A/N: Beginning with the next chapter, Belladonna Lilies will begin posting monthly, with chapters appearing on the first Saturday of each month. The reason is simple: I've been plowing away at this fic, which is already the longest thing I've ever written, since late November or early December of 2013 (though I didn't start posting in Feb. 2014), and keeping up with writing it is not at all easy (how people write those 500K+ word-count fics, I'll never know...), particularly because it's forcing me away from some of my other writing projects at the same time. So basically, rather than put the fic on another hiatus (especially because I don't have a "sister" fic like Burning Gold to fill in the way I did last year), I've chosen instead to slow down the posting rate so you readers can still get a regular, reliable dose of Weiss and Blake's adventures. If I build up a sufficient "buffer" of chapters in the future, I may increase the rate of posting, but for now, a monthly release schedule should be better with which to keep my sanity.

~X X X~

It was nice, Blake thought, to be out on her own again. This was, she thought, the way it was supposed to be, by herself "in the field," as those involved in espionage called it. Answerable only to herself, responsible only for herself. No partners to place at risk, no odd allegiances she was forced to trust, just an objective to pursue and her own judgment as to how to achieve it.

Was this feeling a reaction to the nightmare disaster that had been the raid (raids, really) on Saulbridge? Of course it was; Blake was no fool, and hiding from her own mind was a good way to lay herself open to an enemy's attack.

She shouldn't have been there, consulting the records at Somerset House. That was a mistake, a piece of needless folly. What she should have done was to return at once to the White Fang, to look them in the eyes and report everything that had happened, everything she'd done, and let the group settle what was to happen next.

Was it Vincent's death that she was afraid of facing? The thought that some of the other Faunus might believe she had allowed it to happen deliberately or had even directly connived at it…

Well, she wasn't going to rule that out, despite what she'd told Weiss about the White Fang clinging together as one. Vincent had only been one of several who'd thought of Blake as being more human than Faunus, a traitor to the cause. Their beliefs were only to be cemented by her late return. And as for the alliance she'd found herself in with Weiss Schnee, there was no telling how badly they would take that.

That was another good reason to wait. Having made the alliance, she wanted it to bear fruit, to produce something valuable so that she could stand up and say, "See? This is why I did it. Here are the results that justify what I did!"

Or maybe it just came down to trust. Where did she place her faith? And the plain fact was that Weiss was more trustworthy than Blake's fellow White Fang members, sometimes stupidly so. Indeed, considering what Weiss's human "allies" were up to, that consideration ran both ways. Blake could only laugh at a fate that had taken her from being the woman who'd scarred Weiss's face while robbing her home to being her most reliable ally.

But regardless of the reasons, the bottom line was that Blake hadn't gone back to the White Fang. It didn't take an act of genius to understand that they'd be coming after her sooner or later to try and figure out why. And with luck, she'd be able to give them a valid answer, in the form of useful information. Information such as the name of one G.J. Utterson, solicitor, who'd probated the will and acted as executor of the estate of Dr. Henry Jekyll.

In 1887.

The same year as the will was dated. A will leaving Jekyll's entire estate upon the event of his death or disappearance for longer than six months to his "good friend and benefactor, Edward Hyde."

It all made perfect sense—now. Once one added in the key information that Jekyll had survived the fire and changed his identity. If the White Fang had checked this before, they might have known about Hyde years ago, long before their situation became as critical as it now was. But they'd had no reason to—Jekyll was believed surely dead, and the heirs of his worldly goods an irrelevancy.

Now, though, it was not irrelevant. Quite the opposite, there were plenty of questions to be answered, and this Utterson was the person who might well have those answers, as to what property was involved in the Jekyll estate and what connections existed to Hyde.

The only real question that Blake needed to answer was, did the situation call for the hard approach or the soft one?

Utterson, she supposed, would just have to decide for himself how he preferred to have the information extracted, because one way or another it was going to be hers.

