Page 13 of A Waltz on the Wild Side (The Wild Wynchesters #6)

The badger immediately lost all interest in Jacob, its fangs and claws disappearing as it curled into a furry ball next to Jacob’s stocking feet and fell asleep.

Shredded pink stockings. And lightly shredded feet.

Miss Henry waved a hand. “Sally’s around here somewhere, too. Be advised.”

Be advised ? “Is Sally the polecat?”

Miss Henry shook her head. “Had to return the polecat to the wild. Kept biting the postman.”

What the devil was Sally then, the friendly neighborhood rhinoceros?

“Badgers are the natural predator of hedgehogs,” Jacob informed Miss Henry.

“Mm-hm,” she said without glancing up.

Perhaps she’d acquired Rufus for that precise reason. So he would attack innocent little hedgehogs like Tickletums. Or anyone who smelled hedgehog-friendly.

There could not be a clearer sign that Jacob and Miss Henry did not belong together.

Keeping watch on the allegedly napping beast out of the corner of one eye, Jacob made his way around the Henry home on scratched but silent feet.

There were only four rooms, including the kitchen. The next room was a small parlor, containing a pair of armchairs, an unlit fireplace, and mantel piled with curious artifacts. He made a note of the contents on a blank page of the poetry journal he carried in his pocket:

thick wax impression of a cameo

travel cutlery

unicorn-shaped lock plate

loose gears (from old pocket watch?)

Back when Jacob was still confined to the circus, how he would have longed for lodgings such as these! A parlor in which to place his belongings. Having any belongings, to begin with. A private bedchamber of his own? Unthinkable luxury.

Then he’d met Baron Vanderbean, and everything had changed. Instead of sleeping in a tent that smelled of animals, Jacob suddenly lived in a two-wing residence with so many rooms, most were left empty. It often still didn’t feel real.

The Henry home was a vast improvement over the poverty of Jacob’s youth, but still a far cry from the Wynchester mansion in Islington. It was curious that Quentin should have a trust fund yet only be able to afford cramped rooms in a rather poor section of town.

Normally, enquiring about someone else’s finances was none of one’s business, but in this case, perhaps there was a pertinent detail the Wynchesters ought to know.

Jacob turned from the parlor and faced the other two rooms. Both bedchamber doors were open.

Miss Henry’s was barely large enough to fit a narrow bed and a small wardrobe.

It was so neat, it almost looked as though no one lived there.

From this, Jacob could only conclude that the detritus in the parlor belonged to Quentin and not the missing lad’s cousin.

The final room was Quentin’s bedchamber. The interior looked like a tempest had blown through, followed by a hurricane, and perhaps a tidal wave. Or wolves.

Jacob wished he were with those wolves now. He was not at all convinced he was the right Wynchester to send on an exploratory investigation. His domain was inside the barn, not out in the field. And he absolutely did not know what to do with Miss Henry.

Nonetheless, he tried to pick his way through Quentin’s room as carefully as he could. He jotted down notes of everything he observed, in case it was useful later.

The number and style of waistcoats. The rapier under the bed, next to a dried-out paint set.

A pile of chalk, some of which had been crushed to powder.

A collection of glass jars filled with random objects: marbles, feathers, tiny wheels.

A stack of penny caricatures poking fun at Parliament and polite society.

And… what was this? Jacob flipped through the next stack of clippings with bemusement. A four-inch stack of gossip columns and newspaper articles about the Wynchester family. Everything from cases they’d won to hand-painted illustrations of Chloe’s latest bonnets.

Perhaps Tommy was right. Was this what Miss Henry had elided, when she’d stressed that her cousin had gone missing dressed as a normal boy? Did Quentin long for ribbons and ostrich feathers, only to be told by society—and his cousin—that men were not allowed such fripperies?

When he felt he’d amassed a comprehensive list of the disparate props making up the missing lad’s life, Jacob made his way back to the kitchen.

He came up behind Miss Henry as silently as he could, not because he wished to startle her, but because he did not wish to wake the sleeping attack badger at her feet.

“All finished?” she asked, again without looking up.

Apparently, he had not been as silent as he’d thought. At least he hadn’t awakened the badger.

“For now,” he answered, then hesitated. “I came across quite a bit of intelligence gathered in relation to my family.”

“He’s your biggest admirer,” she said in the same tone as one might regard a fondness for bathing in cesspools. “He’d rather be related to you than to me.”

A sore spot, clearly. Perhaps there was a reason Quentin wished to separate himself from his family. Was there a nice way to ask if perhaps the sketch Marjorie had made of him didn’t quite tell the whole story? No easy way, but out with it.

“If your cousin is off with a lover and you’re not giving me the details we need to narrow the search, we’re not going to be able to help you.”

“To my knowledge, Quentin has never been enamored with anyone,” Miss Henry said in surprise. “Though he has acted uncharacteristically secretive lately, he knows all I care about is his safety and his happiness. I cannot imagine him keeping the identity of a paramour secret for long.”

“Can you not? You were careful to mention your cousin left home looking like an ordinary young man. Did he often dress like a woman?”

She blinked at him. “What?”

“If your cousin usually lives as a different sex, or might have gone into hiding because he fell in love with another man and feared your disapproval—”

“For heaven’s sake, the last thing on my mind is who or how Quentin loves. He can wear my best dresses any time he wishes, for his own wedding or otherwise. But no, I’ve never seen him do so. Though…”

He raised his brows. “Yes?”

“Well, you’ve interviewed his friends, so you know what they’re like.

Like you all, they’re ‘better than Bow Street Runners’ according to Quentin, though that’s not much of a challenge.

I’m sure the boys bragged about every detail, though they might not have mentioned they call themselves a”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“secret society.”

