Page 2 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

Constantia did not answer, did not even look up from her work, though the blunt tip of her pencil was creating more smudges than lines. She had her suspicions about this meeting, but it would do no good to share them with the petted and indulged daughter of a marquess. What could she know of danger or treachery?

To her relief, Lady Clarissa did not press for conversation. Next to arrive was Miss Theodosia Nelson, who was clutching the fateful note in her hand. Upon seeing the other two women, she smoothed the scrap of paper against the table and laid it in the center. Miss Nelson’s grim expression did not invite confidences, but it told Constantia she understood the letter’s import.

Detractors of Mrs. Goode’s Magazine for Misses—known variously among them as the Magazine for Mischief or Goode’s Guide to Misconduct—would give much to discover the identities of the contributors. And now it seemed that someone other than Lady Stalbridge was in possession of their names and addresses. The significance of the letters summoning them all here was as clear and chilling as any threat.

With a nervous sound, which might under other circumstances have passed for a laugh, Lady Clarissa reached into her reticule and laid her letter beside Miss Nelson’s. For no reason that she could explain, Constantia retrieved hers from her bodice and added it, still folded, to the pile. Silence hung over the three of them like a pall, and beneath the dull pencil, Constantia’s sketching grew less and less legible.

Miss Julia Addison was the second to last to appear, sinking into the chair beside Miss Nelson and sliding her letter across the table to join the rest.

Lady Clarissa greeted her arrival as another opportunity to strike up a conversation. “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.” Her violet-blue eyes were always wide, but Constantia’s quick glance over the tops of her spectacles revealed them to be even wider than usual, fixed with alarm on the growing pile of notes. “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 finished, calling to mind the sudden appearance of a cat at one of their meetings last spring, and with it, Miss Daphne Burke, who had become the magazine’s advice columnist, against Constantia’s wishes. Miss Burke had meddled shamelessly in the lives of one of their readers and, to make amends, had thrown herself away on a rake and was now Lady Deveraux.

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

“Theo,” exclaimed Lady Clarissa, reaching across the table to grasp her fingers. “That’s marvelous. I knew you could do it.”

Constantia twisted the pencil between her first finger and her thumb. The walls of this little room were closing in. In the face of bad news, surely they were entitled to seize this last chance to share something good?

“I’ve submitted a watercolor to an exhibition,” she announced. She preferred to work in oils, but Madame D’Arblay had feared the odor of mineral spirits would offend her customers.

As triumphs went, it was a small one, hardly worthy of the name. But if she didn’t speak of it with these three women, she might never have an opportunity to speak of it with anyone at all.

“Anonymously, of course,” she added—unnecessarily. She never did anything that wasn’t anonymous, to one degree or another.

Miss Nelson was the first to congratulate her: “Excellent news!”

The others seemed not to know what to say. Nearly a decade Constantia’s junior, Lady Clarissa was obviously intimidated by her, though the girl’s own artistic gift was nothing to sneeze at. If her father could be persuaded to allow it, she would surely achieve her goal of becoming a concert pianist.

As for Miss Addison? Well, her tendency to bubble over with enthusiasm, her apparent indifference to the potentially serious consequences of behaving rashly or saying something outrageous, had often put her and Constantia at odds. She was free in a way Constantia would never be, and perhaps she was having difficulty mustering felicitations for someone she did not like.

And in fact, when at last that young lady spoke, it was not to praise Constantia, but to contribute another confession of sorts to the pile: “I’m going to marry Lord Dunstane.”

Constantia narrowly restrained a gasp of astonishment. Miss Addison’s biting theatrical reviews had earned the attention of notorious playwright Ransom Blackadder, who had subsequently written a play, The Poison Pen, that threatened both her and the magazine’s reputation. At Lady Stalbridge’s urging, she had established a tenuous connection with the Earl of Dunstane, Blackadder’s patron, to see if the situation could be defused.

How had a plan to keep the magazine from being destroyed led to an engagement? Constantia couldn’t decide whether Miss Addison had sacrificed herself on their behalf or thrown them all to the wolf. After all, how could she be expected to keep her secret—all their secrets—from the man who would be her husband?

Or might she already have said too much?

Before Constantia, or anyone, could speak, Lady Stalbridge appeared in the doorway.

“Oh.” The countess’s disappointed gaze traveled the room. “I had hoped . . .” Then, spying the papers in the center of the table, she sighed, opened her reticule, and tossed two more letters to join the rest. “Oliver received one as well.”

Oliver, Viscount Manwaring, was Lady Stalbridge’s stepson. He was also the person behind Mrs. Goode, author of the famed Guide to Homekeeping and the figurehead of their magazine. Penning domestic manuals and managing ladies’ magazines were not the sorts of activities that did credit to a gentleman’s reputation, however. Lord Manwaring had a great deal to lose if those behind the Magazine for Misses were exposed.

But not more than Constantia.

Lady Clarissa expressed some childish hope that the letters had been sent as a joke, which Lady Stalbridge was quick to deny.

“But—but,” Miss Nelson stammered, “this means someone else knows who we all are, even where we live!”

At those words—the truth that Constantia had known from the first but had come today hoping to hear denied—she pushed back from the table, her chair scraping noisily across the floor. “You’ll excuse me, please,” she said with a nod and a curtsy, leaving the half-finished sketch behind.

Experience had indeed taught her when it was time to walk away from a situation.

Today, it was time to run.

Leaving through the front of the shop might have been a tactical error, she realized, as she glanced from customers to clerks to whoever might be disguised behind that bookcase crammed with books, as tall and solid as a wall. But the distance from Porter’s front door to Madame D’Arblay’s was shorter, two points on a straight line.

As she passed the counter, she laid her key on it before striding out into the gray afternoon. She did not hurry her steps—at least, not noticeably so. She did not cast a suspicious look at every passerby. She knew by now how to stay vigilant without showing fear.