~X X X~

As Faunus went, Connor Lutege did not appear very inhuman. His mammalian tail could be wound around his waist under his shirt, giving him a slightly heavy-set look at odds with his thin frame, and his brilliant green eyes only gleamed at night, their unnaturalness hidden by daylight. His outthrust lower jaw looked rebellious and pugnacious, but no one would guess that it did not properly match the upper one, nor that it had tearing fangs instead of grinding molars in the back, not without a much closer examination than any causal glance could afford.

These were the qualities that had sent him to Blake Belladonna's rooms off the Strand. Being able to rub shoulders with the mass of humanity was a practical skill for one of the White Fang, and he intended to use it.

Adam had not set him to follow Blake. The Fang's field commander had schooled her in tradecraft himself, and he had no illusions that Blake—cautious by nature at all times, and no doubt more than that if she was up to something underhanded—would fail to spot a shadow, particularly one forced to follow her alone (with the risks that implied he'd have to take), one that she actually knew.

No, Connor's mission was simple and straightforward: wait for Blake to leave her flat, then break in and try to find some evidence of what she was up to. He watched her exit the building, scurry up Wilton Court, and get into a cab. The coast wasn't going to get any clearer than that.

The good part of being a Faunus of the White Fang was that, unlike an ordinary criminal, Lutege didn't need to worry about the police using his description to hunt him down later in some underworld haunt. Thus, though he kept the brim of his derby pulled down and his coat-collar turned up to reduce the impression of any passerby to his clothing alone, he openly crossed the street and rang the bell at the front door. A moment later, the door was opened by a middle-aged woman.

"Can I help you?" she said sourly, clearly hoping the answer was no and that the caller would go away. Lutege did not hesitate; his left fist hammered her belly, driving the wind from her. This at once silenced her and let him shoulder his way forward, pushing her back into the building's front hall. His heel swept the door shut behind him while his right hand came up out of his coat pocket with a braided leather sap. Lutege whipped the sap down, striking the landlady behind the ear, and she crumpled in a heap on the bare wood floor. Likely, she was just unconscious, probably concussed but no worse off. Less likely, she might have been seriously hurt or even dying; depressed skull fractures and brain hemorrhages could result from a sapping.

Lutege found that he could care less whether another useless human was alive or dead.

He stepped over the fallen woman and ascended the stairs, where there were two flats. 116b was at the front of the building; he passed by its door on the landing and went to 116c at the rear. This was where Blake Belladonna lived, slept, made a home for herself when she was done with her work in the human world at the Star.

The lock was a simple one, not a fancy Yale type, and while Lutege was by no means expert at illegal entry, he did carry a ring of skeleton keys and knew how to use them. He picked a likely one and poked it into the lock, only to meet with resistance. Before he'd even finished the thought that it was the wrong key and he should try another, though, the blockage was gone and he heard the click of something metal dropping onto the floor inside the room.

The key. The door-key had been left in the lock inside the door and Lutege's skeleton key had poked it out of the hole. But why hadn't Belladonna locked her room and taken it with her? Was she so circumspect that she left her flat completely empty of any incriminating evidence and left it open so that any snooper could examine it and get the idea of her complete normalcy? It hardly seemed likely.

The back of his neck itched. He'd have suspected an ambush, that she'd just re-entered the court through an alley and was slipping up behind him, had he not seen her drive away in that cab. Though a cab could double back, too…

Lutege turned, crept back to the landing, and looked downstairs. He saw nothing but the sprawled form of the landlady. That didn't mean that Belladonna wasn't on her way back, though. His time could be very limited, so he needed to move fast and make securing his escape, even if it was out the rear windows, his top priority. He went back to the door, turned the knob, and cautiously moved into the room, his mind still half-expecting cat-silent footsteps coming up behind him.

The searing pain that exploded through his head, followed by the yawning darkness that rose to swallow him, did not therefore come as a complete surprise.

~X X X~

Gabriel John Utterson was a slim-built man of average height, with neatly trimmed brown hair and a thin moustache. He favored well-tailored black suits, he took regular exercise in the form of long, rambling walks through the City, and he had led a solitary, bachelor existence into his late forties. The word used by most outsiders to describe him was "prim"; he himself would have preferred the words "orderly" and "precise." There had been few moments in his life that provided for strong emotion or imagination.

