Page 32 of The Lady Plays with Fire

“I’d offer you a guinea for the trouble,” she murmured, handing over the letter. “But at present, I haven’t even a ha’penny.”

“No worries, Miss Julia.” He tucked the letter into the pocket of his livery coat, hanging on a peg behind him, and then shrugged into the garment. “Maybe you could find time for giving me another lesson in—what d’ya call it?—instead.”

“Deportment,” she supplied with a gentle smile. “And I think maybe you’re ready for a few phrases in French, too.”

He beamed. “Gee, thanks! But . . .” His hand clutched his breast, where the letter had been secreted. “What if the fellow who opens the door says her ladyship isn’t to be disturbed and won’t take it to her?”

“You will just have to be persuasive, Daniel. It’s very important.”

With an earnest nod, he was off.

Julia made her silent way back to her bedchamber. Once inside, she sank onto the stool of her dressing table and reached for the mug of doctored milk, now tepid rather than warm. She glanced from the frothy contents of the cup to the rumpled white linens of the bed behind her.

I promise you’ll be satisfied.

Squeezing shut her eyes, she downed the milk in three noisy glugs, grimacing at its bitter aftertaste, then flung herself backward onto the mattress and prayed the sleeping draught would at least keep her from dreaming of him.

Between now and next Friday, she needed to forget what those forbidden words had made her crave, to recall that her attraction to Lord Dunstane was meant to be an act.

* * *

The following Friday morning found Graham in the blue study, seated by the window at the table where Keynes usually worked, staring at a blank sheet of paper.

Well, not quite blank. He’d pressed the tip of his pen into the page so firmly it had made a small tear, not only spoiling that page, but also allowing ink to bleed onto the page beneath. A perfect metaphor for the progress, or lack thereof, he’d made in his revisions to The Poison Pen.

The play had a flaw in it. Hardly visible to the naked eye . . . at first. But large enough to make a mess of things and damned difficult to repair.

It had been written in a fit of pique. Taking on the critics was biting the hands that indirectly fed him. And attacking Miss on Scene was scolding the one reviewer who had ever seemed to imagine that anything might lie beneath Blackadder’s sardonic mask. The only one who had ever offered anything like praise.

With one swift movement of his hand, he snatched up the topmost two sheets and crumpled them in a ball, then tossed it angrily over his shoulder.

As luck would have it, Keynes chose that moment to enter the room, whistling an airy tune despite the morning’s gray skies.

The sound from his lips stretched into one long, sinking note, miming the high-pitched whine of a cannonball as it arced through the air over the battlefield. “I didn’t expect to find you here at this hour, my lord,” he said as he skirted the lob and came around to the front of the table where Graham sat.

“Sorry for that.” Keynes’s brows rose. But Graham’s apology, though grudging, was sincere. “I had a restless night.”

A series of restless nights, in fact. Since that fateful kiss in Clearwater’s study, he had slept only fitfully and always woke aching with frustration. He should never have kissed Julia. He should never have granted her request to watch the rehearsals of Ransom Blackadder’s play. The risk was too great. And whatever she intended to offer in return for the favor was nothing he dared to accept.

No matter how much he wanted to.

“Ah.” Keynes sent a sideways glance toward the coffeepot, as if he knew it was the third Graham had rung for that morning, as if its bitter contents were to blame for Graham’s irritableness. “Then perhaps this should wait for another time.”

He was carrying a stack of papers, as usual. Graham hardly ever saw the man without them. Correspondence, he supposed. Some pressing business from Dunstane?

“What is it?”

At least it could not be devastating news about some member of his family. The last possible letter of that sort had been received a few months ago. And it couldn’t be a snarling review of a Ransom Blackadder play, either, since none was currently being performed.

With a show of reluctance, Keynes laid something atop the stack of blank paper in front of Graham. Familiar words, framed by the figures of two Greek women with enigmatic smiles, looked up at him.

MRS. GOODE’S

MAGAZINE FOR MISSES

He raised his eyes to Keynes’s face, searching for an explanation.

“The latest issue, sir. Just out this morning. I thought you might wish to . . .”