Note: As expected, this is a tad late! School ending and Father's Day had an unexpected third bestie: catching a cold. Better late than never, though!
Chapter Twenty-three
Once back at home, Cara relayed what had happened in the carriage to Anthony as he stripped off his wet clothing. She didn't think he had really listened to any of it after the revelation that the queen had accused Eloise of being Lady Whistledown, but the next morning, he offered her the use of his study for the planned meeting between herself, Eloise, Edwina, and (hopefully, once Eloise invited her) Penelope.
"You said it was Edwina who suggested writing a decoy column of obviously dubious quality?" he asked after scrubbing his face vigorously with a cold washcloth.
Cara nodded. "It's brilliant! I cannot even imagine what Penelope will think about it, though. Hopefully as a compliment to her writing skills."
Anthony's hair stuck up in a hundred different ways when he was finished, and Cara couldn't help but giggle at him, which made him look even more cross. He admonished, "Don't assume on Penelope's behalf that Edwina should be in on the secret-"
Cara didn't let him finish. "She doesn't know that I know, don't worry."
"Well, don't take this the wrong way, my love, but I am not certain you are very good with secrets," Anthony said, shooting her an affectionate look.
She hid her reaction by faking a cough as though trying to hide laughter, but inside, she felt awful. The feeling persisted until right up to the meeting time. With Edwina not arrived yet and Eloise off to collect Penelope, she took the opportunity to look around Anthony's study with new eyes.
Her fingers itched to tidy up the mess of papers on his desk, but she resisted, seating herself on his chair, instead. Cara reached out and traced her fingertip over one of the pages that had lines of Anthony's recognizable handwriting, her heart practically burning through her chest in happiness to think of how much her life had changed. Would her husband's writing look completely different in her own time? Would his demeanor of authority be diminished by modern clothing?
Those thoughts reminded her that she was keeping something from the man she loved, an impossible truth constantly looming in the back of her mind. Like a physical thorn lodged in an internal organ, she was completely unable to remove it, either.
To distract herself, Cara sat back in the chair and tugged open a drawer only to be accosted with the strong smell of hyacinths. Confused, she pulled it farther open and saw that there was a teacup resting in amongst the envelopes and other papers in the drawer. Inside the teacup was a square of soap.
"I wouldn't have been able to resist, in your position," Eloise said from the doorway. "Granted, he threatened to bash my head in when I made my way in here hiding from Benedict five or six years ago, but I am merely his sister."
"Men's tempers can be frightful!" Penelope said, coming in behind her friend. "My sisters can be cruel, but they are not violent."
"My husband is the most hot-headed person I know," Cara admitted, standing up to push the drawer closed and drag his chair over closer to the couch. "I do not think he would actually be violent, though. Just threaten to be." She beckoned Penelope to seat herself nearby.
"Anthony would challenge his dinner to a duel for being cold," Eloise joked. As she leaned back to laugh, Cara saw movement and saw Francesca at the half-open door, her fist poised to knock.
"I found this very nicely dressed young lady in the foyer, have you lost one, do you think?" she asked, her expression perfectly composed despite her impish statement. On cue, Edwina waved at them from just behind her.
"Yes I have, and I'm quite bereft," Cara said, stretching out a hand for her cousin. Before Francesca could turn to leave, though, Eloise popped up and dragged her into the room, slamming the door with her foot.
"We need her," Eloise explained as she dragged over a stool from across the study. "We'll need some gossip."
"I am hardly-" Franny started to say, but Eloise raised her voice.
"You are a keen observer, and I am desperate!" Before her sister could protest further, Eloise told her about the queen's accusation and Edwina's suggestion that they fake a column.
"If you just fake one, she'll accuse you of mocking her," Francesca said with a worried expression. "What if we all wrote a version? How many publishing houses are there?"
"Oh, that is clever," Edwina said.
"Cara, will you go fetch some paper and ink? Anthony will forgive you, I am sure. We can write out a list of possible secrets, and each of us can pick what to write about, and how- if, that is, everyone's game to try?" Eloise said.