The sudden and unexpected intrusion of a woman into his inner office, without appointment and unannounced, therefore presaged the sort of matter that would end up ruining his day and his digestion.

"Mr. Utterson?" she asked.

"I am. What is the meaning of this intrusion?"

Actually, "prim" summed up that reaction fairly well, he realized as soon as the words were out of his mouth, souring his mood even further.

"You'll have to forgive your clerk. I implied that it would be better if he took himself off for an hour to avoid any…embarrassing interruptions."

Utterson's brow furrowed. Morrow was a discreet young man, but even so the idea that his clerk would believe Utterson was the type to keep a mistress…moreover, the kind that accepted calls from her during the business day…it was positively mortifying. How was he supposed to maintain the respect of his employees if they had such an impression of him?

A small, traitorous part of him thought that at least if Morrow had to think that he was an immoral rogue, at least he could be impressed that he was able to rate the company of this rather beautiful, young, dark-haired woman, the kind who would be an ornament to some Continental noble.

But even so! Just because the implications were flattering to his male ego did not mean that they were any less offensive.

"My good woman—" Ha! "My good woman, I have no idea what your intentions are, but if you think that I will blithely accept you coming in here and blackening my name, then I may tell you that you are most gravely mistaken."

The intruder shook her head.

"Mr. Utterson, while I appreciate your concerns, I think that if you'll just hear me out you'll soon understand that I had good reason for everything that I've done thus far."

Her tone was serious, crisp, even businesslike, and Utterson had to admit that it did not suggest to him the kind of impropriety he had initially feared.

That, in its own way, made the situation rather worse.

"I see. Well, as you seem to have made yourself at home in my office routine, I would have no better thing to do with my time than hear you out. Please, be seated." He extended a hand towards one of the client chairs on the opposite side of his desk.

"Thank you. While my superiors require a certain discretion, I had hoped that between ourselves we could conduct business matters in a businesslike way."

She seated herself in the proffered chair, and Utterson settled himself back into his own seat of well-worn burgundy leather.

"Your superiors, you say. Then you are not here on your own occasion?"

She shook her head.

"No, like you yourself, I represent a client." She reached into her reticule and slipped out a card, which she extended to him. Utterson took the slip of pasteboard, glanced at it, and his eyebrows rose sharply.

Weiss Schnee.

"You move in rarefied circles, Miss—?"

"Schwarz."

Utterson supposed that there was a certain appropriateness there, in "Black" mirroring her employer's "White." But with the Schnees involved, he was well aware that he was on dangerous ground and would have to tread lightly indeed.

"So, how can I be of service to your employer? My practice is small and self-contained, hardly the thing to attract such illustrious attention."

"You might be surprised. In this case it is one of our employees that is at question, one Dr. Henry Jekyll."

"Henry? But he's been gone these two years."

"Perhaps."

Utterson's eyebrows shot up in surprise for the second time in the space of two minutes. It was an emotion he gravely disliked feeling even once a day, let alone repeatedly and often.

But then, the affair of Jekyll's will had been full of such moments at the time, so why should it stop being so now?

"Miss Schwarz, I am sure that you are aware of this, but Henry Jekyll was not only a client but a personal friend of mine. I am thus doubly bound to treat his affairs as confidential."

"I am well aware of a solicitor's duty," she said. "Nonetheless, if you will hear me out, perhaps we can find some common ground. Perhaps you'll find that your duty as a friend does not follow so closely upon your legal one."

He was not so surprised as perhaps he ought to have been to hear her say that. But then, it was a consideration that he had weighed before.

"Very well. Do go on."

"You are the executor of Dr. Jekyll's estate. In November of 1887, you probated a certain will that had been executed in March of that same year. This will was executed in favor of a certain Edward Hyde, and contained the rather unusual provision that it be effective not only on Dr. Jekyll's death, but also his disappearance. Neither you nor any member of your legal staff served as a witness to the will, however. I needn't go on to say, must I, that no death-certificate has been found on record for Dr. Jekyll?"

Utterson shook his head.

