“Sorry, old chap,” the viscount answered, not seeming the least bit contrite, “but you didn’t give me much of a chance.”
Lord Avermore looked her over once more, and his piercing stare made her feel like a butterfly on a pin. “So you are the poisonous critic who shredded me into spills this morning.”
“I regret my review was not to your liking, my lord, but I had an ethical obligation to give my honest opinion of your play.”
His brows rose. “An ethical critic. How…unusual.”
There was unmistakable mockery beneath the well-bred accents of his voice. It flicked her on the raw, and though she knew engaging in arguments with Sebastian Grant in front of his publisher, the man she hoped would buy her own writing, was probably not a wise thing to do, Daisy felt impelled to respond. “If you can’t take the heat, my lord,” she said sweetly, “perhaps you ought to leave the kitchen.”
He made a sound of derision. “Yes, critics always say that. The reason is that their own work is never at risk for public ridicule. It’s much easier to offer criticism than endure it.”
“For some, perhaps, but if I am fortunate enough to see my novels published, I shall be perfectly willing to endure the criticism of others regarding them,” she assured. “And I hope to take their opinions in the proper spirit.”
“Trust me, petal, you won’t.”
Daisy wanted to dispute that cynical contention about her, but he spoke again before she could do so. “What is the proper spirit, by the way?” he asked. “How should an author respond to a scathing review?”
Lord Marlowe gave a cough. “By ignoring it?” he suggested, sounding hopeful.
“Ignore it?” Avermore echoed. “But if we ignored critics, Marlowe, there would be no purpose to their existence.” He paused, giving Daisy a wide smile. “How tragic that would be.”
He was trying to goad her, but Daisy had no intention of allowing that to happen. “I think the author would be well served to examine the critique, consider the points made in a balanced light, and perhaps learn from the experience.”
“Learn from the experience?” That made him laugh. “Good God.”
She lifted her chin a notch. “I don’t see what is so amusing.”
“My apologies,” he said at once, but he didn’t look the least bit sorry. “In all honesty, Miss Merrick, do you believe a critique can teach a writer anything?”
Despite his mockery, Daisy considered the question in a serious fashion. “Yes,” she answered after a moment. “I do.”
“Then you know nothing about it. The only way a writer learns anything is by writing.”
“I don’t agree. There is always the potential to learn from others, if one is open-minded.” She met his amused gaze with a pointed one of her own. “And humble.”
“Indeed?” His lashes, thick and straight and black as soot, lowered a fraction, and the mockery vanished from his countenance, though he still seemed amused, for one corner of his mouth remained curved in a slight smile as he tilted his head to one side, studying her. “And if I give you the chance, petal,” he murmured, “what will you teach me, hmm?”
That question, so softly uttered, made her blush, and she felt in desperate need to say something. “Perhaps it is impertinent for a novice such as myself to offer advice to someone of your vast experience, but since you asked, I will answer. In my opinion, your play has the potential to be good.”
“Why, thank you,” he said with a bow, sounding so much like an indulgent adult patting a child on the head that Daisy’s temper flared. But she tamped it down, counted to three, and went on. “In order to make it truly worthwhile—in fact to make it work at all—you would have to rewrite it.”
“Rewrite it? The play’s in production, my dear girl. Only a novice would suggest rewrites at this stage.”
Despite his patronizing attitude, Daisy persevered. “I agree that for this run of the play, it’s too late. But if you ever put it on again, you could rewrite it, and if you did, the problems could be resolved without much difficulty.”
“It’s never difficult to resolve the problems when it isn’t your play. But you’ve piqued my curiosity, I admit.” His amusement vanished, and suddenly something flashed in those eyes, something dangerous. “How does one fix a play that is as painful as a visit to the dentist?”
“Sebastian,” Lord Marlowe put in, “you really shouldn’t put the girl on the spot this way.”
“But Marlowe, Miss Merrick pointed out the problems with my play, and she sees a way to resolve them. I can’t resist inquiring further. Advise me, Miss Merrick. How can my utterly implausible story line be fixed?”
