The typeface was the same, but this was not the same one as before.
A new issue.
Part Two.
She did not open it at once.
Jane, still standing, watched her. “What is it?”
Elizabeth opened the pamphlet. Flipped past the preamble. Found the headings with one hand as the other set aside the teacup.
The first sketch featured a well-born widow whose best friend was her own reflection.
The second took aim at a curate’s daughter with strong opinions about other people’s weddings.
The third—Elizabeth’s stomach clenched.
A lady who catalogues the moral faults of others while writing in a secret diary.
She sat down without meaning to.
“Lizzy? What is it?”
Elizabeth could not answer at first. Her eyes scanned the column again.
No names, save for the occasional initial.
No specifics.
Only the shape of her, twisted and dressed for company, with a rapier in hand rather than a reticule.
“They are spreading it,” she whispered. “There is more…”
Jane frowned. “What?”
Elizabeth shook her head, as if to clear it. “Still. To new people.”
“Lizzy, what are you talking about?”
Elizabeth looked down at the bottom of the page. A final line, in the same precise script.
The Ink-Stained Nobody: Part III to follow.
Of course there would be a part three. There was enough material for a fourth, and probably even a fifth.
Andshe… she was done, as soon as someone recognized her.
Chapter Twenty-Five
16 December
Lady Forester’s conservatory wasa greenhouse masquerading as a ballroom. The glass roof glittered with frost, the air buzzed with laughter and violin strings, and Elizabeth felt like a beetle pinned under a bell jar.
She adjusted the clasp on her reticule for the fourth time and tried not to look like she was scanning the room. She wasnotdesperate. Desperate women were obvious, and obvious women were doomed. She was merely alert. Poised. Socially strategic.
And also, very possibly, about to be publicly ruined.
She caught a flicker of ginger silk to her left—Jane, laughing and smiling, engaged in quiet conversation with Aunt Gardiner. They looked like a painting. In contrast, Elizabeth felt like the bit of charcoal someone used to scrawl a mustache across it.
