Page 16 of The Belle of Belgrave Square

Julia expected he had. Her father was a great one for dashing off complaining notes from his sickbed. When he was in residence, the second footman was forever on the trot.

“Setting a dour old matron to guard me isn’t going to make me any more attractive to suitors,” she said.

“I’ll hear no arguments on the subject.”

“But Papa—”

“Enough, child.” Beads of perspiration gathered on her father’s brow. He withdrew a linen handkerchief from his pocket to blot his face. “Away with you, now. You’ll tire me out before I’ve done my work.”

Her shoulders slumped. There was, indeed, no point in arguing with him. He and Mama always won. Naturally, they did. It was they who held all the power.

“Yes, Papa.” She rose from the ottoman, smoothing her skirts. “I’m going shopping for a new book. I’ll return directly.”

“Mind you do,” he said. “I may have need of you.”

Bloxham’s Books was a small shop at the end of an alleyway off of Charing Cross Road. Julia was a frequent visitor to the premises. In the last month alone, she’d been there three times on the hunt for new novels to read.

Mr. Bloxham served as both bookseller and publisher. He did a steady business in lesser-known sensation novels, adventure stories, and romances. Books written by people like J. Marshland or Mrs. Trent-Watkinson. Authors most of the general public had never heard of before.

“They write them fast and we print them fast,” the shop clerk confided as Julia explored the shelves. “Not much in the way of literary value, but they pass the time.”

Mary trailed behind them, looking as dour as a crow in her black stuff dress and bonnet. As lady’s maid, she was obliged to accompany her mistress on errands, but she made no secret of her opinions about novels. She seemed to think they were the main reason Julia hadn’t yet been successful on the marriage mart.

Julia knew better. It wasn’t novel reading that caused her crippling anxiety. Quite the reverse. Along with riding Cossack, it was one of the only things to grant her respite from it.

She removed a small book from a cramped middle shelf on the wall. The Nobleman’s Secret Child. “Who says they don’t have literary value?”

“Why, the best people in the book business, miss.” The clerk drew closer. He was a keen young man in an ill-fitting suit who smelled strongly of cheap pomade. “The reviewers at Blackwood’s Magazine and them at the Weekly Heliosphere. You won’t often see our titles included in their pages, but on occasion one of them gets a mention, and never to the good. Only look at Marshland’s latest. ‘Tripe,’ the reviewer called it. ‘Excessively earnest tripe.’ ”

“That’s not very nice.”

“No indeed, miss. Not for Mr. Bloxham, it isn’t. He’s left with one hundred copies of the book, and since the write-up in the Heliosphere, we can’t sell them for pittance.”

Julia returned The Nobleman’s Secret Child to the shelf. She walked further down the narrow aisle, her wide skirts brushing the shelves on either side. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Have you read Marshland’s novels?”

“Not recently, no, but I used to devour them as a girl. I still count The Fire Opal as one of my favorites of all time.”

“Ah, The Fire Opal.” The clerk waxed nostalgic over the popular sensation romance. “It’s Marshland’s bestseller to this day.”

“She doesn’t publish much anymore, does she?”

“Not regular like, no.”

“And when she does, her stories aren’t at all like they used to be.”

“Marshland’s style has changed and no mistake,” the clerk acknowledged. “For the worse, some say.”

“I can’t believe that. Her writing is generally a cut above the others.”

“Aye, so it is.” The clerk followed after her, with Mary not far behind him. “But a bad review puts people off. Don’t matter the quality of the story. If word gets out that a book’s rotten, we can’t move it.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.” Julia examined first one book and then another. She didn’t know what she was in the mood for. A romance, certainly, but not one featuring brutish husbands, self-sacrificing damsels, or even secret babies. She wanted something a bit more hopeful, with a heroine she could believe in and a hero worthy of the name.

Replacing yet another book onto the shelf, she returned to the front of the shop. A round wooden table was arrayed there, holding multiple copies of the same novel—a slim volume bound in dark green cloth.

It was Mrs. Marshland’s new book.