Page 86 of The Lady Knows Best

“Love and happiness,” said Miles, with one lunging step toward him, shaking off Alistair’s grip. “And a birthday surprise for an eighty-year-old woman, to boot.”

Manwaring didn’t blanch. Or laugh. “Well, in that case . . .” He turned away and stepped to a table piled with books and papers. He picked up a pencil and jotted down something in the corner of a page, then tore the note free. “Here.”

It was an address in Fleet Street, written on a fragment of paper that looked for all the world like a portion of the banner that headed Miss Busy B.’s advice column.

“Much obliged,” Miles said, snatching it from him even as he wondered how Manwaring had come by the information.

“Yes,” echoed Alistair. “My friend will be eternally grateful—”

“That,” said Miles, already headed toward the door, “remains to be seen.”

“And if you could also extend our thanks to Lady Stalbridge,” Alistair continued, ignoring him, “it would be most appreciated.”

The not-quite-amused expression returned. “Oh, rest assured. Both Lady Stalbridge and Mrs. Goode will hear about your visit.” Once more he inclined his head. “Ryland. Deveraux.”

Miles was already seated in his curricle, reins in hand, when Alistair clambered up beside him. Though slightly breathless, he clasped his hands around the lines and tugged them free of Miles’s grasp. “In the state you’re in, you’ll overturn us—and probably every cart and pedestrian we pass between here and the Strand.”

Thankfully, Alistair set aside at least some of his usual caution while driving, meaning that Miles’s shouts and curses fell on a more limited audience than they might otherwise have done: a pack of raucous boys oblivious to their surroundings and prone to jostling one another into the roadway, and the driver of a brewer’s wagon, who flexed a fist the size of a small ham at him in response.

They pulled up beside a parked hackney cab in front of the printer’s address, and Miles sprang from the carriage before it had even come to a full stop.

“Wait,” Alistair said, jumping down and tying the reins. Miles narrowly stopped himself from pounding on the shop door. “I’m sure you’ve already given a great deal of thought to what you wish to say. . . .”

Had he? As usual, his mind had been spinning faster than the curricle’s wheels, almost from the moment Bellis had delivered the news in the Lyneham church.

“You didn’t read what Bellis gave you,” Alistair observed.

It had been too much to take in, Daphne’s words, her feelings about him, all contained in black ink that would swim before his eyes if he’d dared to unfold the paper. He couldn’t bear to think what she might have written. So he’d kept it tucked safely in his pocket instead.

“I don’t care,” he lied.

I love her, and no essay can change that.

As if he’d heard those unspoken words, Alistair nodded, partly in understanding, partly to urge Miles to knock.

The door was opened by a small, balding man, about fifty, with spectacles perched on his forehead and a nose too large for his face. He was wiping his hands with an ink-stained rag. “How can I help you gents?”

“We’re looking for a young lady,” explained Alistair.

“Mrs. Goode sent us,” Miles added, which earned him a skeptical glance from the older man.

Nevertheless, the printer stepped back and let them enter the shop, the small front room of which was papered with samples of the man’s work. He nodded them toward a door at the back, past a wooden counter.

The next room was dominated by a large press, the scents of paper and ink strong in the air. The press clattered and clanged as a younger man cranked the handle with surprising speed, churning out sheet after sheet. Bundles of broadsheets, tied with twine, were piled on a narrow table and on the floor around the perimeter. On the far side of the room, atop one of those bundles, sat Daphne, knees drawn up to her chest, head down.

Miles would have gone to her, but Alistair reached across him for one of the freshly printed pages. Surrounded by text, a man’s face stared up at them, smirking, with the tips of a pair of horns peeking from beneath his hair. Exaggerated features, to be sure, but identifiably Miles.

“It would seem that the artist behind the Unfashionable Plates has expanded her repertoire,” said Alistair in a dry voice.

“I have,” said a voice, and from behind the door appeared a woman, perilously close to thirty, tall and thin, with frizzy hair between red and blond.

“Ah, so you are Miss C.” Alistair dipped his head in her direction. “Intrigued to meet you.”

“Likewise, Lord Ryland,” she said, and did not curtsy.

The noise of the press must have drowned out the sound of their conversation enough that Daphne could not hear it; at least, she did not look up.

“Like I told her already,” the printer said, nodding first toward Daphne’s huddled figure and then toward a clock on the wall, “they go out at four, unless I hear word to the contrary from Mrs. Goode direct.”