His voice was pleasant, his manner genial, but it was a thin veneer. Beneath it, his resentment was palpable, and she realized in some surprise that Mrs. Morris had been right to caution her. She had wounded him with her review. Sensing the bull might be about to charge, she decided it would be wise to employ tact for a change, disengage from this argument, and depart. “Lord Avermore, I don’t believe you truly desire my opinions. Besides, I seem to have said quite enough already.”
She started to turn to Lord Marlowe and bid him good day, but Avermore spoke again before she had the chance. “Come, come, Miss Merrick. Prove to me that you have more to offer than criticism. How would you resolve the problems in the play?”
There was challenge in that question. He thought she had nothing useful to say, and he was daring her to prove him wrong. She could not bear to let the challenge pass unanswered. “You only needed to do one thing in the first act, and you would have had a workable plot. You should have made Wesley’s letter a condemnation of Cecilia.”
“What?” He stared at her in disbelief, as if he couldn’t believe anyone would suggest something so ridiculous.
Daisy stuck to her guns. “Wesley’s condemnation would have established a true conflict between the lovers, not one based on a misunderstanding. By having Wesley tear Cecilia to shreds in that letter, she would have been publicly humiliated when Victor read the letter aloud at the house party. You would then have had a conflict—”
“Yes, yes,” he cut in dismissively, “I would have had a conflict worthy of a silly lady novelist.”
Any momentary guilt she might have felt over wounding his feelings went to the wall. She stepped forward and rose onto her toes, bringing herself to his eye level. “Better the conflict of a lady novelist,” she countered, “than a stupid misunderstanding and no conflict at all!”
“All right, you two,” Lord Marlowe interjected, “that’s enough literary debate for one day, I think. Stop teasing the girl, Avermore.”
“I’m not teasing her,” Lord Avermore countered with a hint of reproof, pressing a hand to his chest with a galling pretense of humility. “I am hoping to learn.”
He ignored the other man’s sound of skepticism. “You must keep me informed about your own writing, Miss Merrick.” His smile returned. “I shall dearly love to know what you learn from the critics if you ever manage to publish a novel.”
“An occurrence likely to happen long before we see a new novel from you,” she shot back, tired of his insufferable air of superiority. “Hasn’t it been about three years since your last book was published?”
His smile did not falter. “Nearly four, petal,” he corrected, his voice light. “Lord, I didn’t realize anyone was still keeping count.”
“I am,” Marlowe put in with emphasis. “Speaking of which, I’m glad you came by, Sebastian. This is the perfect opportunity for us to discuss that next novel of yours, since my letters and cables to you on the subject seem to keep going astray.” He glanced at Daisy. “If you will forgive us, Miss Merrick?”
“Of course.” She was happy to escape. If she stayed here much longer, letting this man toy with her like a cat with a mouse, she would surely say something she’d regret.
Daisy forced herself to give the earl a polite curtsy before she turned to Lord Marlowe. “Shall we meet again next week, my lord? Befor
e we were interrupted,” she couldn’t help adding, “I believe you had made that suggestion?”
“So I did,” Lord Marlowe said, moving to her side to offer his arm. “See my secretary about an appointment for Thursday or Friday,” he said as he escorted her to the door. “That should give me enough time to read your manuscript.”
“Thank you.” As Daisy walked out of Lord Marlowe’s office she breathed a sigh of relief. Her unexpected encounter with Sebastian Grant had been most disagreeable. She had finally met the legendary author, and it would be perfectly acceptable to her if she never met him again.
Silly lady novelists, indeed! Horrid man, so arrogant and condescending. Daisy had no doubt his assessment of her was equally unflattering, but she didn’t intend to lose any sleep over the fact.
It was a travesty, Sebastian thought with chagrin, eying the curve of Miss Merrick’s hips as she walked out of Marlowe’s office. A travesty that a woman with such a shapely backside should be a critic.
