He tried to distract himself with estate matters, but that did no good. There wasn’t much activity on an estate that barely paid for itself, and he had a land agent. Besides, everywhere he went, he found reminders of the woman he was trying to forget. The mill, the maze, the folly, the summerhouse, even his favorite fishing hole, all evoked memories of her, feeding his craving just enough to keep him from breaking free of it.
He tried distractions of a different sort. But the local pub, though friendly enough for the farm lads to share a pint, became quiet as a tomb the moment the local lord came in, and drinking alone to forget a woman was too pathetic to contemplate. Race meetings were all right for an afternoon, and the occasional country house party pleasant enough, but none of these activities could distract him for long.
A week went by, but he could find no relief. In desperation, he turned to the only thing he had left, the one thing that he’d taken so much trouble to avoid for so long. He turned to the book. For distraction and for solace, Sebastian tried to write.
The first time he tried after her departure was pure hell. He found himself looking up every few minutes, expecting to see her sitting at the desk opposite, always surprised for just a moment each time he stared at her empty chair. The second time was just as bad, and the third, and the fourth. After a week of trying, he was ready to hurl his typewriter through the window and give up.
He didn’t. Something—he didn’t know what—compelled him every morning to sit down and try again. Perhaps it was because he wanted to prove that he didn’t need Daisy at all. Or perhaps to prove to himself that he had a purpose, that he was worth something beyond taking up space. Or to prove that he still had one more story worth telling left in him.
Another month went by, and then another. His deadline came and went. Through sheer force of will, pages somehow got written; but despite his persistence, writing seemed like harder work than ever before. Without Daisy, without being able to look up and see her face, without her to talk over the problems and reward him with kisses, there was no joy in it. Yes, he could do it alone. But without her, it wasn’t any fun.
Sebastian typed another row of X’s, crossing out the godawful sentence he’d just written. He was almost finished with the book, damn it, but he just couldn’t make the ending work. No matter how he tried, the perfect finish eluded him.
The ending is unsatisfying, disappointing, even infuriating.
He muttered an oath as Daisy’s revision letter came back to haunt him, and he ripped the sheet of crossed-out sentences from the roller of his Crandall, balled it up, and tossed it aside.
“Having trouble?”
Mathilda’s voice caused him to look up. “No,” he lied. “I’m not having trouble.”
“I’m very glad to hear it.” She came into the library and walked over to a bookshelf. “I don’t mean to disturb you,” she added, “but I wanted something to read.”
In furtherance of that goal, she wandered about the room, scanning bookshelves. When she finally decided upon a certain volume, however, she did not depart. Instead, she curled up in one of the leather chairs by the fireplace to read it while Sebastian resumed working.
He typed a sentence, crossed it out, typed another, and crossed it out. He set his jaw. In this book, he had something good, truly good, maybe the best thing he’d ever written. He was not—was not—going to ruin it with an unrealistic, sappy ending. He typed sentences with rapid-fire strokes, forcing Amelie to write the note, end the affair, and leave. But at the end of the page, he stopped, Daisy’s voice once again echoing through his mind.
Aren’t you the one who’s always saying people aren’t that self-sacrificing?
She was right. Having the heroine be so noble and unselfish made for an ending that deserved the criticism Daisy had given it.
He ripped the page he’d just written out of the typewriter, wadded it into a ball, and tossed it aside.
He looked up to find Mathilda watching him from the chair across the room. “All right, I am having trouble,” he admitted. “The ending is giving me fits. It’s not right.”
“How is it supposed to end?”
“The heroine abandons the hero. She goes off alone, for his sake, but that doesn’t work. It’s too noble of her. It doesn’t seem real.” He paused to consider, drumming his fingers on the desk. “She could abandon him for another man, I suppose.”
“That sounds quite depressing.”
He groaned at yet another reminder of Daisy. Leaning forward, he plunked his elbows on the edge of his desk and rubbed his fingertips over his tired eyes. “Not you, too?” he muttered. “Why do women always want happy endings?” He lifted his head and scowled at his aunt. “This story is not getting a happy ending, damn it!”
