Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
He had tried to stop the publication, Peregrine told her.
He really had. But it was out of his hands.
Her letters were a godsend to the publishers, who intended to publish them alongside her collected works as a sort of commentary on her books, since she had freely discussed her writing in them.
They could not stop them, either, because once the letters had been handed over, there was no retrieving them.
No court would move fast enough to halt the presses.
“I’m truly sorry, but my hands are tied and there is nothing I can do.
” Peregrine put on a chagrined mien. “But looking at the bright side of things, it will bring in tons of blunt, and you’ll be flush in your pockets for the rest of your life.
” Viola had grabbed him by the collar and thrown him out of the house.
Rubbing her head, which had pounded again, she stepped back into the corridor, where she heard raised voices from the dining room. Cousin Georgiana, after having sent Lily with her maid ahead, had stayed behind to give Sebastian a thundering scold.
Viola stood in the doorway, wringing her hands.
“You are prattling gibberish, ma’am,” Sebastian’s voice finally cut in icily. “Not that this is any of your business, but I have never given my wife cause to doubt my fidelity. So pray stop spinning Banbury tales where there are none.”
“Here it is. It’s all in here.” A sound of slapping, as though she struck her hand against the leather tome. “How can you deny it when it’s all printed in black and white?” She flipped through the pages. “Here. Read this. This part.”
Sebastian took the book, flipped it to the cover, and read, “The Demon Lover of Castle Morvino. Good heavens.”
“Read!”
With an exasperated sigh, Sebastian read.
“The full moon emerged from behind the clouds, stroking slowly over her bare throat, gliding over the swell of her bosom, the rapid flutter of her pulse beneath her skin. She trembled, awaiting his touch, sighing.” He paused.
“Why does this sound so oddly familiar?”
“There it is. Proof! It is familiar because you have, of course, experienced it,” Cousin Georgiana replied with scathing triumph.
Sebastian’s brow furrowed, and he read on. “‘Look into my eyes,’ she sighed. And he pierced her with his stony stare, otherworldly and strange, emerald green and azure, fey and devilish, his eldritch eyes coruscating with an unholy fire that did at once ravish and annihilate her very essence.”
A heavy silence fell over the room.
“Well?” Georgiana placed her hands on her hips and scowled. “Do you still dare deny it?”
His cheek twitched. His jaw trembled. And then he did something that Viola, not in her wildest dreams, would have imagined he would ever do.
He threw his head back and laughed.
“An unusual and creative choice of words, I grant you,” he said once he had recovered. He wiped his eyes. “Eldritch. Coruscating.” He shook his head, still chuckling. “Most excellent. One learns something new every day.”
“I am shocked. I must say. Shocked! To be seduced by not only one, but by three, I repeat, three! Women. Creatures. Vampires or some such. Simultaneously, too!” She fanned herself with her hand. “The description in here has entirely overwrought my senses.”
“Was he? By Jove. Simultaneously, you say? Most excellent of him. And you have devoured every word, hm?” He patted the book with a grin.
Georgiana blushed. “Of course I have not! Who would ever read such drivel?”
He snapped the book shut. “You, evidently, Cousin. Or else you would not be standing here in my dining room reprimanding me about it. Clearly mixing up reality with fantasy.” He tossed the book onto the table.
“So the lucky fellow who gets to have his wicked way with three female vampires has one green eye and one blue eye. Very much like me.”
“Yes, and if that is not proof, then I do not know what is.”
“It is balderdash, that is what it is. And proof of exactly nothing at all, other than that I seem to have inspired that lady, whose acquaintance, I assure you, I have not made in my entire life.” His eyes drifted to the doorway. To Viola. He paused, the smile still lingering on his lips.
Then it faded.
“Met,” he repeated slowly, “in my entire life.”
Viola could not move. Could not breathe. She watched as something shifted behind his gaze, as the pieces slid together.
Blue and green, his eyes were. Fey and devilish. Otherworldly and strange.
He picked up the book again and looked down at it in his hands. Then back at her. At her ink-stained fingers. At the quill callus on her middle finger, she had never hidden.
Georgiana was still ranting, something about moral decay and the corruption of the institution of marriage, but Sebastian lifted one hand, and she fell silent.
The room seemed to hold its breath.
“Selina Sable,” he said quietly. It was not a question.
Viola’s throat closed. She tried to speak, but all that emerged was a whisper. “It’s me. I wrote it.”
He stared at her for a long, terrible moment.
“Yes,” he said at last, his voice strange and distant. “I rather think you did.”
He sank into the chair as though the legs beneath him had given way.
Georgiana’s mouth snapped shut with an audible click. “What?” she gasped. “You?” Her voice trembled.
Viola swallowed, then lifted her head. “Yes, Cousin. I am a writer. I am Selina Sable.”
