Chapter 23: The Night Before the Presentation Ball — Two Conversations and a Decision

The letter arrived at half past eight.

Honoria had not expected it — which was, she recognised, the most foolish thing she had thought all week, because she had known for three days that Lady Morrow was routing correspondence through her network of provincial contacts, and she had known for considerably longer than that that Petra wrote letters the way other people breathed, with the same automatic necessity and the same apparent absence of effort. She had simply, in the way that one sometimes fails to account for the things one cannot afford to want, not permitted herself to anticipate it.

The envelope was small and slightly battered at one corner, as though it had changed hands more than once on its way through whatever channels Lady Morrow employed for such purposes. It bore no Court seal. The handwriting on the front — Honoria, just Honoria, no Province designation, no formal address — was Petra's, which Honoria identified from across the room before she had consciously decided to look at it.