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“No,” said Lavinia, knowing the young girl didn’t like dealing with the domineering landlord. “I’ll see him. Anika, if you’d like tea—”

When she turned, she found her friend was already on her feet, shaking out the pleats of her orange and yellow sari. “And miss this?”

With a sigh, Lavinia nodded, removed the kettle from the stove, and led their little band of three out to the front room.

“Mr. Wark,” she said brightly, clasping her hands in front of her, “what can I do for you this morning?”

The man looked from Lavinia to Anika and back again. “I had hoped to speak to Mrs. Parkem in private.”

Not on your life. She was willing to do quite a bit in the name of stopping this man and his plans, but intentionally being alone with him—even in the safety of her store—was not one of them.

“I’m afraid it’s such a busy morning,” she said. “Fiona is restocking the shop and Mrs. Pawar has been helping me fill orders. We’ve made so many dresses for the prince’s ball that it’s a wonder we haven’t run out of cloth entirely.”

“Not a single tailor in the city seems to be well supplied,” he said.

“Did you have a new suit of evening clothes made just for the ball?” Anika asked, a teasing twinkle Lavinia knew Wark would hate sparkling in her eye.

“My tailor is in London,” he said.

Lavinia’s brow furrowed. London? If Wark’s clothes were made in London, why did he have payments to an Edinburgh tailor in his ledger?

He cleared his throat. “I hope you enjoyed your time at dinner yesterday.”

She stared a moment before remembering the role she was supposed to play here and rushed to nod. “Very much. I must apologize again for fainting.”

Anika looked at her sharply, but she gave a little shake of her head.

“Ladies are delicate creatures,” he said. “It’s only surprising it doesn’t happen more often.”

No one in her life had ever described Lavinia as delicate—not with her generous hips and breasts—but if that was the way Wark wanted to think of her, fine. With any luck, he’d be languishing in jail in less than two weeks.

“It’s that delicacy that sometimes makes me wonder that you should want to run this shop,” he said, assessing the neatly stacked bolts of cloth and little drawers filled with buttons.

“I very much like having something of my own that I’ve grown. Rather like you did with your business,” she said.

He laughed. “I own mills and export thousands of tons of wool every year. It’s hardly anything like a dressmaker’s shop.”

Anika coughed, and Lavinia’s hands squeezed into fists. Was the man deliberately trying to enrage her?

“Besides,” Wark continued, “I’ve always believed that cultivating ambition in a woman is misguided. It’s far better for them to marry.”

Lavinia had always thought “to bite one’s tongue” was a ridiculous expression—why would that ever keep someone from saying something imprudent?—but that was exactly what she did now. The sting of pain as her teeth pressed on the muscle kept her from saying exactly what Wark could do with his opinion about ambitious women.

“That’s all very enlightening,” she said slowly through gritted teeth.

With his back to her, Wark couldn’t see the horror on Anika’s face as Lavinia placated the man, but Lavinia could. One of these days, she was going to sit Anika down and tell her every little bit of what had been going on during this conversation.

“Well, I can’t stay long, so I will reach the reason for my visit,” said Wark. “I should be very honored if you would reconsider my offer and agree to accompany me to the prince’s ball.”

Lavinia stilled. The prince’s ball. Andrew wasn’t entirely convinced, but to her it seemed like the one place where Wark seemed the most likely to strike. If his goal was to assassinate the prince—which she was increasingly convinced it was—then where better for her to be than at the side of the man running the entire operation? With Wark, she’d know whom he spoke to and where he went. She might even be able to stop him.

Andrew wouldn’t like this at all, but she could stand to incur a little more of his ire in the name of this cause.

“I should be delighted,” she heard herself say.

A smarmy, wolfish smile spread over Wark’s lips. “Excellent. It should be a most eventful evening.”

Chapter Fifteen