Sebastian dragged a hand over his face. “I knew, of course, that you write. Letters, poems, imitations, little amateurish stories meant for private amusement. Perhaps even one or two sent off to be printed in some obscure pamphlet.” He glanced at the book on the table. “But this?”
“There is nothing amateurish about my writing.” Her voice stiffened.
He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time.
“No. No, of course not. I beg your pardon. Everyone knows, me included, that Selina Sable is no amateur, but a more proficient, decidedly more popular writer than Radcliffe and the rest of them combined. Good Lord.” He dragged his hand over his face again as the full weight of it struck him.
“You, you, you are the woman who wrote this?” Georgiana’s voice quavered. “Selina Sable?”
Viola pressed her hands together until her knuckles blanched. There was no taking it back now. There was no sense in denying it. “I am very much afraid I am, Georgiana,” she whispered.
Georgiana swooned.
Sebastian leapt to his feet. Viola rushed forward, and together they helped her down onto the sofa.
It took Georgiana an entire vial of hartshorn salts, lavender oil, a cold compress and then a hot one, and finally, a glass of the strongest Scotch whisky to revive her.
After she downed the glass in one gulp, she sat up, a gleam in her eyes. She pointed a finger at Viola. “You, Viola, are Mrs Selina Sable, authoress of the most popular tales of terror and Gothic romances of the decade?”
Viola sighed. “We have already established that I am, Georgiana. Now, if you do not mind, I need to talk to Sebastian alone.”
Georgiana clasped her hands together. “But then you are not only immensely famous but also tremendously wealthy! They say Mrs Radcliffe, when she publishes a book, earns about five hundred pounds. Walter Scott and Lord Byron a thousand…”
“I earn twice that for each publication, plus ongoing royalties, and those from theatrical adaptations. And that is the case for all my books.” That was solely thanks to Peregrine, who had become notorious for driving ever harder bargains with each publication.
Georgiana’s finger swung from Viola to Sebastian. “You earn more than him!”
He gave a small smile. “I daresay she probably does.”
A beatific smile spread across Georgiana’s face. “Capital.”
After Sebastian had bundled Georgiana into her carriage and sent her off, Viola paced the drawing room, beside herself with worry.
“So, Mrs Sable,” Sebastian said when he returned, giving her a quixotic look. “I do not know why I never made the connection earlier, since the evidence was always there. I would never have seen it, however, had it not been for Cousin Georgiana.”
“It was a mistake,” Viola burst out. “This book was never meant to be published. Oh please do not read it.” She tore it from his hands as he bent to pick it up.
“I wrote it when I was very green and very angry, and I poured all my emotions onto the page, only for myself. It was never intended for any other eyes. Somehow there was a mix-up, and I gave the wrong folder to Lockwood.”
“Lockwood.” He frowned. “What role does he play in all this, pray? I am finding his perpetual nosing about you increasingly irritating.”
“He is a friend, as I told you, but also my manager. He discovered I write stories, and it was thanks to him they were published in the first place. He is in direct contact with the publishers and assures me that my anonymity is being safeguarded. But Sebastian,” she wrung her hands, “I did not know that in that folder there were letters I had written to you as well, which he accidentally handed over to the publisher. I wrote them to you over the years but never sent them.” Her voice faltered.
“I was quite candid about my feelings and my day-to-day life, and my writing, and it is perfectly clear from reading them I am Selina Sable. They are addressed to you.” She drew in a shaking breath.
“They are to be published as a pamphlet tomorrow. Oh Sebastian, I fear it will be a tremendous scandal.”
He frowned. “This does not appear to be an accident.”
“Lockwood assures me it is.”
“And how much does he profit from all this? Surely, he receives a considerable portion of your royalties in recompense.”
Viola named the percentage.
“Ah. Viola.” His voice sharpened. “Are you entirely out of your mind to hand over the greater part of your earnings to that cad? Of course, he is milking you for every penny. That alone might be incentive enough, don’t you think?”
“But, but…he is my manager.” She faltered.
Somehow, she had not imagined that Sebastian would be more incensed by her arrangement with Peregrine than by his own impending ruin.
“But isn’t that beside the point? The letters are being printed as we speak.
By tomorrow at the latest, the entire country will know about you.
And me.” She swallowed. “It will be a scandal that eclipses even Lord Byron’s disgrace concerning his half-sister.
” The rumour mills had exploded years ago with whispers of an illicit attachment, and the world had not forgotten.
Voices sounded in the hallway as the butler admitted a visitor.
“I must speak to him,” an agitated male voice declared. “It is of the utmost urgency.”
“Peterson,” Sebastian groaned. A fellow Member of Parliament.
“But Sebastian, there is something else I need to tell you—”
“We shall have to continue this discussion later, Viola.”
She watched him retreat unhappily, knowing that later would be far too late.