Page 13

Baffling though it was, Margaret had come to understand that a disheartening percentage of people in the world did not share her love for spending hours in a stationery shop packed with treasures.

Luckily for her temporary maid, the first shop Margaret found was remarkably empty, no doubt due to so many of its fashionable patrons still being abed at this hour. Free of distractions, it took Margaret scarcely more than fifteen minutes to sort through all the various options on offer and decide upon a small but satisfyingly thick new commonplace book with plain, cream-colored paper and an elegant burgundy leather binding. It did, admittedly, take rather longer to make a decision from the tray of beautiful and unique fountain pens from local makers which the diminutive proprietor drew out from underneath his desk to offer as an irresistible accompaniment to that first choice.

Even so, they’d spent less than forty delightful minutes in the shop when Margaret finally slipped her new pen—now full of jet-black ink and neatly secured in a velvet-padded case—into her reticule, where the cloak of invisibility was still hidden.

Hovering beside her, the maid, Eva, gave a sigh of badly hidden relief. “I can carry that book for you, Your Ladyship.” As the bells over the door behind them jingled, Eva reached for the brown paper parcel in Margaret’s hand, but Margaret shook her head firmly.

“No, thank you.” After her experience the other night, she wasn’t letting any of her notes out of her personal control again. “Now⁠—”

“Lady Riven.” The voice that spoke from the doorway was rivetingly musical, lush and rich and instantly identifiable. “We meet again.”

“Madam Amalie!” Margaret smiled with real delight as she turned. The gorgeous lorelei stood framed by the open door, clad in a plain, high-necked green gown with only modest puffing in its silk sleeves. “What a delightful surprise. Shouldn’t you be resting now after a late night of performance?”

“I might ask you the same question.” Stepping forward, the lorelei let the door fall closed behind her with another jingling of bells. “Weren’t you out yourself last night at the latest royal ball?”

“I was,” said Margaret, “which is precisely what I’ve been wishing to speak to you about. May I invite you to join me at one of the Konditoreis in this neighborhood?”

Amalie’s carefully plucked eyebrows arched high at the request. “If you wish to converse, wouldn’t you prefer to do so more privately, perhaps in my dressing room at the opera house?”

“Ah...” Margaret slid a glance back at her maid, whose lips were sealed but whose blue eyes were wide and desperately pleading. “Must we? I was rather hoping to enjoy one of the delightful-looking cakes I’ve seen on offer.”

“And yet...” Stepping closer, Amalie lowered her voice. “It is one thing to come across each other in a public space such as this, accidentally, and quite another to invite me to share your table. Are you quite sure, Lady Riven, that you would feel comfortable with such a public declaration of our acquaintanceship?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” Margaret asked blankly. “Unless...” Abruptly recalling the words she’d overheard last night, she winced. “Would it be terribly detrimental to your reputation? I know I’m seen as rather odd.”

For a long moment, the lorelei simply stared at her in blank silence. Then she said, enunciating each word slowly and clearly, “Lady Riven, I am an opera singer. You are a British noblewoman. It is not my reputation that will be in danger if people imagine us to be friends.”

“Oh, that. Pfft!” Margaret swept the notion away with a relieved wave of one hand. “The worst that could happen to me would be whispering and gossip, and there is plenty of that already, I assure you. Now, which konditorei do you prefer?

“...Unless, of course,” she added hastily, “you are too busy to meet with me. I didn’t mean to interrupt your own shopping expedition.”

The lorelei’s eyelashes swept low to cover her green-flecked eyes, but Margaret could sense that probing gaze still fixed upon her as a silent decision was made. At last, Amalie said, “It is of no concern. I was only coming to collect a pen that is being held for me. If you’ll grant me a moment?”

She swept to the sales desk for a quiet exchange with the proprietor, who bowed and promptly hopped off his high stool to retrieve a slim pen case wrapped in the same brown paper as Margaret’s new commonplace book. As he straightened, a beam of sunlight from the large shop windows illuminated the tip of one pale and pointed ear, exposed for only a second before he quickly swept his fair hair back to cover it.

Ah. Suddenly, Margaret understood exactly why the pens offered here were so uniquely beautiful. The zwerge and bergmännlein of the Austrian mountains were legendary craftsmen and metalworkers...and clearly, they’d found a way to successfully hawk their wares here in the heart of the capital despite the current Viennese insistence on social pretense. In different circumstances, Margaret would have seized the opportunity to learn more, but Madam Amalie was already starting for the door, while Eva hurried ahead to open it for both of them.

Later, Margaret promised herself.

The konditorei that Amalie chose was just around the corner, with a bright pink and white shopfront and a happy buzz of lady visitors coming in and out even at this relatively early hour. The twinned scents of strong coffee and baked sugar mingled in the air of Konditorei Goldberg, and a comfortably middle-aged waitress in a colorful headscarf approached them with a warm smile, in startling contrast to the stern waiters of the Viennese coffee houses.

“Gracious ladies, may I help you?”

“Yes, please,” said Margaret. “I should like a table for Madame Amalie and myself.”

“Of course. If you’ll follow me? And of course your maid can take a seat by the wall with all the others.” The waitress gestured towards the discreet line of seats by the back wall.

“Actually...” Margaret hesitated. She couldn’t allow a human girl she didn’t know to share her table for this important conversation—not when she was asking Amalie to reveal information considered private and even shocking by local standards. It would be an inexcusable breach of supernatural privacy.

After watching Eva sigh so wistfully over all those cakes in the windows, though...

“My maid will also require a table of her own,” she said firmly. “Please give her all the cake and coffee that she’d like.”

“Ohhhh!” The squeak of delight that fell from Eva’s lips made even Amalie’s lips twitch.

The waitress’s eyebrows rose, but she dipped her head in a nod. “Very well, madam.”

Once they were all safely seated at their two separate tables and their orders had been made, the buzz of general conversation rose around them like a shield and Amalie drawled, “So, Lady Riven. What is it that you so urgently wished to speak to me about? If you imagine that I have anything to do with your supernatural puzzle, I may assure you that I was performing last night at the time of the ball. Every member of my audience can attest to that, and⁠—”