Page 17 of A Baron's Scandalous Quill
“And a lady still,” he remarked simply. The way he said the words made a blush rise to her cheeks. She may have walked into that room feeling as if they were from entirely different worlds, but as she left, there didn’t seem to be so great a distance between her and Lord Lancaster after all.
***
William stood in the window of the parlor, staring out at the track which led from his front door to the London road beyond. Miss Thornton walked along the track, her bonnet pulled close around her ears and her spencer jacket tight across her back.The bottom of her gown was frayed a little, and she tugged at the gown to allow herself to walk freely, revealing that her boots were old, too.
“I know she is perhaps not of the class you pictured for a writer—” Henry began from across the room, but William shook his head urgently.
“Do not think such a thing,” William pleaded. “God’s wounds, Henry, I have read Mr. Baxter’s articles for months now. They’re always my favorites. You think I am going to think the worst of someone because they come from a different class to me? Pfft, hardly.”
He scoffed at the idea. Some of his dearest friends throughout his life had been from a different position to his own. Henry was his dearest friend now, and as a small boy, his closest friend was the stable boy. Strangely, the discovery of that had outraged his father, but not his mother.
His mother had always encouraged William to find a kind soul wherever he looked and a possible friend. His father, George, in contrast, seemed to want to distance himself from anyone poorer than himself as much as possible.
It must have been his resentment of his own past. Perhaps he hated the manner of his birth.
“She is…intriguing,” William murmured, still watching Miss Thornton as she left down the track.
“She’s a beauty.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s what you were thinking.”
“I do not remember asking to be analyzed, Henry,” William said with a laugh, glancing back to see his friend sat nearby, shrugging and holding back his own laugh. “Yes, yes, I know she is beautiful. I wasn’t thinking about that.”
“Of course, you weren’t.” Henry’s dry tone showed he clearly didn’t believe him.
William held back further words.
How could I not think about her in such a way?
It wasn’t just beauty that captivated him. It was the way she talked, the way she looked at him, and the fact that she had this great secret all of her own. She’d carved out a career in a world that did not want her. When no one declared a wish to read a female writer, she had challenged them as if she were MaryWollstonecraft, Miss Radcliffe, or Miss Austen. The admiration that had stirred before now grew tenfold.
A little way down the track, she hesitated and pulled at the hem of her gown, lifting it enough so she could reach down to her boot, for her laces had come undone. She didn’t wear stockings, and the flash of bare skin made William’s heart race. He turned his back on the window, unable to look at her anymore without indulging in scandalous thoughts.
“What was that you were saying about thinking of her purely as a writer?” Henry teased him from across the room, clearly having seen his expression.
“Haven’t you caused enough mischief for one day?”
***
“Becca?”
She froze in the doorway of the house, her hands clutching the reticule in her grasp as her father’s voice echoed through the house.
“Is that you?”
“I’m here, Father.” She tried to keep her voice as level as possible, not wanting him to know about her meeting at that moment, the excitement and the nervousness of it. Creeping toward the nearest open door, she looked into their small sitting room where her father sat.
It was his day off from work. Rather than at work in his lawyer’s office in Covent Garden, he was sat in a small armchair by the fire, reading a paper that rested on his lap.
“Where have you been?” he asked jovially. “Enjoying the weather?” His teasing made her smile, for the bitter wind outside was rattling their old windows.
“Just for a walk. I went to see Charlotte in the print house.”
“Ah, very good.” He nodded approvingly and held up one of the papers on the table beside him. It was theSanders’ Periodical. “I love your latest. As always.”
“Thank you, Father.” She walked further into the room, smiling and taking the paper from him. When she had first written an article under a pseudonym, she hadn’t told him, but in the end, she’d had nothing to fear. After she eventually told him the truth, he was delighted that she had found a way to be herself and still write, despite their friends’ disapproval.
