Curiosity was a dangerous thing. It killed cats. It was probably what impelled moths to fly into flames and caused small children to fall into wells. It was what led a sane writer to do crazy things, like read reviews of his plays and revision letters for his books.
Sebastian stared at the twine-tied manuscript in the grass nearby, knowing he would regret it if he allowed his curiosity to get the better of him. And yet, he felt an overwhelming desire to know what Miss Merrick had said.
He leaned forward, causing the hammock in which he sat to tip precariously, but from this distance, he couldn’t read her letter. He craned his neck and squinted, but even then, he couldn’t quite make out the typewritten words. He sat back, aggrieved.
What did her opinion matter anyway? She was a rejected writer and an infuriating critic and probably an incompetent editor, too. He shouldn’t care a jot what she had to say.
He leaned forward again, resting his elbows on his knees. She’d told him the story had a powerful premise, but that was hardly illuminating. Hell, he’d written the blasted thing twenty years ago. He couldn’t even remember what the premise was. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder what she wanted him to change.
He studied the manuscript, nibbling on one thumbnail, his curiosity battling with his good sense.
Best all around if he tossed the letter into the pond, told her to go to hell, and cabled Harry in Torquay that he wasn’t changing a word.
But what would he do if Harry chose to be stubborn about this and continued to support Miss Merrick in her misguided attempts? Sebastian thought of all the revision letters Harry had sent to him in Italy, all the editorial suggestions he had refused to implement in the past, and all the concerns Harry had expressed about the deteriorating quality of his work. He thought of that day at Marlowe Publishing when Harry had heaped condemnations upon him, and he knew he had already pushed his publisher’s tolerance to its limits.
Sebastian stared at the manuscript, a sick knot in his stomach. He could not afford a legal battle with Marlowe Publishing, and yet, he could not do what they asked of him. He could not go back. He could not force his books into being by sheer will. It was too hard, too painful, too exhausting.
Yet, what other choice did he have? In Italy, in the drug-induced haze of his life there, it had been easy to forget his obligations. In a remote part of the Swiss Alps, it had been simple to deny his responsibilities. But here, in the home of his ancestors, with his aunt, whom he loved, close at hand, it was neither easy nor simple. He was pinned in a corner, no longer able to avoid the hard realities of his situation, and he wished he had never come home.
What will you do now?
Daisy Merrick’s damnable question echoed through his mind again, and Sebastian looked up, gazing out across the water of the pond to the mill and then to the woods beyond.
His play had closed. If Marlowe chose not to pay him for this book, he would go further into debt. He would be reduced to borrowing from friends. Phillip, perhaps, or St. Cyres. His pride revolted at the thought of living off of them like some pathetic distant relation. There had to be another alternative.
Sebastian returned his attention to the sheaf of papers in the grass. It wouldn’t hurt, he supposed, to at least read the letter. Perhaps the revisions she wanted were not as difficult as the length of her letter made out. Perhaps, despite her assurance of brevity, she had not been brief, but had rambled on for ten pages about only a few minor problems that could be easily fixed.
He walked over to the manuscript, sank down onto the grass, and pulled the letter from beneath the twine—all twelve pages of it. He was probably going to regret this, Sebastian thought, and began to read.
Five minutes later, he tossed the letter aside, his misgivings about Miss Merrick’s abilities as an editor thoroughly justified. She was out of her mind if she expected him to make such substantive changes. She might just as well have demanded an entirely new book.
An image of her face, with its pretty golden freckles and teal-blue eyes, came into his mind. Somehow, he had to convince her to give up on this silly revision business, publish the book in its present condition, and pay him his money. But how?
He could make an attempt at bribery, he supposed, offer her a share of the money if she’d let the manuscript stand. But the moment he thought of that idea, he rejected it. If money motivated her, she’d have approved his book and collected her fee already.
He could make himself as uncooperative and disagreeable as possible, but he suspected that wouldn’t work either. Miss Merrick was no timid little rabbit. She was stubborn enough to withstand even his most belligerent attempts to drive her away.
