Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
He looked good. He really did.
Certainly, she’d seen him dressed in evening dress occasionally. But with a pink waistcoat and a tulip in the top buttonhole?
Her eyebrow rose. “You look like a ridiculous tulip.”
“Thank you, my girl, I shall take that as a compliment. And you look—” his eyes swept over her, “unexpectedly fetching. My compliments.”
Viola rolled her eyes.
“We shouldn’t talk to each other here. If someone sees us,” she muttered, glancing to the left and right. That someone, in particular, being Georgiana and Lily. It would be unthinkable for them to be seen together.
“In that case, let’s talk outside. Follow me. And don’t you dare run away.” He went ahead, leading her out of the room, into the corridor, and into a side corridor that seemed to be reserved for servants.
“We can talk here unobserved.”
Viola crossed her arms defensively. “I never expected to see you here.”
“No? Neither did I, to be honest. But it is well-met. Because I am still waiting for your answer. You never replied to my last letter. I await your explanation.”
“That was because there was nothing to reply,” Viola muttered. She wished she could flee. If she tore the door open and raced down the corridor… As if sensing that, Lockwood blocked the way.
Detestable man!
“No, you preferred to run away, coward that you are. But time is running out, Viola. How much more time do you need? I can’t wait much longer.”
She chewed on her lower lip. “A year.”
“Impossible.”
“No. You don’t understand. I can’t do it in less.”
“Balderdash.” He pulled a frustrated hand through his thick, blond hair, ruining the perfect roll he had over his forehead. “You can, and you did. You once took three months to finish it. Three months!”
“Yes, but that was then, and this is now. I need more time.”
He shook his head. “This is very serious. The contract has been signed. All you need to do is deliver. Do you understand the gravity of the situation?”
There it was again, that gut-punching feeling of panic that she’d been trying to run away from.
“Of course I understand it.” She shifted on her feet and bumped against some marble statue behind her.
“Good.” He gave a curt nod. “I give you three months.”
“Three months.” She shook her head. “I can’t. It’s too soon.”
“Three months.” His word was iron.
She shook her head stubbornly. “Impossible.”
“Viola.” He grabbed her by the arms and shook her gently. “Have you lost all faith in me?”
She shrugged, then shook her head mutely.
“I am your friend, am I not?”
She nodded miserably.
“Have been all those years. Your only friend, if I may add. You have no one more loyal than me.”
Well, that was arguable if one defined loyalty as a leech that refused to be removed, but nonetheless,she nodded. Lockwood had indeed been there for her when no one else had.
“And you can trust me.”
She hesitated.
“Viola?”
She gave a reluctant nod.
“Good girl. As I trust in you.” He dropped his hands. “I want you to finish it, Viola. The manuscript. Get over that blasted writing block and just. Finish. The. Blasted. Thing.”
“I am trying,” she cried, then lowered her voice when she noticed heads turning towards them.
She drew him further under the columns beneath the stairs.
“I am trying,” she hissed. “But it’s not as easy as it sounds.
You said you trust me. So please, Peregrine, please.
Trust that I know what I am doing, and that I will deliver it to you when it is ready.
But never put this kind of pressure on me, not unless you want me to withdraw completely.
It’s poison for my creativity, and then I won’t be able to write anything at all.
” The fact of the matter was that she’d already reached that stage.
“That would be an utter disaster, and you know it.”
She did indeed.
“Viola. If you do this, it will be greater than anything you have ever done before. We are talking prodigious sums here. A fortune beyond calculation! Print, plays, theatre productions, opera productions! We have so many offers flooding in I hardly know what to do with them all. Not even Mrs Radcliffe, in her prime, can keep up with your success. You have put her long in the shade. You are now the undisputed queen of romance and tales of terror. Don’t give up that throne so easily. ”
Oh heavens. That did not help her at all.
She nodded miserably.
“You will pull it off, won’t you? Say you will. If you want, I will get on my knees and beg.” He cast a quick glance aside. “It might create somewhat of a scandal, however, so I’d rather not.”
She closed her eyes. Then she gave a defeated nod. “I will try. I promise.”
His relief was palpable. “Excellent. I am eagerly awaiting the next bestselling manuscript, Mrs Selina Sable.” He gave her a wink and left.
Viola found her way to the refreshment room, exhausted, thirsty, and quite done with tonight’s entertainment.
