Page 27

Actually, there was nothing suggestive about it. It was plain for anyone to see. Right there in the window of the bakery, next to the nipple cookies and the pitchfork baguettes. Clara kept her expression of polite disinterest even as she wondered how that could possibly be physically accurate.

A woman in a matronly lace cap and wrinkles that showed her smile bought two. Behind her, the vicar sighed.

And bought three.

Clara nearly giggled. If the vicar planned to eat bread with his supper, there were no other options. Even the hot cross bun looked like…well…buns.

She bought a basket of them to give herself something to do as she eavesdropped. And because they looked delicious. She was offered courteous nods of greetings, sidelong glances at her plain dress, a twist of honey bread to try. But no gossip. Not a single murmur. It was quiet as a tomb until she left the shop.

The mantua maker had a display of masks for the occasion, painted and glued with spangles that caught the light. There were feathers, velvet, silk fringe. The Devil’s Night and the accompanying ball, however outrageous, were clearly good for business.

Clara had to remind herself that she was here as a Spinster, not the Nightingale.

Even as she coveted a mask sewn with silver glass beads and crystal drops along the edge. Regretfully, she put it back on the stand. “You do beautiful work,” she said.

“Thank you,” the shop owner replied over her needle. She was working on something in rose velvet. It shimmered softly like the inside of a shell. “Are you visiting the Hall?”

“Yes, I am. I’ve never been before.”

Two of the other customers exchanged the kind of glance Clara could feel in the back of her eyeballs. She could pinpoint it while blindfolded. At midnight.

She’s a guest at the Hall?

Clara swallowed but otherwise refused to react. She smiled as though she had no idea what they were whispering, when in actuality she could have written the script for them. Also blindfolded.

Silence thrummed, just as in the bakery.

Ordinarily, one could gain valuable news about the presiding gentry from the local busybodies. The mayor, the wealthiest merchant, a woman who was the cousin of the housekeeper at the Hall. Gossips were the best bet, but even here, where Clara was unknown, she knew it would not do her much good. One look at her dull dress and starched spine and the gossip dried up. No one wanted to be scolded or reminded that they should mind their manners.

Clara didn’t either, so she did not blame them.

At any rate, she had made a basic mistake. Priya relied on information brought to her by lady’s maids and valets and armies of maidservants. Matilda excelled at gathering gossip from daughters with vendettas. Emmeline knew every countess and duchess by name. But Clara would not get anywhere seeking the most popular villager, the chattiest girl, not even the dressmaker, at whose shop scandals were usually traded over ribbon choices and issues of La Belle Assemblée.

None of those were environments where Clara excelled. She looked too…starchy. Proper. And she needed to stop acting as though it was otherwise, or she would never get anywhere. She was following the wrong rules. She was not a charming, dashing lady, nor was she Priya, with her occult abilities to get information from anyone, anywhere.

She was Miss Vinegar, like it or not.

She needed someone overlooked. Someone avoided. Someone who had lived in the village for some time. An old woman, preferably.

In other words, a true spinster.

It took two turns around the village before she saw an old woman sitting on a stone wall, scowling at the children playing keep-away with a ball. Her white hair was caught in a soft knot, her shawl wrapped tightly around her. She was knitting socks with daffodil-yellow yarn that she set down in favor of the end of a charred potato. Clara approached her through the long grass.

“Are you in mourning, girl?” the old woman snapped before Clara could say anything.

“No?” What an odd question.

“Then you are far too young to be wearing that gray. Makes you look pinched.” She snorted. “Youth is wasted on the young.”

“I am twenty-nine years old.” An old maid, according to the whispers of newly introduced debutantes, barely eighteen.

“I said what I said. Now what do you want, bothering an old woman eating her baked potato in peace?”

“I have hot cross buns from the bakery.”

Her interest was piqued and then quickly shoved behind a mask of irritability. “Good for you.”

“Would you like one?”