Page 3 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

That did not mean, however, that she did not feel it.

Her heart pounded, working to move blood half-congealed by the combination of chilly air and the icy terror that had overspread her veins. The magazine’s foes were legion. Rakes who objected to Miss Busy B.’s advice. Playwrights and actors who found fault with Miss on Scene’s reviews. Parents and governesses and a larger society who wanted young ladies to remain ignorant and thus easier to control. The letter writer could have been any of them. And what a clever way, just the names and directions on a series of notes, to show the staff of the magazine who had the upper hand now.

Constantia had no reason to assume that Miss C.’s cartoons were the particular target of the letter writer’s ire. But that arrow had pierced her fragile bubble of security and contentment all the same.

When she burst through the door of Madame D’Arblay’s, a bell jangled harshly. Though the shop was empty of customers, the modiste sent Constantia a reproving look. She was to come and go through the back, not the front.

“I won’t trouble you or your clientele again,” Constantia assured her, after leaning for a moment against the doorframe to catch her breath. Then she slipped through the shop, snatching up her bags from the stairwell as she passed, and left for the last time through the rear.

This time, her feet traced a different route through the alleyways, northwest toward the nearest coaching inn. She would take the next available stage, whatever direction it might be bound. She couldn’t afford to wait and choose her destination.

She only prayed she had enough money left in her purse to start again wherever she ended up.

The rumble of wheels and clatter of hooves, muffled by the rows of houses and shops between her and the streets of London’s West End, grew louder as she approached the point at which she would have to emerge to cross the thoroughfare.

“Where ’re ye off to, miss?”

The man’s wheedling voice made her whole body jerk, coming so close behind and just loud enough to be heard over the patter of her own hurried footsteps and the pounding of her heart. Almost as if he had spoken right in her ear.

Probably just some servant or shop assistant. No one sent to pursue her.

Nonetheless, startled, she leaped away from him into the relative safety of the busy street.

Sound and sensation blurred around her, inside her. The shouted oath of a coachman. The hot snort of a frightened horse. Sharp pain, everywhere, as the cobbled street rose up to meet her. Both valise and artist’s case flew from her hands.

Then everything went black.