As Marlowe closed the door behind her, an image of her face came into Sebastian’s mind, and he felt even more aggrieved. Nature had a twisted sense of humor indeed to put such a lovely pair of eyes into the same head with such a vinegary tongue and such a clever brain.
She was a cheeky baggage, too. Offering her opinions with such blithe confidence and without any bona fides to back them up. Deuce take it, he had twenty years of hard writing behind him, including ten novels, seven plays, and half a dozen short story collections. One review aside, she was an unpublished nobody. Who was she to be giving him literary advice?
Make Wesley’s letter a condemnation of Cecilia. Of all the idiotic ideas.
“Was she right?”
Harry’s voice broke into Sebastian’s thoughts. “Hmm? What?” He turned, watching as his publisher circled back around the desk. “Sorry. What did you ask me?”
Harry resumed his seat. “Was she right?”
Sebastian pulled out the chair on his side of the desk and also sat down. “About what?”
“Don’t be coy. What she said about the play. Was she right?”
He shifted in his chair, impatient. “Of course not. She was talking nonsense.”
“Indeed? What she said sounded sensible to me.”
“The only sensible thing Miss Merrick said was how impertinent it was for a novice such as she to offer me writing advice!”
“My, my,” Harry drawled, “she has gotten under your skin. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this outraged about a review. You came storming in here, sneering at the poor girl—”
“I was not sneering!”
“—disparaging her and her review, demanding I print retractions and alternate opinions, and when you find she’s overheard every word you’ve said, what do you do? Do you behave like a gentleman? Oh, no. God forbid you should apologize, I know, but you don’t even politely withdraw. Instead, you goad her and laugh at her. You demand her opinions, and then dismiss them when she offers them. In short, you’ve been acting like an ass ever since you walked through the door. I’d love to know why.”
Sebastian looked away. “I told you,” he said after a moment. “That review was important. I need the money from ticket sales—”
“Sod the ticket sales. You want to know what I think?”
He set his jaw. “Not particularly.”
“You’re outraged about this review because it was the truth, and your artistic conscience is smiting you. At long last, you are feeling guilty because your writing has become so unworthy of your talent.”
“That’s absurd!” he said at once, but the sick twist in his guts belied his denial.
“I saw the play last night. I wasn’t intending to go, but at the last minute I changed my mind. After viewing it, I can safely say that Miss Merrick’s review was spot on in every respect, including the assertion that you wrote it for the money.”
“Of course I did!” Sebastian shouted before he could stop himself. He twisted in his chair, jabbing a finger over his shoulder toward the door behind him. “I didn’t need that fire-haired, serpent-tongued spinster to tell me Girl with a Red Handbag is trivial, and trite, and just plain silly! I knew that already, but I had to agree to put the thing into production. I didn’t have a choice.”
Sebastian let out his breath in a sigh. “Rotherstein wrote to me three years ago. He asked me to write a play for him. He offered me two thousand pounds up front and twenty percent of the gross. I hadn’t written anything for over a year, Harry. I was absolutely flat and going into debt, and I couldn’t afford to refuse.” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “What was it Moliere said? Writing is like prostitution? It’s so true.”
“Well, if that’s so, do you think you could whore yourself long enough to write a novel for me?”
Sebastian stared at his publisher in disbelief. “You’re enjoying this,” he accused. “That woman slaughtered me and quite possibly ruined any chance my play had for success, and you are enjoying it.”
Harry didn’t deny it. “Do you blame me? I’m thinking you got just what you deserve. The quality of your work has been deteriorating ever since you went to Italy. You were writing with such speed, but the substance was lacking. Each novel, each short story, became a little more slick, a little more shallow, until I could no longer recognize the brilliant talent I first published eighteen years ago. I tried to warn you. I tried to tell you that you needed to slow down. I wrote letter after letter, but you wouldn’t listen. You ignored my requests for revisions and left me no choice but to publish your work as it was and let the critics slaughter you. Which they began to do with tiresome regularity.”
