Search Worlds Without End

In a Regency London that isn't quite the one we know, young women of family whose reputations have been ruined are known as the Fallen. Young Sarah Tolerance is one such: a daughter of the nobility who ran away with her brother's fencing-master. Now that the fencing-master has died, everyone expects her to earn her living as a whore.

But Sarah is unwilling. Instead, she invents a new role for herself, and a new vocation: "investigative agent." For Sarah, with her equivocal position in society, is able to float between social layers, unearth secrets, find things that were lost, and lose things too dangerous to be kept. Her stock in trade is her wits, her discretion, and her expertise with the smallsword -- for her fencing-master taught her that as well.

She will need all her skills soon, when she is approached by an agent of the Count Verseillon, for a task that seems routine: reclaim an antique fan he once gave to "a lady with brown eyes." The fan, he tells her, is an heirloom; the lady, his first love. But as Sarah Tolerance unravels the mystery that surrounds the fan, she discovers that she--and the Count--are not the only ones seeking it, and that nothing about this task is what it seems.

Miss Sarah Tolerance refuses to follow the path of the Fallen Women who have gone before her. She's a straight shooter, with her pistol as well as her wit, and her mind is as sharp as the blade of her sword.

Miss Tolerance is an Agent of Inquiry, a private investigator of sorts--the sole one of her kind in London, in this year of 1810 with mad King George III on the throne and Queen Charlotte acting as his Regent. Her aim was to trace lost trinkets, send wastrel husbands back to their wives, and occasionally provide protection to persons with more money than sense--but she is continually drawn into the plots of others.

Her newest case poses a puzzle unlike any she has faced before: who killed the Chevalier d'Aubigny? The French émigré was beaten to death in his own bed, found by his retainers the next morning, all the doors and windows of the house sealed tight. The murder is a classic locked-room mystery, but Miss Tolerance knows she can find the key.

As Miss Tolerance examines the situation and interviews witnesses and suspects, she realizes things are far more complicated than she originally suspected--for the Chevalier had more enemies than he had friends, and Miss Tolerance is hard pressed to find someone who didn't wish him dead. Her search for his killer takes her from the lowest brothels of the seedy London underworld, where men go to indulge their more aggressive desires, to the Royal Family and a Duke who must hide his perversions or risk the Throne.

For a Fallen Woman and Agent of Inquiry, a young matron of quality is not the usual client. But when such a woman asks Miss Sarah Tolerance to find her sister, Miss Tolerance can't bring herself to say no. The girl has vanished from under her family's roof, apparently bent on elopement with a mysterious stranger.

Like, and unlike, Miss Tolerance's own scandalous elopement years ago.

Haunted by the similarities between this girl's story and her own, Miss Tolerance is determined to reunite the girl with her grieving sister. But there is little to go on, only an assumed name and a small portrait. And--despite her client's urgency/anxiety--Miss Tolerance soon discovers there are people who would do anything to see the girl never returns home.

As she digs further the mystery surrounding the young woman--so like and yet unlike herself--forces Miss Tolerance to confront her own past, and to question what her future may hold...

In England of 1811 Queen Charlotte may be Regent, but the fate of women-particularly Fallen women-can be particularly harsh. To avoid the fate of others of her kind, Sarah Tolerance works as an Agent of Inquiry, using her wits and her skill with a short sword to find lost trinkets and wastrel husbands. But sometimes her cases are not so simple.

When a fallen woman's life savings is stolen, Miss Tolerance is asked to find the culprit. But what begins as a simple case of swindled funds soon turns to murder.

As the investigation twists, and more bodies are discovered, Miss Tolerance and her friend and erstwhile suitor, the magistrate Sir Walter Mandif, find themselves untangling a web of passion, deception, and madness...