Page 60 of The Lady Plays with Fire

She found her sitting on the side of her bed, her wrapped legs dangling over the edge of the mattress, with her walking stick in one hand and Mrs. Whyte at her other elbow, urging her to lie down again.

“I’m perfectly capable of sitting at a table for a quarter of an hour,” Aunt Mildred was insisting. “There’s correspondence that demands my attention.”

“I can write for you,” Julia said, hurrying to the bedside.

“Not on your life.” She thunked the tip of the walking stick onto the carpet for emphasis, narrowly missing Julia’s bare toes. “Dunstane will write to your brother, of course—has written already, I daresay. Last night, he had a certain look in his eye—the look of a man who wanted to be doing something, anything to move matters along.” She shuffled forward, until her feet brushed the floor. “But I am determined that your mother will hear the news that her daughter is to be the Countess of Dunstane from my own hand.”

There was little to do, then, but help her to a chair—the chair in which Julia usually sat, fortunately just a step away from the bed. Between the three of them, Mrs. Whyte, Jess, and Julia managed to drag the mahogany pedestal table from across the room and arrange it in front of her.

“I’ll fetch pen and paper,” Julia said and went down to the sitting room.

Daniel met her on the stairs. “A message for you, miss.” He’d even remembered the salver—though he gave her the folded missive with one hand while balancing the tray on the other.

“Thank you, Daniel,” she said, tucking it into the pocket of her dressing gown for safekeeping. Who but Graham would have written to her? And his words would be for her alone.

Once Aunt Mildred was busy with her letter, Julia decided it would be safe for her to enjoy hers. Stepping closer to the window, with her back almost to the table, she fished the letter from her pocket and slid her finger beneath the disc of wax. He’d been in such a hurry, he hadn’t even bothered with his thistle seal.

But the hand was strange, and the message stranger still.

Urgent meeting of the Misses. In the usual place, at noon.

—Mrs. G.

“A love letter?” Aunt Mildred tilted her head, the better to spy on Julia’s expression.

Julia started. “No, Aunt. It’s a—” Something about the message made the skin along her spine prickle. Better to spare Aunt Mildred further anxiety. “It’s a notice from the bookshop. That new novel I ordered for us has come in. I’ll just go and fetch it after breakfast, shall I?”

Mrs. Hayes dipped her quill and resumed writing. “And how will I explain your absence to his lordship when he calls on you?”

Before leaving, Graham had mentioned a matter of business to which he must attend the next day. “I don’t expect him, ma’am,” Julia said. “But if he does come, tell him . . .” She sent another frowning glance at the paper in her hand and then mustered a smile. “Tell him it was urgent—we’d run out of Hume.”

* * *

Julia arrived at the bookshop with a quarter of an hour to spare ’til the clock struck midday, but the others had still arrived before her. All but Lady Stalbridge, that was.

Lady Clarissa Sutliffe, Miss Theodosia Nelson, and Miss Contantia Cooper were all seated around the table, in the center of which lay three identical letters. Julia sank into a chair and slid her letter across the scarred and stained wood to join the rest.

“I wonder why Lady Stalbridge needs to see us on such little notice? I had to say that Thomas, my cat, had run away—even though the poor old thing is asleep under my bed.” Lady Clarissa’s eyes were wider than usual, fixed on the pile of paper. “Papa let me join some of the servants in a search for him. I gave two footmen the slip and came here. I figured, it worked for Daphne,” she said with a shrug, a reference to the feline misadventure that had brought Daphne Burke, now Lady Deveraux, to join the magazine last spring.

“I had been wishing for another meeting,” confessed Miss Nelson, “so I could tell you all that I’m to have an article published in the Times.”

“Theo, that’s marvelous,” declared Clarissa, reaching out to squeeze her hand. “I knew you could do it.”

Constantia fidgeted with her pencil, though for once, she did not draw. “I’ve submitted a water-color to an exhibition,” she said, speaking to no one in particular. “Anonymously, of course.”

“Excellent news,” said Theo.

Julia knotted and unknotted her fingers in her lap.

The mood in the room was strange. Nervousness—they’d never been summoned by Lady Stalbridge in such a fashion before. And all these declarations—as if they might never have another chance to speak. It reminded her, oddly, of the sense of anticipation she’d felt in Graham’s cottage as she’d waited for tea. The feeling that something important, something life-changing, was about to be revealed.

Beneath the table, she pushed her damp palms down the front her skirt. “I’m going to marry Lord Dunstane.”

Three sets of eyes—hazel, brown, and violet—bored into her, full of astonishment. But before anyone could say anything, Lady Stalbridge arrived.

“Oh.” She glanced around the room at each of them, looking crestfallen to find them there. “I had hoped . . .” Then her gaze landed on the pile of papers in the center of the table. With a sharp sigh, she opened her reticule, withdrew two letters, and with a flick of her wrist, sent them to join the rest. “Lord Manwaring received one as well.”

“Oh. I thought perhaps that he . . . You didn’t send them, then?” Lady Clarissa’s golden brows still had a hopeful lift. “As a . . . as a sort of . . . joke?”