Page 31 of Temptations of a Wallflower
“Don’t you care for the burletta?” Mrs. Boyle asked. “Lady Marwood is quite celebrated.”
“Her tragedies are finely written, but too gloomy,” her mother replied. “Life is difficult enough without forcing ourselves to endure someone else’s suffering.”
Sarah’s stories celebrated the earthy, joyous part of life and left it at that. No need to worry about practicalities or how her characters would go on for the rest of their lives. No, she happily wrote about sex, knowing that her readers would get to enjoy themselves whenever they picked up one of her books, leaving the cares of the mundane world behind, if only for a few hours.
Sarah gladly shouldered the responsibility. She’d no desire to write “serious literature.” It was too often moralizing, or crammed full of sorrow. Escape had its own important value. She would never flatter herselfinto thinking she could change the world, but she didn’t want to. That task would be left to other writers, other minds. She wanted only to entertain, and counted herself lucky that she had the opportunity to do so.
“It’s hard to believe,” Lady Egerton exclaimed, “that the playwright married Lord Marwood!”
Sarah’s mother sniffed. “A topsy-turvy world we live in, when a viscount marries a commoner—and a writer, at that.”
Sarah thought it all quite romantic, frankly.
Their voices hushed as the curtain to their box was swept aside. A darkly handsome, Byronic-looking man stepped inside. He looked every inch the rogue, with his long black hair, piercing eyes, and sensuous movement. Viscount Marwood, the very man they’d been speaking of and London’s most notorious rake. Well, hehadbeen a rake, until he’d proposed to Mrs. Delamere onstage, and the playwright had accepted him. They’d married not that long ago. If only Sarah had been in the audience the night of the proposal, she could have seen the drama unfold before her very eyes.
The viscount didn’t seem entirely glad to be in a theater box with older matrons and a wallflower, yet he quickly covered his lack of enthusiasm with a smile and bow.
“Ladies,” he murmured. “My greatest pleasure.”
“Lord Marwood,” the duchess said, inclining her head and offering her hand. The viscount took it and pressed a kiss to the back of her knuckles. “My felicitations on your, ah, recent nuptials.”
“Thank you, Your Grace. I am delirious with happiness,” Lord Marwood said without a trace of irony.
While Sarah might have normally been intrigued by a man so infamous, she paid him no mind. Not when Jeremy strode in behind him, wearing all black, his curly hair swept back to reveal the clean contours of his face.
Sarah’s heart hammered. She half-rose from her chair, then sat back down, fanning herself.
“May I present my cousin,” the viscount said, waving toward Jeremy. “Mr. Jeremy Cleland.”
Jeremy bowed, the movement elegant and restrained. “An honor,” he said. His gaze immediately went to Sarah, and she couldn’t make herself look away.
She found her voice. “Will you join us for the performance?”
“Much obliged,” Lord Marwood said before Jeremy could answer, “but I have my own box, and my bride awaits me.” He said this with a glow of happiness. “Though,” Lord Marwood added, glancing over at his cousin, who continued to gaze at Sarah, “I can spare Jeremy.”
“Oh, but we don’t want to keep family apart,” Lady Wakefield said airily. Sarah wanted to kick her.
“Nonsense,” Lord Marwood answered with a wave of his hand. “I’m sure Jeremy would relish the chance to get away from an old sinner like myself.”
“Sin is contagious,” Jeremy said, nodding.
“Let him stay, Mama,” Sarah said quietly but urgently to her mother.
Her mother sighed, as though put upon. Clearly she felt that entertaining Jeremy was a waste of time. Yet she said, “Very well. Do sit, Mr. Cleland.”
“Maggie and I shall see you after the performance,”Lord Marwood said with a chuckle, then disappeared.
Jeremy took a seat just behind Sarah. She could sense his rangy, warm presence like a fire at her back. But she kept her gaze firmly on the stage, as if testing herself. Could she spend at least ten minutes in his presence without actually looking at him?
“Lady Sarah,” he murmured. His breath, lightly scented with tobacco and whiskey, fanned gently against her neck.
“Mr. Cleland,” she answered. “It still shocks me that Lord Marwood is your cousin. Rather a diverse family tree.”
“Since Marwood’s married,” he said, “his mania for the theater has been replaced with a mania of an entirely different kind. One that seems to make my cousin very happy. Poor bloke.”
“Why ‘poor’?” Sarah asked, turning around in her seat. Blast, she hadn’t lasted nearly as long as she’d hoped, but she was rewarded by looking upon him again. She glanced quickly at her mother and was happy to see that Lady Wakefield was too engaged in conversation with her companions to notice Sarah’s own discussion with Jeremy. “Surely, as a man of the cloth, you believe in the sanctity of love.”
“I do,” he said at once, holding up his hands. “I believe love is a true, beautiful, and solemn thing.”
