont, Connecticut, and Tennessee before settling down. My husband, the brilliant British novelist Andrew Grant (I may be biased but that doesn't mean I'm wrong) and I now divide our time between Chicago and Wyoming. He makes sure I get my English characters right, and I make sure his American ones sound American. A CRIMSON WARNING I was dancing while he burned, but I had no way of knowing that, not then, while spinning on the tips of my toes, my husband’s grip firm around my waist as he led me around the ballroom again and again, glistening beads of sweat forming on his forehead. My heart was light, my head full of joy, my only complaint the temperature of the room. Its warmth was oppressive, humid and thick; the air heavy with the oil of too many perfumes. Looking back, I realize I had not even the beginning of an understanding of real heat, or of the pain of fire with its indiscriminate implacability. How could I? I was in Mayfair at a ball. The man meeting his fiery end might as well have been on the opposite side of the earth. That evening, my side of the earth was Lady Londonderry’s ballroom, one of London’s finest, where I stood surrounded by friends and acquaintances, happy and safe, with bubbles of political gossip and society rumors floating around me. The ornately decorated room, with its columns and gilded surfaces, took up nearly the entire first floor, and was rumored to have been modeled after the site of the Congress of Vienna. Lord Londonderry displayed his collection of paintings on the walls. Marble statues, in the Greco-Roman tradition, stood in regularly-spaced nooks. The house seemed to pulse as the orchestra began a waltz, my favorite dance. “Shall we continue?” Colin asked. I shook my head, out of breath. “It’s too hot, even for a waltz.” Colin Hargreaves, a man always capable of anticipating a lady’s every need, whim, and—sometimes more importantly—desi