Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Viola decided to go ghost-hunting.
It was a most reasonable thing to do, given her situation, considering she had lost all ability to concentrate and couldn’t write a single word, let alone a coherent sentence.
She’d been staring for two hours straight at a blank sheet of paper.
She’d tried sitting at the breakfast table, under the breakfast table, on the breakfast table.
On the fauteuil in the drawing room (Sebastian was right, it was too short and uncomfortable to sleep on), in front of the fireplace with a fire, in front of the fireplace without a fire.
At the desk in the study. In the end, she returned to her bed, the place where she usually wrote best.
But not today. Her thoughts kept returning to Sebastian, and how he’d slept there, right next to her.
The entire night.
She wondered where he would sleep tonight.
And what he was doing now.
Whether he was holding a speech in the Commons.
And what he looked like when he held one of his brilliant, lethal speeches.
They called him The Slayer, Mainwaring had said.
Viola snorted. She would love to see him in action, slaying one of the MPs. That vision sparked something. Finally! She grabbed her pen and scribbled.
She wrote a couple of lines, and for a while it looked like creativity had returned, only to come to another crashing halt. She reread what she’d written, groaned, crumpled up the paper, and threw it to the floor.
How could she have written nearly ten books, all of them roaring successes, and the eleventh left her flailing about like an amateur, a mere beginner who was incapable of writing anything at all?
What if it had all been a mistake? What if her ten books were merely accidental creative burps, as the eleventh would, no doubt, reveal?
What if her career as Mrs Selina Sable was done and over, forevermore come to an end?
The familiar grip of icy panic clenched her stomach.
She jumped out of bed.
This wouldn’t do.
She got dressed and told the maid that they were going to St Pancras graveyard.
She needed inspiration.
Her story was called ‘The Ghost of Gildenstone Abbey’.
She had absolutely no idea how to go about writing it.
If he was a spectre, and she was human, how could they touch, let alone kiss?
How would they have a happy ending? Would she die, or would he come alive, or would there simply be no happy ending, with the two of them forevermore parted? Her readers might hate that.
It was truly a conundrum.
The solution was to seek actual spectres, and the graveyard was just the place to go.
A shame she couldn’t go at night, for the graveyard would be locked, so she had to go during the daytime.
That made the excursion slightly less frightful than she would have liked, but there was nothing she could do.
Her maid, Ellen, was not amused. She balked at the gate. “I’d rather not go in there if you don’t mind, ma’am.”
“Lady Viola,” Viola hissed at her. Ellen, who had not at all been surprised that Viola turned out to be married to Fane, had been given strict instructions to keep that a secret, particularly when they were out in public.
“I beg your pardon. Lady Viola,” Ellen repeated.
Viola left her there and went inside on her own, settling on a stone by Mary Wollstonecraft’s grave, pulling out her pocketbook and opening it.
She sat in the shadow of an oak tree, with the church in the distance, some slight fog hanging over the tight, crooked slabs of grey gravestones overgrown with ivy. It was peaceful in an eerie, lonely way. This was precisely the atmosphere she craved.
Finally, the words started flowing.
She’d written a wonderful chapter and concluded that maybe she hadn’t lost her touch after all, and that Peregrine would surely be satisfied with what she’d written, when she heard a child’s peal of laughter.
Her head snapped up. A woman with a small child was walking along the narrow gravel path by the church.
Viola watched them wistfully. A pang of yearning went through her.
The child, slightly older than a toddler, escaping from the woman’s grip, ran in Viola’s direction, stumbled over a root, fell, and burst into noisy tears.
“Oh, dear.” Viola shot up and knelt beside her. “Did you hurt yourself?”
The girl sobbed quietly but looked up at her through the tears.
Viola talked to her in soft, soothing sounds until the woman reached them.
“Amelie, oh dear. I told you to stay with me and keep holding my hand,” the woman fussed. “Did you hurt yourself badly?” She lifted the girl, who clung to her. Over the child’s head, she turned to Viola. “Thank you for your help.”
“It is nothing at all. I am very fond of children.”
“Are you, indeed? Children are a blessing, of course, but this one turned out to be a handful.” The girl had wiped her tears, and now she insisted on being lowered so she could run around again.
“Careful, Amelie, pray do not climb that gravestone,” her mother called.
“She is very lively, you see, the liveliest of the three. And there is a fourth one on the way.”
