The Missing Missives: a Light-hearted Regency Fantasy by Marissa Doyle

Author:Marissa Doyle [Doyle, Marissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Marissa Doyle
Published: 2022-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

Chesterfield Street, London

June 1810

Sunday morning, again at an ungodly hour

“Gghrugr-ghurgr-ghrugr-ghrugr-ghrurrr!”

Annabel groaned and rolled over, burying her face in her pillow. “Yes, I’m pleased to see you too, but it’s far too early for breakfast,” she mumbled.

There was a flapping sound; the pigeon had probably fluttered over to his favorite perch on her dressing table. “Gghrr. Not brreaggfast.”

“You astonish me.” She rolled onto her back to indeed find him regarding her sternly from atop her dressing table mirror. “Permit me to guess. Another meeting?”

After returning from Windsor after the special investigation’s successful conclusion, she had planned to spend the next day or two in a quiet orgy of maternal preparation for the boys’ return from Eton for their long summer leave. But instead of efficiently making lists and sorting clothes, she’d barely been able to go more than twenty minutes at a time without thinking about the stolen letters or Frances. Or Quin.

Well, fifteen minutes.

It was a pity that thinking about it every fift—to be honest, ten minutes—had not led to any satisfactory conclusions. This had been the most inexplicable week of her life: she thought she’d understood Q—Lord Quinceton’s feelings, thought she knew Frances thoroughly. Clearly, she hadn’t—and had nothing from which to construct a more accurate understanding of them.

True, the week had not been an unmitigated disaster. They did have the letters, and poor dying Princess Amelia would never have to know that her private correspondence with her lover had been profaned by a stranger’s eyes nor the king distressed by their affair. But it had been a near-run thing in many ways.

Why?

“There is a meeting today, isn’t there?” she said to the pigeon, sitting up. The only reason Sally would call a meeting a day before a regular Monday meeting was if she had something extraordinarily important to discuss.

“Meeting, ghhr. At Lady Ghersey’s house, no laterr than eight.” He paused portentously, then said, “And I’m to be therrr, too.”

“At Lady Jersey’s?” Why not in King Street? And, she remembered belatedly, why invite a pigeon? Sally couldn’t stand the pigeons.

“Don’t ggknow. Prrrivate meeting, too.”

Even stranger. Had the investigation not concluded after all? Would it only be her and Clementina at Sally’s? Would Frances be there? She swung her legs out of bed. The only way to find out would be to go. But first— “Breakfast?”

“Gghhr!” The pigeon hopped from one foot to the other in pleasure. “Thoughht you’d neverr asggk!”

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