Chapter 3: A Scandalous Manuscript
The porcelain mask lasted until the door of her bedchamber clicked shut. Then it shattered.
Selina leaned against the cool wood, the borrowed calm falling away in pieces. Her knees gave out, and she slid to the floor, the layers of her silk gown pooling around her like shed petals. She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, but all she could see was the dark, all she could feel was the insistent, burning memory of his mouth on hers. The scent of bergamot and old books seemed woven into her skin.
“Stupid,” she whispered to the empty room. “Reckless, idiotic—”
A draft from the window made the candle on her writing desk gutter. The flame jumped, casting wavering shadows over the chaos of papers. Her sanctuary now felt like a crime scene. There, stacked neatly beside the silver locket tangled in its inkwell, was the latest manuscript. The Viscount’s Secret Sin. Three hundred pages of pure folly.
She pushed herself up, the motion sharp with anger—at him, at herself, at the entire choking apparatus of expectation that made her secret necessary. She stalked to the desk, snatched up the heavy sheaf of papers, and carried it to the cold hearth. A single log lay in the grate, unlit.
This was the only way. Burn the evidence. Burn the fantasy. The kiss had proven the danger was not abstract; it was a man with clever hands and a devastating smile who could trace a pseudonym back to her as easily as he’d traced her jaw. Her secret was a lit fuse. This manuscript was the powder keg.
She took the tinderbox, her hands shaking. The flint sparked. A small, hungry flame caught on the charcloth. She held it to the corner of the top page.
The paper blackened, curled. A wave of heat kissed her fingertips.
She watched the fire begin to eat the first line: Lord Vane had never believed in love until he found her hiding in the garden, her eyes full of storm and defiance…
It was her. It was him. It was every forbidden thrill she’d poured onto the page before she’d ever met him, and now it felt like a prophecy. The flame crawled upward, threatening to consume the whole stack.
A sound escaped her—a raw, choked gasp. She dropped the burning page and smothered the fire on the manuscript with her bare hands, beating at it until only a charred, ruined corner remained. The smell of scorched paper filled the air. She clutched the pages to her chest, her breath sobbing. She couldn’t do it. The words were her marrow. Destroying them felt like erasing a part of her soul.
Defeated, she slumped into her chair. The damaged manuscript sat before her like an accusation. Her gaze fell on a fresh sheet of paper. Her hand, moving of its own volition, uncorked the inkwell and pulled a quill from the tangle of the locket’s chain.
She did not burn the story. She wrote a new one.
The quill scratched furiously, a frantic, cathartic rhythm. She wrote not as her pseudonym, but as herself, pouring the shock of the library onto the page in a torrent of thinly veiled fiction. He kissed her not as a gentleman kisses a lady, but as a man starved kisses salvation. It was a conquest and a surrender, all at once. In the dark, every pretense fell away, leaving only the terrifying, glorious truth of want…
She wrote until her hand cramped and the candle burned low, transmuting panic into prose. When she finally set the quill down, the sky outside her window was the dull gray of pre-dawn. She felt hollowed out and curiously calm. The secret was still hers, locked in a new cipher. She hid the fresh pages inside a volume of boring sermons on her shelf and fell into bed, her mind blissfully numb.
A sharp rap on her door woke her what felt like moments later. Sunlight streamed through the curtains.
“Enter,” she croaked, her voice rough with exhaustion.
Her maid, Bess, bustled in, her round face curious. She carried a small, flat parcel wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with twine. “This just came for you, my lady. No card. The footman said a street boy delivered it, paid handsomely for silence.”
Selina sat up, the sheets pooling at her waist. A cold trickle of foreboding cut through the haze. “Give it here.”
The parcel was heavier than it looked. She dismissed Bess with a murmur about breakfast and waited for the door to close. Her fingers trembled as she picked at the knot. The twine gave way, the paper falling open to reveal a book.
Her breath stopped.
It was A Lady’s Folly, her second published novel. The gaudy cover felt ludicrous in the clear morning light. But it was not a pristine copy. It was worn, the spine cracked from reading. She opened it.
The margins were filled with ink.
A bold, masculine script annotated nearly every page. Not criticisms of the prose, but reactions to the story. Beside a scene where the heroine argued with the duke, he had written: Would she truly say this? Or would she smile and cut him deeper with silence? Next to a passionate embrace: Too tidy. Passion is messy. It smudges the ink.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She flipped wildly. There, on the final page, the note was not in the margin but centered, written with a fresh, dark slash of ink.
Your villain lacks conviction. Your protagonist is too cautious by half. The ending is a coward’s compromise.
We should discuss your editorial revisions.
Hyde Park. The old oak at the Serpentine. One hour after dawn tomorrow.
Do not be late.
-B
The book tumbled from her hands onto the bedspread as if it had burned her. He hadn’t just discovered her secret. He had read her. He had dissected her work with an intelligence that was both thrilling and utterly terrifying. This was not a threat of exposure. It was a challenge. An invitation to a duel she had never agreed to fight.
“Bess!” The call was too sharp.
The maid reappeared. “Yes, my lady?”
“What… what time is it?”
“Just past seven, ma’am.”
Dawn had already come and gone. He was out there now, perhaps, waiting by the Serpentine, expecting her to cower and obey. A fierce, rebellious heat flared in her chest, burning away the last of the fear. He thought to summon her like a character in one of her own books? To critique her work as if they were literary colleagues?
She swung her legs out of bed, her bare feet hitting the cool floor.
“My riding habit,” Selina said, her voice now clear and edged with steel. “The dark green one. And tell Jacobs to have Orion saddled. I’m taking an early ride.”
“In Hyde Park, my lady?” Bess asked, eyes wide.
“Precisely.” Selina stood, looking at the annotated novel on her bed. A slow, dangerous smile touched her lips. He wanted to discuss editorial revisions? Fine. She would give him a piece of her mind no margin could contain. Let him see how cautious his protagonist could be when cornered. Let him learn the consequence of mistaking a writer for her heroine.
The game was indeed afoot. And she was done merely writing the rules.