Page 91 of Temptations of a Wallflower
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. Buthoware 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 something 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—whatwriting—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 besignificant. I thought I wanted to be the next Maria Edgeworth or Fanny Burney. I believed I needed to write books that wereimportant. 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?”
