A Telegram for Miss Vesper. The Two Misses Vesper, #1

Two women. One surname. One telegram that should never have reached the wrong Miss Vesper. London, 1883. Dinah Vesper is a professional photographer from Manchester, accustomed to trusting her own eyes and unimpressed by rank, privilege, or men who assume they know what is best for her. When a coded government telegram is mistakenly delivered into her hands, she reads enough of it before the error is discovered to become something the Foreign Office cannot easily dispose of: a civilian who knows too much.
The message was meant for another Miss Vesper. Verity Vesper is an aristocratic linguist whose respectable occupation conceals her real work deciphering languages, codes, and intentions for the Foreign Office. Controlled, precise, and accustomed to deciding what information other people need to know, Verity expects Dinah to be an inconvenient security problem. Instead, Dinah notices something every trained cryptographer has missed.
Part of the mysterious code is not linguistic at all. Its patterns resemble the cataloguing systems used for photographic plates. Their discovery sends the two unrelated Vespers from London to Dover, across the Channel to Calais, and finally into the photographic studios and commercial archives of Paris. Somewhere inside an apparently ordinary trade in negatives, catalogues, chemicals, and glass plates, diplomatic secrets are crossing borders.
Solving the case demands both women's talents. Verity can hear the habits a writer cannot conceal. Dinah can see inconsistencies other people overlook. Working together is remarkably effective. Getting along is another matter entirely. Every argument exposes another difference between them-class, loyalty, secrecy, ambition, and above all the question of whether anyone has the right to control another person's choices simply because the stakes are high.
Unfortunately, irritation is becoming fascination. And fascination is becoming something considerably harder to ignore. A Telegram for Miss Vesper is the first novel in The Two Misses Vesper, a Victorian sapphic espionage romance series about two brilliant women, dangerous secrets, complicated desire, and a partnership that begins with the wrong telegram.