Temptations of a Wallflower (28 page)

There was one source of solace . . .

Yet when she picked up her quill to write about Lady Josephina and her playful, earthy professor, no words came. Her quill hovered over the paper, dripping
ink. She tossed the pen down and cradled her head in her hands.

God. What had happened to her? Who was she?

A woman without purpose. Without love.

A woman lost.

My body, already primed by thoughts of him, heated even more. I needed him on me. In me.

“How did you find me?” I demanded.

He said nothing, his expression hungry and his eyes sharp. With feline grace he climbed into my bedroom, shutting the window behind him—all the while his eyes never left my face. There was no mistaking the sensuous purpose or intent in his gaze . . .

The Highwayman's Seduction

I
n the predawn hours, Jeremy pushed himself through the water. Harder, faster. Yet with every stroke, he felt the shackles of his anger and sorrow pull at him, threatening to drag him down to the bottom of the lake.

At last, bodily exhausted but still sick at heart, he hauled himself out of the water. Slogging toward his clothes, which waited for him on the shore, he barely felt the cold. It didn't touch him the way the chill of Sarah's deception did.

After toweling off, he began to dress. Nothing felt quite as icy as the space between him and Sarah. He'd
been sleeping in a spare room, all too aware of the cold space beside him in the bed, knowing that she was somewhere else in the house but he was unable to talk to her, to touch her.

His routine these past few days had been grimly similar. Wake alone hours before dawn, walk the long distance to Hampstead Heath, swim until the sun began to rise, then wander the city aimlessly, wondering what was to be done.

He had the answer his father craved. He knew the identity of the Lady of Dubious Quality. But to expose her meant ruining his own wife.

Damp but clothed, Jeremy strode from the lake, back south toward the city. He felt hollow, ghostlike. He missed Sarah, and he was furious with her. He did not know a man could feel both emotions at once. He didn't know anything.

There were no solutions anywhere, only more conundrums.

S
arah sat upright in bed. A distant clock chimed half past two—not that it mattered.

She barely slept anymore and went to bed simply as a matter of habit. These past few days since the revelation, other than her visit to McKinnon's, she hadn't had the strength or energy to venture much beyond the threshold of her borrowed bedroom. Yet whenever she'd attempted to close her eyes and surrender to slumber, her mind had goaded her to wakefulness. Every now and then, she'd drifted off for a handful of minutes, or an hour, but nothing resembling real rest. Food, too, held no appeal. Nor did reading. Or writing.

Her only understanding of the passage of time was the maid coming in every morning to tend the fire and open the curtains. Sarah didn't bother going down for breakfast anymore. She'd only see Jeremy, and that was a fresh agony every time, the distance between them marking what they'd lost.

She had no husband. She was unable to write. Something had to change.

This cannot go on.

The thought rang in her head, loud as a bell, as she stared at the darkened bedroom. This situation was insupportable, intolerable. Unbearable.

Clearly, Jeremy hadn't told his father yet about her identity as the Lady of Dubious Quality, or else she would have been thrown out into the street. What was he waiting for? What was it that
she
waited on, for that matter? Action had to be taken, down one path or the other. He wasn't acting for some reason—so she had to.

Throwing off the covers, she rose from bed. The cold bothered her little anymore, but she donned her night rail and slippers as from rote. Opening the bedroom door, she peered into the darkened hall. No one was about.

She didn't bother with a candle or lamp. She knew the way because she'd walked it countless times but never had the courage to knock once she'd arrived. This time, she was determined to go in rather than lingering outside Jeremy's door.

Despite her resolve, she hesitated once she arrived at his room. Her hand hovered over the doorknob. What would he do? But the worst had already come to pass. Nothing could hurt her anymore.

That wasn't true. She had only to see the hurt and anger in his eyes or the stance of his shoulders, and it set off a round of sharp pain that would not fade.

But she could not hide from that hurt. She had to shape her fate, not wait passively, leaving it to providence or Jeremy or anything else to push her down the path. When it had come to her writing, she hadn't sat idly but had moved and decided her course of action. Now had to be the same.