"I am, but I think we should all be prepared to have our writing skills excoriated by the lady herself," Cara said, standing and moving over to re-open the drawer with the soap chunk. She grabbed the supplies, pushing away the thoughts of how handsome Anthony was when he was pretending to be vexed. He would definitely pretend to be vexed.
The thought of her husband's ire was contagious, it seemed, because Francesca said, "We should include your dancing to make Anthony cross, before he stomped out in disgust only to bring you flowers! Mother was quite in a tizzy, thinking he'd offended all the guests by leaving early."
Cara wrote, Anthony and Carina Bridgerton, outrageous display at Aubrey Hall dance, groveling, flowers, .
"He was up all night drinking the night before, put that in?" Eloise said, looking over at Cara tentatively.
"I will, but maybe I'll leave that one out of my version," Cara said, wincing. She wrote, Lord Bridgerton too afraid of his wife's ire to risk sleeping in his own bedchamber, the night before reconciliation.
"While that was going on, I overheard a young man whisper to another to stay clear of the Orangery, lest he be trapped into marriage!" Edwina said, her eyes wide.
"Well, you can't leave it there!" Eloise exclaimed, looking around at the rest of them. Cara had completely forgotten the engagement between Prudence and the Featherington heir, but she'd been hashing out a return to London in the library as the drama went down.
"As he told it, he had left the ball to take a walk, to let his food settle, and when he was farthest from the door in the Orangery, in walked Lord Featherington, seeking Lord Fife."
"But the man speaking was not Lord Fife, I imagine?" Francesca cut in.
"I didn't turn around, but he didn't sound like Lord Fife. He said he remained hidden, and a minute or so later, Prudence Featherington walked in. Apparently, not two minutes after that a large party led by her mother burst in the door and accused them of being compromised!"
"Is the man saying they weren't actually in a compromising position?" Eloise said excitedly. "Pen, you were worried about the match, this could be useful!"
Everyone looked at Penelope. "I-" she began, but stopped, looking down at her hands. Her cheeks were flushed nearly as red as her hair.
"Did you know about this already?" Eloise breathed. That had her best friend looking up swiftly to object.
"Not precisely. My mother seemed inordinately pleased about it at first, but-"
"Is Prudence happy?" Edwina interrupted.
"My sister is happy to have the attention of our mother squarely upon her," Penelope said, clearly glad to give an uncomplicated answer to a complicated question. "Cousin Jack is personable and clever, and Mother is convinced he will not turn us out if he is married to Prudence. But if she were to find out that I had anything to do with-" Penelope cut herself off, her eyes begging Eloise to understand. Cara understood immediately. If Penelope was revealed to be Lady Whistledown, and something even remotely associated with Lady Whistledown were to scupper that union, Penelope's family would likely never forgive her.
At the same time, this might be the only chance she had to have the truth come out where it wasn't attributable to Lady Whistledown. Cara couldn't credibly argue that the marriage wouldn't take place, not and risk the underhanded way that Portia Featherington would fund her family's continued place in society- but this? This was an unexpected boon.
"I am not as brave as Lady Whistledown," Edwina fretted. "I feel awful for even relaying that comment!"
"I imagine Lady Whistledown just pretends she's brought everyone to stand next to wherever she is when she overhears these things! After all, you did not create the situation you overheard," Cara said quickly. "But, if it would cause trouble to have it written somewhere, I'm sure we can-"
"We cannot only use Bridgerton foibles!" Penelope declared, lifting her chin. "Besides, if each of us has something negative in at least one or two versions, it deflects attention, does it not?"
"Then we had better come up with more gossip and fast, lest we all be scooped by the Lady herself!" Eloise said gaily, starting for the door. "I'm off to get my own paper, one forbidding authority figure out for my blood is quite enough!"
