Evelyn couldn’t stop herself from bristling. “I’m not a bluestocking.”
“Don’t be offended. I count myself as a bluestocking, too.” Lady Anne paused. “Bluestocking adjacent, anyway.”
Evelyn had cause to doubt it. With her flawless alabaster face and enviable figure, Lady Anne appeared the polar opposite of a bluestocking. She was too poised. Too elegant. A perfect English lady.
“Mama will be expecting us to leave soon,” she said.
Evelyn cast a glance at the door. “Your mother is here?”
“She went straight from the carriage to your uncle’s study. The pair of them are in rhapsodies over a new report from Birmingham. Some boy claiming he’s received a message from Prince Albert. If it’s true—”
“You think it might be?”
“I’m not a believer myself. But who knows? ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,’ and all that.”
Evelyn recognized the quote from Hamlet. Among the books remaining in her family’s modest library was a tattered copy of The Collected Works of William Shakespeare. As a girl, she’d read it from cover to cover, equally enamored of the romantic plays and thrilled by the gruesome ones. “If Prince Albert had a message to send from the great beyond, wouldn’t it make more sense for him to send it directly to Buckingham Palace?”
“Rather. Unless Birmingham is more convenient for some reason.”
“Why would it be?”
“Because of the boy. Mama says he must have a powerful spiritual antenna. Like a telegraph pole.”
Evelyn’s lips quivered.
Lady Anne’s eyes glimmered with answering humor. “You may laugh, Miss Maltravers. But I have to live with this flummery.”
“Oh, do call me Evie.”
“And you must call me Anne. I never use my honorific if I can help it. Not with my friends.”
Evelyn smiled. A friend. Her first one in London, and she hoped not her last.
Anne stood suddenly. “Would you like to do something else?”
Evelyn rose from her chair. “Instead of shopping?”
“Mama expects us to go somewhere. We may as well do so. The coachman won’t tattle on us, nor will the footman. We can direct them where we will.”
“And where is that?”
“Why, to call on Julia Wychwood, of course.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, the Countess of Arundell’s black lacquered carriage came to a stop in front of the Wychwoods’ residence in Belgrave Square. The windows of the grand white stuccoed house were covered with cloth and the door knocker had been removed. The place looked all but abandoned.
“Are you certain they’re at home?” Evelyn asked as the footman handed her down from the carriage.
Anne climbed out after her. She shook her skirts. “Pay no attention to its outward appearance. The Wychwoods are always battling some sickness or another. Julia’s father, Sir Eustace, has even been known to put straw on the steps on occasion, when he feared the end was near.”
Evelyn eyed the town house warily. “What kind of sickness?”
“Biliousness, apoplexy, green fever, megrims, palsy, the ague. Any number of unfortunate conditions, and even more of them undiagnosed.” Anne climbed the stone steps to the front door. “Julia’s parents keep half of the physicians in London in business.”
“So long as it’s not anything contagious.” Evelyn couldn’t afford to become ill. Not at this stage of her plan.
“Heavens, no. You’ll never catch so much as a cold from the Wychwoods.” Curling her gloved hand into a fist, Anne rapped sharply on the door.
It was opened by a balding footman in canary-yellow livery.
“Good morning, Jenkins,” Anne said. “We’ve come to see Miss Wychwood. She’s in her room, I take it?”
“Yes, my lady.” He stood back to allow them entry. “The doctor has just been.”
“That bad, is it?” Anne removed her black silk hat and stripped off her gloves, handing them to the footman.
Evelyn followed suit. Her gaze drifted over the entry hall. It was too dark to properly make out the wall coverings or furnishings. Not only that, the interior of the house was distinctly over warm.
A shiver of uneasiness went through her.
Mama’s sickroom had been just the same. Dark and close in the aftermath of giving birth to baby Isobel. Evelyn could still recall the coppery smell of blood. There had been so much of it.
The memory only served to drive home the urgency of her mission. Her sisters were depending on her. She had to marry well for their sakes. For Gussie, Caro, Bette, and Izzy. Each of them was due a chance at happiness and security. A chance for love. And if Evelyn had to marry without it in order to give them that chance, then by God, she’d do it.
And why shouldn’t she be the one to make the sacrifice? She was the most unsentimental of them all.
At least, she had been until she’d met Mr. Malik.
But those feelings would pass, surely. The way butterflies fluttered in her stomach whenever she saw him. The way her breath caught and her pulse quickened. Soon she’d meet someone else. Someone suitable. Life would go on, and if she never felt those exquisite palpitations again—
Well.
She’d forget she ever had, wouldn’t she? She’d be precisely as she was when she’d first arrived in London. Sensible and pragmatic. Decidedly unromantic.
“Sir Eustace is beside himself,” Jenkins confided in low tones. “He’s taken to his bed.”
“What a shame.” Anne headed for the curving oak staircase. “No need to accompany us. I know the way.”
Evelyn ascended the steps after her. “It sounds as though Miss Wychwood may be too ill for company.”
Anne gave a very unladylike snort. “Julia has the constitution of a horse.”
“But—”
“You’ll see.” Anne led Evelyn down a carpeted hallway to a large, wood-paneled door. She knocked on it twice.
There was a frantic rustling from within. At length, a weak voice answered: “Come in.”
Anne flashed Evelyn a speaking glance as she opened the door.
Miss Wychwood’s chamber was as dark and warm as the rest of the house. Velvet curtains were drawn shut over the windows, and a dying fire crackled in the grate. At the center of the room stood a carved four-poster bed draped in blue damask. Julia Wychwood lay inside of it, tucked deep beneath her bedcovers, her head resting on a stack of feather pillows. She turned her face to the door as they entered. Her countenance was pale as wax.