Page 3 of Burning Secrets of a Lady's Pen
In the stillness of the Florentine nights, I find solace in the echoes of your promises.
I never much fancied being a kept woman.
That wording is wrong. I was going to continue on to say something to the effect that if being kept meant being on your arm, it would be worth it, but I forgot the connotation of the words until after I wrote them. I’m exercising great restraint as a writer, I’ll have you know—in sending you my first draft of every letter raw and unedited.
It’s too brash to say I would want to be a kept woman if it meant being yours, but Lord help me if the temptation isn’t there. To be even more brash, I suppose I could request a short engagement. I imagine after we are married, kissing you whenever I desire would be well within my right.
Each word penned by your hand breathes life into my longing heart. Though oceans may separate us, know that my love for you remains steadfast and true. I will say that four-letter word if you fear it. If I am to be bold, I will be doubly so.
I will return home in the next two weeks.
Forever yours,
Imelda
Imelda had read and reread the letters inside of her briefcase so many times the words were imprinted upon her very mind. She had devoured them, both the ones sent to her and those that she had hurriedly copied before sending off. She had sent her first drafts, she had been honest in that, but she had needed to keep some record of what she had said. She always did.
But Corin never answered her last letter.
And she had spent the entirety of the rest of her trip in Florence and the time traveling back home thinking about it and wondering what might have kept him from doing so.
Corin had been a fantasy.
He had been every literary masterpiece rolled into one bound between the finest of leather and crafted by the most studious of hands, and Imelda—Imelda had wrapped herself in the memory of him ever since the night he had departed.
It was hardly academic for her to fall in love with a man she had only shared the presence of for two weeks. It was hardlyintelligentto become so tied up in him. But…
The knocker of Old Laurel Manor was loud in the otherwise silent house, her whole body jumping as she tapped her pen idly against the empty page in front of her.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The heavy metal against the wood had her hastening to rise from her desk as she barely refrained from running her ink-smudged fingers down her face.
Corin.
God help her but she had to stop thinking about him.
Her mother and father had gone to call on the Iversons not but an hour before, and Hilda and Carrington were both out running errands for the house. That left only her to answer the door, though who would be calling midafternoon in the Lancashire countryside was beyond her.
“I’m coming!” she called out as the dreadedthudstarted again. “Just—”
Trying not to worry over the fact that she had no time to straighten the messy bun of her unruly hair or at least somewhat ready herself for being seen by another person.
“So sorry.” She huffed as she threw open the front door, leaning on the doorjamb and offering the person on the other side of the wooden paneling a wide, apologetic smile.
One that slid right off of her face the moment that she recognized the dark brown curls and tawny gaze staring back at her.
“Corin!” Her shock melted into delight as he nodded, her body straightening off of the jamb and her skin tingling with that same fiery current that it had the month before when in his presence. “You’re here!”
She hadn’t been sure after the absence of his letter.
Oh, it was so difficult not to throw herself across that short distance and into his arms and—
“You…are here, aren’t you?” she asked, her voice more hesitant as she noticed the marked lack of a smile on his face. For one brief moment, she was terrified that she might have stepped into some horrid nightmare.
“I am,” Corin answered cordially.
Cordially.
