She could picture Lord Ashton now, looking very disapprovingly at her from behind those adorable wire spectacles of his. She loved men with spectacles.
Miss Danby, with all due respect, it’s a gentleman’s guide. Why would I include a ladies’ club?
It echoed the dismissal she faced every time a new acquaintance learned of her endeavor.Why should ladies want to gamble? Aren’t you worried about your reputations?Everyone thought she should be encouraging virtues, not vices. As if her sex made it physically impossible to enjoy a little fun.
Well, she thumbed her nose at all of them every day that Bishop’s kept its doors open. Why shouldn’t she thumb her nose at the Viscount Ashton as well?
He wasn’t the sole arbiter of entertainment. No one had vested him with any superior taste or authority; he’d merely claimed his status by being born with a title and then writing a book. And not even a real book, with a plot and characters, and intriguing twists, that might require some creativity. No. His guide was nothing more than a list of things he liked, with the sort of idle commentary any number of gentlemen might exchange when deciding how they should spend their evening.
In short, anyone could do it.
I could do it.
The realization struck her with such force, Della could scarcely contain herself. Shecoulddo it! Why shouldn’t she? Heedless of the last few ladies trickling out into the night, she grabbed the club’s guest book, flipped to an empty page at the back, and began scribbling.
She would scrap the public houses, of course, and any other place ladies couldn’t be seen. What could serve instead? There weren’t many shops in Lord Ashton’s book, only a few tailors and cobblers. That was his most glaring omission. Women came to London to see and be seen, not to drink. Milliners and dressmakers should occupy the opening chapters…
“What are you doing?” Eli had returned to squint at her messy scrawl.
“Writing down some ideas,” she said impatiently, not looking up. “I’ve decided to publish a lady’s guide to London.”
Three
It was the first of the month. The day that Lyman normally paid his landlady, Ellen’s family, and all his other creditors, in that order. But today he rose early, shaved, and dressed himself before the sun was up, and tiptoed down the stairs. He took care to hop over the second step, which creaked. Mrs. Hirsch had the watchfulness of a barn cat, but she couldn’t ask after the rent money if he was gone before she woke.
His account balance had been dwindling for months, every new expense bringing him closer to ruin. Again. Poverty was never far behind him. If Lyman forgot it for a moment, it would pop up in the fraying end of his coat sleeve or a hole in his shoe. He would taste it in his supper of bread and beans at the local public house, while the other diners ate meat. It had made itself a home in his debts, gobbling up his meager repayments so quickly they seemed little more than air.
But today, things were different. Once Lyman gingerly shut the back door behind him and stepped out into the safety of the gray morning, he walked with a lighter step. He had tucked a large parcel wrapped in brown paper under one arm, thick and heavy with thepromise of financial security. His revisions were done, and he would turn his manuscript in to his publisher today, just as soon as the clock struck a decent hour. That meant fresh money.
Once the deposit had cleared, he could pay Mrs. Hirsch, and Michael, and all the rest, and then he would breathe easy. At least until the funds got low and the whole wretched cycle started over.
He would try to work quickly on the Bath guide.
Lyman desperately needed a strong cup of tea, but everything on this street was closed for another few hours. He decided to walk to his publisher’s office in the hopes of finding a hotel tearoom along the way. It would help kill the time until the start of business, in any case. It was well over an hour on foot from his little boardinghouse in Pimlico to the booksellers of Paternoster Row.
The fastest route was to take Rochester, but that path led straight into the Devil’s Acre, where half a dozen thieves would be all too happy to relieve him of what few valuables he had left, even at this hour of the morning. Lyman headed north, instead, to pass Buckingham Palace and take Piccadilly. It would add time to his stroll, but it was far safer.
After about twenty minutes, the change in the quality of the neighborhood became evident. Signs in windows proclaiming “Comfortable lodgings!” became less frequent, then vanished altogether. They were replaced by the brass plaques of doctors’ and dentists’ offices for a short time, until those, too, gave way to whitewashed row houses of the finest caliber.
Lyman had lived here once. It felt like eons ago. If he kept walking north into the heart of Mayfair, he might pass his old town house. Instead, he pulled up his coat lapels to shield his face from the wind and hurried on. No good came of dwelling on the past. That life was lost to him and he had no one to blame but himself.
He had just passed the Green Park when he saw it. He’d still beenlooking for a tearoom, and instead had fallen upon another sort of amusement. Similar, yet entirely different.
MRS. BISHOP’S CHOCOLATE EMPORIUM, the sign proclaimed. And underneath, just in case Lyman had forgotten, LADIES ONLY.
So, this was Miss Danby’s gaming hell. He hadn’t quite been able to scrub their brief encounter from his mind. In spite of himself, he wondered what such an establishment would look like. Its owner must be quite fearless. Lyman crossed the street to get a better view.
He was almost disappointed by how normal it seemed. It was a small, unassuming storefront bordered tightly by its neighbors. The plaster was freshly painted in sky blue, with a little flower box on either side of the door. As fashionable as anything you would expect to see on Piccadilly, but nothing exceptional. Certainly no chasm threatened to pull the place down to hell before his eyes. The windows were shuttered, leaving Lyman to guess what it might look like inside.
You don’t want to see the inside, he reminded himself. There was curiosity, and then there was self-destruction. Everything about Miss Danby promised the latter.
Lyman hurried his steps on toward Paternoster, but his destination was still far off, and now his thoughts were fixed on the gaming hell and its beautiful proprietress.
How pleasant it might have been to reciprocate her flirtation—for she had flirted with him, he was sure, at least at first. He might’ve taken the opportunity to laugh with her for a moment, to do something charitable like agree to put her business in his book and bask in the light of her attention a little longer, forgetting his problems. His current mode of living hadn’t allowed him to keep up his friendships with the wealthier set he’d once frequented. It would have been nice to talk to someone new.
But for Ellen.
She always weighed heavy on his conscience.