In the distance, the church bells rang, bringing Sebastian out of his contemplations. There was no point in speculating about this now. Before he could determine the best way to bring Miss Merrick around to his way of thinking, he had to become better acquainted with her, and tonight was the perfect opportunity. Sebastian picked up the manuscript and started back toward the house to dress for dinner.
Had Daisy envisioned an earl’s country house as the setting for a novel, it would not have looked like Avermore House. She would have imagined something opulent, with gilded ceilings, flocked wallpapers, and every piece of furniture swathed in ball-fringed velvet. But Avermore was nothing like that.
It was a solidly built three-story affair of prosaic red brick and gray stone, with furnishings that were more comfortable than ornate. The marble chimneypieces were simply carved, the walls were adorned with plain papers, white moldings, and gold-framed landscapes, and there wasn’t a scrap of ball fringe in sight. It was a charming house, elegant but unpretentious, and not at all in keeping with Daisy’s notions of the aristocracy. But then, being the daughter of a bankrupt Northumberland squire who’d lost his lands before her thirteenth birthday due to his profound love of cards and his abysmal lack of skill with them and to his even more profound love of drink, Daisy had grown up without much knowledge of country-house life.
What the house lacked in opulence, however, was more than made up for by the vibrancy of the gardens. June, in all its beauty, could be enjoyed from any window, including her own. The view from her bedroom was an island of flowers surrounded by an enormous expanse of green turf. In the evening twilight, the magenta roses, blue delphinium spires, chartreuse sprays of lady’s mantle, and the white petals of her namesake seemed especially vivid.
Her gaze moved past the lawn. In the distance, she could see the mill, with its stone walls and thatched roof. She could also see the pond and the willow trees. She could even see the hammock, but not the man she’d left standing beside it, and for perhaps the tenth time since she’d returned to the house, Daisy hoped she’d done the right thing.
After her conversation with Lucy a week ago, she had thought long and hard about what her next step should be. Though in the end, she had been forced to the conclusion that her first duty was to Marlowe as her employer, and her second duty was to herself and her personal sense of integrity, she had also begun to appreciate that she had a duty to her fellow author. It was, she supposed, rather like the duty of a physician, for it required that above all, she do no harm. She was aware that she may have already violated that duty by her scathing review of his play. While she did not regret the opinions she had expressed, she acknowledged that she should have been more aware of the impact her words would have on a fellow author. Daisy stared out at the mill, and she hoped that forcing his hand today had not done more harm than good.
Too late to have doubts now, she supposed. If he called her bluff, if he refused to revise his book, that was his choice, and Marlowe would be the one to agree or refuse to publish the manuscript in its present state. She would be compensated either way. Marlowe had already assured her of that. In her letter, she had given her honest opinions as tactfully as possible. If Avermore refused to make the changes, her duty was discharged, and she could go home, knowing she’d done her best.
Why won’t you peopl
e leave me alone?
His desperate, angry voice echoed back to her, and the knowledge that she’d done her best was not much consolation.
The scratch on her door forced Daisy’s attention away from the window as a severe-looking maid in a gray print dress and a starched apron and cap came into the bedroom, carrying a pitcher of steaming water and an armful of snowy-white towels.
“I am Allyson, miss, upstairs maid,” the servant told her as she set down the towels and poured hot water into the bowl on Daisy’s malachite-topped washstand. “Her ladyship has asked me to do for you, since you’ve not brought your own maid up from London.”
“Oh, but—” Daisy stopped, biting back just in time the confession that she’d never had a lady’s maid in her entire life. There was no need, she reminded herself, to confess such things to a woman she barely knew. “Thank you, Miss Allyson,” she said instead. “I appreciate your giving service.”
If the maid thought the situation odd, she was too well trained to show it. “I’ve unpacked your things, miss. Your blue silk I’ve sent down to the laundry to be pressed, and your skirts I’ve hung in the wardrobe. I hope that’s all right?”