No light shone from beneath the door. Pressing her ear to the wood, she heard nothing. Was he even within?

Sarah opened the door. She stepped into the blackness of the unfamiliar room, closing the door as quietly as she could behind her. It took a minute for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, the fire having gone out. When they did, she managed to pick out a dresser, desk, chairs, and, between two windows, a canopied bed. The draperies on the bed were drawn.

He was here. Asleep.

She took a cautious step toward the bed, her feet almost noiseless on the carpeting.

“Who's there?” he demanded, breaking the silence.

She nearly jumped. After taking a steadying breath, she answered. “Me.”
Your wife,
she almost added.

“Sarah?” The curtains on the bed parted, and Jeremy looked out. It was too dark to read his expression, but his tone was puzzled. “What are you doing here?” Then, alarmed, he added, “Is something wrong?”

“Everything,” she said.

He made a low sound, something halfway between a laugh and a grunt. “True enough. But you aren't ill?”

“No,” she answered, though she wasn't certain if some kind of sickness hadn't overtaken her. A sickness not of the body but the soul.

“Why are you here?” he asked again.

She drew nearer to the bed. “Because I have to tell you something.”

“At half past two in the morning?” So he hadn't been asleep but had heard the clock, just as she had.

“Don't,” she cautioned when he moved to light a candle. “I need the darkness,” she admitted, “to say what I must.”

The bedclothes rustled as he drew back the draperies. In the halcyon days of their marriage, he'd slept either in drawers or nude, and a faint gleam of moonlight from the window now revealed the planes of his bare chest as he sat up, propping himself against the headboard.

He crossed his arms. “Say what you must.”

Sarah continued to hover, trying to decide where to go. She sat herself gingerly down on the edge of the bed. At least he didn't try to move away from her. His body was solid on the mattress and his heat radiated near, but not near enough to touch. Several inches separated them, but it might as well have been a mile.

“These past few days . . .” she said, not looking at him. “I didn't know a person could suffer this way. Not without being killed by their suffering. But I'm still alive. We both continue to live. But
how
are we living? In misery. This . . . has to stop.”

“You're right,” he said after a pause. “Somehow, some way, things must alter.”

“Before I continue,” she murmured, “there's some
thing I have to say.” She took a deep breath. “I'm sorry. For the hurt I caused you. It was never intentional. That might not make it any better, but I am sorry, Jeremy.”

“Because you did something wrong, or because you got caught doing it?” His voice was caustic.

She fought to keep from flinching. “A little of both. I knew that writing as the Lady of Dubious Quality was dangerous. Yet I couldn't stop myself.”

“Why, for God's sake?” he demanded. “Why risk so much with your lies?”

Frustration with him and herself threatened to boil over. “I don't know if I can make you understand what those books—what
writing
—means to me.”

“Illuminate me,” he snapped.

She turned to face him, even though she could barely make out his features in the dim room. “Ever since I was small, since I learned to read, I've been drawn to writing. I used to scribble my own fairy tales. Stories of princesses rescuing princes. Young girls going on quests and becoming heroines. I would bring these fairy tales to my mother, who found them charming. Until I began to take them seriously. I wanted to turn them into books. I wanted to share my stories with the world. They made me feel . . . important. Significant. As though I was more than a pawn to be bartered to the highest bidder.”

She drew a breath, recalling what came next. “When my parents both realized that my interest in writing was more than just an adorable little hobby, they forbade me from taking up a pen for anything but a journal, correspondence, or”—she shuddered—“planning gardens.”

“But you didn't stop,” he deduced.

“I kept it up, secretly,” she confessed. “Started several not particularly good novels, all of which I burned when I realized how terrible they were. But despite that, I continued to write. Late at night, or when I was supposed to be writing letters.”

“I remember all your letters,” he said bitterly. “It surprised me how many people you wrote to.”

“I couldn't have told you the truth,” she said. “It would have torn us apart.”

