Stroke of Genius by Mia Marlowe Page A

bottomless.
    As she walked alongside her parents through the beautifully dressed throng, she was grateful that the cut of her gown was of the first water, even if she wasn’t.
    “Just imagine how difficult a time I’d have of things if I was gawky and awkward and poor,” she muttered.
    When they reached the base of a larger-than-life statue of a man, Minerva stopped and tried to peer over the heads of the crowd, a difficult task for one so fashionably petite. “This is where the note said my Washburn cousins would meet us.”
    “Well, where are they?” Her father pointed up to the statue. “And why in blue blazes is that fellow in his dressing gown?”
    “Homer, mind your language.”
    “Mind my language? Have you forgotten how long it took you to get me to say ‘blue blazes?’” her father asked with a wicked glint in his eyes. “I suppose I could always go back to saying why in h—”
    “It’s a statue of Handel, Papa. You know, the German composer,” Grace said, hoping to stall her parent’s eternal argument.
    They didn’t seem happy unless they were fussing with each other over something. She’d pored over the guidebook of London landmarks before they embarked on this evening’s outing, hoping for a wealth of distracting information with which to diffuse their little tiffs.
    “The artist wanted to show Handel in his dressing gown, as his friends and family might have seen him,” Grace explained. “It’s so folk realize that even though he was a genius, he was still just a man.”
    “A man in his dressing gown.” Her father gave a little snort. “Minerva, where are these cousins of yours? I don’t mind tellin you, they’re late.”
    “I don’t know,” her mother said fretfully. “But if we wait here too long all the best supper boxes will be taken.”
    “Perhaps you and Papa can secure a box and I’ll see if I can find your cousins,” Grace suggested. “Miss Washburn will be wearing green, the note said, and her brother will be sporting a red boutonnière on his lapel. That should be easy enough to spot.”
    “I don’t like it,” her father said.
    “Nonsense, Homer. One of the lovely things about Vauxhall when I was a girl was that ladies could walk about unescorted in perfect safety. She’ll be fine so long as she stays nearby. We’ll be right over there, lambkin,” her mother trilled. “It’s the perfect place for the after dinner concert.”
     Which meant the box was situated so the occupants would be seen by all the right people.
     Grace took her little guidebook from her reticule and thumbed the dog-eared pages till she found the map of Vauxhall.
    “There’s a pavilion up this path I’d like to see. If they entered from the land gates, our cousins should walk that way.”
    Despite her father’s grumbling, her mother waved her on. Grace scurried away before her mother was overruled. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes Homer Makepeace put his foot down.
    Once she was out of their line of sight, she put the guidebook away. She didn’t want to see any stuffy old pavilion. She wanted to see the Dark Walks, the places lit only by moonlight and small fires.
    Vauxhall was astonishingly liberal in its admission policies and theoretically the lower classes could rub elbows with the upper crust. But in reality, people tended to gather in stratified groups, like flocks of birds all nesting in the same large tree, confining sparrows to one branch, snowy doves to another. Only the ‘birds of paradise’ seemed to come and go at will between the branches. 
    Grace enjoyed scandal as much as the next person. She’d heard of those fashionable courtesans and followed their wild exploits in the daily tabloids. This was her first chance to see them in glorious plumage.
    She didn’t know their names, but she recognized them on sight. They were bedecked with jewels and the line of their gowns made Grace feel like a pauper. A coterie of young men tagged after them, hoping for an