“Yes, of course.” Daisy turned her head, eying the mentioned wardrobe in bemusement. It was a piece of furniture from an earlier era, when ladies wore crinolines and it took sixteen yards of fabric to make a dress. Her three skirts of thin summer wool and half dozen shirtwaists seemed woefully inadequate to the yawning vastness of the armoire.
“The rest of your things are in the dressing table,” Allyson went on, bringing Daisy’s attention back to her. “And I’ve put your little leather case just beside it. When your evening gown is ready, I will bring it up to you straightaway. In the meantime, if there is anything else you need, miss, just ring for me. The bell pull is beside the bed.”
Daisy glanced at the tasseled rope of gold silk that hung beside the unadorned cherrywood four-poster and nodded. “I see. When is dinner served?”
“Eight o’clock, miss. The first gong sounds one half hour beforehand so that guests may begin gathering in the drawing room.”
Rather like Little Russell Street. She smiled at that thought, for in every other way, she seemed far removed from the prosaic, shabbily genteel confines of the lodging house in Holborn. “And breakfast?”
“Warming dishes on the sideboard in the dining room at eight o’clock, and guests may help themselves. Unless you’d like breakfast in your room? The ladies often prefer it that way.”
“No, thank you, Allyson. I shall come down for breakfast.”
“Yes, miss.” The maid dipped a curtsy and departed, closing the door behind her.
Daisy availed herself of the hot water to wash away the dust of travel, donned fresh underclothes and stockings, and sat down at the dressing table, where the maid had already laid out her tortoiseshell brush, comb, and mirror. She took down her hair and brushed it, then she coiled and pinned the thick, unruly strands into a chignon at the back of her head, but she studied her reflection in the mirror without satisfaction. Too bad one couldn’t wear a hat to dinner, she thought, making a face. A hat ought to be allowed if one had hair the color of carrots.
I think you’re a delicious little morsel with pretty hair, a shapely bum, and a deuced supply of impudence.
Sebastian Grant’s acerbic voice echoed back to her, and though she knew the man had no business noticing her bum, she couldn’t seem to work up the proper outrage about his comments. She touched a hand to her hair, curling a stray tendril around her finger. He’d said her hair was pretty.
She remembered with painful clarity the relentless teasing of her girlhood, how other children had called her “beanpole” and “freckle face” and “carrot-head.” She knew Sebastian Grant was an arrogant, bullheaded man with far more pride than was good for him, and she shouldn’t set any store by his opinions on anything. It wasn’t as if his remark had been intended as a compliment. Nonetheless, in her entire life, no one else had ever told Daisy that her hair was pretty.
He’d almost kissed her that day, she remembered. What if he had? What if he had swept her up in those strong arms of his and pressed his lips to hers? Imagining it, Daisy felt a delicious little thrill. Always under her sister’s watchful eye, she’d only been kissed once in her entire life, a quick, moist, most disappointing press of lips with the village fishmonger’s son when she was fourteen. She pressed her fingers to her mouth, and she suspected a kiss from Sebastian Grant would be something quite different. The man didn’t have a wicked reputation with women for no reason.
The return of the maid brought Daisy out of her reverie with a guilty start. She jerked her hand down as Allyson came bustling in with her freshly pressed evening gown of blue-black silk. The maid tightened her stays and assisted her into the close-fitting gown, buttoning up the back and adjusting the enormous, elbow-length puff sleeves. Daisy slid her feet into her black kid slippers, and was just pulling on her long white silk gloves when the gong sounded.
“Perfect timing, Allyson,” she said to the maid. “Thank you.”
The poker-faced servant didn’t smile, but Daisy fancied she was gratified by the compliment just the same. “Doesn’t do to be late for dinner, miss,” she said, gave Daisy’s sleeve a final tug, and nodded as if satisfied. “The soup goes cold.”
Daisy started out of her room, then stopped. She had a quarter of an hour before dinner. She might as well take her writing things to the library and arrange them for tomorrow.
