“I’m only asking questions,” she said defensively. “Why shouldn’t I? I’ve nothing else to divert me.”
He snorted at that. “You need diversion? You work yourself to the bone more days than not with the gazette.”
“But that’s just it, Donovan. The gazette is...” She groaned and looked at the hearth. It was difficult to explain, even to herself. The gazette was everything to her...or so the story went. And it was. But it was really Percy. Or rather, the gazette was all she had left of him. At least it had felt that way when she’d picked up the reins after he died. She’d felt connected to him. But lately, the gazette didn’t feel anything like Percy. It had become something else entirely. “It’s tiresome,” she muttered.
Donovan stared at her a moment. He shifted around to face the fire. “Of course it is—you work too hard. If you published monthly—”
“It’s not the frequency,” she said, interrupting him. “It’swhatI’m publishing. There is more to life than the latest fashion! There are important matters in this world that women ought to think about—if not for themselves, then for the sake of their children. When Percy died I wanted to honor his name, I wanted to keep his memory alive and I thought the best way to do that was to keep the gazette going. But it doesn’t resemble anything he published, and really, needanyonebe told how to treat a chilblain?”
“Not me,” Donovan said instantly. “I don’t get them.”
“I want todosomething with my life. I want to have some purpose. I want...” Her voice trailed off. “I don’t know what I want, not really. I only know that I have these feelings of restlessness that I can’t explain. I feel as if something is missing.”
“I understand,” Donovan said softly. He reached across the space between them and took her hand, giving it a squeeze. “You work at a pace that exceeds that of any man I’ve ever known, and that would include the revered Percival Honeycutt. You’re exhausting yourself, trying to do it all on you own. Why not hand the gazette over to someone who can take the burden from you? Then you’d have the time to explore those things that interest you.”
Hollis clucked her tongue. “Now you sound like my father, advising me to give the gazette to someone else,” she said, and slumped in her chair. “‘You work too hard, Hollis. You ought to be about the business of marriage,’” she said, mimicking her father’s deep voice.
“Mmm,” Donovan said. “I don’t know if you ought to be about marriage, but I do wish another love for you. And, frankly, I can’t help but worry about this rumor you’re pursuing. You’ve been privileged to know the best men society has to offer, love, but there are other sorts of men you’re bound to run across. I know what those men are like—allmen—and there are quite a lot of them that you shouldn’t meet.”
Hollis pressed her lips together. She didn’t doubt that there was some truth to what he said. It wasn’t as if she was unaware that the life she’d lived was a sheltered one. But how would she ever understand the world if she didn’t experience it? How would she ever discover things that ought to be discovered? Like a coup. “It keeps me well occupied,” she said, and glanced sidelong at him. “It keeps the nights from being so boring.”
Donovan sighed. He had no solution to offer her. He stood up and went to the sideboard and poured whiskey into his glass. “By the by, I was down at the docks today.”
Hollis loved Donovan too much to ask why he might have been down on the docks. “Were you?”
“I met a pair of sailors who’d only just docked on a return from the Continent. Oh, but they were chatty, those two. Nattered on at a pace. They’d been to France, they said, and Louis Napoleon has been elected president and favors imperialism. They mean to hire on to French ships because they think they’ll be rich.” He shook his head and came back to his seat. “One of them said something I thought you’d find interesting.”
“Oh?”
“He said there were four Weslorians aboard their ship. Not just any four, mind you, but four soldiers.”
Hollis didn’t see the importance of it and waited for him to say more.
Donovan stacked his feet on the footstool. “That’s what the bloke said. Said he recognized them because of the bit of green pinned to their lapels, aye? Said they were big men, strongly built.” One of his dark eyebrows rose as he sipped his whiskey.
Hollis thought of Mr. Brendan, another man with a bit of green on his lapel who was strongly built. Unrefined, rugged good looks. Like a sailor, she mused. Hadn’t she said exactly that? “What sort of ship?” she asked curiously.
Donovan shrugged. “Scottish merchant.”
Hollis pondered that. She wondered if she ought to pay another visit to the insufferable Mr. Kettle. “What was the name of it?”
“TheAnna Marie.”
Hollis gasped. TheAnna Marie! She knew that ship—everyone in Mayfair knew that ship. That was the name of the vessel that Lord Douglas had bought against his father’s wishes—Hollis had reported the purchase of it. The gossip was that he’d won so much at a gaming table he hadn’t known what to do with all that money, so he’d purchased the ship from a bankrupt merchant. Hollis knew Lord Douglas very well—they’d attended the same parish church as children. He could be quite charming when he was of a mind, but he had a notorious reputation and was abroad more often than not. He’d only recently come to London, some say to escape the very watchful eye of his father in Scotland.
“Why would four Weslorian soldiers arrive in London on a Scottish merchant ship?” she asked. “Do you suppose that—”
She did not finish her question because someone was suddenly knocking loudly on the front door. Donovan looked at the clock. “It’s half past seven. Who would come calling on a night like this?”
Hollis’s heart skipped. “You don’t think something has happened to Pappa, do you?”
“No. If Poppy were sent for you, she’d come in without knocking.”
“It wouldn’t be Caro or Eliza, not at this hour. Beck?”
Donovan snorted. “I’ve no doubt he’s completely at his leisure at this hour. I’ll see who it is.”
Hollis was suddenly filled with a sense of unease. “Let them knock,” she said, even as the person knocked again, but more insistently.
