Page 16 of Temptations of a Wallflower
“Call it intellectual curiosity,” Jeremy said. “It has nothing to do with faith. I merely want to know what kind of person could pen such works.”
“You aren’t going to shut her down?”
Jeremy couldn’t outright lie, so he offered, “I’d like to talk with her.” Which was true. What made someone write such works, especially if they had so much to lose by being discovered? It had to be some kind of compulsion. Unless they needed the money that badly. Perhaps whoever it was might be a commoner. Or an impoverished noble.
Whoever it was, Jeremy needed to understand that desire, that drive. Perhaps something could be learnedthere, though he wasn’t certain what. Vicars and authors of smut generally had little to unite them.
Yet the world was a strange and mysterious place. It shifted and changed from moment to moment, revealing connections that might never have been seen before. Consider himself and Lady Sarah. They were two people with very little in common, yet it turned out they shared an attraction and a potential bond.
Lady Sarah wouldn’t think much of him if he revealed his true reason for coming to London—as though it might taint him somehow. Perhaps, if their paths ever crossed again, she would ignore him or be cuttingly polite and distant.
A pain stabbed in the center of his chest. His fingers rubbed absently at his heart. His health was good, so why did he feel this ache?
Was it . . . the thought of losing any connection with Lady Sarah? She seemed to be one of the true bright spots here in the city, and he was loath to lose her light.
“Talk?” Stalham asked.
“Talk,” Jeremy echoed. He hoped God would forgive him the omission. It was for the greater good, he hoped.
Stalham scratched at his face. “Even if I wanted to tell you who the Lady was—and I don’t, because she sells more books being anonymous—I couldn’t.”
“Why not?” Jeremy demanded.
“It’s all done through secret channels, you see.” Stalham stood and paced to one corner of his office, hooking his thumbs into his braces. “She routes all her manuscripts through a fourth party.”
“Who?”
“No idea.” Stalham shrugged. “Once I tried to have the chap that delivers the manuscripts followed, but he shook the tail—that is, he lost the man I had follow him.”
“You must have tried more than once,” Jeremy deduced.
“Half a dozen. All came up empty. I even hired me a Bow Street Runner to get the job done.” He shook his head. “To no avail. They couldn’t find her. Whoever she is—”
“Or he,” interjected Jeremy.
“Or he,” Stalham allowed with a nod, “they don’t want to be found. They’re damn—I mean, quite—careful.”
On that, Jeremy had to agree. The steps taken by the Lady to protect her identity were indeed elaborate. It would take a considerable amount of thought and deduction to ferret her out. Yet, far from deterring him from his goal, he found his excitement and interest growing, like a spark that wanted to burn hotter and higher. This was a world of which he knew little—a slightly lurid realm of the senses.
Who was she? Why did she want to protect herself so badly? Idle curiosity shifted, became stronger.
How long had it been since he’d been truly challenged, since his mind had been fully engaged in a pursuit, something beyond his constraining parish duties?
Too long.
“Afraid I can’t be much more help to you, Mr. Cleland,” Stalham continued. “But, as I said, even if I knew who the Lady was, I wouldn’t tell even you, a man of God. The sales of her books help put my children through school and keep my wife in new gowns, so I’d be a blasted fool to give up my golden goose.”
A knot of regret formed in Jeremy’s stomach. He didn’t want to keep Stalham’s children from their education, and if finding out the Lady’s secret meant the end of that, Jeremy wasn’t certain how he could shoulder the guilt. But his father and uncle relied on him to see this task through. He couldn’t let them down—because the earl would never permit it. And Jeremy had to consider the good he could accomplish if, given the freedom of more money, he could establish his own charitable organizations. Perhaps he’d assist the widows of men killed in the war, or help returning veterans find employment. Surely that had to outweigh the benefit of a few prurient books.
“Thank you for your time,” Jeremy said, rising. He shook Stalham’s hand. “Yet you ought to consider publishing something a little more . . . wholesome. It might help out when it comes time for a tallying of accounts.” He looked heavenward.
Stalham laughed. “Oh, I’m too far gone for that, Mr. Cleland, but I thank you for your concern. Include me in your prayers.”
“I will,” Jeremy promised. Given how many inveterate sinners he met here in London, it would take him a full two hours to get through his evening prayers. He prayed for himself, most of all, a man too much on the edge of dissolution. His encounter with Lady Sarah had him kneeling at his bedside for a long, long time the previous evening as he’d tried to stop thoughts of her from filling his mind.
Jeremy exited Stalham’s office, then made his wayback through the main room full of desks, where writers and clerks watched him with more curiosity. He smiled and nodded as he went, then emerged onto the street. Setting his hat back on his head, he glanced up at the sky. It was hazy and stained with coal smoke, with a faint sun struggling to pierce the urban gloom.
He’d hit a temporary obstacle, but he would prevail. In that, he was determined.