“Why not?” Mathilda looked at him in bewilderment. “Why can’t the story have a happy ending?”
He gave a violent start and stood up. “Because there is no such thing!” he snapped as he walked to one of the French windows. “Because happy endings don’t happen. Because dogs die, love affairs end, and life goes on!”
Behind him, he heard Mathilda rise from her chair and cross the room to stand beside him. “Sebastian, love affairs don’t always have to end, you know.”
“Don’t,” he cut her off. “Don’t even open the topic of Daisy Merrick. She’s gone, and that’s the end of it.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so.” Sebastian leaned one shoulder against the jamb and looked out the window, his gaze skipping past the terrace to the gardens beyond. He couldn’t see the summerhouse from here, or the folly, but he could see the maze. He stared at the wall of tall green hedge, stared straight through it to the center. He could see her standing there, by the fountain of the Muses, with her brilliant hair falling like strands of fire through his fingers.
How? he thought with sudden despair. How was he ever going to conquer his need for her when memories of her were everywhere?
He could leave, he supposed. But where would he go? Africa no longer seemed to hold any charms for him. The Argentine didn’t appeal much either. France, Italy, and Switzerland were out of the question for obvious reasons. America…He paused to consider America, the land of new beginnings. Going there had a certain irony about it, he supposed, but—
“It’s odd,” Mathilda’s voice interrupted his thoughts, “but now that I think on it, I realize you’ve never written a story with a happy ending.”
Sebastian paid no attention to this observation. America was all very well, he thought, and from what he’d heard, a magnificent country, but—
“Perhaps you should.”
The sound of Mathilda’s voice once again intruded. “I beg your pardon?” he asked without taking his gaze from his imagined view.
“I said, perhaps you should write a happy ending.”
Lost in his thoughts, it took a few moments for Mathilda’s words to sink in, but when they did, they brought to mind the words of another woman, the woman he was trying so hard to forget.
For heaven’s sake, Sebastian, some people do fall in love and end up happy for life! It does happen, you know.
At the time, he hadn’t paid Daisy’s words much heed, but now, they struck him like an earthquake. Everything in the world cracked, shook, and shifted. And then, suddenly, he felt as if he was looking at things right side up instead of upside down. He didn’t want to go away. He wanted to live right here at Avermore for the rest of his days, writing books in this library, fishing at Osbourne’s Bend, and making a life. A life with the woman he loved.
“You’re right.” Sebastian started for the door, grabbing the manuscript as he went.
“Where are you going?” Mathilda called after him.
“In search of a happy ending,” he answered, hoping fiction wasn’t the only place to find one.
Daisy inserted a fresh sheet of notepaper into the typewriting machine and turned the roller. She pushed the metal lever three times to bring the sheet to its proper marg
in, then placed her fingers on the keys, found her place midway down the sheet of handwritten manuscript to her right and resumed work.
The novel, Where Passion Flows Free, by Rosamond Delacroix, was terrible, but Daisy was not working at Haughton’s Typewriting and Secretarial Service to offer editorial opinions. She was a typist and stenographer, nothing more. She was paid five shillings per week to convert handwritten manuscripts to type, and to take shorthand dictation when required.
She hadn’t obtained this post through Lucy’s agency. She’d found it herself, and from the moment she had first sat down at this desk, she had vowed that no matter what, she was not going to lose it because of her rash tongue and impulsive nature. Over two months she’d been employed here, and she had not a single reprimand to her credit. Lucy was very proud of her.
He caught her up in his manly arms, she typed, but that was as far as she was able to go before her machine jammed, and she had to stop again. Daisy swung the undercarriage of the Remington upward, saw that the ribbon was caught, and proceeded to begin working it free.
