Worlds of Ink and Shadow by Lena Coakley

interesting when you asked for nothing and then opened the lid.”
    â€œSplendid idea,” said Emily. She put her hand on the door handle, giving Anne a nervous glance. “One. Two. Three.” She threw open the door.
    It was still only a hallway, just as Anne had imagined it would be. However, it wasn’t empty now.
    â€œLadies,” said a deep voice. Into the room stepped Alexander Rogue.

CHARLOTTE
    W AS IT CHARLOTTE’S IMAGINATION, OR was the room different in some inexplicable way? She was still in the green and gold salon, and the malachite fireplace was still exquisite, but the paintings on the walls were all of shipwrecks or storms raging over jagged mountains. Hadn’t they been tranquil landscapes before?
    This was Emily’s doing, somehow. Even as a child, she had ruined stories with her strangeness. Charlotte should have remembered how, in the old days, her plots had veered off in odd tangents when Emily was around, and even her own characters became unpredictable. At least Charlotte’s collaboration with Branwell allowed for each of them to have their own particular stories—whereas Emily’s imagination seeped into everythinglike strong dye, changing what wasn’t hers to change.
    â€œDid you hear? Zenobia Percy is at the party,” a woman said.
    Charlotte was alone in the room, but the double doors were open. She could see the party guests gliding by in their finery and could hear snippets of their conversations.
    â€œThe Red Countess?” a man answered. “Why would she be here? Her husband is the duke’s deadly enemy.”
    Why indeed. What in heaven’s name was Charlotte to do with this plot development? Truth be told, Emily was right about the character’s potential. Zenobia could be the Verdopolitan Madame de Staël. The modern Cleopatra.
Perhaps she plays the mandolin and speaks fluent Chinese
, Charlotte thought.
    â€œ
All covet an invitation to her salons
,” she said under her breath, “
where the greatest politicians, the wittiest authors, and the most talented artists gather around her like moths to a flame.
”
    Yes. She liked that. But still, why would the Red Countess come to the party?
    â€œA love affair,” she breathed aloud as the idea struck. “A love affair with the Duke of Zamorna.”
    Now, that was interesting.
    Not only were there hundreds of dramatic possibilities to such a romance, but it would also mean that Branwell’s character, Alexander Rogue, was a dupe and a cuckold. Charlotte grinned, thinking how vexed this would make her brother. He deserved it. Hadn’t he threatened to kill off Zamorna?
    Charlotte felt a twinge of guilt for what this would do toMary Henrietta—she’d be devastated to learn that her husband was having an affair with her own stepmother—but then, she would be so beautiful in her melancholy. Besides, her noble and virtuous love hadn’t set Zamorna’s heart on fire the way Charlotte had hoped it would. Perhaps forbidden love—guilty, tortured love—with the Countess Zenobia would finally bring him to life.
    Charlotte ducked behind a sofa and squeezed her eyes shut, ready to take hold of the story. In a singsong voice, she murmured:
    â€œ
The young lord Charles, though intelligent beyond his years, was not above the games and japes to which all boys are prone. After being abandoned by his rude cousins, he fell to playing with a ball, which bounced under the legs of a silk-upholstered sofa that had once belonged to Louis the Fifteenth. It was for this reason that when the duke of Zamorna and the viscount Castlereagh entered the room and shut the door, they believed themselves to be alone, not noticing Zamorna’s young brother behind the sofa. Dear reader, do not blame young Charles for not admitting his presence, for otherwise how would we know of the conversation that ensued?
”
    â€œI did not ask her to the party,”