Nora scrambled to hide her pencils. “Perhaps Mr. Grenville has come to call.”
Lady Roundtree shook her head. “No, he just gave me a status update.”
Nora frowned. A status update about what? Something to do with the baron? Was he visiting mistresses as well as the Cloven Hoof?
A footman appeared at the door. “Lady Agnes Febland is here.”
“Show her in, of course.”
Nora leaped to her feet to be prepared to curtsey. When she recognized the bejeweled guest as the lady in Hyde Park who had hated both Lady Roundtree’s dog and the color of Nora’s hair, little urge to curtsey remained.
“There you are,” Lady Febland said to the baroness, ignoring Nora’s curtsey altogether. “I’ve just come from the monthly book club gathering and, as one might notice,youwere not present.”
Lady Roundtree placed her new sketch on the side table out of her visitor’s view. “I decided to stay home today.”
“How boring. It is so good I came.” Lady Febland seated herself across from the baroness and raised her brows toward Nora. “I’m sure the help has a chore she could be applying herself to somewhere else.”
Nora paused in the act of retaking her own seat, her cheeks aflame.
“Miss Winfield stays,” Lady Roundtree said firmly. “Did anything of note occur during today’s meeting?”
Miss Winfield stays.
Nora eased into a high-backed armchair with far more confidence than she’d felt a moment earlier. Not only had Lady Roundtree undercut the countess’s obvious desire to rid the parlor of pesky companions, the baroness had done so by referring to Nora asMissWinfield. Not just “Winfield.”
Miss. As if Nora was just as much a welcome guest as any bejeweled countess.
Lady Febland wrinkled her nose as if the rebuke smelled like spoilt milk. “In any case, we scarcely spoke about the book. Have you seen the Cloven Hoof caricature?”
“‘The road to me is paved with gold intentions,’” Lady Roundtree quoted without hesitation. “Not that I approve.”
“They call him ‘Saint Max.’” Lady Febland’s thin lips curved in a knowing smile. “Because he is anything but.”
A frisson of panic slid down Nora’s spine. Who had referred to the club’s owner as Saint Max?Shecertainly hadn’t. The drawing hadn’t even shown his face, because Nora had no inkling as to what the man might look like. She had been taking such care to avoid another “Lord of Pleasure” situation!
Lady Roundtree reached for her cup of tea. “I don’t even know the man.”
“I’ve heard he’s worth getting to know,” Lady Febland said with a wicked smile. “If one doesn’t mind being relegated to the shadows. Thanks to that caricature, he’s all anyone can talk about. Even the men are in a tizzy to declare themselves patrons of Saint Max.”
Maxwell Gideon was a vice merchant, Nora reminded herself firmly when her stomach began to churn. The man ran a gaming hell designed to take people’s money. By the sound of it, his club was more popular than ever. Nora had inadvertently done him a grand favor.
But she had nothing to do with his ironic new nickname.
“My husband frequented all the best establishments long before there were caricatures,” Lady Roundtree said. “I’m surprised his face was not among the gamblers pictured.”
“I didn’t recognize a single one,” Lady Febland agreed, then lowered her voice. “You don’t suppose the artist is trying to show that the club is primarily frequented bycommoners?”
Nora heroically refrained from groaning aloud.
The artist’s sole intention had been to help feed her family, without inventing new gossip for the sketch’s subject, nor implicating anyone else in the process. The faces in the background had been invented whole cloth on purpose.
Even the caption was no earth-shattering revelation. The gaming hell was literally named the Cloven Hoof. The pun had beenright thereall along. Nora had simply been the first to think of it.
“I don’t think one should obsess about such silly things.” Lady Roundtree lifted her tea. “We have given this anonymous caricaturist far too much power.”
Nora stared at the wealthy titled women chatting over a gold-embossed tea set that was worth more than her family’s farm.
Power? The word tasted foreign on her tongue. From the moment she had arrived in London, she could not have felt more powerless. And yet Lady Roundtree was right: Nora’s drawings indeed held power. They allowed her a say in a world in which she was otherwise silenced.