She caught up her leather dispatch case and made her way back down to the elegant crimson-and-green drawing room on the ground floor where she’d had tea earlier with Lady Mathilda and found that she seemed to be the first one down for dinner, for the drawing room was empty. The double doors to the library had been opened and through the doorway, she could see walls filled with shelves of books. How wonderful to write surrounded by the works of other writers. What could be more inspiring?
Daisy entered the library, and at once her gaze fell on a beautiful, intricately carved rosewood secretaire in the center of the sun-yellow room. That, she knew at once, would be her desk. She placed her dispatch case atop the blotter that rested on its polished surface, opened the case, and removed her manuscript and a sheaf of fresh notepaper. There was an inkstand on the desk, she noted, with a filled inkwell and two elaborate ostrich quills. She eyed them for a moment, tempted, even pulling one out of its silver stand for a closer inspection, but in the end, she decided she preferred her own. She removed the wooden box containing her plain goose quills and nibs and placed it on the blotter. Closing the case, she set it on the floor and ran her fingers over the desk’s sleek surface with a happy sigh. She couldn’t wait to begin work.
A slight cough behind her made Daisy realize she was not alone in the room. She whirled around to find Lord Avermore had arrived before her. Dressed for dinner in a black evening suit and white linen shirt, he was standing by one of the recessed bookshelves, an open book in his hands. The light from the gas jet overhead gleamed on his black hair and caught the glint of silver cuff links at his wrists as he marked his place with one finger, closed the book, and bowed to her. “Good evening, Miss Merrick,” he said with a smile.
The smile took her back, rather. She started toward him, studying his face as she approached, but she could discern nothing in his expression but pleasant, gentlemanly politeness, and she wondered if he’d even read her revision letter. She wanted to inquire on the subject, but with an effort, she curbed her curiosity. “What are you reading?” she asked instead as she halted in front of him.
He held up the small volume so that she could read the print on the plain cloth cover.
“A Shropshire Lad,” she murmured, “by A. E. Housman.” She looked up. “I’ve not heard mention of this book. Is it a novel?”
He shook his head. “No. Poetry.”
Daisy looked at him askance. “You read poetry?”
“You needn’t sound so surprised, Miss Merrick
. All English boys study poetry at school.”
“But they don’t all like it,” she countered. “And,” she added, studying him, “if anyone had asked me when I first saw you if you were the sort of man to read poetry, I’d have said no. In fact, I didn’t even think you looked like a writer.”
“What occupation should I have had?”
She laughed. “I thought you ought to be navigating your way along the Ganges River or exploring Antarctica, or something equally adventurous.”
“I spent one summer in Great St. Bernard Pass with the Augustine friars, climbing the Valais Alps. We slept in tents, and carted food and water on our backs. Does that signify?”
“Heavens, did you cart your typewriting machine on your back as well?”
Something flickered in his gray eyes, something dangerous that marred his easy politeness. “There was no need,” he answered. “I did no writing in the Valais.”
Looking into his eyes, Daisy decided it might be wise to change the direction of the conversation. “You read poetry, but have you written any?”
“God, no,” he answered, sounding so appalled by the idea, she couldn’t help but laugh. He laughed as well, and the dark moment passed. “I much prefer reading it to writing it,” he confessed. “The public, I’m sure, is grateful for my preference. Do you like poetry?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “I’ve always preferred novels. I’ve never read much poetry.”
“That’s a crime.” He lifted the book in his hands, and his dark lashes lowered as he transferred his gaze to the page. “With rue my heart is laden, for golden friends I had, for many a rose-lipt maiden and many a lightfoot lad. By brooks too broad for leaping, the lightfoot boys are laid. The rose-lipt girls are sleeping in fields where roses fade.’”
“How terribly sad. Still, it is a beautiful verse.”
“Well, if you think that, tell Marlowe. Perhaps he’ll buy the fellow’s next set of poems. Housman published this collection at his own expense, I understand, after several publishers turned it down.”
With Seduction in Mind Page 11