In fact, Lucy had taken the entire situation rather well, much to Daisy’s surprise. There had been no lectures. No recriminations, no censure of any kind. The fact that she’d lost her post in Devonshire had not come as any particular surprise to her sister, but the fact that she’d burst into tears right after announcing it had come as a bit of a shock. Lucy, however, had reacted with all her usual intrepid calm. She had jumped up from the breakfast table and guided her sobbing younger sister up to their rooms. There, with a tiny glass of Mrs. Morris’s horrid damson gin, a stack of linen handkerchiefs, and Lucy’s surprisingly tender sympathy to sustain her, Daisy had poured out the whole story, including a delicately phrased admission of her lost virtue.
When all had been revealed, once Daisy had regained control of her emotions and Lucy’s fierce, protective anger had calmed, and after Daisy had dissuaded her sister from finding Papa’s pistol and using it to shorten Avermore’s lifespan, Daisy had outlined her future plans, including her intent to find her own next job and finish her novel.
In the ten weeks that had passed since then, Daisy had accomplished both goals. Her novel was with Marlowe, being considered, and she was the fastest, most accurate typist and stenographer at the bureau. It wasn’t the exciting post she’d yearned for, but it was hers and she was good at it, and life went on. She tried to be content with that. But sometimes at night, when the lodging house was quiet and everyone else was in bed, Daisy would sit by her window, imagine a maze or a folly or a summerhouse, and remember what it was like to be in love.
All around her, the other typewriters made a raucous cacophony of sound. One of the clerks rushed past her desk and swung the green baize door wide as he entered the main reception area. He left the door open, as the clerks were always wont to do. Daisy, her hands occupied with handfuls of typewriter ribbon, could not get up to close it.
Because she sat nearest to the door, the haughty, female voice of Haughton’s own secretary occasionally floated to her when the door was open. She could hear it now, speaking into the telephone.
“Oh, yes, madam. Haughton’s Typewriting Bureau can send a stenographer to you straightaway. Your address, please?”
Daisy finally freed the jammed ribbon and began the painstaking process of rewinding it back onto the spool without removing it from the machine, but when she heard Miss Bateman say her name, she paused in her task, hopeful.
“Miss Merrick? She’s done work for you before, you say?” There was a pause. “Quite so, your ladyship. She might have a previous engagement, but yes, of course I shall inquire of Mrs. Haughton. Shall I ring you back? Mayfair six—two—four—four? Yes, I have it.”
Daisy wanted to jump for joy. Even on a cold, wet day in November, going out on a call was far better than being cooped up inside the bureau. But when Mrs. Haughton appeared a few moments later and paused before her desk, Daisy managed to contain her exuberance beneath a dignified, ladylike demeanor. “Yes, ma’am?” she said, rising to her feet.
“Six twenty-four Park Lane,” Mrs. Haughton said. “The Marchioness of Kayne requires a stenographer immediately. She asked for you.”
Daisy blinked. Maria had rung up for a stenographer?
Mrs. Haughton held out sixpence. “Here’s fare enough for a taxi to Mayfair and an omnibus back. Well, don’t just stand there dawdling, miss,” she added impatiently when Daisy failed to move. “Fetch your mackintosh, your notebook, and your pencils, and go. It won’t do to keep a marchioness waiting!”
“Yes, ma’am.” Daisy did as she was bid, but she was puzzled. Maria had formerly lived at Little Russell Street, but she had left the lodging house to open a bakery, and had subsequently married a marquess. It was quite a romantic story, worthy, in Daisy’s mind, of a novel. But she couldn’t understand why Maria would need a stenographer. The only thing she could conclude was that her friend was doing this as a favor to her, since being asked for specially by a marchioness would convey a most favorable impression upon Daisy’s employer.
But when the butler at Park Lane had taken her cloak and led her into the gold and white drawing room of Lord Kayne’s magnificent London residence, Daisy found that her friend was not the only one waiting for her.
