Chapter 14
“To be seen, without having to hide, wasn’t that all she’d ever really wanted?”
Adelaide, Chapter 27
“Is it from her Majesty?” Olivia asked.
In the three days since the ball that opened the season, the footmen at the Pembrooke house were kept on their feet bringing in the post and deliveries.
Noelle was waiting at the bottom of the stairs as the latest wave of invitations and flowers were brought into the drawing room.
When a letter was handed to her bearing a familiar seal, she immediately tore into it with shaking fingers.
Olivia placed the bird she was holding in a cage and came close enough to read over her shoulder.
Noelle didn’t stop reading, only nodded in response to her sister.
“My Devoted Subject,
I hope this morrow finds you awash with excitement and relief.
As I guessed, you were a sight to behold.
I have so many Questions. Did my eyes deceive me or was a certain tall, quiet, bookish debutante flanked with suitors?
Including one elusive libertine? You captured the attention of many last night.
It wasn’t because of your beauty, there was something graceful and self-assured about you as well.
I have seen it all along, am merely glad the others finally did as well.
I’m sure her ladyship would have crowed her excitement from the rooftops of the palace.
EVer your friend.
“Noelle, are you crying?” Olivia asked, searching her pockets for a clean handkerchief.
The lady in question concealed the missive in her bodice, took the handkerchief offered by her younger sister, and put herself to rights. There were over a dozen cards from several different suitors, she didn’t have time for hysterics of any variety or volume.
Belatedly she realized the butler, Bedford, was announcing a visitor. “Sir Edward Clarkdale,” he said in a bland tone.
Noelle smoothed her skirts and hair before turning toward the open doorway. A bespectacled young man followed closely behind. Not another suitor. Or rather, not another suitor that wasn’t the one suitor that she wanted.
Noelle’s eyes lit on the man in a mixture of curiosity and reverent boredom. From her peripheral, she saw her sister Moria slip out the back door to the rose garden with a wrap and a bonnet, pen and paper in hand, before she could be missed. Noelle said nothing, did nothing to impede her.
Jasper was shaking hands with the scholar.
Noelle was sure she’d seen him or danced with him sometime in the previous three days; but couldn’t quite place him in her mind.
He had a not-altogether-unattractive face.
He was not overtly handsome either. He didn’t stand out from a crowd; but while that didn’t recommend him, that didn’t damn him either.
The man was no Fitz. He had not the gorgeous mane of hair, or cheekbones like blades, or the eyes that held her and made her laugh; but he was handsome in his own right with his brown hair and green eyes.
Sir Edward now sat across from her. He gifted her an amiable smile that asked her to give him a chance.
She couldn’t shake from her mind the way that Fitz had set her at ease and set her aflame at the same time the other night at the ball.
There was an effervescent chemistry that existed between her and Fitz; but Fitz had been vacant from her drawing room for the last two days, while this man was here.
She exchanged the usual pleasantries with Sir Edward, an awkward back and forth until she recalled when they’d last danced at a ball and found a mutual interest in literature.
The topic of conversation turned to books, and then he mentioned that he’d written volumes of his own.
She would have been impressed by his literary accomplishments if she hadn’t been so envious of the fact that he had accomplishments to boast of that she could not attain simply given her gender.
Instead, something like jealousy snared at her and mocked her. It was all she could do not to cry out in frustration. She heard herself saying, “Perhaps I could read some of your writing some time?”
And he smiled at her as though that was what he had wanted all along.
He wasn’t really invested in her intellect for its own merit; but rather, as a mirror to his own.
Belatedly, he asked what she herself liked to write.
Before she could finish, her brother had answered for her, “Noelle is always writing something, sir; but it’s merely a pastime, an amusement, I can assure you. My sister does not envy the title of authoress more than that of wife or mother.”
Jasper shot her a look. Noelle wanted to scream.
If her governess hadn’t been sitting feet away reading to her niece she would have.
Her brother had said he wanted matches for all his sisters that were partnerships, not business arrangements.
But perhaps that was all he wanted, to marry them off, and that goal superseded all others.
Perhaps none of her family saw how deeply her desire -no, her need- not just to write but to share her work ran.
How could she be in an equal partnership with a man whose work she read, while hiding her own words and keeping them to herself?
Her throat felt tight, her heart beating angrily like wings against the cage of her bodice.
Hot, angry tears threatened. She held them off. She was getting good at that.
Sir Edward’s hand gently grazed hers as he reached for a biscuit.
“I’d still like to read your work, if you’re amenable, Lady Noelle.”
Her breathing returned, slowed by his equanimity. “You would?” she asked, pausing in the act of pouring a cup of tea for the man across from her.
“If you’d like to share it with me.” he smiled at her, a congenial smile.
It wasn’t a smile that shook the earth, that stirred things inside of her like plates beneath the earth’s surface; but it was a smile that gave her a small piece of hope.
She’d sent her manuscript to several publishing houses and either heard crickets or received a standard rejection.
“Something tells me you have quite a lot of interesting things to say, Lady Noelle.”
He meant this as a compliment, but it was true. She did have things to say that were more than interesting; they were riveting, original, compelling, witty at times.
Lady Noelle placed down the pot of tea with perhaps a little more finality than she had meant. It made a thud on the table. Jasper looked at her with his arms folded over his chest. She merely gave him a bland smile.
Noelle did have things to say whether her brother, Sir Edward, Fitz, or any other man wanted to hear them or to read them.
Sir Edward tried to recapture her attention, but her mind was elsewhere.
It was clear he was interested in a potential match; but how anyone handled her words would decide many things.
She’d worked too hard and scratched the ends of her imaginings to produce Adelaide, and she was proud of what she’d done.
It had been her companion in dark, grief-filled hours; and she’d be damned if any man would ask her to give that up for his sake.
As her suitor sat drinking his tea and making idle conversation with her older brother, Lady Noelle Pembrooke vowed she would share the things she had written and the things still inside her left to write down.
To be patted on the head and called a “good girl” by a man far less creative or talented was not something she desired out of the season.
Her vision was clear: her book, sitting on a shelf, in the hands of readers, in a book shop window on full display- husband or no.
She knew there was, or at least there would be, an audience who’d find all that there was to love about Adelaide.