“Last I heard, you have engaged an editor to commission articles.”
She sets down her spoon and subjects me to a long look, as if trying to decide whether I am worthy of any further knowledge concerning her professional endeavors. “Mrs. Donovan has, as of last week, gathered a sufficient number of articles for the launch of the magazine.”
“Excellent. What of advertisers?”
She gives me another long look. “We are still waiting to hear back from Pears and a dentifrice manufacturer. But even without them, we have a sufficient number to go forward.”
I ask more questions concerning the magazine’s subscriber base and her channels of distribution. Her expression remains skeptical, but she answers at length and in good faith.
Half of me is exhilarated beyond words; the other half would like to run me through with a sword. Why, in the name of God, have I never before spoken to her like this, with simple human respect and interest? It is not arduous. It is not even difficult.
“So when do you expect to launch the first issue?”
“I do not—not anymore, in any case,” she answers as the footmen replace our soup bowls with plates of lobster tails in herbed butter.
I frown. “Why not?”
She cuts into her lobster. “Do you mean to tell me you will have no objections to my continued role as a publisher?”
“That is indeed what I mean to tell you.”
This time her gaze is a long sweep of my person, as if—my heart leaps so high it crashes into the roof of my mouth—she might indeed be reconsidering her opinion of me. “Your word, Lord Larkspear?”
“You have my word, Lady Larkspear.”
“September, then,” she says. “September was—or is—our projected launch date. Tomorrow I will write Mrs. Donovan and my secretary to let them know everything will proceed according to the original plan.”
A glorious warmth permeates my chest, as if I have been entrusted with the map that leads to the Fountain of Youth. “I am sure you do not need it, but if I can be of any assistance, be sure to let me know.”
She pierces a piece of lobster with her fork, puts it in her mouth, and chews meditatively. When she finishes with that particular morsel, she says, “I will consider it.”
And that is as marvelous an answer as I can expect, under the circumstances.
FOR THE REMAINDER OF DINNER our conversation revolves around her family. It isn’t a sparkling exchange, not a single bon mot tossed about. In fact, by any other standards, it is a remarkably mundane discussion: her sister’s new place in the country, her sister-in-law’s gardens, her brother’s annual shooting party, coming up in a few weeks.
But for me, it is a startlingly novel experience, as what passes for mundane between us is my insulting her looks or her publishing endeavors while deploying a dirty leer, and her systematic verbal destruction of my manhood in response.
I desperately, desperately do not want dinner to end. But like all good things, end it eventually does. She rises and departs, and I am left behind with a gentleman’s customary glass of port and cigar, in neither of which I have the remotest interest.
I fiddle with both until a seemly amount of time has passed; then I vacate the dining room with the speed of Grisham dashing out the front door when he has been cooped up inside too long.
She is still being attended to by her maid when I let myself into her room. Our eyes meet in the vanity mirror. I am not sure what she sees in my face—too much hope, eagerness, or familiarity? Her hand tightens on the lapels of her lustrous blue silk dressing robe.
“You may retire,” she instructs her maid.
The maid curtsies and departs, closing the door soundlessly behind herself.
“You could have stayed for port and cigars,” I tell her. “I would not have been scandalized.”
She smiles. No, the corners of her lips move upward, but it is no more a smile than fool’s gold is treasure. I feel my face becoming rigid, the boyish enthusiasm that has made me almost hoppingly excited for this night draining away like blood from a gaping wound.
“Do you have that blindfold you promised me?” she asks, her voice as unruffled as the Dead Sea.
As she speaks, I notice my sketch of her photograph on the vanity. I almost burst with relief, until she rises, the sketch in hand, and tosses it the fire.
It is swallowed by the flame in no time at all.
She turns around, that cold not-quite-smile still about her lips. “My blindfold?” she reminds me.
“Of course,” I say stiffly. “If you will give me a moment.”
When I reach my dressing room, I brace my hand on the nearest chest of drawers and breathe hard, my heart churning with both anger and anguish. This is why you should never let your guard down, screams a voice in my head. This is why!