“Hmm.” Lulu left the photograph, sat herself at the table, and pulled Toby onto her lap. “And I suppose,” she said, “you’ll want me to cook a special supper for your friend Jamie to thank him for his help.”

“Oh, would you?” said Sophie. “That would be amazing, Lulu, you’re such an amazing cook. Would you do that beef thing with all the mushrooms? It’s so fabulously yummy, and he’ll have driven all that way, so I think he deserves it, don’t you?”

“I think after carrying all your version of ‘not much stuff’ up the stairs, he’ll deserve a starter and a dessert, too. Find out what his favorite pudding is and we’ll surprise him.”

“And there you go again,” said Charlie.

“I’m not hugging her,” said Lulu. “She’s hugging me. And make no mistake, Sophie, if you don’t behave yourself in the flat, you’ll be down the stairs and back on the street before you can say Kate Winslet.”

“I think this calls for a little chocolate,” said Fee, making for the stairs to her bedroom.

2

Boddesley Brothers Publishing Company

Boston, October 1892.

Dear Mrs. Bhaer,

I hope that you will continue to consider my request for a selection of your private writings for my series of books, Lives and Letters of Literary New Englanders. I do understand that you “don’t care a pin for fame,” and thus can hardly claim surprise to learn that you “abhor [your] sisters’ sentimentality” in having retained so many of the letters that you have sent to them over the years; I, on the other hand, can only applaud their good taste for having preserved what is without doubt a lively and affecting correspondence. I thank you for your good efforts in having collected these letters from your sisters—and must also commend your honesty in acknowledging to me the doubtless vexing fact that they were there for the collection!—and hope that with a little more persuasion, I might yet incline you towards the idea of sharing them with your admiring public.

I intend to be in the neighborhood of Plumfield on Thursday next, and hope that I may call upon you there to discuss this further in person.

Your obedient servant,

Thomas Stauncey,

Editorial Director.

Lulu replaced the letter, its tidy masculine hand and crisply formal paper a contrast to the other letters in the pile, and sat carefully back into the tumbledown armchair she had dragged under the attic’s window, frowning absentmindedly into the weak stream of sunlight that fell through the glass to pool on the wood floor beneath. It was five days since she had first made the discovery of her great-great-grandmother’s letters. She had not yet mentioned the find either to her mother or to her sisters, but it had remained in the background of her mind at all times since, and today, knowing that her mother was safely occupied at a seminar at the Institute of Psychiatry, she had taken her lunch break from Goncharoff’s Antiques, the shop where she worked, to cycle over to the house for a further inspection.