A Murder in Bloomsbury (Lark and Everthorne Mysteries #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

A Literary Salon

If there was a more reliably tedious creature than a gentleman convinced of his own brilliance, I had yet to encounter it.

"You mistake my meaning entirely, Lady Larkspur.

" Lord Pemberton’s jowls quivered with the effort of projecting his voice across my drawing room.

"I do not oppose education for women. Indeed, I believe a lady ought to know enough to manage her household accounts and perhaps read improving works of—"

"How generous of you, my lord." I lifted my teacup with what I hoped passed for polite interest rather than the urge to fling its contents at his waistcoat.

"And tell me, what constitutes an ‘improving work’ in your estimation?

Something sufficiently dull to guarantee we never develop opinions of our own? "

A ripple of laughter ran through the assembled guests. Pemberton’s face took on the mottled hue of undercooked beef.

This was my favorite part of hosting a salon—the moment when pomposity met its match and found itself outmaneuvered.

Every Tuesday afternoon, my Bloomsbury townhouse opened its doors to London’s reform-minded thinkers, radical poets, and the occasional bombastic fool who wandered in expecting to find docile admirers.

What they found instead was something far more dangerous: women, and the rare man, with minds of their own.

"I merely suggest," Pemberton blustered, "that there are natural limits to female understanding. The delicate constitution, the sensitive nerves—"

Mrs. Fitzwilliam, a sharp-eyed widow of formidable intellect, leaned forward from her seat by the window. "I assure you, Lord Pemberton, my nerves are quite robust and more than enough to withstand your speeches, which I consider proof of considerable fortitude."

Beside the bookcase, Lord Peregrine Montfort crossed one elegant leg over the other and murmured, just loudly enough to carry, "I find your theories wonderfully clarifying, Lord Pemberton. You speak of the natural limits of understanding, and then so obligingly furnish us with a demonstration."

When more laughter ensued, Pemberton subsided into his chair with a huff that sent his watch chain dancing across his ample middle.

Peregrine was, in the parlance of society, a younger son of little consequence—the Marquis of Alderwick's spare, unburdened by title, land, or expectation.

Society considered him a cultivated bachelor, impeccably mannered and agreeably decorative.

I considered him one of the sharpest minds in any room he chose to occupy.

"Perhaps we might move on to the afternoon’s reading?" I suggested, rescuing Pemberton from further humiliation. I was not cruel, merely impatient with fools. "Miss Gray has been kind enough to prepare a new work for us."

A hush fell over the room. Miss Lydia Gray rose from her seat near the pianoforte, a slender woman in her early fifties whose modest dress and quiet demeanor disguised her keen mind.

She wrote under a pseudonym, of course. Ladies who published radical pamphlets on women’s rights and the abuse of power did not advertise their identities in drawing rooms. But those of us who gathered here knew the truth, and we guarded it fiercely.

"Thank you, Lady Larkspur." Her voice was soft but steady as she unfolded a sheet of paper. "This is a poem I have titled ‘The Mask of Virtue’.”

Her words flowed like dark honey, each line a careful indictment of hypocrisy dressed in elegant verse. She spoke of men who preached morality while their own hands were stained and of power that cloaked itself in righteousness to escape scrutiny.

The room went utterly still as she read. Even Pemberton seemed to sense that something significant was unfolding, though I doubted he grasped the full weight of it.

When Miss Gray finished, I saw something in her eyes that sent a chill down my spine. Trepidation.

"That was remarkable," I said quietly, breaking the silence. "Truly."

"There is more." Her fingers trembled slightly as she refolded the paper. “But it is not yet complete.” She hesitated, glancing around the room as if suddenly aware of how many ears were listening. “And it would be dangerous to speak aloud."

Mrs. Fitzwilliam’s eyebrows rose. "My dear Miss Gray, surely you know this company would never—"

"It is not this company I fear," Miss Gray said. There was something in her tone that made the words feel like a warning.

Before anyone could respond, the drawing room door opened and my sister-in-law slipped inside, flushed and breathless. Anne, Lady Westmere, was a vision of pale prettiness, all golden curls and wide blue eyes, but today her cheeks were pink with the exhilaration of successful defiance.

