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“ N ot that I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth,” Ember Donnelly was saying as she surveyed the cold finger foods being arranged along her bar for tonight’s festivities, “but I can’t fathom renting out a whole gambling house for five players when you could just as easily have a private salon in your townhouse—for free, I mean. ”

“Eight players, if we participate,” Millie corrected, ushering the floral arrangements through the door of Brigid’s Forge. “Lady Bentley wanted the full experience of being in a gambling hell. You know, I can’t believe I’ve never seen inside this place before.”

“Well, it isn’t customarily an appropriate place for ladies,” Ember said with a chuckle. “Though I think that’s rubbish, naturally. Perhaps tonight will change things here at the Forge.”

“You’re a lady,” Millie pointed out, nudging the door shut behind the florists.

“I’m a woman,” Ember replied, “which is a different thing entirely.”

“Oh,” said Millie, pausing. She turned to look at her friend. “I suppose that is true, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is.”

Millie allowed a wry smile to spread over her face.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been surprised already this Season at the many facets of being a woman.

I feel as though I’m an entirely different species now than I was as a debutante or even as my family’s unmarried burden.

Each era is like embodying a different animal, isn’t it? ”

“Yes,” said Ember without hesitation. “It goes so far beyond maiden, mother, and crone. They never tell you that. The rules are different for widows, too, as your patroness has no doubt expressed to you a fair few times. I heard about the gown she wore to the Wharton ball.”

“Did you? You must tell her. She will be chuffed.”

Ember laughed again. “I expect I will like this woman, her son notwithstanding.”

Millie grimaced. “Speaking of which, I have not mentioned your previous dealings with Freddy. I thought it would unnecessarily complicate things.”

“I wouldn’t have expected you to try to explain that to her,” Ember said with a shrug and a toss of her tight cherry-brown ringlets and a deceptively airy tone. “Even I have trouble explaining it. Tell me, why did the good lady send you ahead? Isn’t it your job to accompany her in all things?”

“It’s my job to manage her diary and ensure this Season goes the way she wishes.

” Millie handed two coins to the flower deliverers as they passed her on their way out, and sighed.

“Besides, I believe she is meeting some of her friends at their flat on Bond Street ahead of time and they will travel here together.”

“Do her friends know she calls them ‘the Spinsters’?” Ember asked with a gleam of mischief in her eye. She leaned back against the bar, surveying the effect of the flowers and food on her establishment.

“They call themselves that, actually.” Millie had wondered the same thing, and Lady Bentley, suspecting the unasked questions from her reaction to the group moniker, had graciously explained.

“Apparently, they were friends as girls and had all agreed they would become wealthy spinsters rather than wed. Obviously, my patroness did not manage to hold up her end of that agreement, but they do not shun her for it, all the same.”

“Really? Did any of them manage it?”

“I suppose we’ll have to ask them when they get here,” Millie replied with a thoughtful tilt of her head as she approached a vase that was sitting slightly askew over a dark wooden mantel near the central card table. “Shouldn’t be much longer.”

“People are not always honest when they gamble, you know,” Ember told her, watching the flowers as Millie spun and arranged them to her satisfaction.

“But they reveal little pieces of themselves you might not ever see otherwise. I rarely play anymore myself, but I learn much simply by watching. It can get very dramatic.”

“I’m sure it can,” Millie replied, dropping her hands at her sides and looking around for anything else that might need adjusting. “Are you going to abstain from playing tonight?”

“No, I think I will join you,” Ember replied, a feline little smile seeming to sharpen her teeth. “Sometimes, one wishes to participate in the drama.”

The ladies indeed arrived in a clutch, the five of them already deep in the midst of raucous conversation as they burst through the doors of Ember’s establishment.

“My,” said a silver-haired woman with half-moon glasses. “So, this is hell, is it? Very nice flora.”

“ A hell, my dear,” replied a plump, sweet-faced woman to her side. “A gambling hell. And not a copper one either, I daresay.”

“Certainly not!” Ember had cut in, sweeping into the foyer to greet her guests. “Welcome to Brigid’s Forge, ladies. I am the proprietress, Ember Donnelly. At your service, of course, if you require anything tonight.”

Coos and adulations were made in response to Ember’s very existence as a woman and the owner of such a business, and the women were all swept inside on the enthusiasm, shedding their shrugs and reticules to a series of shiny brass pegs on the wall as they went.

As introductions were made, Dot arrived, slipping in through the front door without so much as a creak of the hinges. She appeared next to Millie so suddenly that she visibly startled, which won a smug little smile out of Dot, proving it had been intentional.

As a bit of revenge, Millie grabbed her by the hand and tugged her forward, making a show of her introduction to the Spinsters, whose names were Mrs. Goode, Smith, Wainwright, and Billings.

Privately, Millie thought they sounded like a law firm.

“So you are all called Missus?” Ember observed with amusement. “Except the one of you who went off and got married.”

“To be fair,” Lady Bentley replied with mock haughtiness, “I was always going to be Lady Patricia, whether I wed or not.”

“Oh, is fairness the name of the game tonight?” asked Mrs. Smith, the Spinster with pale silver hair and half-moon spectacles. “I was intending to cheat.”

“We already know that, Zelda,” Lady Bentley replied back flatly, winning a round of laughter from the other women.

“Help yourselves to refreshment,” Ember said, gesturing toward the platters of cold finger foods on the bar, “and I will pour whatever drinks you like and we may start with either cards or dice. I’ve prepared games for both.”

“Did you bring your dice?” Mrs. Wainwright asked Lady Bentley excitedly. “The ivory ones with the gold filling?”

“Alas, no.” Lady Bentley sighed, filling her plate with a careful selection of figs and stilton tarts.