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In the end, their group agreed that they'd write less than Lady Whistledown usually published, after coming up with far fewer stories than they'd hoped to. Everyone jotted down a short list of gossip and promised to return the next day with their brief, Lady Whistledown-style pamphlet drafts. It wasn't as if anyone was fooling themselves about quality, for one thing, and for another, it would cost money to print even their limited number of pages. Cara knew Anthony wouldn't mind funding something like this if it ended up deflecting the queen's anger away from his sister, but she knew she'd have to keep her plans secret from him until the very last moment.
Cara got to work right away, writing under the moniker Lady Entwhistle. She carefully themed everything she was saying with tree imagery, laughing under her breath as she pictured Treebeard the Ent from Tolkien's stories reading the column aloud, instead of Julie Andrews. When she was finished, though, she turned melancholy; there were so many books and poems that she'd never have the chance to read again!
Or would she?
Cara got out a fresh sheet of paper. What would it hurt if she wrote down some of the poetry she could remember and kept them safe so she could read them years from now, when her memory was full of things from her new life?
She thought of her favorite poet, Pablo Neruda, and some of the lines that were simply indelible, even if she wasn't sure she had the wording just right.
I love you without knowing why, or when, or from where
I love you directly, without pride or problems,
I love you in this way because I know no other way to love,
So close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
So close that your eyes close with my dreams.
Cara didn't even remember which poem it was, but she'd always been drawn to his lines about dreams and the power of love. She dipped her quill into the ink again, writing,
Already, you are mine. Rest with your dream inside of my dream.
Love, labor, grief- all must rest now.
It took real willpower not to reach out and touch the words right after she'd written them, but of course, that would smear them and ruin the page. Her restless mind was fixated on dreams and the upcoming fear of labor, even though that wasn't the 'labor' Neruda had likely meant, in this. She strained to remember more of that one…
No one else will sleep with my dreams, love.
I will go, you will go, joined by the waters of time.
No one else will travel the shadows with me.
Reading it just made her think of Anthony, how he'd comforted her in the times she'd been caught up in memories of the past. There were only so many times that could happen without revealing the schism in her mind, the way she was caught between this world and the one she'd come from! Cara hated lying to him almost as much as she hated having to keep all of her experiences locked away in her memory, only to emerge during the chaos of a thunderstorm.
By now the page she'd written up as Lady Entwhistle had probably dried, so Cara walked over to where she'd laid it on the dresser and picked it up.
Welcome to the forest, my lovelies! I come bearing tidings of the exclusive outing at the Bridgerton estate this past week. When the branches parted last go-around, the ton emerged with two engagements! While there were no similar occurrences this time, it was overheard by one of my little birdies that at least one pair may not have needed to jump onto the bough of matrimony so quickly!
As was tweeted to me by one of my beaky spies, Miss Prudence Featherington may have flown to the arm of her father's heir prematurely! It seems that she and Lord Jack Featherington were merely admiring the scenery for a few short minutes before being discovered together! Could it be that Lady Portia Featherington rushed to judgment, blinded by the riches the man's American mines can bring?
If either party is unhappy with their lot, it may be that there is a witness to their lack of impropriety whose testimony may help one of the Featheringtons fly the coop!
Cara giggled to herself. It was heavy-handed indeed, nothing like the real Lady Whistledown's deft but incisive touch. She'd wanted to write about the way Lord and Lady Sheffield had treated their daughter and, as an extension of that treatment, been abhorrent to the memory of Kate Sharma… but they hoped to have the pages published by mid-week, days before Queen Charlotte's sun-themed gala. There wouldn't be much of a veneer over plausible deniability as to who had authored the accusation, and their point in spreading out the gossip into five different pamphlets had been to deflect the queen's ire, not focus it.
A tap on her door proved to be Eloise, who asked if Cara would mind accompanying her to one of the printers the next day, once everyone had delivered their pages. Because she wasn't meant to know about what Penelope had done to obscure her identity, Cara tried to stay as silent as possible, so she didn't give herself away. They agreed on a time, and after Eloise left, Cara went to put away her scattered poetry lines somewhere safe. Maybe someday she could turn a few of them into a lullaby to sing to her children, something secret and special.
