Page 99 of The Muse of Maiden Lane

Of all Stella’s friends, Anne was the most likely to throw cold water on Stella’s plans. Not out of mean-spiritedness, but out of an instinctive desire to shield Stella from being hurt.

Yes, he wants you now, Anne would say in her rational, lemon-tart voice. He is in the throes of some sort of artistic mania, desperate to paint you. But what will happen afterward? What kind of life will you have with him when he’s on to his next subject and the next, and you’re still there, in his house, overlooked and perchance unwanted?

Or possibly it wasn’t Anne who would ask Stella those things. Perhaps they were the worrisome questions Stella was already asking herself.

Julia and Evie exchanged an opaque glance.

“It’s not the same anyway.” Stella attempted to explain what she didn’t fully understand yet herself. “It’s not a love match like you and Captain Blunt, or like you and Mr. Malik.”

“What is it, then?” Julia asked. “A friendship? That’s what you called it when first you mentioned him to us in Hyde Park.”

“Friendship can often lead to more tender feelings,” Evie said.

Stella recalled how Teddy had held her face in the cradle of his large, black-gloved hands. How he’d kissed her so warmly. So thoroughly.

Heat suffused her cheeks.

Yes, there were tender feelings in abundance. At least, on her part. And surely on Teddy’s, too. Gentlemen didn’t kiss just anyone, did they?

“It’s not only a friendship,” she said.

Julia was encouraged by the prospect. “Well, that’s something, isn’t it?”

“Something wonderful, to be sure,” Evie said. “It must be. I vow you’re positively glowing.”

“You are,” Julia agreed. “Indeed, you look rather different. More…more…something.”

“It’s your hair,” Evie noticed. “You’re not wearing a silk net.”

Stella touched a self-conscious hand to the simple roll at her nape. She rarely ventured out without masking her hair in a close-woven net. But today she’d refrained. Her gray color was plain for everyone to see.

“Forget being small and quiet,” Teddy had said yesterday. “I’m asking you to be conspicuous with me!”

The words had awakened something in Stella, as surely as a sorcerer’s spell. They had summoned the boldness in her heart, too long stifled by her fear of society’s censure. In the past, she’d been afraid to expose herself, lest she provoke the sort of malicious cruelty she’d endured during her first season.

But no more.

If she was going to live conspicuously, she must begin somewhere. Her hair had seemed the obvious place to start.

“That’s it!” Julia’s eyes sharpened. “But you always wear a net over your hair when you go out.”

“Does it look dreadful without it?” Stella asked.

“Not at all,” Evie replied. “You’re radiant.”

“Your connection with Mr. Hayes must agree with you,” Julia said.

Stella looked between her two friends. “Then you both approve? You don’t think I’m mad to have accepted him?”

“Would our opinions change your mind?” Julia asked.

“No,” Stella admitted. “I don’t expect they would.”

“There’s your answer, then,” Evie said. “You’ve chosen correctly. If you hadn’t, you’d be looking for any excuse to retract your acceptance of his proposal.”

“I don’t want to retract it,” Stella said.

On the contrary, having accepted Teddy’s proposal, she felt more hopeful about the future than she had in ages. Perhaps that was why she was glowing, if indeed she was.