“That's come to pass,” he said darkly.

“So it has,” she said, sorrowful to her very marrow.

“It's a fair distance from writing fairy tales and novels to taking on the identity of the Lady of Dubious Quality,” he noted.

“Not as far as you might think,” she said. “My early writing efforts strived hard to be
significant
. I thought I wanted to be the next Maria Edgeworth or Fanny Burney. I believed I needed to write books that were
important
. But none of my attempts succeeded.”

“Yet you kept on trying.”

“I did,” she said. “Even after my come-out, I kept going. Kept pushing myself. And would have gone on in frustration if it hadn't been for one misdelivered book.”

“Which book was that?”

“
La secrete de la fille de laiterie—The Dairymaid's Secret
by Jean-Louis LeBrun.” Even speaking of that slim little volume now made her smile. “I'd ordered a French novel from McKinnon's, and the LeBrun was delivered to me by mistake. As soon as I started read
ing it, I knew that my life wasn't going to be the same. Returning it was impossible—I devoured the book. Read and reread it a dozen times.”

“But . . . it was filthy.”

“Exactly.” She nodded. “I'd known a little about sex—just overheard conversations, and I'd seen one of our maids kissing her sweetheart. My own body had its demands, but I never knew . . . I had no idea . . . the
bounty
of sex. How freeing the pursuit of pleasure could be. And the book itself was so . . . direct. Unapologetic. Just a taste of that, and I wanted more.”

“More?” He sounded genuinely curious now. “Girls of good breeding aren't supposed to want more.”

“As a vicar, you know as well as I do that that's ridiculous. If girls and women didn't enjoy sex, if they weren't curious about it, there would be far fewer people in the world. I daresay, there would be
no
people in the world.”

“True,” he acknowledged.

“So I ordered half a dozen French novels,” she went on. “McKinnon never chided me. Never withheld from me, or threatened to tell my parents. I think he thought it refreshing that a woman would seek to further her own education. It wasn't long after reading so many of those books that it occurred to me:
I can do this
. I could write my own ‘French' novel. So . . . I did.”

She shook her head. “It was . . . revelatory. I loved to write but hadn't done it well. Not until I penned my own erotic novel. And then . . .” Her gaze turned inward, remembering the feelings stirred in her as she'd written her first sexual tale. “I
found
myself. My voice, at last.
Here it was, all this time, but I'd needed to find the right subject.”

“Sex,” he said flatly.

“Not merely sex, but women finding sexual fulfillment, finding themselves through the expressions of their bodies. We've been taught, us females, that we aren't supposed to know what we want, that men are supposed to guide us in everything sensual and earthy—but why? Why can't we know what we want, what we desire?”

“I don't know,” he said tightly after a pause. “Fear of Eve, I suppose. Of women.”

“If we women had as much knowledge as men, it makes us both stronger. It doesn't take away power—it adds to it.”

He spoke, tension threading through his voice. “Why publish what you'd written? You put yourself in jeopardy.” He accused her with his tone.

She mulled this over. “Because I wanted others to find the freedom I'd found in writing those books. What I wrote gave me release and pleasure. But more than that,” she went on, growing in strength, “I wanted to stop living in the shadows. They called me the Watching Wallflower. Writing that first book . . . was a way for me to claim another identity.” She smiled viciously to herself. “No one knew who I truly was. And I liked it.”

He said nothing, so she continued. “I saw that there was a publisher of English-language ‘French' novels,” she explained. “I approached them with a query. They were intrigued enough by the notion that I was a lady of
quality—we started working together. Through letters, of course. Never in person. Even then, I was careful. It was always dangerous.”

The word
dangerous
reverberated. The quietness of her life was nothing but an illusion.

Running her fingers over the coverlet's stitching, she went on. “They couldn't keep copies on the shelves at booksellers'.” She wasn't able to hide the pride in her voice. This was her accomplishment. Something she'd done entirely on her own, without anyone's assistance. “My publisher asked for more.”

“And you gave him other books,” he said with that same edge in his words.