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Anthony wasn't ashamed to admit he was looking forward to the Friday 'afternoon tea' he and Cara had scheduled for that day in their bedchamber. After a long week of seeking a suitable house for the rest of the Bridgertons to move into once he expanded his family, he was tired, mentally drained, and yes, full of desire for his wife. It had taken effort to balance his inquiries with the need to keep her pregnancy a secret, and now he was ready to relax and enjoy the benefits of marriage he'd almost let himself miss out on.
When Cara didn't drop by his study as expected, Anthony strolled out into the foyer to find that she and Eloise were dressed to go out.
"Oh, Anthony!" Cara said, coming over to steal a quick kiss. "Oh! Anthony," she said once the quick peck was over. "Tea."
"You do not sound pleased," Anthony said, sounding displeased.
"It is just that I have had to postpone this outing with Eloise three times this week already, and today is the last possible day it will work properly," Cara said, frowning. Beside her, Eloise's face closely resembled a thundercloud. "I'm so sorry, but we will have to reschedule."
"That won't be until Tuesday," he objected.
"I will make it up to you?" she said over her shoulder, as his sister dragged her out through the front door.
"Hold! If you're taking the carriage, I'll ask the footman to drop something off for me. John?" Anthony said, thinking quickly to gesture for the footman to step away from the carriage into the house with him. A different servant helped both women into the carriage, obscuring their reactions.
"Did you need to get something from your study, sir?" the servant in question asked deferentially.
"I do not; I'd like to ask you to report to me on the ladies' outing, if you would. I do not regularly make such a request-" Anthony's mind supplied the 'anymore,' because he had, during Daphne's courtship with Simon. John's lips twitched ever so slightly, telling Anthony he was being exactly as transparent as he thought he was. "Not word for word, mind you. I am more interested in the urgency of their errand than the substance of their conversation."
With an impeccably performed bow, the footman agreed and left, leaving Anthony standing alone in the foyer of Bridgerton House. He crossed his arms, frowning.
"Damn."
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Cara had managed to forget about Theo Sharpe right up until she followed Eloise Bridgerton into the shop where he worked. It so happened that he was behind the counter as they walked in, so she was able to see the way his eyes lit up upon seeing Eloise. He dampened his reaction almost immediately, taking on a guarded appearance that told Cara the two had either already parted ways, or that Sharpe had decided that would be necessary soon. Once again she wished she had a way to use her extra knowledge to help, but once again, it would have done more harm than good.
"Miss Bridgerton, what can I do to assist you today? I have a large order to oversee, so-"
"Aha!" Eloise interrupted triumphantly. She held up her stack of five pages to wave under his nose. "I have business today, not just questions."
Sharpe crossed his arms and looked down at her with an expression of stern fondness. "Do you? That'll have more to do with your companion, then, I'd wager."
"That's my sister-in-law. Lady Bridgerton," Eloise said dismissively, waving a hand back in Cara's direction without turning from the counter. "Now, I want to find out what your prices are for printing a set of these. We'll be printing a limited run, each at a different shop." He reached out, but she moved the papers away and poked a finger directly in the center of his chest. "Will you promise me you'll keep this completely secret? It is a matter of utmost importance."
"I can do that, but then, you'd do well to have them all printed here, Miss Bridgerton. I can't vouch for the quality of people working on those other shops."
Eloise sagged a bit onto the counter and looked back at Cara. "I worried as much."
Sharpe eased the pages out from under her arm where they were being crumpled by her defeated body position. Eloise opened her mouth to object, but the sly smile that grew as he read further along the first page had her shutting it again.
"Well?" she whispered, sounding tense. Cara walked over to stand beside her to watch Sharpe.
"Are these all different versions, then?" he asked, using his thumb to fold the first one down to peek at the next. Eloise trapped all the pages between her hand and the counter in a swift, nervous gesture.
"Maybe. Can you help?"
"Oh, I can help," Sharpe said, adjusting his hat with his free hand. The hand holding the papers was beneath Eloise's, and he shifted it slightly, causing her to move hers in an overly defensive huff. "If you're doing what I think you're doing, here's my advice," he added, a touch of color on his cheeks.
