Chapter 7

Sarah Bentley was surprised when she received a response to Georgiana’s anonymous plea the very next day. She had only decided to check at the bookstore out of sheer impatience.

“You ought to have worn a veil when you asked for responses at the counter,” Mrs Figg, her equally curious housekeeper, intoned in a dramatic whisper as they left the shop. “I could not see anyone suspicious, but it does not mean they were not there.”

“I do not believe you need continue whispering,” Sarah replied, suppressing a smile.

“They could be following us!” the woman insisted, nearly stumbling as she continuously attempted to peer behind them on the busy street. Sarah took her arm, just in case.

It was not until they were in the carriage that she opened the seal on the reply.

Dear Love is Blind

We both, it seems, have identities to protect. It is difficult, however, to communicate the most sensitive issues via post. If you have available to you a reliable agent who could meet my likewise reliable agent in the reading room inside the Minerva Press Circulating Library located at No 33 Leadenhall Street, at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon, we shall be happy to facilitate a roundabout conversation. My agent, whom you need only address as Mr Smith, will be the man possessing a book authored by Emma De Lisle, The Sisters, a Tale, Volume I, bound in red leather with gold tooling. He will wait no longer than one hour from the appointed time of assignation.

Sarah set the letter upon her lap, regarding it with some glee. “You are now looking at Georgiana’s Reliable Agent. This is perfect!”

“Perfectly foolish,” Mrs Figg snapped. “Miss Darcy is a child still—she might be excused for her silly ideas. You are a lady of distinction! You may not toddle about London, meeting strange men in strange libraries! What would your father say?”

Sarah snorted. “Papa would likely ask me to search for a copy of some scholarly journal whilst I am there.”

“Your father! Someday he will wake to the world around him, and may I live to see it!”

Mrs Figg did not revere the blue blood of presumed earl-hood running through Papa’s veins, and only hauled out phrases such as ‘lady of distinction’ to put Sarah in her place.

“Shall I tell Evans to accompany me to the Circulating Library tomorrow, then?”

“Evans! What would your maid do if this scribbler’s agent is a ne’er-do-well, looking to bother a respectable young woman? Scream and cause a scene and make everything worse? Could she kick a fellow in just the right spot leaving him too airless to whinge about it?”

“No,” Sarah allowed. “Evans is better at slinking away than fighting. But I can protect myself.”

“Of course you can,” Mrs Figg agreed, nodding with satisfaction. “No young lady in my care shall ever be left a helpless, pathetic pile of silk and sensibility. I will attend you—someone useful must watch your back. And you will wear a veil this time.”

“Wearing a veil in the library will call far more attention to my person than dressing with simple respectability. Besides, I do not care whether I am discovered speaking with a scribbler or not.”

Mrs Figg continued to grumble, but it was true. While Sarah’s reputation was good and her dowry immense, she was too forthright, too little enamoured of the politics of the ton to cultivate the correct interest and appeal, and too unconventional to care whether she did or not. She simply could not cease being herself long enough to enact the part of ‘delicate flower of young womanhood’ in the over-staged performances and productions which passed for high society. Two or three fortune hunters had tried their best, but she was far too keen a student of human nature to be taken in, and had bluntly told them exactly what she thought of their counterfeit courtships. They, in turn, had avenged their wounded masculinity by reporting her supposed flaws to the ton. As a result, she was thought an oddity.

Which was probably true. For entertainment, she enjoyed making a mess of Cook’s kitchen baking fruit tarts; she despised practising at the pianoforte, and she preferred fencing to dancing. Her singing voice, she had been informed by Mrs Figg, sounded as though a herd of cattle struggled to escape a barn-fire—and yet she loved to sing, and could not understand why only those who were proficient were encouraged to take part.

Lady Hampton, in a last effort at refining her stubborn niece, had insisted upon her attendance at the exclusive girl’s seminary where she had met Georgiana Darcy, but her friendship with the younger lady was about the only good thing to come from the experience. Most of the girls at Miss Grey’s Academy were sixteen or seventeen years of age, polishing themselves for their upcoming Seasons. At the grand old age of one-and-twenty, Sarah had been considered ancient by her schoolmates; at barely fourteen, Georgiana had been a baby. It was, perhaps, natural that Sarah could not resist befriending the shy, fearful girl, helping her to cope with the sly insults and provocations she faced from her peers. Sarah, of course, was not any more popular than Georgiana; she only cared far less what they thought about her.

“I refuse to wear a veil, but I promise you will have the right of first kick, if he is anything except a gentleman of the utmost character and address,” Sarah promised, and with that, Mrs Figg had to be content.