Page 17 of The Lady Knows Best

By the light passing through the glass-paneled door, his oldest friend studied him, a crease notched into his brow. “I do, you realize. Worry.”

“Why? You know I never lose.”

Alistair sighed. “I wasn’t thinking of your wager, Miles. Or, rather, I was wondering . . . Have you given any thought to what happens after you win?”

Don’t you care about affection? she had asked.

He did, of course—though not in the way she’d meant it. He knew what he wanted from this marriage. He’d agreed to the terms of the wager, hadn’t he?

Or—or passion?

He paused on the threshold and scanned the ballroom, though he certainly was not looking for anyone in particular.

This was no time to be distracted. He had no reason to feel . . . disappointed.

Everything was going exactly to plan.

CHAPTER 6

Long before any other member of the household arose, Daphne got dressed, grabbed a bonnet, and went downstairs. All was quiet, though the shadowy entry hall bore witness to several early-morning deliveries, bouquets and nosegays from the gentlemen who had danced with her sister last night.

Most of them included daisies, Bellis’s namesake flower, though she’d never been particularly fond of it. Daphne reached out a hand to trace the edge of one delicate petal. Why were men so unimaginative when it came to sending tokens of their affection? One could only hope they were more invested in the lady’s feelings when it came to bestowing the affections themselves.

Don’t you care about affection?

She jerked away her hand, nearly toppling a vase of pink roses in the process.

Why the devil should she care about Lord Deveraux’s heart?

From somewhere behind her came a weary groan. She turned to discover a black-and-fawn mastiff watching her expectantly.

“Walk?” she suggested to the dog, who perked up his ears at the word.

The Magazine for Misses staff meeting wasn’t for another hour. But Daphne needed to clear her head now. She had expected to have to persuade one of the footmen to accompany her. She could already foresee spending most of the wages she earned writing for the magazine on ensuring the silence of half a dozen servants, scattered throughout the British Isles, on the matter of her comings and goings as well as that of the post.

But this was better. Dogs couldn’t talk.

“Walk?” she said again, and the giant canine lumbered to her side. Swiftly tying the ribbons of her bonnet, Daphne set out.

The clerk at Porter’s expressed no surprise at her early arrival, though he did cast a chary glance at the dog.

“He wouldn’t hurt a flea,” she reassured the young man, who bobbed his head in a skeptical nod, then pretended to look the other way while Daphne fished for the key to the back room, which hung on a hook behind the counter. After that first meeting, Lady Stalbridge had told her where to find it and explained that the room was reserved for the exclusive use of the magazine’s staff.

But someone else had already retrieved the key, and she found the door to the back room ajar.

The room was just as disorganized as it had been before, but someone had polished the window, and a complete run of the Magazine for Misses now lined the sill.

Constantia Cooper, the artist behind the monthly satirical cartoons, “What Miss C. Saw”—known among readers as the “Unfashionable Plates”—was seated at one end of the oval table, sketching. She wore a dress of drab green muslin and, as usual, all that had been done to tame her frizz of curls was insufficient to the task.

Once, Daphne had puzzled over Constantia’s role at the magazine, but now she understood that Miss C.’s drawings were intended not to highlight the day’s fashions but to skewer the fashionable.

Only after Constantia had completed the exaggerated outline of a figure did she lift her head. Pushing her spectacles up her nose, she favored the dog with an exasperated look and then shifted her gaze to Daphne.

“Are all the Burkes incapable of leaving the house without some sort of animal companion?”

Daphne had never confessed the matter of her sister’s cat’s misbehavior and its role in bringing her to the magazine.

“This is Zwolf.” She patted the dog’s broad head as she made the introduction. Given the dog’s size, the movement hardly required her to extend her arm.