Julia knew better. It wasn’t novel reading that caused her crippling anxiety. Quite the reverse. Along with riding Cossack, it was one of the only things to grant her respite from it.

She removed a small book from a cramped middle shelf on the wall. The Nobleman’s Secret Child. “Who says they don’t have literary value?”

“Why, the best people in the book business, miss.” The clerk drew closer. He was a keen young man in an ill-fitting suit who smelled strongly of cheap pomade. “The reviewers at Blackwood’s Magazine and them at the Weekly Heliosphere. You won’t often see our titles included in their pages, but on occasion one of them gets a mention, and never to the good. Only look at Marshland’s latest. ‘Tripe,’ the reviewer called it. ‘Excessively earnest tripe.’ ”

“That’s not very nice.”

“No indeed, miss. Not for Mr. Bloxham, it isn’t. He’s left with one hundred copies of the book, and since the write-up in the Heliosphere, we can’t sell them for pittance.”

Julia returned The Nobleman’s Secret Child to the shelf. She walked further down the narrow aisle, her wide skirts brushing the shelves on either side. “It can’t be that bad.”

“Have you read Marshland’s novels?”

“Not recently, no, but I used to devour them as a girl. I still count The Fire Opal as one of my favorites of all time.”

“Ah, The Fire Opal.” The clerk waxed nostalgic over the popular sensation romance. “It’s Marshland’s bestseller to this day.”

“She doesn’t publish much anymore, does she?”

“Not regular like, no.”

“And when she does, her stories aren’t at all like they used to be.”

“Marshland’s style has changed and no mistake,” the clerk acknowledged. “For the worse, some say.”

“I can’t believe that. Her writing is generally a cut above the others.”

“Aye, so it is.” The clerk followed after her, with Mary not far behind him. “But a bad review puts people off. Don’t matter the quality of the story. If word gets out that a book’s rotten, we can’t move it.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.” Julia examined first one book and then another. She didn’t know what she was in the mood for. A romance, certainly, but not one featuring brutish husbands, self-sacrificing damsels, or even secret babies. She wanted something a bit more hopeful, with a heroine she could believe in and a hero worthy of the name.

Replacing yet another book onto the shelf, she returned to the front of the shop. A round wooden table was arrayed there, holding multiple copies of the same novel—a slim volume bound in dark green cloth.

It was Mrs. Marshland’s new book.

Julia picked up a copy, examining the title stamped in gold on the spine. The Garden of Valor. “What is it about?”

“A knight come home from the wars,” the clerk said.

“It’s medieval?”

“Indeed, full up with swords and jousts and unrequited love.”

“Unrequited? But I thought it was a romance. Romances are supposed to have happy endings.”