Page 48 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

“Miss Addison and Lord Dunstane are betrothed, yes. And after the wedding, I expect they will return to Scotland.”

“You are fretting, then, about the loss of your theatrical reviewer?”

“Actually, I was thinking of my artist.”

“Miss C.?”

“Yes. She got up and left in the middle of our last meeting, the day we all got those terrible letters. She seemed particularly unsettled at the prospect of our exposure.”

He waved a hand over the collection of papers, each with an account of what had transpired at Covent Garden—a dozen at least. “Unless she’s locked in a cellar or an attic somewhere, she must have heard the news that the letter writer was exposed instead and we’re all safe.”

“For now,” Tabetha conceded. “But the very evening she left, I had another letter, this one from a . . . well, I shall simply call him a mutual acquaintance, indicating that an accident had befallen her and she was in need of assistance. Under the circumstances, I had little choice but to reply that I was not at that time in a position to help. And since then—nearly a fortnight—I’ve heard nothing more.”

“You trust this mutual acquaintance?” He sounded annoyed at the secrecy those words implied. Oliver dearly loved to gossip.

“Indeed I do.” Forgetting it was cold, Tabetha picked up her cup again, brought it to her lips, and then returned it to the table untasted. “But I have reason to think Miss Cooper does not. She doesn’t appear to place much faith in anyone, really—I’m quite sure she alone, of all the magazine staff, gave me a false name. I’ve often wondered why.”

“Trouble at home, perhaps. A family who would be displeased to find their daughter had taken an aesthetic turn.” Oliver knew whereof he spoke; his father had frequently berated him for dressing and acting in ways he considered detrimental to the name of Manwaring. The discovery that his son and heir had written a housekeeping manual in the guise of a lady would have been the last straw.

“Mm,” she answered noncommittally. She would not minimize her stepson’s difficulties, of course, for they had been great indeed. But she could not shake the feeling that Miss Cooper—or whatever her name might be—faced something even worse.

Oliver rang for hot coffee and picked up a newspaper, turned to something other than the theatrical reviews, and began to read. Tabetha pretended to do the same. A quarter of an hour later, Oliver let the upper half of his paper fall and peered over it at her. “I can hear the wheels turning in that head of yours. Still fretting about Miss C.?”

“I’ll have to go to print with no Unfashionable Plates in the next issue. People will wonder.”

“Let them.” He folded the paper and laid it aside as the housekeeper came in, thanked her for the coffee, and made a project of adding milk and sugar before taking a series of scalding gulps that must have drained the whole cup. “Ahh. Now I can think again. So why don’t you tell me what’s really bothering you, Mamabet?”

She hesitated, but only for a moment. With one forgivable exception—his authorship of Mrs. Goode’s Guide to Homekeeping—they had never kept secrets from one another. “Should I give up the Magazine for Misses?”

A frown of surprise wrinkled his brow. “Your dream? Your mission to help young ladies think independently, as you wish you had been helped? Why would you do such a thing?”

“Because,” she replied, gesturing toward a review bearing the tortured headline “Miss on Scene’s Near Miss,” “every month, the work I undertake to help the many puts a few people I hold dear, you included, at risk.”

Were their contributions discovered, the young ladies might be ostracized by their families, cut off from good society. Even someone as professedly carefree about such matters as Oliver would hardly benefit from being known as the man behind the most highly regarded voice on matters domestic and the most popular ladies’ magazine.

“Some risks are worth the rewards.” He shot her a mock-stern look. “Rewards which, until very recently, included seeing you happier than you’ve been in years. Though perhaps I ought to give some credit to Stalbridge?”

“Some,” she agreed with an impish smile. “Much as I love being here with you, I do consider the time away from my husband one of the disadvantages of the present situation.”

“Fair enough. Though you must find some consolation in the fact that the Magazine for Misses has helped more than one young lady find true love.”

“That’s another matter—the fact that half my writers are no longer misses. It feels . . . disingenuous, I suppose.”

“I daresay you could find replacements without too much trouble. You might even find someone else to run the damn thing, if you chose. Or to share the responsibility with you. Better that than letting it wither on the vine, to say nothing of killing it outright.”

“Are you offering, Oliver?” She directed her attention to a speck of dust on the tablecloth rather than meet his eye.

He laughed. “I don’t mind giving you the benefit of Mrs. Goode’s imprimatur, or her occasional wit and wisdom. But I fear anything more would cut dreadfully into my social calendar.”

“I wonder if it mightn’t benefit from a little trimming?” she suggested, studying the dark circles beneath his eyes.

“Mamabet . . .”

She recognized the warning note in his voice. “All right, all right. So then, I’ll need an editor, an advice columnist, and a theatrical reviewer.” She ticked off each position on one fingertip as she spoke. “Where will I find them all?”

“Don’t forget an artist.”

“Oh, no. Not yet. Miss C. may return.”

Oliver looked skeptical but said nothing.

Privately, Tabetha hoped that Lord Ryland had offered Constantia his assistance, and that the young woman had taken it. Her mocking cartoons of him were no doubt a point of contention between them. But rough patches could be got through.

Tabetha knew of no one so steady and reliable as Ryland, and no one more in need of someone trustworthy than Constantia. She had always struck Tabetha as a frightened wild thing, snapping at anyone who came too near.

Perhaps a gentle hand, belonging to the right person, might soothe her at last?