These last two words were spoken with portent.

“You think this club has something to do with wherever Quentin is?” Jacob guessed.

“Don’t you?” she asked. “Those meetings, and them running around trying to be Good Samaritans like the wonderful Wynchesters, and—of course—the mysterious Newt. Have you found Newt?”

“Not yet,” he was forced to admit, and made a mental note to double-check that they’d sent someone to find him.

“I’ve told Quentin time and again not to use that phrase,” she muttered.

Jacob stared at her. “‘Newt’?”

“ Secret society ,” she whispered again. “Quentin would never involve himself in anything illegal, but the fact is that the Seditious Meetings Act made all secret clubs illegal. I warned him that using the wrong phrase could lead to disastrous consequences…”

Jacob nearly laughed out loud. She thought her adolescent cousin would be arrested because he and a few other lads claimed they were a secret club?

If the authorities couldn’t be bothered to search for a missing person, they certainly weren’t going to waste time listening at the keyholes of random adolescent boys to see if they used the words “secret club.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” he said with a comforting smile. “The possibility of legal ramifications for playing pretend is so remote as to be nonexistent. Nothing has happened to my family. And as my sister says, we do seditious acts every morning before breakfast.”

Miss Henry’s expression was flat. “I’m sure that’s very gratifying, for you all. Unfortunately, people like us don’t share your luxuries.”

He winced. Once again, he’d managed to say the wrong thing, when all he wanted to do was to help.

Notebook in hand, Jacob approached the kitchen table. From this angle, he could see what she was working on. It was not a manuscript anymore, but correspondence. He could not help but note the curious way every single one of the missives appeared to be addressed. In fact—

“ You’re ‘Ask Vivian’?” he blurted out in disbelief. This was the very definition of public adulation and interaction!

“I’m Vivian,” she replied. “My readers do the asking.”

“I thought that name was a pseudonym,” he stammered, realizing he’d walked back into hazardous territory. He’d allowed himself to forget she was a human hedgehog.

Miss Henry pushed the stack of letters away, one black eyebrow cocked higher than the other. “Why would it be a pseudonym?”

“Well… Vivian is a unisex name, is it not? Rather, England has significantly more male Vivians than female ones. It would be the perfect way to disguise the gender of—”

“I don’t want to hide that I’m a woman.”

“Even from…” Jacob trailed off.

His first concern with Miss Henry using her real name was safety.

The Ask Vivian column was infamous for its brutal honesty and searing advice.

The clever author was rational and insightful, but also direct to the point of rudeness.

One could practically feel the disdain behind every sneered word of her replies.

Indeed, it seemed more logical for Ask Vivian to be the one in danger of some violence being perpetrated against her, rather than any trouble her young cousin might have got himself into.

“What if an unhappy reader shows up at your door?”

“You think I should fear an attack from a disgruntled admirer?”

Jacob didn’t wish to alarm her, but the possibility couldn’t go unaddressed. “Strangers can be surprisingly possessive.”

She gazed at him in silence for a moment, then said quietly, “Is that why you’re really here? You think whoever came after my cousin was actually trying to hurt me?”

“We don’t know yet that anyone other than Quentin is involved in his disappearance,” he reminded her.

“And yet you’re looking at me as though you cannot quite fathom why I haven’t been murdered.”

“You’re not at all worried about your own safety?”

“No one has any clue I’m that Vivian. The paper wants to keep that secret even more than I do. Besides, I have Rufus, and other defensive measures. And I never respond to the letters written by madmen.”

“You receive letters from madmen?”

“Weekly. Names and identifying details redacted, of course. These are the questions that get replies.” She gestured toward one pile of correspondence, then pointed at a different stack across the table. “Those are the answers that will be going back to the newspaper clerk in the next batch.”

“Might I review them?” he asked.

She crossed her arms. “Is it relevant?”

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly.

She hesitated, then waved him toward the letters. “They’re going to be printed in the newspaper anyway. You’re just getting to see them a few days early.”

“You don’t mind people looking at your unedited work? I just… If it were me…”

“I’m not you, thank God.” She gestured at the sideboard behind her. “I want people to read what I write. I have duplicates of every play I’ve ever written. I send a fresh copy to every theater manager in England every time I write a new script. You can read those, too, if you like.”

He stared at her. “Really?”

“Then at least someone will. You can memorize each line and put on a one-man play at Vauxhall for all I care, as long as you credit me as the author.” Her face brightened.

“In fact, I’ve written several anti-Wynchester plays.

It would be the most delicious irony to hear an actual Wynchester perform the monologues. ”

The very thought of a public performance nauseated him. Or rather, the thought of the audience’s inevitable rejection. “I don’t perform in front of crowds.”

“Well, read the lines in your parlor with your siblings, then, if it amuses you.”

“I don’t read in front of them, either,” he admitted.

“Just the poetry group your siblings mentioned?”

He didn’t answer.

“Oh, for God’s sake. You’re not an ‘aspiring’ writer if you don’t let anyone read your work. What is a publisher supposed to publish, your good intentions?”

His voice hardened. “You don’t know anything about me.”

Her eyes flashed. “Let’s keep it that way, shall we?”

He should have said yes and walked away. It was the perfect chance. Abandon this human hedgehog and her attack badger. Flee home to the safety of his barn, where a menagerie of furry friends awaited him.

But he could be stubborn as an ox himself. It was how he’d lived through those early years. How he’d managed to find and rescue and train hundreds of wild animals. Jacob did not take the first growl as the final answer. He never gave up. He kept trying until all that he heard was purrs.

“No,” Jacob responded firmly. “We’re not done with each other quite yet.”

He sank into the seat next to her and settled in.