Read The Bride of Larkspear for Free Online Page B

murmurs a thank-you as a bowl is set down before her. “Well, whom should I blame if not you?”
    Her tone is light and appropriate. She, too, understands that we have an image to uphold, if not one of actual happiness, then at least of harmony.
    “May I compliment you on your toilette, Lady Larkspear. You look ravishing.”
    Her hair, done up simply, exposes her fine, delicate ears. Her throat is a column of pure elegance. The tiniest pools of shadows gather in the hollows of her clavicles. And it is only with some difficulty that I stop my eyes from traveling lower.
    I do not know whether she notices the direction of my gaze. Her reply is a dry, “Thank you, my lord. And that is a well-cut dinner jacket you sport.”
    “Please, my dear, you will cause my heart to pitter-patter,” I answer, as my heart pitter-patters. I swear, it is the most naive and useless heart known to man. Hers was not even a compliment, but a neutral statement made to sound like one so that the servants would not hear anything amiss.
    All the same…
    At my reply, she flicks a gaze toward the butler and his underlings. They stand still as statues, their faces bland. But the younger footman’s lips quiver, as if he is trying to hold back a smile.
    “I remember the last time I saw you in this dress,” I went on. “The dinner at Lady Francis’s house. May of last year, wasn’t it?”
    For a moment, surprise crowds her eyes. “You have a good memory.”
    “I never forget anything when it comes to you, my dear.”
    I regret the words even as I say them. How do I know my second sketch of the day hasn’t joined the first one in her grate, a similar heap of ashes? How do I protect myself if I go on like this?
    She does not say anything. I am not sure whether that makes things better or worse.
    “How is preparation for the magazine coming?” I ask.
    The spoon she is raising to her lips pauses in midair. “You mean the magazine you normally refer to as my folly?”
    “You should not believe all the stupid things I say.”
    I’ve always thought the magazine, aimed at the increasing population of young working women, a brilliant idea. And who better than she, already a successful publisher of books, which include volumes on educational and employment opportunities for women, to tackle such a magazine?
    “It must be a character defect in me,” she says coolly. “When people persist in saying stupid things, I believe wholeheartedly that it is indeed what they mean to say.”
    Now it is I who glance toward the staff. They are listening raptly, even my butler, who I could have sworn had never before given a single thought to my private life.
    “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