Perhaps.
The next morning dawned grey and drizzling, fitting weather for posting a letter that might change everything or nothing at all. Eveline walked to the postoffice herself, unwilling to trust such important correspondence to a servant who might gossip about the address.
"Special delivery?" the clerk asked, noting the quality of the paper.
"Regular post will suffice." Special delivery would seem too eager, too desperate, too much like someone trying too hard to be noticed.
"Very good, miss."
And with that mundane exchange, it was done. Her application was winging its way to Everleigh Manor, where it would land on some assistant's desk and probably be dismissed as the ramblings of an overeducated nobody.
Or perhaps not.
Perhaps E. Whitcombe would intrigue someone, mayhap those qualifications would outweigh the eventual surprise, perhaps...
"You're wool-gathering in the middle of the street," a familiar voice said.
Eveline turned to find Harriet, armed with an umbrella and a concerned expression that suggested she'd been lying in wait.
"It's done," Eveline said simply. "I've sent it."
"Oh, Evie." Harriet linked their arms with the air of someone preparing to offer comfort for an inevitable disaster. "Well then, we'd better go to Gunter's and eat an obscene amount of ice while we wait for either triumph or disaster."
"It's ten in the morning."
"Impending social ruin calls for ice at all hours."
As they walked, Eveline wondered what the Duke was like; cold, society said, proud and bitter from his broken betrothal, the sort of man who'd probably burn her application the moment he discovered her deception.
But then, society said a lot of things. They said women couldn't understand Latin, shouldn't read philosophy, mustn't aspire to more than marriage and motherhood, and so many other things that Eveline disagreed with.
"You're smiling," Harriet observed with suspicion. "That's either very good or very bad."
"I'm imagining the Duke's face when he realizes E. Whitcombe isn't Edmund or Edward."
"He'll probably have an apoplectic fit."
"Quite possibly." Eveline's smile widened with anticipation. "Won't that be interesting? But in all honesty, it is far too unlikely that I shall even be considered.”
Chapter 3
She was about to fall, she was sure of it.
The rain had transformed Everleigh Manor’s gravel drive into a treacherous landscape of puddles and loose stones, each step threatening to send Eveline sliding ignominiously to her doom or at least to a very undignified arrival. Contrary to what she had thought, she had indeed been considered. Well, E.Whitcombe, had been at least. She clutched her leather portfolio against her chest like armor, though what protection it might offer against the imposing façade looming before her, she couldn't say. The massive oak door stood at the top of twelve stone steps, each one slick with rain and seemingly designed to remind visitors of their insignificance in the grand scheme of ducal importance.
She had dressed carefully for this interview; her best blue day dress, the one that made her look serious and scholarly rather than like someone who'd spent the previous night arguing with herself about the wisdom of this entire enterprise. Her hair, usually a lost cause of rebellious curls, had been wrestled into submission with enough pins to construct a small fortress. She'd even borrowed her mother's good gloves, though they were now rather dampened from her death grip on the portfolio.
The door knocker was a bronze lion's head that seemed to sneer at her presumption but she lifted it and let it fall with a sound that echoed like judgment.
The man who answered was everything a ducal butler should be. He stood well over six feet, with a hawk-like gaze that could probably spot impropriety from three counties away. His black livery was pressed to a degree that suggested he considered wrinkles a personal affront to his dignity, and his hands were clasped behind his back in the manner of someone perpetually prepared to deny entry to the unworthy.
"Yes?" The single word contained multitudes of disapproval.
Eveline lifted her chin, summoning every ounce of false confidence she'd been cultivating since receiving the interview invitation. "Miss Whitcombe to see His Grace. I have an appointment at two o'clock."
The man, who had announced his name as Graves, consulted his pocket watch with the gravity of someone checking the alignment of the planets. "It is twoo'clock and three minutes."
"Then I'm fashionably punctual."