“Harry—”
“The sales of your past few books have declined steadily,” Harry interrupted, cutting him off. “Your last novel was due to me over three years ago, a novel for which you had already been partly compensated, but I have not seen a single page of manuscript. Despite your sinking career, you seemed to be having quite an enjoyable time in Florence. I heard all about the parties, the women, your escapades about town with St. Cyres—”
Sebastian stiffened, fearing the worst. “What did he tell you?”
“Give the man a little credit. He told me nothing. But he didn’t have to, Sebastian. It was in all the scandal sheets, including mine. I got to read about your exploits in my own damn newspapers. As I said, I wrote to you repeatedly with my concerns, but received no replies. You couldn’t even be bothered to respond when I cabled you saying I had married and that my wife and I were coming to Florence during our honeymoon because I wanted her to meet you.”
“You wanted an excuse to see me because you wanted the damned book,” Sebastian shot back.
“Well, it wasn’t because you’d been any sort of a friend.”
Sebastian sucked in his breath, feeling those words like the lash of a whip.
“Imagine my surprise,” Harry went on, “when I called at your pensione in Florence and found you were no longer living there. Upon inquiring at Cook’s Tours, I learned you’d gone gallivanting off to Switzerland months earlier.”
“Gallivanting? For God’s sake, I wasn’t touring the European capitals like some awestruck American with a Baedeker! I was—” He broke off, for he had no intention of telling his publisher what had taken him to Switzerland. But before he could think of any alternate explanation to offer, Harry spoke again.
“I know what you were doing.”
“You do?” he asked even as his mind tried to deny it. You can’t know, he thought. You can’t. No one knows.
“Your aunt was kind enough to explain that you were perfectly well, holed up in some Alpine cottage, writing away.”
Relief flooded him. Aunt Mathilda, of course. She knew only what he had told her, and she would have passed that information on to his acquaintances and friends in all good faith.
“But then another year passed,” Harry continued, “and another, and another, and yet, I still had no book and no word from you. The only reason I knew you weren�
�t dead was Mathilda, who kept assuring me that you were indeed writing. And then, last autumn, I happened to encounter Rotherstein at a party. Imagine my surprise when I learned from him that you had a new play opening at the Old Vic in April. You hadn’t been in Switzerland writing the novel you owed me. You were writing a play for him.”
“I wasn’t—”
“And now, after all this time, you come barreling in here, full of righteous indignation, interrupting me in the midst of a meeting, making demands and grumbling about your damned lack of income? Forgive me if I lack the proper sympathy.”
He couldn’t deny it. It was true, all of it, and his publisher’s condemnation was no less than he deserved. His resentment crumbled, leaving only a terrible helplessness. He leaned forward, plunked his elbows on the edge of the desk, and rubbed his palms over his face. “I wrote the play before I left Italy,” he mumbled, resting his forehead against the heels of his hands. “I didn’t write it in Switzerland.”
“So what the hell were you doing in Switzerland?”
He lifted his head, staring at his publisher. He couldn’t explain about Switzerland, about the long, painful withdrawal from cocaine and the dearth of creativity that had followed in its wake. About the endless hours of staring at a blank sheet of paper, feeling no spark of inspiration but only the hungry need for a drug he could no longer have. About how desperation had turned him to new distractions—he’d climbed mountains and crossed ravines, he’d learned to use skis and snowshoes. Hell, he’d even learned to milk a goat. Anything to help him forget cocaine, the only thing that had ever made writing easy.
It was time to face things, wasn’t it? He straightened in his chair. “I finished that play three years ago, and it was the last thing I wrote. I tried after that, but it was no use. Harry, I can’t write anymore.”
Harry’s gaze was thoughtful and not without compassion. “Periods of drought happen to all writers. In your case, it’s understandable. You produced a massive body of work in a short period of time. It’s temporary, Sebastian. It’ll pass.”
With Seduction in Mind Page 4