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the sewing party Wednesday, will you not? One o’clock. By the time you arrive, I am certain to have a solution.”

Chapter Five
    “Where is Amanda?” Juliana said Wednesday afternoon in the drawing room.
    Rain pattered outside the windows. “You’ve asked that more times than Emily’s pricked herself,” Alexandra observed as she patiently knotted a thread.
    Alexandra could afford to be patient, Juliana thought, stitching a tiny frock more frantically than patiently. She wasn’t the one who’d promised to deliver twenty dozen articles of baby clothing in one short month. “Amanda said she’d be here.”
    “No, she didn’t,” Emily pointed out, rearranging Herman on her shoulders. Unfortunately, the clerk at Grafton House hadn’t fainted. She’d only glared, which had done nothing toward convincing Emily to part with the dratted snake. “You invited her, but she never actually said she would come.”
    “Perhaps not in so many words. But she’ll come.” Amanda had to come. Juliana had devised a plan. An excellent plan, which she couldn’t wait to explain—
    “Ouch!” Emily exclaimed for the fifth time, sticking her pricked finger in her mouth. She really wasn’t very good with a needle. “This blanket is turning out dreadful.”
    Juliana leaned over to inspect the girl’s handiwork. “It isn’t that bad.” The hem was rather uneven, but it wasn’t dreadful . Babies, after all, weren’t prone to criticize. “The blanket will keep an infant warm no matter what it looks like.”
    “But I want it to look good .”
    “With more practice, it will.” Corinna stopped sewing long enough to gesture toward an easel set up by the large picture window. Even in the dim rainy-day light, the scene on the canvas—a man pushing a laughing lady on a swing by a reflective lake—conveyed movement, vibrancy, a sense of life. “My first painting didn’t look like that.”
    Alexandra smiled, still patiently working her own needle into the little cap she was making. “If I recall correctly, your first painting was a willow tree that looked more like a haystack.”
    “We’re none of us expert seamstresses, Miss Emily.” Aunt Frances squinted at her own handiwork through her spectacles. “We’ve only ever done samplers and embroidery. After a few more practice blankets—”
    “This isn’t practice,” Juliana interrupted. “Every single item will be used.” If she was lucky, today’s efforts would produce five or six finished garments. And she needed two hundred and forty! Although it was a bit early to panic, she realized already, less than an hour into her first sewing party, that she was going to have to host many more of them. “Where is Amanda?”
    Just then the knocker sounded in the foyer.
    “That must be Amanda,” she said, the frock falling to the floor as she jumped up and rushed from the room.
    Though their butler, Adamson, was almost as short as Juliana, he always managed to look dignified nonetheless. “Good afternoon, Lady Amanda,” he intoned as he opened the door.
    “Good afternoon, Adamson,” Amanda replied formally.
    “Where on earth have you been?” Juliana asked, very informally indeed.
    “Playing chess with Aunt Mabel. I couldn’t leave in the middle of such an exciting game.”
    “Exciting?” Juliana could think of little less exciting than chess. She preferred games that were light and relaxing, not so cerebral. Even sewing was more fun. “Come into the library.”
    Amanda peeked through the open door across the way. “Isn’t everyone in the drawing room?”
    “Yes. That’s the point.” Juliana took her in the opposite direction, closing the door behind them and ushering her friend toward two leather wingback chairs. “We must keep your engagement a secret. I’ve a plan to break it.”
    Amanda sat and clasped her hands in her lap, suddenly looking nervous. “What is the plan?”
    Picturing her sisters with their ears to the door—after all, she’d often