The Domino Effect, Chapter Three

As soon as Phyl touched the bell pull, the door opened and a plump, curly-haired girl in a lacy fichu and day cap pulled her into a cool shady foyer and down a long hallway bordered by parlors where Ma’am and her dressmakers met with clients. At the moment the rooms were empty. Distant, muffled voices and giggles, as well as heavy footfall upon the creaking floorboards, gave little doubt that fittings were taking place upstairs.

“Thank goodness you’re here!” whispered the girl, whose name was Penelope. “We were afraid that something had happened to you. Really, Phyl, you must let us send you a hackney!”

“Am I so late?” Phylidda hissed, taken back by the urgency of the reception.

“No, but Philip has received an order for playbills that need to be delivered in time for a performance tonight.”

“Could they not have given somebody else the order?”

“It’s for a Drury Lane theatre. He’d have been mad not to take it!” Penelope’s whisper grew screechy, a blatant hint that Phylidda was mad to suppose any printer would refuse work from a theater located in the entertainment heart of the kingdom.

Leaving the house by way of the back door, the girls crossed a yard grown shaggy with tall grass and wildflowers. Their way appeared to be blocked by a wall of blooming lilac bushes, but Penelope pushed aside a few flowery boughs, and they stepped into a small flagstone yard in front of a crooked, half-timbered building that exuded the scent of damp wood.

The heavy oak door, which had disproportionately large, rugged, iron hinges, opened onto a large room occupied by two printing presses, sloping composition desks, writers' desks and long, plain wooden tables. It seemed to Phyl that every flat surface was covered by piles of papers of varying sizes, from broadsheet to letter to invitation. A merry-faced young man sat at one of the desks, marking a broadsheet, but, upon seeing the girls, he stood and bowed, thoroughly composed and unconscious of the ink that streaked across his nose and cheek.

Phyl pulled the tightly folded paper from her reticule. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t possibly finish. We ran out of ink!”

The unsurprised host gestured to the chair he had just vacated. “Not to worry, my lady, we’ve got enough ink here to sink a ship.”

Penelope shrieked. “Philip! Think what you’re saying!”

Shrewd light streamed from Philip’s chestnut-colored eyes. “Think what I say? That’s odd. Is it not always best to say what one needs to say and communicate something that should be said, rather than merely think it and give rise to misunderstanding or ignorance?”

“You are a misunderstanding!”

“Well, at the moment, what has come out of the mouths of both of you has led me to understand nothing!” Phyl said, so secure in what she had meant to write earlier that she had no need to arrange her thoughts as she settled down at the desk and took pen in hand. “I happen to think that what your brother said was rather witty. Goodness!” The disbelief that further spread Pen’s widened eyes and O-shaped mouth made Phylidda giggle. “You look as though you’re thinking that I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. As that is the case, may I recommend speaking out loud and enlightening me.”

Philip lowered his voice, lest the sound carry through walls or windows, or to wherever none of them wished it to go. “I think my sister is hinting at the fact that Uncle Bamford is at war, operating under a letter of marque as we speak—or think, as the case may be.—What!” he responded as Pen shrieked once more.

“You mustn’t say his name. Nobody is supposed to know what he’s doing!”

“Her ladyship is not nobody!”

Phyl’s heart went out to Philip. Though the eldest child and only brother, he was also the mental runt of the litter. Good-hearted, perhaps, but possessed of an honesty inclined to run afoul of common sense. His comments often made her wonder how he been admitted to—and survived—Eton.

Cut by the way Pen was treating her sibling, Phyl looked at Philip hoping for all the world that her expression conveyed both her concern for him and her disapproval of Pen’s behavior. “Philip! Please! How often have I asked you to simply call me by my given name? Really, we’ve all practically grown up together. We’ve known each other far too long for this ‘ladyship’ business.”

“But not to recognize your rank would be to dishonor you, and I could never dishonor you. Please accept my disobedience as the sign of the depth of my esteem for you.”

Another fellow would have blushed to admit such things in front of another person, as Philip admitted in front of his sister. Not this one. Phyl wondered if he had confided his feelings to the flustered Penelope, whose cheeks appeared to have been replaced by two very round, very red apples that grew larger and redder as she addressed her brother. “Really, Philip, your having had the unspeakable fortune of being friends with the Earl of Blystone at Eton hardly qualifies you to set amorous designs upon his sister now that you have no reason to affiliate with him.”

“Now then Pen, I have no doubt that Philip’s actions are as far from notions of courtship as we are from Bombay,” Phyl chided as she wrote.

“Precisely!” avowed Philip. Though his face had grown more scarlet than sunset, he never left Phylidda’s side, but waited patiently as she finished writing her column.

Instead of simply leaving the print shop by way of the front door, Phyl followed Pen back through the rear yard and garden to the modiste’s shop. ”Ma’am,” as everyone called the proprietor, awaited them upstairs, nested on a long chair in a room whose heavy jonquil drapes complimented—or clashed, depending upon one’s taste—with wallpaper that emulated pale pink roses climbing trellises along a background of green and lavender stripes. She was an elderly lady of extravagant proportions, and the layers of white muslin in which she chose to conceal her girths inspired Phyl to recall the picture of a pale baby elephant she had seen in a book about the Indies.

“I have news for you,” Ma’am’s deep, musical voice intoned as a maid poured tea into paper-thin china teacups. “I have it on the most confidential authority that our Gentleman Dairyman could very well be attending Lady Wilfer’s gathering this evening. It’s to be a great surprise, don’t you think?”

Unwilling to embarrass the woman, Phyl thought carefully before speaking. “If it’s to be a surprise, Ma’am, how, then, does anybody know about it?”

“He’s been at everybody’s balls this season! Why not Lady Wilfer’s? Her premises offer the most perfect setting for an intrigue, don’t you think?”

Phyl and Pen gave each other a sidelong glance, trying hard not to widen their eyes at the way Ma’am noisily smacked her lips after loudly sipping her tea. “I’ve never been to Lady Wilfer’s,” Phyl admitted shyly.

“That’s wonderful! She’ll not know who you are. You’ll have the run of the place and be able to speak to everybody.”

“But if she doesn’t know who I am, how am I to be admitted? Surely, I’ve got to present an invitation.”

Ma’am’s imperious nod impelled the maid, a pimply girl in a stained mobcap, to give Phyl a card that had been lying on the table beneath the silver tea set.

Phyl fingered the fine paper, curdling with an odd anxiety. “You’re certain I can get by?”

“I’m certain you can get in. How you get by is entirely up to you.”

“Oh, cheer up, Phylidda!” Ma’am joyously counseled as the girls stood to take their leave. “I know men, and I know balls. Believe me, discovering the identity of an upstart pleb is not a job for decorous Lady Athol-Hight. It is an endeavor for a witty, pretty young thing like yourself. Once you see the setting and the people, Nature will overtake you. You’ll catch that masculine scent and go directly for the kill.”