"No, you need not spell it out. It was indeed the 'disappearance' provision that was invoked. Regardless, I can assure you that I acted entirely within the boundaries of the law and Dr. Jekyll's instructions."

"Did you, now?" his visitor said with deceptive mildness. "I daresay, though, that at no time did you have actual face-to-face contact with Dr. Jekyll."

She'd caught him out with that one. Now how the devil did she know that?

"Or spoke to him on the telephone?" she added, not waiting for a response but instead pressing her advantage.

And advantage it was. With only three short sentences, she had succeeded in all but completely tipping over what Utterson knew—or thought he knew—about the entire Jekyll affair. The business had worried him at the time. It was irregular—it raised doubt—it had deeply troubled him on his old friend's behalf.

"Come, put it in plain English, Miss Schwarz. What are you implying has happened?"

"Though Dr. Jekyll was your friend, he communicated with you only by letter, or perhaps telegram. He had you draw up a new will for him with an unusual term, and leaving his estate to a man of whom you knew nothing, despite that friendship. Have I the right of it so far?"

"You do."

"And then, having complied with what you believed to be his wishes, he did indeed disappear as perhaps, by that point, you half-expected him to do. Disappear—so that his property could be transferred to Edward Hyde without you even so much as standing over Dr. Jekyll's coffin at the funeral. In short, sir, that the entire thing was an imposture of the first order."

"Miss Schwarz, you shock me!"

"You had never considered it?"

"Not at all!" And he hadn't. His confusion had indeed given rise to certain fears, particularly of blackmail. Unlike the conservative and reserved Utterson, Jekyll had been a bit wild in his youth and was still known for pursuing certain discreet pleasures and luxuries. Utterson had worried that some indiscretion had put his old friend into the power of an unscrupulous schemer, who had extorted these concessions from him. "You forget that I am quite au fait with Jekyll's handwriting, and knew the letters for his."

Miss Schwarz canted an eyebrow upward.

"Indeed?" she said dryly. "Given that this extremely unusual situation closely concerns a friend's life, I am surprised that you were so cavalier in its acceptance." She tapped her fingertips together slowly, in measured beats. Utterson tried to repress a shudder and believed that he succeeded. Thus far, she was merely making suggestions, not even allegations. But there would be more to come, he knew.

Utterson drew himself upright in his chair.

"Miss, if I may speak plainly, you seem to be implying that at the time Dr. Jekyll commissioned my services to rewrite his will, he was in fact already dead—perhaps done to death by this Hyde and his body hidden, or more charitably that a group of rogues came to be aware of his extended absence and so decided to carry out an imposture for the sake of pilfering his wealth. I can assure you in the strongest possible terms that this did not occur—that I was not derelict in my duty."

"That interests me deeply," Miss Schwarz said. "You impress me as a man who does not just say such things at the drop of a hat or a feeble attempt to defend your actions against a claim of legal neglect. Yet the situation as described is so gravely irregular that I cannot imagine you letting it pass without taking steps to verify that you were indeed serving the interests of your client and friend. Merely recognizing the handwriting would not have satisfied a competent man of the law."

"You must appreciate that, as you say, a 'competent man of the law,' I have an obligation to protect my clients' confidences."

She nodded.

"These are matters of public record, though, Mr. Utterson. And my employer believes it very likely that there has been a fraud committed."

"Fraud!"

Miss Schwarz's gaze fell on the folded newspaper sitting on the corner of the desk.

"You take the Times, I see. If you'll look at the Stop Press, I think that you'll see something of interest."

Confused by the sudden shift in topic, Utterson picked up the paper and unfolded it. Quickly locating the insert she'd mentioned, he cast his eye across the headlines.

"I'm afraid that I don't—"

"Try the article headed, Lunatic Asylum Burns."

Still confused, he did as she asked, reading the story of the partial destruction of a private sanitarium in Kensington early on the previous evening. The account was given in the usual dry, matter-of-fact tone the Times preferred, and Utterson saw nothing of interest until his eye fell upon the name of the asylum's director.

"Edward Hyde? But surely it cannot be the same man?"

