Page 72 of The Muse of Maiden Lane

The next morning, at breakfast, Stella informed her brother of her plan.

Daniel dropped his fork to his plate with a clatter, leaving the remainder of his eggs and toast untouched. His narrow face tightened with weary anger. “Are you trying to ruin yourself?” he asked. “Or is it my reputation you seek to blacken with your wild antics?”

“I’m trying to support my friend,” Stella said. “She expects me at her wedding, and I’ve promised to be there. Since you refuse to accompany me, I have no choice but to—”

“I’m a newly married man! I can’t be boarding a train to London at the snap of your fingers!”

Amanda sat across from him at the table, a frilly matron’s cap pinned over her flaxen curls. She paused in the act of pouring his tea. “Pray, don’t let her behavior draw you into anger, husband.”

“How else to react, my dear? We were wed less than a fortnight ago and already my sister demands to be taken to town. How is such selfish behavior to be borne? As if I would abandon my bride for—”

“It’s a day’s journey each way, that’s all,” Stella said. “Hardly akin to abandonment. It isn’t as though I intend to remain for another season.” On the contrary, she’d be returning directly. She’d have to, or else risk Locket pining for her again.

“Can you afford it, sister?” Amanda asked with deceptive sweetness. “I should have thought, with the expense of your horses and your groom, you would be at pains to economize.”

“Naturally she can afford it,” Daniel said. “She isn’t obligated to expend her capital in a more responsible fashion. Not with me subsidizing all the necessities of her life.”

“Obligated, no,” Amanda said. “But one would hope that Christian duty might compel her to spend her resources on other than her own pleasure.”

“I am sitting right here,” Stella said. “You needn’t speak over me as though I were invisible.”

“I wish that you were,” Daniel retorted uncharitably. “Instead, every day brings a new misery. Arguments over ordering the coal, instructing the servants, and the manner in which I receive guests in my own home. My wife is daily at pains to placate your whims, and Squire Smalljoy himself has said—”

“Not Squire Smalljoy again,” Stella objected.

“A man who would provide a happy solution to our current troubles if you would but rid yourself of the ludicrous notion that remaining unmarried is a choice.”

“It certainly is a choice,” Stella said. “Though what it has to do with my being a bridesmaid in Lady Anne’s wedding—”

“Had you a husband, he could take you to London,” Daniel said.

“Or not,” Amanda murmured. “Indeed, sister, the wisest scholars teach that true contentment begins at home. It is to her own household a lady should direct her attention, not to the dubious pleasures of the outside world.”

Spoken like a person who had never galloped in Rotten Row, danced among the colorful lights of the Chinese pagoda at Cremorne Gardens, or thrilled in the giddy company of a group of like-minded friends.

Stella opened her mouth to say as much, let the consequences come as they may, only to have her tart reply forestalled by the unmistakable sound of carriage wheels on the gravel drive outside the window.

Daniel shot an accusing look at her. “Did you summon a cab to take you to the station?”

“Don’t be absurd,” Stella said. “I’m not leaving until tomorrow.”

He turned to his wife. “Are you expecting someone, my dear?”

Amanda’s mouth curved in a smugly satisfied smile. “Perhaps it’s the squire?” she suggested, all innocence. “He mentioned something about coming to look at that gray mare of yours.”

“That gray mare of mine,” Stella corrected automatically as she rose from her chair. “And if he did, you had no business encouraging him. I’ve already given him my answer on the subject.”

“You were in a temper,” Amanda said. “I knew that, when your ardor had cooled, you would see the sense of his proposition. One wouldn’t wish to cause a rift with an esteemed neighbor. Not over something so trifling as his interest in a horse.”

“It’s no trifling matter to me.” Stella moved to the window. She drew back the curtain to peek out at the drive. The carriage that had rolled to a stop at the front of the house bore no crest on its door. On the contrary, it appeared to be a hired cab, of the sort one could find at the railway station in Fairhook.

“It’s not the squire,” Stella said. “It’s…”

Her voice trailed off as the door to the carriage opened and an imposing gentleman in a black overcoat leapt out. He was tall, dark, and broad of shoulder, with a sinister scar traversing the right side of his face.

Good Lord, it was Julia’s husband, the notorious Captain Blunt!

And he hadn’t come alone. He turned to gently assist Julia out of the cab. She was garbed in a dark blue traveling dress and matching cloak. As she paused to fluff her flounced skirts, she caught Stella’s stunned gaze in the dining room window. Julia’s face spread into a mischievous grin.