Page 3 of The Lady Knows Best

“Scoff if you will,” Daphne replied, favoring Miss Cooper with a patronizing smile, “but I have witnessed the power of a love match firsthand, and many times over.” She had seen it in her eldest siblings’ marriages, and in her parents. “This man”—she gestured toward the letter Lady Stalbridge still held—“does not love his bride-to-be. I doubt he even is capable of it. And I also question whether any father who could arrange such a match truly loves his child. She will be better off a spinster than yoked forever to a cad.”

A murmur of approval greeted her speech. Miss Nelson nodded. “Well said.”

“I wonder, ma’ am,” said Miss Addison to Lady Stalbridge after a moment, “whether we oughtn’t to consider making an advice column a regular feature of the magazine?”

Lady Stalbridge’s lips curved in an expression of thoughtful interest. She weighed the matter for several minutes while the others looked on. At last she said, “What say you, Miss Burke?”

“Consider the sort of advice she is prepared to offer,” Miss Cooper objected. “Worse than ‘listen to your parents.’ Listen to your heart,” she sneered.

“Personally, I prefer to use my head,” Daphne replied evenly. “And I should recommend that others do the same.”

Someone at the table, perhaps Miss Addison, choked back a triumphant giggle.

“If you join us,” added the young Lady Clarissa, “and if there’s time, perhaps you could round out your first month’s column by advising someone how to persuade her papa that a young lady can pursue a career as a concert pianist without any loss of reputation or respectability.”

Daphne could easily guess the identity of the young lady in need of guidance on such a subject. But she could not help but wonder about her father, who was unlikely to be persuadable on such a point, though Lady Clarissa was perfectly in the right, as far as Daphne was concerned. “I would suggest changing the instrument,” she suggested with a nod of encouragement. “In your letter. Just to preserve anonymity.”

“Yes,” agreed Lady Stalbridge. “Outside this room, we guard everyone’s identity strenuously, including that of Mrs. Goode. As I’m sure you know, the Magazine for Misses does not always receive a warm welcome. Sadly, too many still believe young ladies incapable of forming—to say nothing of expressing—sensible opinions on matters of both education and entertainment.”

As a girl, Daphne had wished to become a teacher. Gradually, however, she had come to understand that teachers were most often impoverished young woman with no other choice. To choose such a profession might be seen as a slight to her family, as if her father and brothers and brothers-in-law were incapable of supporting her in comfort. It might be taking a situation from a young woman desperate for the sort of respectable independence a teaching post afforded, as her sister-in-law Rosamund, Paris’s wife, had once been.

But she hadn’t given up entirely on the dream until the day Bell had looked her in the eye and exclaimed, “You just want an excuse to order people around!”

“So, Miss Burke,” Lady Stalbridge prompted, “what do you say?”

Daphne still suspected that she was wanted primarily for the possibility of persuading her famous elder sisters to participate in the venture. Or that the offer was merely a means of ensuring her silence.

But joining the Magazine for Misses as an advice columnist would finally give Daphne an opportunity to make her own mark on the world—if anyone listened.

“Daph?”

Bell’s voice. From inside the bookshop, though not yet close enough to have overheard anything.

“I accept,” Daphne said, leaping to her feet and snatching up Eileen, who squeaked in protest. “But I have to go. I’ll be in touch.”

Lady Stalbridge stood, too, and handed her Aggrieved in Grosvenor Square’s letter, even as she laid a finger across her lips to remind Daphne of the necessity of secrecy.

Daphne bobbed her head, tucked the letter into her reticule, and left. The swish of her skirts nearly toppled a stack of books as she hurried back toward the front of the shop. “Careful now, miss.” The clerk, who had at last deigned to make an appearance, paused in the act of helping another customer to admonish her.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she replied without slowing her steps.

Bell, who was standing just inside the door, turned toward the sound of her hurrying feet. “There you are! Were you hiding?”

It took several moments for Daphne to realize her sister was speaking to the cat.

Bell lifted Eileen from Daphne’s arms, deposited her once more into the basket dangling from her forearm, and tapped her pink nose. “You naughty girl. You made Daphne get all dirty.”

Daphne glanced down to discover a streak of dust down the front of her skirts and a goodly collection of white fur on her dark green spencer.

“I’m sorry it took so long. I was—” she began, though uncertain what explanation she could offer. But Bell was already off. After a few fruitless swipes at her clothing, Daphne followed her sister out of the bookshop and into the bright spring morning.

Daphne had spent a great deal of time in England since her three eldest siblings’ marriages, but she had always preferred Dublin to London. Now, however, the prospect of being able to meet regularly with the staff of the Magazine for Misses gave the city a fresh appeal.

She imagined the friends she would make among its writers, even Constantia Cooper—all of them dedicated to the prospect of improving wisdom and promoting rational conduct. She, Daphne, would advise other young women how to make good choices and attain their dreams.

And unlike Bell, they might even listen!

Cautiously, she wended her way into the throng of shoppers, trying at least to keep her sister, and the Finch House footman who had accompanied them on this excursion, in her sight. Bell never moved more quickly than when she’d been given permission to purchase a new bonnet.