Page 7 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

Chapter 3

Alistair had met her, briefly, in the spring of that same year. He had accompanied his friend Miles, Viscount Deveraux, on the sort of outing that might have seemed ordinary to rakish Miles, but which Alistair would always remember as an adventure: a breakneck ride from Hertfordshire to London—chasing after a girl, of course. Miles’s second reluctant fiancée of the Season.

At the end of the journey, a discovery had awaited them. Miles’s name was once more to appear in the scandal sheets. The author of the piece had been Miles’s bride-to-be, Miss Daphne Burke—who, as it had turned out, was also the advice columnist for Goode’s Guide to Misconduct. Alistair’s sisters were faithful readers of the notorious periodical, despite his protests.

And this time, the exposure of Miles’s rakishness was to be accompanied by a less than flattering illustration of that devil, Deveraux. The artist had been none other than the hand behind the magazine’s monthly mocking cartoon, “What Miss C. Saw.”

None other than the young woman now lying before him.

Miles and Alistair had intercepted the scandal sheet at the printing house before the damage had been irreversible. And after an explanation—and an embrace—had set all to rights between Miles and the author, it had fallen to Alistair to accompany the artist home.

Half an hour alone with her in Miles’s curricle ought to have been sufficient time to discover something about Miss C. Her name, for instance. Where she’d come from. How she had joined the staff of Mrs. Goode’s Magazine for Misses.

Why he—dull, generally inoffensive Alistair Haythorne—had been a frequent target of her satirical pencil.

But asking questions was an awkward business, and Miss C. had not been forthcoming on her own.

The only information she’d imparted had offered no more of a clue about her identity than that old letter. Her few words had been quietly and coolly spoken; above the rattle of wheels and the noise of the street, he had heard too little of her voice even to speculate about her accent. She had instructed him to deposit her in the vicinity of Bond and Oxford Streets, a bustling shopping district into whose impersonal throngs she had quickly disappeared.

He hadn’t liked to leave her there, unaccompanied and unchaperoned. But she had seemed to regard her independence as unremarkable. Whether she lived nearby with her family in one of the elegant mansions of Mayfair or alone in a room above a shop he would never know. At least, not without prying in a most ungentlemanlike manner.

Now, though, what choice did he have but to pry?

Laying aside the cartoon, he explored the remaining pieces of half-completed artwork. The deeper he went into the pile, the better the pictures had fared in the accident, their style varied but the hand that had made them invariably skillful.

Her hand?

The available evidence pointed to one conclusion: Miss C. was an extraordinarily capable artist, whether working in pen-and-ink, watercolors, or oils. But that only begged another question. Why would someone with such a gift squander it on satirical sketches for the Magazine for Misses?

Alistair knew of one person who might be able to answer that question, other than the artist herself. In their quest to find Miles’s fiancée, he and Miles had inquired of Miss Burke’s chaperone, Lady Stalbridge, and been directed to the Magazine for Misses’ printer by Lady Stalbridge’s stepson, Lord Manwaring. Manwaring had admitted that Lady Stalbridge knew Mrs. Goode. Impossible not to speculate that she might in fact be Mrs. Goode. But of course Alistair had never acted on those speculations or vouchsafed that secret to another soul. To have done so would have been very bad ton, and Alistair was no gossip. It was one reason he and Miles, so different in most every respect, had been able to rub along so well for so many years.

Truth be told, despite Alistair’s vocal misgivings about the magazine whenever he happened upon a copy, the identity of Mrs. Goode was a matter of supreme indifference to him. His three youngest sisters—Lady Frederica, Lady Georgiana, and Lady Harriet Haythorne, known in the family as Freddie, Georgie, and Harry—had been just shy of unmanageable long before Goode’s Guide to Misconduct had come on the scene.

But if Lady Stalbridge, or Mrs. Goode, also knew Miss C., what choice did Alistair have but to make use of a connection he ought properly to have forgotten? The packed valise and artist’s case, the sturdy shoes and woolen dress, all hinted at a woman undertaking a journey. Running away from home? Why, at this very moment, Miss C.’s family might be frantic with worry, with no notion of what had become of her.

He scrounged up a half sheet of paper, dipped his quill, and scratched out a few lines of explanation and inquiry, worded in such a way that he hoped would not reveal more than either Miss C. or Lady Stalbridge would like.

The seal had only just hardened when he heard a rap on the outer door. He went to answer it and found the lad returned with the food. Another coin from Alistair’s waistcoat pocket, almost the last. Another set of instructions, and the boy was on his way to Berkeley Square with the letter, while Alistair returned to the library and sat down to his dinner.

Not that he had much appetite. Nor did his desk make a terribly genial dining room, though this was not the first occasion on which he had resorted to it.

Tonight, however, his attention was all for the figure reclined on the little sofa on the other side of the room.

Was it his imagination—his misplaced hope—that a hint of color had returned to her face? Perhaps it was nothing more than the reflected glow of candlelight.

But no, her breathing was steadier too. Deeper. With a sigh, he pushed away his plate, rose, and approached the settee, his thoughts a jumble of concern and frustration and perhaps even a flash of irritation.

Readers of the magazine had dubbed Miss C.’s cartoons the Unfashionable Plates. It was true that Alistair was often careless about what he wore. He had no aspirations to join Beau Brummell’s set, that dandy who seemed to imagine the funds for fine tailoring grew on trees. But Alistair was hardly alone in his indifference to fashion, and certainly not the only gentleman without a fortune to go along with his title. What had he done to draw Miss C.’s eye—to say nothing of her ire?

Last spring, he had not even ventured to ask her.

Now he wondered whether he would have another chance.

He stood looking down at her. Her hair was all in a tangle, as one might expect, given her ordeal—though he remembered it having been rather disordered the first time he had seen her too. Its tendency to curl—to frizz, his sisters would have said—made it rather ungovernable, he supposed.

The Miss C. of last spring had carried herself with the air of a woman who would bristle at the notion of being governed.

Well, and look where that independent streak had got her. Once more, he brushed a few strands of hair away from her face, carefully avoiding her bruised and bandaged cheek.