Georgiana’s heart clenched a bit at her mother’s words. For all that they’d lived alone together these past seven years, they rarely spoke of the circumstances that had conspired to bring about their independence.
“I am protecting my career.” She made her voice crisp, as though her mother’s words did not catch at the soft places in her heart. As though it were not her fault, after all, that they were alone.
“You are protectingme,” her mother said, “and you do not need to. I am so proud of you—you know that I am. But we need not rely solely upon your work. Your brother—”
“No.” She could not help the terseness of her tone, could not soften her sharp edges. “We do not need to contact Ambrose. Or Percy. I can handle this on my own.”
“I know you can,” her mother said patiently, “but I am trying to tell you that you do not need to. If we ask—”
“No,” Georgiana said, and she pushed back from the table to stand again. “No. I shall—I will talk to my publisher. I’ll find out who this Darling woman is and warn her off. There is no need to involve Ambrose or anyone else. I have everything under control.”
Edith let out a tiny breath that, in another woman, might have been a sigh. She touched her fingers to her neat blond coiffure, which was as immaculate as it had been that morning, when she had pinned it up herself. “Take care, Georgie, my love. Do not do anything rash.”
“I shan’t.” She made for the door, Bacon at her heels, and did not look back at her mother.
She would not do anything rash. She had used up her capacity for rashness when she was eighteen years old.
She had not yet stopped trying to make up for it.
Chapter 2
With exceeding slowness,AlbaBlanche unfolded the letter. Her gaze fell upon the words, written in ink and engraved forevermore upon her heart: To my daughter,Alba MargheritaBlanche Estelle…
—from the manuscript forMORNINGSTAR,extensively revised by the author
As she hid in the shelter of a potted shrub behind Belvoir’s Library just before dawn, Georgiana wondered if she had—perhaps—tipped over the edge into rashness.
Iris Duggleby, her friend and unexpected co-conspirator, pulled her cloak more firmly around herself. It was November, and dark, and unpleasantly cold. Iris’s nose, just visible from beneath her hood, was the color of garden rhubarb.
“Do you know,” Iris said to the alley at large, “we could be in our beds right now.”
“Yes.”
“Underneath the covers. Where it is warm.”
Georgiana bit her lip. “I know this may seem a bit untoward.”
Iris tucked her hands into her armpits to warm them. “I like untoward. This is bordering on outlandish. Remind me why we are here at this hour?”
“You did not need to accompany me. I told you, I—”
Iris waved a hand, winced, then stuck it back beneath her arm. “Yes, yes. You told me. I heard you. And yet here I am.”
Georgiana felt a stab of guilt at Iris’s visible shivers, at her very presence in the alley. She had not intentionally brought her blunt, abstracted friend into the project of ascertaining Lady Darling’s identity. Iris was an antiquities scholar. While she possessed a marked facility for languages and considerable knowledge of Etruscan coins—Georgianathoughtit was coins, though it might have been urns or maybe bowls—she was not particularly well-versed in the realm of scandalous novels.
But Iris was a friend of long standing. Though her continued association with Georgiana after the revelation of Georgiana’s novels had meant the loss of many social invitations—and likely some potential suitors—Iris had been stubbornly determined to keep up her friendship with Georgiana anyway.Spinsters,she’d said blithely,have the freedom to do as we like.
And when Georgiana had outlined her ridiculous plan for how to unmask her rival, Iris had blinked, nodded, and then insisted upon joining her.
“I have spent the last fortnight trying to identify this Darling woman,” Georgiana began.
“This darling woman? I thought you did not like her.”
“What? No, I meant—” Georgiana’s words strangled themselves slightly in her throat, and she coughed and tried again. “It is her nom de plume.”
“This darling woman?”
“No—for heaven’s sake, Iris. Her pseudonym is Lady Darling. I am confident I have mentioned it before.”