Blast it, that Peregrine had to show up at Almack’s of all places. She’d tried to run away from him in Inverness and ended up right in his arms again. There was no escaping him. He was more relentless than a slave driver. An overseer on a galley. Napoleon, Nero, and Caligula combined.
That comparison made even her giggle.
At least Peregrine had left and disappeared with the crowd. He would leave her alone for now, and hopefully for the rest of the Season.
At least until she wrote the accursed book—and therein lay the problem.
Her imagination and her ink had dried up like a well in the Sahara Desert, and she found herself incapable of writing as much as a single word.
She rubbed a hand against her chest to ease the tightness that had assailed her.
It was no use pondering on it. It wouldn’t help at all.
Where were Georgiana and Lily? They had disappeared as well.
Oh well.
But wasn’t that Mr Mainwaring, making his way towards her through the crowd with two glasses of lemonade? He looked ridiculously pleased to have found her again.
“Lady Viola! I appeared to have lost you, but here you are again. What a terrible squeeze, don’t you agree?”
He handed her a glass of lemonade, which she drank gratefully. It tasted horrible, but at this moment she would have gladly drunk vinegar.
“Thank you.” In that moment, truly, Mr Mainwaring appeared as a saviour.
Mr Mainwaring looked about the room, frowning. “The squeeze has intensified. Something’s happened.” He craned his neck toward the entrance. “It appears someone’s arrived.”
“Someone important?” Viola rose onto her toes. Perhaps this was her chance to glimpse Prinny up close.
Indeed, the crowd had shifted toward the doors. The music faltered, then stopped. A murmur rippled through the room, that hum of anticipation that expressed the arrival of true consequence.
“Liverpool’s man,” someone said behind her.
Liverpool. Viola did not follow politics closely; she found it unbearably dull, but even she knew that name. The Prime Minister.
“Well, well.” Mr Mainwaring adjusted his cravat, suddenly looking rather less comfortable. “That’s unexpected. What the devil is he doing at Almack’s?”
“Liverpool?”
“No, no. His protégé. The Slayer.” He lowered his voice as though the man might somehow hear him across the crowded room.
“I heard him speak in the Commons last week. He’s called The Slayer because he’s cold as a scalpel, cutting down the opposition without mercy.
He’s brilliant, but lethal. An opposition man rose to accuse him of some mismanagement or other, and he took him apart so thoroughly I almost felt sorry for the fellow.
” He paused, grimacing. “I made the mistake of questioning him once. Did not stand a chance. He remembered a bill I’d voted against three years prior and quoted my own words back to me. ”
“How alarming,” Viola said, not particularly alarmed.
“As everyone knows, Liverpool is grooming him for the Home Office. After the election in June, a cabinet position is all but certain.” Mr Mainwaring shook his head with the admiration men reserve for other men who frighten them.
“If he stays the course, he’ll be running the country in ten years.
Mark my words, I do believe we are looking at our future prime minister. ”
Viola plucked a fresh glass of lemonade from a passing footman. Politics. Men in waistcoats arguing about corn prices and Catholic relief while she had actual problems: a manuscript due, a publisher waiting, and absolutely no idea how to kill her villain in a suitably gruesome fashion.
She took a sip and turned her attention elsewhere.
The crowd parted.
Her gaze caught on a figure near the entrance. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Evening black tailored with severity. He stood in profile, speaking to someone she couldn’t see, and the candlelight caught the sharp line of his jaw, the high cheekbones, the proud Roman nose.
Her stomach gave a sick lurch.
Dear sweet heaven.
It couldn’t be.
He turned his head, just slightly, and she saw the mouth.
That mouth. That beautiful, cruel mouth that haunted her dreams.
A whimper escaped her.
He was older. Harder. Whatever traces of the young man she remembered who had stood beside her exchanging vows so long, long ago, had been carved away entirely. What remained was marble. Handsome, cold, and utterly unforgiving.
Sebastian.
Viola’s world tilted.
The lemonade glass slipped. She caught it, but not before half the contents splashed across Mr Mainwaring’s waistcoat. He didn’t notice. Nobody noticed. Every eye in the room was fixed on the man in the doorway.
She had to run. Now. Hide. Behind the curtain. Under the table. Anywhere. Before he saw her.
Too late.
As if he knew she was there, as if he’d sensed her presence all along, he turned his head and their eyes locked.
His eyes, icy slivers of blue-green.
It lasted only a fraction of a second, the connection, but long enough for Viola to register that he’d seen—and undoubtedly, clearly, most definitely—recognised her.
Then the crowd closed in on him once more.