“Do,” he said, snapping out the order as if she were a hired member of the newspaper staff. “Tell her she has until four o’clock. If her silly advice column isn’t here by then, I’ll choose something to take its place and your Lady Truelove will be out of a job.”
Have Irene come back to find theGazette’s most popular feature had vanished from its pages? Appalled by the prospect, Clara jerked to her feet. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary, Mr. Beale. We don’t go to press until tomorrow night. There’s still plenty of time for me to fetch her column myself, and for you to edit it. The word count might differ slightly from what you’ve allotted here, but I’m sure you can—”
“My working week comes to an end at five o’clock on Fridays, Miss Deverill, and that’s three hours from now. My wife puts dinner on my table an hour after that, and I’ll not be kept from it because of silly women who would rather have careers than be at home making dinner for their own hardworking husbands.”
Clara had never longed for a career, nor had she ever been the sort to march in the streets for women’s rights as her sister had been known to do, but nonetheless, Mr. Beale’s words stirred within her some of her sister’s suffragist sympathies. Any other time, she might have taken issue with his disparaging ideas of what constituted a woman’s place, but at this moment, she was in no position to defend Lady Truelove’s tardiness. “I’ll edit it myself, and ensure it fits the space you’ve allotted before Mr. Sanders begins the typesetting.”
“See that you do,” he barked, and without another word, he turned and walked out, slamming the door behind him.
Though glad he was gone, Clara found her mood decidedly worsened by her encounter with him, and instead of getting on with her task, she scowled at the door, feeling a sudden wave of resentment that included not only him, but also Jonathan, Fate, and even her beloved sister.
This wasn’t how things ought to have gone. They had all agreed that Jonathan would become the publisher after Irene’s marriage. Jonathan was supposed to be the one sitting behind this desk, managing Mr. Beale and worrying about Lady Truelove, while Clara was supposed to be with the duke’s family, working to overcome her shyness and learning to move in good society. The season was officially set to begin next week. With Jonathan’s defection and Irene’s delayed return, how would she ever make a successful debut?
Panic rose up inside her, mingling with her resentment, but she forced both emotions down, along with any inclination to feel sorry for herself. She had work to do. Clara reached for her letter opener, but before she could resume her task, she was again interrupted by a knock on the door, and Annie, the family parlor maid, came into her office.
“Begging your pardon, Miss Clara, but your father wants to know if you’ll be joining him for tea upstairs this afternoon.”
Since it was after two o’clock, her father was probably well on his way to being drunk by now, and she had no desire to watch him get any drunker. “No, Annie, give him my regrets and apologies, but I’m far too busy to break for tea. I shall come up to bid him farewell, though, before I return to the duke’s house this evening.”
“Yes, miss.” With that, Annie departed, but the door had barely closed before there was yet another knock.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Clara muttered under her breath, tossing down her letter opener and rubbing a hand over her forehead. “What is it now?”
The knock came again, and Clara lifted her head. “Come in,” she called.
The door swung wide, and theGazette’s secretary, Miss Evelyn Huish, entered the room. “I’ve sorted the afternoon post,” the auburn-haired secretary said as she approached Clara’s desk. “Lady Truelove’s column still hasn’t arrived.”
Clara wrinkled up her nose. “Yes, so Mr. Beale has taken great pains to tell me.”
Evie might have noticed the acrid tone of her voice, but since the other woman’s secretarial duties were divided between Clara and Mr. Beale, she wisely made no comment. Instead, she shifted the bundle of correspondence she carried onto one forearm and plucked an unopened letter off the top. “Nothing from Lady Truelove,” she said as she held out the envelope, “but there is a letter from your brother.”
“Jonathan?” she cried, relief welling up inside her as she jumped to her feet and took the letter from Evie’s outstretched fingertips. “At last!”
But when she glanced at the return scrawled across the back of the envelope, her relief faltered. He was still in Idaho, a remote part of the American wilderness nearly five thousand miles away. No closer to London, in other words, than he’d been when he’d last written a month ago.
Fearing the worst and cursing his name, Clara tore open the envelope and scanned the words written in her brother’s careless, nearly illegible script.
“Not bad news, I hope?”
Evie’s voice had Clara looking up. “Awful,” she replied in dismay. “The worst news possible. He’s found silver.”
“Silver?” Evie laughed in surprise. “He’s a miner?”
“My brother,” she muttered in disgust, “transforms himself into whatever will enable him to avoid his responsibilities at home. Silver?” She rustled the letter in indignation. “Now, after seven years of roaming around America chasing every wildcat scheme possible, now, when I need him, he finds a mine with silver in it? That scoundrel!”
Evie laughed, much to Clara’s chagrin. “But if he’s found silver, that means he’s rich,” she pointed out.
“Damn it, Evie, you’re missing the point. He’s not home, and now, he has no intention of ever coming home. That is the point.” She groaned. “And Irene’s surely halfway to Greece by now. What am I going to do?”
But even as she asked that question, she already knew the answer. She was stuck, stuck not only with Lady Truelove, but also with the paper, Mr. Beale, and all the headaches that came with them until Irene came home.
“Miss Huish?” called the irate voice of Mr. Beale from the outer office. “When you’ve stopped rattling on with Miss Deverill, I need you out here.”
“Go,” Clara said as Evie hesitated. “Just put the rest of my correspondence on the corner of my desk.” Turning, she reached for her leather portfolio from the shelf behind her. “I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”
“You’ll be coming in on a Saturday?”
“I have to, I’m afraid. With that wastrel brother of mine ducking out on his promises, I’ve no choice. Right now, however,” she went on, reminding herself of her most immediate priority as she stuffed letters into the portfolio, “I must go and deal with Lady Truelove. If I don’t return with her column in hand, Mr. Beale will probably have apoplexy. Hmm...” She paused. “Upon reflection, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.”
