“Each Wednesday was torture. To rise from her meager bed required energy she rarely possessed. Food was unpalatable, and sleep, when she found it, was her only escape.”

Richard snorted.

Iris looked up. “Yes?”

“Nothing.”

She turned back to the book.

“But really,” he said with indignance, “Wednesdays?”

She looked back up.

“The woman is afraid of Wednesdays?”

“Apparently.”

“Only Wednesdays.”

Iris shrugged.

“What happens on Thursdays?”

“I was about to say.”

Richard rolled his eyes at her impertinence and motioned for her to continue.

Iris gave him a deliberately patient stare, signaling her preparation for another interruption. He returned the expression with equal irony, and she turned back to the text.

“Thursdays brought hope and renewal, although one could not say that Ivory had reason to hope, nor could one say that her soul was renewed. Her life in Miss Winchell’s Home for Orphaned Children was tedious at best and wretched at worst.”

“Tedious might be the first apt word of the novel,” Richard scoffed.

Iris raised her brows. “Shall I stop?”

“Please. I do not think I can bear to go on.”

Iris bit back a smile, feeling just a little bit wicked for enjoying his distress.

“But I still want to know how the Hungarian archer dies,” Richard added.

“That will spoil the story for you,” Iris countered, adopting a prim expression.

“Somehow I doubt that.”

Iris chuckled. She hadn’t meant to, but Richard had a way of saying things with a sly undertone that never failed to amuse her. “Very well. The archer was shot in the head.”

“That’s not terribly interesting.” At her look he added, “In a literary sense, of course.”

“The gun was fired by a dog.”

Richard’s face went slack.

“And we now have another silent gentleman,” Iris said with a superior smile.

“No, really,” Richard said. “I must protest.”

“To whom?”

That seemed to flummox him. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “But a protest must be lodged nonetheless.”

“I don’t think the dog meant to shoot him,” Iris demurred.

“You mean the author does not make the canine’s motivations clear?”

Iris assumed a scrupulously even expression. “Even she lacks such talent.”

This was met by a snort.

“I did tell you that this was not one of her better novels,” she reminded him.

Richard appeared to be incapable of response.

“I could read from one of her other books,” she said, not even attempting to disguise her amusement.

“Please, no.”

Iris laughed merrily.

“How is it possible,” Richard opined, “that she is one of the most popular authors of our time?”

“I find her stories quite diverting,” Iris admitted. It was true. They were not terribly well written, but there was something about them that was impossible to put down.

“A diversion from sanity, perhaps,” Richard scoffed. “How many novels has Miss Gorely written? Or is it Missus?”