"Oh, do enlighten-"
"Eloise!" Cara hissed. Theo Sharpe's shop published Lady Whistledown's Society Papers, and it was likely they were privy to the distribution plans. It would be a lot more work to figure all of that out if Eloise alienated her not-quite-beau in the process.
"As I was saying, Lady Bridgerton," Sharpe said, adjusting his attention to Cara instead. "I can print each set using a few of our damaged letters, so they look different from each other. It will look like you used multiple shops. You'll still want to visit a number of them to inquire about prices and state that you'll come back, but don't let them know you have different versions of the same pamphlet."
"Anyone inquiring will assume you chose somewhere else! That's clever," Eloise interrupted.
Sharpe's expression turned smug. "Is that a compliment I heard, just now?"
Cara turned her slippered foot so that it overlapped Eloise's, and pressed down ever so slightly.
"It may have been, I cannot recall," her sister-in-law said brightly. "But, how much is this kind of endeavor going to cost, isn't that a lot of work?"
"The knowledge that you think I'm clever might just see me through," he told her. "May I?" Sharpe added, holding out a hand for the papers.
"I-" Eloise started, the rest of the words obviously crowding her throat and preventing all sound. She squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and then nodded, handing over the five precious pages.
"How long for the whole job, Mr. Sharpe?" Cara asked, trying to sound businesslike. Both Eloise and Theo looked at her, and she realized that they hadn't been introduced. It would be best for Eloise to let her assume that Cara knew Theo's name because perhaps Anthony did, which might dampen any behaviors that would threaten her reputation. Still, the slips kept happening, and she wondered if it was because she had no confidante, no one to share her particular brand of homesickness with.
Cara barely remembered anything else about their outing, floating through their visits to other print shops with half of her attention taken up by worry. When she and Eloise got back to Bridgerton House, she checked the time and then asked to use the carriage to head over to Danbury House so she could visit Lady Mary. Bua's calm voice and reassuring manner was exactly what she needed before their Friday outing.
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Anthony hadn't expected to hear that the two women had spent the afternoon visiting multiple publishing houses.
After hearing his spy's report, Anthony tried to imagine what they'd been up to. All he could think was that there were quite a few writing-related things that Cara had been doing over the past week. Was she constructing some kind of present? He'd dutifully noted down the new notable dates in the lives of his in-laws, but nothing was upcoming.
He tried to put it from his mind, but as the afternoon waned and she did not return, Anthony made his way up to their bedchamber. It had occurred to him that there might be something in her papers at the desk she'd spent a lot of time writing at, lately.
Anthony had expected to see a number of letters to send back to India, or perhaps some drafts for a printed page that she might be seeking to frame as a gift.
What he found were multiple pages of truly superior poetry.
It was a kick to the gut, both positive and negative, one due to quality and one due to concern. It was one thing to have a brother who was good at creating things, but a wife? Yet, how could anyone be anything but impressed? Anthony didn't know what to do, but he sensed that what he'd found was intensely private, else she would have sought to share it with him. Hell, the verses spoke so eloquently of love, with such intimacy, that he couldn't help but feel flattered. It seemed wrong to have gone into her things and found something like that, only to speak of it with his mother or best friend first. No, he had to speak of it with Carina, even though that almost certainly meant a conflict of the first order.
When Cara got home from visiting her aunt and cousin, there wasn't time to speak with any depth before the event Lady Danbury had organized. Because she was the dowager's protegee, they were busy all evening receiving congratulations and predictions from all the well-wishers. That night, a storm threatened but never materialized, so Anthony held his tongue, but the following morning was no better. He did what any self-respecting husband would: to distract her from her fears, he made love to her, setting aside his concerns for later in the day.
They both had engagements during the day, as it was Saturday, but Cara was delayed returning from her afternoon tea with the Smythe-Smith ladies (he hadn't even needed to come up with something fake to avoid it, as only Cara was invited). That left them short of time yet again before their evening's plans, but Anthony decided he had to ask about the poetry he'd found. If she got upset, then they would have the buffer of an evening of the queen's hospitality before she could really light into him.
