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.Some hired courier was wearing down the soles of his boots running all about London.Dear Mistress Chase,I apologize for my lapse in responding to your delightful notes with naught but a few words.Dear Mistress Chase,I am working on a project where the fruit is just starting to bloom.Too tender yet to say when I will be able to have anything to show or in what manner it might be plucked.As to the type of project you reference, rumors often swirl in smoke.Dear Mistress Chase,It is with great reverence and respect that I received your latest correspondence.Dear Mistress Chase,Your notes make me feel alive.That last missive had made her heart beat a little too quickly.Made her think of the viscount, the scent of jasmine and lilies drifting through her thoughts.Interspersed were also notes from Mr.Pitts, finally, who had been oddly reticent in his responses at first, but had once more picked up steam, especially once she had begun to wax poetic about Eleutherios again.But still the viscount didn’t return.The only evidence of his acknowledgment came in the unopened boxes she began to stack in the corner of the library.She had opened her box of secrets already.She’d decide whether to open another when next she saw him.The following day she tried to gain entrance to the kitchens again and was turned away.The next day she tried again.On the third day, they grudgingly let her in.She sat at the back table of the bookshop, fingering the cuff of an older calico.It had been a week.She was starting to feel more than a little odd about the whole matter.Had she done something so wrong? Or was this just the life of the Quality and their whims?Georgette reached into her bag.“Come, I saved the paper.No stop at the teashop today.”The daily scandal sheets had been full of speculation.It had been an odd week of gossip and news.A waiting period, some grand lull.The viscount’s family had been unusually silent and well behaved.The gossips were starting to show signs of clawed-finger starvation.She kept her own itchy fingers still.Georgette withdrew her hand and smoothed the paper upon the table.“Let’s see what the bard has for us today.” She skimmed the column.“Talk, talk, talk, of the Hannings’ masked ball tomorrow.Can you imagine?” Georgette gave a dreamy sigh.“You could show up as the princess.It would be grand.”Miranda had to agree that the ball sounded magnificent, even apart from Georgette’s mad imaginings about her attendance.The Hannings held the best-reviewed masked ball each year.And each year it seemed to become slightly more salacious.But even the starchiest of matrons still attended because everyone who was anyone did.It was a night when odd things could sometimes happen—or at least that was what the gossip columns always claimed.“And what is this? A shadowy agreement again took place with Lady W.’s suitors and both have mysteriously taken leave.Is there something new in the air? When will the marquess and marchioness return to our stage?” Georgette raised her brow.“Did you see or hear anything at Vauxhall? Other than your discovery of just how delicious the viscount is in truth?”Miranda shook her head, a lingering loyalty toward the man staying her tongue with regard to what she had overheard—a kernel of something that would be gossip-worthy.“He would hardly confide in me,” she said with all honesty.He hadn’t confided in her, after all.Georgette looked disappointed.Miranda saw the line before her friend and tried to hide it.Georgette pushed her finger to the side.“Oh!” She crowed.“The lovely princess hasn’t been seen since that moonlit night in the gardens.A figment in the minds of the attendees? One hopes she will return for all of us who lie in wait for a glimpse.”Miranda’s face flamed.Georgette looked satisfied.“And that expression right there, that heat, is exactly why you should come with me to the Mortons’ tomorrow.Goodness, it is why you should keep returning to the viscount’s dreary library, no matter how many times he doesn’t appear.”Miranda snorted.“You know, dear, one absent day—or five—does not make everything else in the past go up in smoke.” Georgette tapped a digit.On any other topic, Miranda might agree.But when it came to the emotional weight of a viscount, especially of this man, she just couldn’t grasp it.She was glad that she hadn’t told Georgette about the boxes.Georgette would have had them opened and the contents released into the world faster than she could have uttered the name “Pandora.”Georgette shook her finger.“He’s gorgeous.And wealthy.And those eyes.Seek him out and capitalize.Go to his country estate, if you have to.”“Are you listening to yourself? You want me to stalk a viscount? You will be bringing the paper to me in Newgate.”“Not if you use whatever wiles on him you have been employing.” She waved her hands around in a blustery manner.“Mrs.Q., Miranda, Mrs.Q.”But that was Georgette’s desire, not hers.And she wasn’t going to chase the man around England.She had had a lovely time at Vauxhall—at least right up there until the end—and that was that
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