“Oh! How wonderful. How tremendously fortunate you are.” Viola ignored the prick of jealousy deep down inside her.
“Indeed, my husband and I count ourselves very fortunate.” The woman took in her appearance and Viola self-consciously realised that she must look a fright. A bespectacled spinster with a crooked bonnet and a crumpled pelisse. She pulled her spectacles straight.
“You do not appear to be—” the woman hesitated “—married?”
It took a beat for Viola to sort herself out mentally. “No. No, I am not. Fortunately. Or unfortunately.” She laughed awkwardly. “I am Lady Viola Leigh.”
“I am Lady Josephine Penworthy.” The woman smiled, extending her hand. “You look like you are an interesting woman, sitting here,” her eyes fell on Viola’s journal, “writing? It is an excellent place to do so.”
Viola beamed at her. Finally, someone who understood.
“Surely Wollstonecraft will bestow her blessings on you, and whatever it is you are writing shall be a success. Amelie, stay on this path if you please and don’t climb that tree!
” She turned back to Viola. “What was I saying? Oh yes. Her daughter, Mary Shelley, it turns out, has had a very successful writing career.”
“Indeed!” Viola’s eyes lit up. “Do you write as well?”
“I used to. Before I married.”
“You stopped?”
“My husband is in politics.” Lady Penworthy shrugged, smiling ruefully. “It wouldn’t do.”
Viola drew a sharp breath.
“Amelie! Do not lick that headstone!” Lady Penworthy pulled her daughter away from a decrepit tombstone overgrown with moss and ivy. “But such is the fate of a politician’s wife,” she continued cheerfully. “I have resigned myself to it and found other, more interesting pastimes.”
Viola’s fingernails cut into her leather journal.
“Pray tell me,” Lady Penworthy continued as they strolled down the path, following the child who had ambled on ahead, “do you read? Surely you must. What is it that you like to read? Do you, maybe, possibly, also happen to enjoy the same literature as I…” She hesitated.
“Since you enjoy visiting places such as these.” She waved a gloved hand.
“Next to Mary Shelley, you mean? Only female writers. They are few and far between. Roche, Dacre, Radcliffe and…”
“Selina Sable,” they said simultaneously.
They paused and stared at each other.
Lady Penworthy clasped her hands together and laughed, delighted.
“What joy! I have found a soulmate at a place like this!” She gripped Viola’s hands.
“You must come and visit me. We must have tea together and discuss books.” She cast a furtive glance over her shoulder.
“I have formed a club, you see. A secret club. Sir William, my husband, is not to know about it. He would disapprove. He fears scandal, you understand. The gathering is only for women. We get together every Thursday afternoon and discuss books. Of a certain kind.” She pressed Viola’s hand.
“My husband thinks we are knitting for the parish. But,” she giggled like a schoolgirl, “we are not. We discuss—dare I say it? Somewhat naughty books.” She giggled again.
“Like Selina Sable’s. Hers are the most delightfully naughty of all. ”
“Indeed.” Viola swallowed.
“You will come. Oh, you must come! Will you not? Do promise you will. It would be such a pleasure.”
Oh dear. She would have to meet a group of women she did not know and discuss her own books. They would take her stories apart and criticise her writing without knowing the author was sitting amongst them the entire time. For any author, that was the stuff nightmares were made of.
Viola beamed at her. “It would be a tremendous pleasure.”
That afternoon, she finally pulled herself together and visited Cousin Georgiana. Georgiana must have been wondering what had happened to her after her hasty departure from Almack’s, and Viola needed a suitable excuse.
Cousin Georgiana swallowed the fib with no qualms at all.
Viola had told her she was staying with an elderly friend near Grosvenor Square’, which was an entirely accurate approximation, for Bird Street was nearby.
Her friend was very old and very ill and did not wish to receive visitors.
Her house was therefore closed, which meant that Viola could not receive any visitors. This arrangement suited her perfectly.
Georgiana accepted that gracefully and without question. Concluding that Viola must be quite glad to leave the townhouse and her ailing friend, she dragged her to Pall Mall and Bond Street to do some shopping. Lily, alas, was ill and did not join them.
Viola came along somewhat unwillingly but changed her mind when they’d drifted into St James’s Street and she saw the bookshops and a lovely stationer’s shop filled with notebooks, quills, paper, and other good things.