“I’m afraid my son inherited those a lot earlier than planned.

But I do not need ivory and gold for luck tonight, I think.

My stars should be in good order, since I arranged the evening, don’t you think? ”

“Are we gambling with real money, then?” asked Mrs. Goode, the soft, benevolent-looking Spinster. “We used to only play with buttons.”

“We used to have no money of our own,” retorted Mrs. Smith. “Now we do, we ought to do the thing properly.”

“Agreed,” put in Lady Bentley. “Which is why I got us port and cigars for a little later in the evening. We shall have a gentleman’s leisure, just as we are not supposed to.”

“Cheers to that!” said Ember with a grin, lining up glasses for the incoming drink requests from behind the bar. “Who wants whiskey?”

Dot was still clutching MIllie’s hand, she realized, her green eyes wide with wonder and perhaps a bit of fear. “What is this?” she whispered to Millie without moving her body or indeed, somehow her lips.

“It is something new,” Millie whispered back, giving her friend’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “Come, let’s get you a drink.”

Dot followed obediently, watching the clinking of silver on plates and the buzz of excited gossip and laughter with a wary sort of fascination. When a glass of deep amber liquid was put into her hand, she did not hesitate to take a hard swig.

Evidently, Dot needed the liquid courage, for she didn’t sputter or wince at all as the fiery liquid went into her belly. And, a few moments later, she sighed and her shoulders eased.

“Better?” Millie asked, amused.

“I thought you hated things like this,” Dot replied instead of answering, turning to face her friend with bafflement etched all over her delicate features. “You used to say you preferred an evening locked in your room over all else.”

“Ah,” Millie said, color rising a bit in her cheeks.

She accepted her own glass from Ember, who had leaned in for her answer from across the bar, and took a sip, contemplating the question.

“I think,” she said after a moment, “I think it is a matter of context. It isn’t to say that I don’t still enjoy locking myself in solitude, but perhaps it is not the only thing I enjoy anymore.

This has all been such great fun with Lady Bentley, who does not keep me on a leash.

I hated balls and roux with my mother because it was riddled with pressure and rules and unbelievable anxiety. ”

“I was much the same,” Ember said with a raise of her auburn brows, “when Mr. Withers, my husband, died. Suddenly, all the things that I thought I hated had a new color to them because I was a widow and not a wife.”

“Yes, exactly.” Millie nodded, relieved. “I’m not a debutante anymore. I’m not a hopeful or under scrutiny. So it feels very different.”

“Did you not feel the same when you became a wife, Dorothy Fletcher?” Ember prodded, tilting her head as she refilled Dot’s glass.

“I suppose,” Dot admitted, thinking about it with a twist of her lips. “Yes, I suppose I don’t feel like an interloper now, when I escort Miss Lazarus into Society. I certainly would have before I married Silas.”

“To interlopers,” Ember suggested, lifting her glass. “May we always get away with it.”

“God willing,” Millie agreed with a chuckle and another pull of her drink.

“No you don’t!” called Mrs. Wainwright, her face already red with excitement and perhaps from the whiskey too. “Toasts are for all guests tonight. What are we celebrating?”

“Access to freedom,” Ember provided, pacing back to the center of the guests. “Lady Bentley and I as esteemed widows, Dot as an equal partner to her husband, and Millie as a bonafide lady’s companion. The rest of you, I hear, are wealthy spinsters.”

“Comfortable,” Mrs. Goode corrected with a blush. “I wouldn’t say wealthy.”

“Not in mixed company, anyhow,” Mrs. Smith agreed. “It wouldn’t do to have the vultures hearing.”

“Everyone’s a vulture in a gambling den, dear,” Mrs. Goode replied with a shrug.

As conversation began to cluster off again, Millie turned to Dot with a curious expression. “Miss Lazarus would have benefitted from being here tonight, don’t you think?”

Dot gave a startled bark of laughter, shooting a look of incredulity at her friend. “I think she’d be rather overwhelmed and scandalized, Millie. She’s just a girl in her debut year with barely a reputation to ruin being at such a gathering. I imagine she’d be quaking with fear in a corner.”

Millie allowed herself to smile at the image.

“Perhaps, but the poor thing was so distressed at not being the perfect English rose and belle of her first ball. If she could see all the women in this room whose lives have taken less traditional paths, don’t you think that would bring her comfort?

I wish someone had shown me something like this when I was nineteen and afraid of the world. ”

“Perhaps you can explain it to her, then, the next time you meet,” Dot suggested, leaning against the bar and popping a chilled grape into her mouth. “I confess, I would have liked such knowledge at a young age too.”

“I have seen and realized so many things this Season, Dot,” Millie mused, watching the Spinsters as they made merry. “I wish we all hadn’t been led down the garden path like we were as young girls, told and terrorized that there was only one way forward, one way to thrive.”

Dot considered her, a fond smile forming on her lips. “Yes,” she agreed. “You are much changed. I imagine the journal you’re filling now is a great deal different to those that came before.”

“It’s already nearly full,” Millie admitted with a laugh. “I am planning to buy a new one with this week’s wages. Perhaps I’ll come over to Bloomsbury if you wish to help me search.”

“I’d like that,” Dot answered. “But for now, I think you’ll need to refresh me on the rules of Hazard.”

“Capital idea!” Ember cut in again. She was apparently very skilled at listening to multiple conversations at once, as just now, she was standing between Mrs. Billings and Goode. “Why don’t we all gather round and I will impart upon you the house rules for Hazard.”

“Excellent,” clipped Mrs. Smith, adjusting her spectacles. “Who doesn’t love making things a bit hazardous?”

Silently, Millie agreed.