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Cara flew upstairs toward her bedroom, grateful there was someone whose job it was to close both the carriage door and the front door. She had a mere twenty minutes to dress herself for the engagement that evening, and there was almost no chance she'd manage it. They'd have to be late, but so would the ladies she'd just finished visiting.
Anthony was already dressed when she burst through the door, and she apologized to him while simultaneously reaching to unhook her dress so she could start the process of changing for the queen's event.
"I can help," Anthony said. "The maid showed up about ten or twenty minutes ago, and I sent her off to Eloise."
"Oh, thank you!" she said, but paused to fix him with an intent look. "No distractions, we are very late!" He had the cuteness and audacity to hold his hands up beside his head! True to his word, though, he helped out without trying anything. Her usual maid was in the country attending her sister's wedding, and Cara was happy to allow it. Lydia had been convinced she wouldn't be able to, not so soon after being promoted to ladies maid to a viscountess.
Working together, they got her into her sunset orange dress just in time for the maid to knock at the door and finish up. Instead of doing the expected thing and heading downstairs, Anthony settled into her desk chair and just watched as she had her hair pinned up.
Just as Cara had to hold steady for the last few decorative clips to be placed in her braided updo, Anthony said, "I didn't know you were a poet."
Every single vital function in Cara's body halted for a full three seconds.
"I'm not," she managed to squeak, earning herself a concerned look from the Bridgertons' maid. Anthony met her eyes in the mirror, his expression skeptical but admiring.
"You must know how good these are," he said, holding up the page of Neruda's poetry she thought she'd hidden away. As the person in charge of collecting everyone's decoy columns, Cara had needed to hide them and retrieve them multiple times, one for each canceled trip to the printing shops. She must have gotten careless in her haste in putting it away again- or her husband had gone snooping.
This was the exact worry she'd had about writing down something from her own time!
"Your silence speaks volumes," Anthony announced, standing.
"Your defensiveness does as well!" Cara retorted, thanking the maid as the other woman stepped back, satisfied with her handiwork. "Please put that back where you found it?"
"I will, if you tell me whether you intend to have them published. No matter how good these are, Cara, it matters for the family name, to have something like that associated with it! Particularly if-"
"I'm sorry, did you just accuse me of trying to sully the reputations of our families by… what? Hiding memorized verses on a piece of paper in a desk in our private bedchamber?" she asked, completely incredulous. Was Jane Austen publishing novels yet? Could he possibly be serious?
"I would have heard of verses these well written, if they already existed," Anthony said, but there was new hesitation in his voice. She had to build on that; the alternatives were frightening. Would he show them around? What if someone else wrote down some of the verses, and the page survived into modern times? She never should have risked writing them down, she realized.
"What if I translated them from another language?" Cara offered, inwardly apologizing to the spirit of Carina Sheffield and her upbringing in India. She had started taking lessons in Hindi from Edwina, but they could only do it in complete privacy, because anyone who listened in would be deeply confused about it. Edwina had suggested that maybe they could bring in Francesca to learn, once the season was over. If Cara sat nearby and listened in on someone brand new to the language, it wouldn't seem so odd or concerning for someone of her background to be learning remedial Hindi. "Oh, bite me, you stupid slipper!" she groaned, fear and frustration making her clumsy while trying to tie them.
"Allow me," Anthony said, going to his knees in front of where she was leaning against the bed. It was too high for her to sit and rest her shoe on the floor to fasten it, but she did appreciate the benefits of its height on other activities. Those activities were also on her husband's mind, thankfully distracting him at least a little bit from his suspicions. Cara stayed silent and just watched as he rested her foot on his bent knee, tying the ties with many gratuitous swipes of his hand against her stockinged leg in the process.
"You are incorrigible," she told him, but she couldn't help smiling through her complaint.