“Forgive me for my tardiness,” she whispered, settling into an empty chair beside Miriam. “I was delayed at the modiste.”

My brother, Edgar, Lord Westmere, disapproved of her attending my literary salon, so she had taken to scheduling her fittings on the same day. What he didn’t know was that once her appointment ended, she came straight to my townhouse.

“You are welcome at any time, dear,” my cousin Miriam said, patting her hand. Widowed, practical, and possessed of a wit drier than summer dust, her role today, as always, was to maintain the veneer of respectability my unmarried status required.

Anne smiled faintly. “Thank you. I couldn’t do without these gatherings.”

My brother had chosen her because she was beautiful, and had seemed biddable and meek. He had not anticipated that exposure to ideas might awaken something in her he could not control.

I returned my attention to Miss Gray, intending to press her about this unfinished poem, but she had already gathered her belongings and was making quiet apologies about an appointment.

Something in her haste troubled me. But before I could intercept her, Pemberton launched into another tedious speech about the natural order of things.

From the corner of my eye, I saw my youngest sister, Linnet, sitting in her customary spot by the far window. She had been sketching throughout the afternoon, her charcoal pencil moving across paper with quick, sure strokes. She held up her latest creation so only Miriam could see.

Miriam took one look and pressed her handkerchief to her mouth, shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter. I craned my neck and caught a glimpse of the drawing—Lord Pemberton rendered as a braying donkey, complete with elongated ears and an expression of supreme self-satisfaction.

Linnet’s eyes sparkled with wicked delight. Deaf since birth, she could not hear Pemberton’s pompous speeches. But she had read his lips well enough to capture the essence of a fool.

I should have scolded her, but I was too busy biting the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

The salon continued for another hour, talk turning to the latest parliamentary debates and whispers of reform. But I found my thoughts drifting back to Miss Gray’s words, to the fear in her eyes, to the rest of the poem she dared not share and would be dangerous to speak aloud.

What could be so dangerous that even among friends, it could not be spoken? What truth had Miss Gray uncovered that frightened her so?

The last of the guests departed at five, leaving behind empty teacups and the lingering scent of candle wax and conversation. As Miriam closed the door behind Pemberton, she turned to me with an expression of profound weariness.

"If that man returns next week, I will not be held responsible for my actions." She did not need to explain who ‘that man’ was.

"You would never act," I said, gathering abandoned pamphlets from the side tables. "You are far too proper."

“Maybe I should give up being proper then,” she suggested tongue in cheek.

I laughed. She would never do so. Propriety was too well ingrained in her. Never mind that very trait kept my brother at bay so I could live the life I had chosen.

Linnet appeared at my elbow, holding out her sketchbook. She had captured the entire afternoon in a series of quick studies—Mrs. Fitzwilliam mid-argument, Anne’s delighted smile, Miss Gray with her eyes downcast over her poem. But it was the final drawing that caught my attention.

In a few deft strokes, Linnet had rendered Miss Gray as she departed, glancing over her shoulder as though expecting pursuit. It was what I had sensed but not quite seen—a fleeting shadow of fear.

I touched my sister’s hand and met her eyes.

“Did you see something?” I signed. Linnet and I spoke through fingerspelling and a private language of home signs—gestures she had learned at the Braidwood Academy and we’d refined into something uniquely ours.

She was also remarkably skilled at reading lips and the subtlest shifts of expression, although beards and mustaches tended to muddle those messages.

She shook her head, though her expression remained troubled. Linnet’s silence was never emptiness. She missed no detail and saw more than most ever would.

“Come,” Miriam said, ever practical. “We should let the maid put this room to rights, and we must change for supper.”

I followed them up the stairs but paused at the landing to glance back at the drawing room. In the dim glow of the dying fire, the chairs sat empty, the teacups abandoned. It might have been the end of any ordinary salon.

But something felt different. Miss Gray’s fear had been real. And, though I did not yet know what danger she had stumbled upon, I knew with certainty that it would not remain hidden for long.

Secrets, I had learned, have a way of demanding to be told—whether we are ready to hear them or not.