Seated beside the fair-haired Maria on the sofa was a handsome, dark-haired man Daisy knew quite well. She froze in the doorway as the butler announced her name, and she watched in dismay as Sebastian rose and turned toward her. His face was grave, without its usual ironic half smile, but he was still as handsome as ever, and he still looked much more like a venturing explorer than a writer. Pain twisted her heart at the sight of him, but she couldn’t bear to look away.
“Daisy,” Maria greeted her, stepping forward.
“Maria,” she murmured absently, accepting her friend’s kiss on the cheek without taking her gaze from Sebastian. “You sent for me?”
“I did,” Sebastian corrected, answering for her. “But I had the marchioness place the call.”
“You did? Why?”
That brought the smile. One corner of his mouth curved up a bit. “I thought she’d have better luck persuading you than I would.”
Daisy recovered her surprise, lifting her chin to glare at him, trying to hide the prickle of alarm that ran up her spine. “What do you want?”
“I need a stenographer,” he said simply.
Before she could ask any more questions, Maria spoke again. “I shall leave you to conduct business,” the marchioness said. “I shall be in the library across the corridor if you need me,” she added, and before Daisy could protest her departure, Maria was heading for the door.
“No, Maria, wait!” Daisy cried, but her friend seemed to have gone deaf. She didn’t even pause, walking out of the drawing room without another word and closing the door behind her.
Daisy turned toward Sebastian, hugging her notebook to her chest. “Why on earth do you need a stenographer?”
“Maybe I want to write something?” he suggested.
“I’m leaving,” she said and turned to go, but when he spoke again, his words gave her reason to pause.
“I have something of yours.”
Curiosity got the better of her, and she glanced back at him to find he was holding her copy of Byron, the one he’d given her in the maze.
“Away with your fictions of flimsy romance,’” he quoted as he took a step toward her, “‘those tissues of falsehood which Folly has wove. Give me the mild beam of the soul-breathing glance, or the rapture which dwells on the first kiss of love.’”
The memory of that day in the maze brought a wave of fresh pain ripping through her chest. “Stop it!” she cried. “Don’t quote me poetry about love and kisses! I thought I made it clear there were no more kisses. You certainly made it clear there was no love!”
He held the small volume of poetry out to her. “The book is still yours.”
Daisy bit her lip, staring at the copy of Byron in his outstretched
hand. She’d left it behind on purpose, along with the Crandall. For the same reason. “I can’t accept it,” she said primly. “And now, I must return to work, Lord Avermore. Good day.”
“I am your work, petal. At least for the next hour. I am paying Mrs. Haughton’s establishment for one hour of your time, and I expect to receive it.” At her sound of outrage, he gave her an apologetic look. “I fear if you leave before the hour is up, you might lose your post.”
“This is ridiculous!” she cried, fighting the impulse to run for the door. “Why are you doing this?”
Since she had refused to accept the volume of Byron, he set it on the table beside the sofa, and it was then that she noticed that a sheaf of pages tied with twine was also on the table. He picked it up. “I’ve finished my book. Finished just this morning.”
“Congratulations,” she said, unimpressed. “But that has nothing to do with me.”
“On the contrary. I’m sure Mrs. Haughton would be absolutely delighted to allow Miss Merrick to edit, type, and proof the latest Sebastian Grant novel before it goes to Marlowe Publishing.”
Daisy stared at him, feeling rising dismay and a hint of panic. “You don’t need your manuscript typed,” she said. “You type your own.”
“Since my editor deserted me over two hundred pages ago, at least one third of the book needs to be reviewed for content. Then it will have to be proofed and retyped. I want you to do it, my love. I won’t let anyone else come near it until you’ve approved it. Not even Harry.”
Daisy’s panic deepened into stark fear. “I don’t work for Marlowe Publishing, and I’m not your editor. Nor am I your proofreader, your assistant, your secretary, your writing partner, or your love. I’m nothing to you at all, and—” Her voice broke, much to her mortification, for she couldn’t finish with the lie that hovered on her lips. She couldn’t say he was nothing to her. “I’m nothing to you,” she repeated to reinforce the point.
With Seduction in Mind Page 25