that wall. In a bed that must have smelled of her, sprawled out warm and soft and sleepy-eyed, as the autumn moonlight danced through the window and spilled onto the antique carpet . . .
Agatha stopped her thoughts before they could betray her further, and set her wineglass down with a sharp click. “Have you had any luck with the Napoleon snuffbox?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.
“None,” Mrs. Molesey confirmed, with a twist of her lips. “I think our dear vicar has actively begun avoiding me. I caught a glimpse of him from the window when I came up the lane, but when I knocked the housekeeper told me he’d just gone out.” She snorted. “Out the back door, no doubt, as though all Hell’s minions were in pursuit.”
“As if you’d need minions to bedevil anyone,” Flood teased.
Mrs. Molesey only huffed in irritation. “I’m horribly tempted to shout at him about it again—but he’d only say again he’d ask his sister, and then we’re right back where we started.” She made a curt, cutting gesture with one hand. “I might as well waltz down to Westminster and shout at the king.”
“They’d arrest you for sedition,” Flood chuckled.
“Treason is beginning to look attractive,” Mrs. Molesey murmured darkly.
Agatha fiddled with the base of her glass, remembering Brandenburg. “People do shout at the king, though. Pamphlets. Letters.” She smiled, thinking of Mrs. Turner. “Ballads.”
Mrs. Molesey sat straight up in her chair. “Ballads, you say?”
Agatha clapped a hand over her mouth as the phrase “Oh no” escaped between her fingers.
Mrs. Molesey leaned forward avidly. “Rhyme and meter and melody, you mean. Just the sort of thing a poet is expert in.”
Flood chuckled, and refilled Agatha’s glass. “Now look what you’ve done.”
“Please, Mrs. Molesey, forget I said anything,” Agatha grumbled, and swallowed half the new glass in one go.
“It could be quite a challenge for a poet,” Joanna said thoughtfully, “considering the last name.”
Agatha frowned at her, but had to ask: “Whose last name?”
“Lady Summerville’s, of course,” Flood explained. “Summerville’s only the title. The viscount’s family name is actually Spranklin.”
“It’s what?” Agatha half shrieked.
“If it weren’t for the courtesy title,” said Joanna, “she’d be Mrs. Archibald Spranklin.”
“Just try finding a rhyme for that,” Flood said, with relish. “I dare you.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Molesey. She rolled the syllable off her tongue, like the word was some rich and savory delicacy. “If it’s a dare, then . . .” She rose from the table. “I’m going to get started, while the muse is still singing with fury. Good night to you both.” She strode out the door and up the stairs, spite crackling in every limb and line of her.
“Now you’ve really done it,” Agatha sighed.
“You’re the one who brought up ballads,” Flood said, and giggled into her wine.
Agatha Griffin, it transpired, had severely underestimated both Joann Molesey’s swiftness of composition, and the lengths to which she could be motivated by pettiness. The very next week saw Griffin back in the Four Swallows, choking on her ale, while Nell Turner sang at least six different lines that rhymed with Spranklin, three of which were obscene, and all of which were insulting.
Penelope grinned at her friend, as the crowd roared for Nell to sing it again. “Nobody but yourself to blame, Griffin!”
“Crankling isn’t even a real word!” Griffin sputtered. She set down her beer and shook her head. “I’m just surprised the authoress didn’t come down the pub herself to hear it performed.”
“Oh, she’d never,” Penelope replied, as the third verse got an even bigger laugh the second time around. “She hates reading her poetry in public. Very much a creature of the pen, our Mrs. Molesey.” She smiled, as a hail of pennies rained down on Nell as she bowed her thanks. “But she knows how to reach an audience.”
The ballad became the hit of the Four Swallows, and before long it could be heard on the lips of shopkeepers, customers, and children going about their business on the Melliton lanes and byways. When asked who’d written it, Nell only smiled and answered: “A lady.” The gossip moved so fast, and caused so much uproar, that three days later Penelope was unsurprised to find her breakfast interrupted by the vicar himself, with his cheeks very flushed and his cravat hastily tied.
“Is that daft Mrs. Molesey up?” he demanded.
Penelope had been about to stand and say a polite good morning, but such a question in such a tone rather made her knees go shaky, and