Page 96 of Temptations of a Wallflower
“From scribbled page to printed sheet,” Lady Ashford said with a not-insignificant smile.
“Do you . . . write forThe Hawk’s Eye,as well?”
Lady Ashford smoothed her skirts. “Not as much as I used to, since the staff has expanded considerably these past months and I’m more managerial than creative. But I do have a regular column once a week. The Hawk’s Talon. It’s a new feature.”
Good God.Boththese women were also writers? What was the likelihood that they would not only be friends but also sitting in Sarah’s drawing room right this moment?
They were so damnedlucky,these two women. Did they know the depths of their fortune?
She felt a pained expression cross her face, unable to stop it.
“Do you find my calling distasteful?” Lady Ashford said coolly.
“No! Not at all,” Sarah said quickly. “It’s only . . . well . . .” She wasn’t sure how to explain it. She couldn’t tell these women the truth—she barely knew them, and she wasn’t certain they could be trusted, even though the three of them had something in common.
“I’m something of a dabbler at writing, myself,” Sarah finally said. It was as close to the truth as she could get without jeopardizing everything.
Both Lady Ashford and Lady Marwood brightened.
“What do you write?” Lady Marwood asked.
“Stories, mostly,” Sarah prevaricated. “But . . . I don’t do it anymore.”
“Why not?” Lady Ashford demanded.
“Oh . . .” Sarah feigned a shrug. “Married life keeps me so busy.”
“But if you enjoy it,” Lady Ashford said firmly, “you should keep at it. No matter what.”
“It’s not that simple,” Sarah answered. “I should think that both of you would know that. You’re women of title, of consequence. Writing doesn’t fit into that equation.”
Lady Ashford and Lady Marwood exchanged a glance. “Wemakeit fit,” Lady Marwood said.
“And if Society sneers at you?”
“Let it,” Lady Ashford declared. “My marriage to Daniel cost him friends, but only those of little value. Those that mattered, stayed.”
“Cam never gave a fig what thetonthought of him,” added Lady Marwood. “My own position in Society has always been on the outside. If a few snobs fell away or stopped coming to my shows, I couldn’t bring myself to care.”
“Forgive me, but . . . you both married into the aristocracy, didn’t you?” Sarah remembered now the minor scandal that had happened when Lord Ashford had taken a commoner, and a woman whoworked,for a wife.
“We did,” Lady Marwood said. Her accent wasn’t the most genteel, but it did have the rounded tones of one who was in the theater. “But we had just as much to lose as our prospective husbands. Our livelihoods could have suffered severely because of the unions. In truth, the decision to marry wasn’t an easy one, not for either of us. I broke it off with Cam, thinking I had to choose. Writing or love.”
“And I thought that a commoner and an earl could never be married,” Lady Ashford noted. “I’d never give upThe Hawk’s Eye.I believed I had to pick one or the other.”
It was as if Sarah had been struck. Though she wanted to cover her face with her hands to hide, she couldn’t. Yet she felt shaken down to her very core.
“What . . . changed your minds?” she pressed.
Both Lady Ashford and Lady Marwood smiled. “Very persistent men,” said Lady Marwood. “They both let us know that they wouldn’t be deterred. They were determined, and, in truth, both Eleanor and I were miserable without them.”
Sarah had deliberately given up the thing that gave her life meaning to show Jeremy that she was trustworthy. Yet these women had their husbands’ faith as well as their work.
“Why do you write?” she asked them.
“What do you mean?” asked Lady Marwood, plainly baffled.
“What makes you do it?” Sarah pressed. She shook her head. “Especially in the face of societal disapproval.”