"Always," he agreed, "-even if I do not wholly understand the word." He finished, but rested a heavy hand on her ankle to prevent her from moving. "Do you promise they are not yours?"
"Of course!" she asserted. "Edwina has a book of translated poetry from India. If you ask her, I'm sure she'd let you go through it? I…" she sighed, hating to need to draw on her affliction in a deceptive way, but needing him to believe that the poetry he'd found in her handwriting was already published, and claiming she'd written it would be more improper than whatever he thought would happen if she had. "I do not remember the name of the poet."
He squeezed a reassurance on her ankle, stood, and helped her to her feet, clearly mollified. "That is a good compromise. Shall we?"
She wanted to beg him never to snoop through her things again, but after an uneasy truce about the poetry, Cara was afraid to do so. It would lead him to assume she was keeping something from him- and she was.
In essence, Cara had needed to lie to her husband yet again, and her only avenue of emotional release when it came to her secrets had just been very firmly closed off forever.
It really felt like something had to give.
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They arrived at the queen's midsummer gala to find the entire courtyard filled with fire-themed decorations. There was an enormous raised bonfire at one side, presumably placed so that its smoke could only disrupt Queen Charlotte's guests if the wind blew in one particular direction. It was possible to walk around it, but currently, the stone blocks that ringed the temporary dais the fire was lifted onto were occupied by a cast of servants dressed in sunset-themed livery. Not long after Anthony and his extended family stepped into the courtyard, the servants left their sun-shaped gathering point to carry their trays of refreshments out to offer to the guests.
He checked his pocket watch to reassure himself that the servants weren't somehow waiting for the Bridgertons to arrive, but it was seven exactly, meaning they were a half hour late.
"Oh, they've fanned out like sun rays!" Cara said, pointing. "Does the queen do this every year? It seems quite a coincidence to see the footpaths radiating out in just the right way!"
"They're temporary, see?" Anthony said, pointing down at the start of one of the paths nearby. It was ever so slightly raised, and he slotted the tip of his shoe under to show her that the grass was still beneath it. "I would have thought you of all people could recognize paving stones," he teased her, reminding her of their Pall Mall adventure. The look of frustrated amusement she shot him was exactly what he was hoping for, and Anthony took her hand in his and kissed the back of it, to reward her.
"Ahh, Bridgertons! You are late. I was starting to feel affronted," came the voice of Queen Charlotte from behind them. The two of them turned to bow and curtsey their abject apologies, but Anthony rushed to speak first.
"Forgive me, your majesty, I must take the blame. I simply could not settle on my outfit for this grand demonstration," he said, knowing the queen would see his attempt for what it was: a deflection from his wife, who was the real culprit.
"Mmm, it is a good thing your dutiful Emerald of a wife dressed as a brilliant garnet tonight to deflect from your rudeness!"
Before Cara could say the quip Anthony knew she had at the ready, a footman approached the queen with a stack of pamphlets. Because Anthony was watching his wife's face, he saw her expression tighten with fear. It was so uncharacteristic that he stepped up to offer her his arm to steady her, but she soon relaxed, offering him a (wholly feigned, he was completely certain) joyous smile as she rested her (fisted, so tightly that the fabric of her glove was strained) hand on his elbow.
"At last!" the queen said delightedly, snatching up one of the pages. "'Lady Thistledown?'" she quoted, her brows knitting together in confusion.
Suddenly, Anthony understood everything, from the furtive meetings she'd been attending with Eloise and Penelope to the visits to multiple publishing houses. Cara's hand was no longer fisted along his arm but a claw digging into his skin through multiple layers of clothing. She was inching backwards, but he knew he could not let her, not without risking the queen's suspicion, so Anthony shifted his foot to position it behind hers.
The confusion on the queen's face was punctuated by brief huffs of laughter and incredulity. She was almost to the end of the page when a second footman walked over with a similar tray. Behind him was a third.
Cara let out a halting, frightened breath as Queen Charlotte reached out to pick up the second pamphlet.
"What did you do?" he whispered to her, the words drowned out by a loud cackle of surprised laughter from the queen.