Selina had directed an exasperatingly patient look at Georgiana. “Dearest,” she’d said, “I did not revealyouridentity to the interested public. Do you truly think I would do so with hers?”
Yes!Georgiana had thought with a mental wail.Because we are friends! And because this woman is driving me mad!
Raw emotion was something Georgiana kept close to her chest, however, and so instead of wailing, she had pressed her lips together and nodded. “Of course. I should not have asked.”
She ought not have taken her troubles to Selina. Though they were close friends now, Georgiana could not forget that her own cowardice had nearly destroyed Selina’s library seven years ago. Though Selina did not seem to hold the memory against her, sometimes Georgiana could scarcely stand to enter the building, so closely did the recollection press upon her.
She had no business asking Selina for any favors.
Instead, she’d taken a very long walk around the park with her dog, Sir Francis Bacon, and attempted to talk some sense into herself.
Her sales had not flagged. If Lady Darling meant for their novels to compete with one another, she had not succeeded—the interest of the literate public was enough to support them both and more. What did it matter that their novels were repeatedly and serendipitously similar?
Except it did matter. To Georgiana.
Her novels were the only means she had of supporting herself and her mother. Her books had been the gateway to their independence from her late father. Her continued sales were critical. She and her mother kept a small, neat apartment in Bloomsbury, and by now also supported a single maid, whom Georgiana very much did not wish to abandon. She had some savings, to be sure, but not enough for them to live on for the remainder of their natural lives.
Sheneededher books. She needed her career. She did not need the competitive schemes of the so-called Lady Darling.
After the skeleton debacle, Georgiana had decided to wait the woman out. She kept her manuscript on her person at all times. She spoke of it to no one—not even her publisher, Jean Laventille, whom she trusted more or less with her life.
Let Lady Darling publish first this time! Then she, Georgiana, could scrub her manuscript of any similarities before it wasprinted andensurethat their latest works were entirely, completely, memorably distinct.
Which brought her to the present moment, her skirts whispering furiously along the floor as she stalked back and forth in front of the tea table, Bacon looking hopefully in the direction of the fractured biscuit.
“Myheroine is named Alba!MyAlba has a secret identity that is revealed at the end of the novel—her second name, Margherita, is the clue to her highborn origins. How could this Darling woman possibly know?”
This question was more or less rhetorical, but her mother made a decorous little sound, not quite a cough. “Are secret identities not… fairly common in the genre?”
Georgiana whirled so quickly that she nearly upset the tea table. Bacon cast her a disgruntled glance, and Edith pretended not to feed him a biscuit directly in front of Georgiana’s eyes.
“Of course they are. But the revelation of Alba’s second name is the climactic moment of the book—and oh God, I shall have to change her name on every single page, won’t I? Every cursed page. She is in every single sentence!”
“Surely not,” her mother protested. “Sometimes you must use a pronoun.”
“Are you not taking this seriously?” Georgiana demanded. “The woman is… is…”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know precisely. An agent of espionage and—and chaos. Perhaps she works for the Home Office. Perhaps she is bribing someone to rifle through my belongings!”
Edith looked unimpressed by this leap of logic. Her long slim fingers tapped once against the side of her plate and then promptlyceased, the tiny tic smothered as quickly as it had appeared. “Does that truly seem likely?”
“I don’t know! I know her name is notLady Darling,for heaven’s sake. There are no Darlings in the peerage.” She had looked it up in Debrett’s, cursing in her head all the while.
“Georgie, my love,” her mother said. “Do you not publish under a nom de plume yourself?”
Georgiana groaned, flung herself back into her chair, and sent a resentful glance in the direction of her plate, which had been thoroughly cleared of biscuit fragments by the combined forces of her mother and her dog.
“There is something more going on here than meets the eye.” She took a single decided swallow of her tea and then placed her teacup back in the precise center of her saucer. “And I mean to find out what it is.”
Bacon shoved his wet nose against her calf, and she reached absently down to stroke the white fluff around his snout.
“Georgie,” her mother said. Her voice was soft, but there was a faint edge there, almost a tremor.
Georgiana looked up sharply.
Edith pressed her lips together, her mouth making a small thin line before she spoke. “You needn’t… do all of this, you know. For me.”