"On the contrary, I am quite sure that it is."

Utterson shook his head vigorously.

"It cannot be. Hyde, in Kensington?"

Miss Schwarz leaned forward in her seat, and Utterson would have sworn that he saw her hair-bow…twitch.

"You knew," she said. "I thought that you were just a dupe, but you knew all along."

"I have no idea of what you mean, Miss Schwarz," Utterson tried to brazen it out, but he was an exceptionally poor choice for that even at the best of times.

"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are one and the same man, and his 'disappearance' and will no more than a ruse to transfer legal title to his property to his new identity. The inheritance taxes would be a substantial loss, I expect, but worth it for the absolute lawful control it would grant him."

Utterson had no idea how to react. He had always believed that there was a chance that someone might come forward some day to expose or at least pursue what they had done, but that that someone would know about it from the very start…

Or that Jekyll would be found here in London when he did turn up…

Utterson was not prepared for such things, not at all.

"My dear Miss Schwarz, I—"

"Dr. Jekyll was working on certain private projects for the Schnee Dust Company at the time of his disappearance. No doubt as his friend you were familiar with his work in the field of experimental chemistry? We are not amused, Mr. Utterson."

"You have it all wrong, I tell you!"

"I hardly think so. You have two choices now, Mr. Utterson. You can face the legal consequences of assisting Dr. Jekyll in committing a fraud on the courts, as well as your own actions, or you can face the private consequences with us."

She did not elaborate on those, and there was hardly any need to. The Schnee Dust Company was quite capable of exacting any number of imaginative revenges on those who crossed them. It wasn't even personal—just good business sense to not allow anyone to get away with defrauding them.

"It wasn't like that at all! Henry Jekyll wrote to me just as I told you."

"And…"

"And you're quite right. I was suspicious. I thought that he had gotten himself into the hands of villains who had extorted this will from him as the price of their silence over some foolish indiscretion of his youth, now come home to roost. I implored him to no avail to reconsider the matter. I decided that at the least I must meet this Hyde. I lurked at Jekyll's address, trying to catch a glimpse of him, but did not. My own clumsy attempts must have been seen, though, for the next day I received a letter from Hyde himself. It chanced that this letter was seen by Mr. Guest, my head clerk, who has made a special study of graphology, and he was struck at once by its similarity to Dr. Jekyll's writing. Examination revealed that, in fact, the two were one and the same, the Hyde letter being merely written in a disguised hand."

"I presume that you taxed Dr. Jekyll with this?"

"Of course! I implored him to tell me the truth—by letter, as he still would not see me in person—and at last he revealed to me that it was as I feared: he had fallen into the clutches of a blackmailer. Rather than being the out to ensnare him, however, 'Edward Hyde' was rather his safe haven that he would use to protect himself. He claimed that he intended to go abroad, to get beyond their direct reach."

"Presumably, Dr. Jekyll had no legal heirs who would contest such a will, and this fact would also make it seem more reasonable that he would name a single friend to inherit his entire estate."

"That is quite so. Indeed, the devisees under his previous will had only been charities as well as the medical school where he took his degree."

"And so, convinced by his pleas, you stifled your sense of legal ethics and assisted Dr. Jekyll to escape into the identity of Mr. Hyde. Except, of course, for the key points that there were no creditors, no blackmailer, and no disappearance abroad. Instead, he stayed right here in London."

"I was trying to help a friend," Utterson insisted. "There was no fraud, no theft. He didn't even try to conceal any of his assets, agreeing that it would create a risk of discovery, so the government collected taxes on the estate of a man who wasn't even dead."

"No fraud? Mr. Utterson, why, precisely, do you think that I am asking about Jekyll?"

He had no answer for that. Indeed, he had the sudden impression that he did not want to know.

"Two years ago, you made a choice," Miss Schwarz continued. "You have another one now. You can defend your actions in court, or you can get out your file on the Jekyll estate and start talking to me."

She did not smile at him, gave no sense of satisfaction or self-indulgence at the position that she (and Jekyll) had placed him in—and left no illusion that he actually had any kind of choice.