Page 47 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

“Some Bristol merchant’s docile and doe-eyed daughter who has assiduously pursued the sorts of accomplishments her family imagines will make her welcome in the ton,” sneered Georgiana, “but whose most pleasing attribute is an ample . . .” She made a gesture that insinuated she was referring to a woman’s bosom but finished with “. . . purse.”

“Georgie!” Edwina scolded. “You’re speaking of the future Lady Ryland, who will be our sister! And I also think it’s highly improper of you to suggest that our brother may have”—her cheeks pinked—“prurient motives for making a match.”

“I fail to see how that would be worse than the pecuniary motives to which he himself confessed last night.”

“Do none of you understand what this means?” Danny’s question was quiet, but her voice possessed the same knifelike quality as her brother’s and sliced cleanly through her sisters’ chatter. Everyone turned and looked at her. “Do none of you recall how Bernie and Charlie married first and foremost out of esteem and affection?”

“Love,” Edwina corrected.

“Yes,” Danielle conceded. “Love. And has he balked even once at your understanding with Mr. Forster?” Edwina shook her head. “Because he wants you—all of us—to be happy. Could any of you have foreseen”—she looked almost frantically about the room, taking in the scattered sketches—“having someone here to teach art, given what—”

She broke off without finishing that thought, though Constantia found herself on the edge of her chair, wishing to know what she’d been about to say.

“That only makes his decision more inexplicable to me,” declared Frederica. “To allow Aunt Josephine, of all people, to choose his bride, and based on the size of her dowry? That’s not like Alistair at all.”

“It’s a sacrifice,” said Edwina, in a tone that made clear a willingness to sacrifice was very much in her brother’s nature. “For us.”

“I think we all suspected that the estate finances were not perfectly in order,” Danielle said. Four dark heads bobbed in agreement. “But for him to do this, things must be desperate indeed.”

Constantia knew it was unlikely that in that particular moment, they were wondering about her presence at Rylemoor Abbey. They’d probably forgotten about her entirely.

But she could not help but think of the circumstances that had brought her here. She thought of the crumbling spire of the abbey church and recalled how Alistair had told her he hadn’t the ready funds to hire a coach, how his cheeks had flushed at the confession. She hadn’t any notion what had produced this state of affairs, but she was ashamed she had ever thought him irresponsible. He was bowed down with his own worries, but he had insisted on caring for her nonetheless.

She had no reason to go on increasing his troubles or intruding on his hospitality. He had his family around him, and he—why, he was to be married, to someone who could help make his problems go away.

Certainly, she had no call to be jealous.

Rising, she clapped her hands twice to draw her students’ attention. “Thank you for satisfying my curiosity, but now it is time to begin our les—”

“We can’t let him do this,” insisted Harriet, her anguished eyes raking over her elder sisters. “We have to put a stop to it.”

Frederica nodded, and Georgiana said, “You’re right, of course.” She had been slouching slightly in her seat, but now she raised her eyes to Constantia, who could not read their expression. “But how?”

Edwina glanced at Danielle. “And what will become of us if we succeed?”

Tabetha, Lady Stalbridge, held the saucer in one hand and lifted the cup to her lips, blowing across the surface with enough energy that her breath ruffled the papers spread before her.

“I happen to know your tea is not hot,” said a male voice behind her. She turned to see her stepson Oliver, Viscount Manwaring, standing with one shoulder propped against the doorjamb. His chestnut brown curls were unruly, as always, and his eyes looked tired. She suspected he had made a late, and rather wild, night of it, as he often did.

Smiling up at him, she returned the cup to the saucer. “And how would you know that?”

“It’s my house, Mamabet.” Which was true, though he rarely made a point of it; they had shared the house for many years after his father died, and now, even after her remarriage, she stayed with Oliver whenever she came to London.

He pushed away from the door and into the morning room. “And my housekeeper just informed me she served your breakfast an hour ago. So,” he said, pulling out a chair across from her and dropping into it, “what has you so distracted this morning? Another love letter from Stalbridge?”

She sent him a mock scolding glance. “Those arrive by the afternoon post, as you well know.”

After twenty years in a loveless marriage, she had been reunited with and married her childhood sweetheart a year ago, and now each of them dreaded any moment they had to spend apart. But Kit, the Earl of Stalbridge, was dedicated to the estate in Hertfordshire he had unexpectedly inherited, and equally supportive of Tabetha’s decision to found the Magazine for Misses, which often demanded her presence in Town.

“I was reading the reviews of last night’s premiere of The Poison Pen.” Ransom Blackadder’s latest vicious satire, this one on theater critics, had been said to have as its particular target Julia Addison, known to readers of the magazine as Miss on Scene. Tabetha had of course attended the performance, apprehensive of the damage the play might do to the magazine and everyone associated with it. Now she sifted through the newspapers and broadsides scattered across the tabletop. “They have remarkably little to say about the play itself.”

“It is rare one goes to the theater and finds the action on stage the most compelling part of the evening.” Oliver picked up an untouched piece of toast from her plate, took a bite, chewed twice, and grimaced. “Perhaps more performances ought to involve shocking revelations and attempted murder.”

Even with his mouth full, she could hear the irony in his voice. The shocking revelations threatened by The Poison Pen would have cost both Oliver and Tabetha dearly, but he would have paid the greater price. Eventually, they would have led to society’s discovery that he was the famed Mrs. Goode.

In the end, though, the performance had shocked its audience for far different reasons, including an attempted murder onstage. Thanks to some quick-wittedness on the part of a few, and a heroic sacrifice on the part of the playwright, the identities of Mrs. Goode and the Magazine for Misses writers remained a secret.

“I gather,” he continued, washing down the cold toast with a slurp of cold tea from her cup, “Ransom Blackadder means to marry Miss on Scene?”