Page 14 of A Waltz on the Wild Side (The Wild Wynchesters #6)

Viv glowered at the dashing, maddening Wynchester making himself at home at her breakfast table.

Also known as the nuncheon table, coffee table, tea table, supper table, worktable, ironing board, and escritoire.

She had only the one surface, and his presence was taking up all of it—despite him not touching a single thing.

Unlike her habitually correct posture, he slouched casually in one of the hard wooden chairs as though this were his space and not hers.

Not that it was technically Viv’s, either.

Given Mr. Wynchester spent his life roaming his vast mansion and its equally sprawling grounds, the rooms she shared with her cousin must look sad, indeed. She hated the thought of him inwardly judging her and finding her lacking.

If only he weren’t so infernally handsome, on top of it all!

His attractiveness didn’t even make logical sense.

Not too tall and not too short. Not too bulky and not too scrawny.

Neither slovenly nor dandy-ish. All those “mediums” mashed together should combine into mediocrity, not extraordinariness. He wasn’t playing fair.

She liked the bright intelligence in his eyes, the full thickness of his lips, the slight shadow at his jaw. She even liked that he—or his valet—had taken the time to craft an extravagantly folded cravat, yet a leather apron was still slung around his narrow hips.

As though Jacob—the vexing man had wormed his way far too deep into her life for her to keep thinking of him as Mr. Wynchester—had either left home in such a rush that he’d forgotten to remove his apron… or else he cared more about everyday practicality than polite society’s fashion sensibilities.

An admirable characteristic that absolutely could not be borne. She was right to distrust the Wynchesters. She definitely wasn’t going to start liking this one. Maybe her badger would bite him, and he’d never return.

“I suppose you find our humble living arrangements tragic.” Viv barely kept the bitterness out of her voice.

He sent her a curious look. “What’s wrong with this house?”

“It’s not much compared to yours.”

“Why compare? There’s always better than where we find ourselves, just like there’s always far worse. You keep your home beautifully… except for your cousin’s bedroom. I regret to inform you that he may not be missing after all, and might simply be lost under one of his heaps of random objects.”

Viv pressed her lips together to keep from smiling in agreement. She was not going to find Jacob Wynchester charming.

“Since you mentioned the living arrangements, might I ask how the cohabitation with your cousin came about?” he enquired.

Her knee-jerk reaction was that her family’s financial situation was none of his business, but the facts were: She’d gone to him for help, he was here trying to do just that, and neither of them had any idea which detail would or would not prove decisive in locating Quentin.

She’d braced herself for ridicule when she’d handed over the list of secret society members.

Obviously, the moment Jacob and his family visited those moonstruck lads, there’d be no hiding the depths of Quentin’s Wynchester fanaticism.

His friends would have explained every “secret mission” in minute detail.

Had probably begged the Wynchesters to autograph every surface in their house.

To Viv’s surprise, Jacob and his family had seemed to take the youthful club’s enthusiasm in stride, with nothing more than, “We’ll let you know if it leads to any relevant clues.”

Perhaps their fanaticism wasn’t unusual.

Maybe every adolescent boy in England—and a fair number of grown men—did the same.

Given the Wynchesters’ royalty-like praise in the newspapers and scandal sheets, Viv might be the only person in the entire country not to bow down before them in awestruck sycophancy.

She’d sworn never to behave like that again, for any reason.

But her personal reticence didn’t matter. If he and his siblings needed to know Quentin’s personal history in order to find him, then Viv would have to tell the truth about that, too, no matter how she felt about sharing her cousin’s private business with strangers.

She lifted her chin and replied, “My cousin is the illegitimate son of Viscount Ayleswick.”

Jacob’s forehead lined briefly.

“Correct, the prior one. The current viscount is legitimate—and thirteen months younger than Quentin.”

She did not need to explain how different the firstborn son’s life might have been if his viscount father had deigned to marry Quentin’s mother.

Nor did Viv need to spell out why such a marriage had not happened.

“Upon Quentin’s birth, the viscount created a small trust for him.

Honestly, the effort was more than I would have expected, given the situation.

Of course, Ayleswick could have publicly acknowledged his son’s existence.

Illegitimate sons of lords move much more freely through society than run-of-the-mill bastards of ordinary mistresses.

Though I suppose it was too much to hope an aristocrat might acknowledge a Black child. ”

Jacob inclined his head. “I can only think of one recent occasion that came close. A few decades ago, Miss Dido Belle was born into slavery in the West Indies before being brought here to be raised by her great-uncle, the Earl of Mansfield.”

“Raised as a lady?” Viv asked with interest.

He made a face. “As… a free gentlewoman and companion to her same-age white cousin, who was indeed raised as a lady. Miss Belle lived with the family for thirty years. Although the earl left her a significant sum and an annuity in his will, even upon his deathbed, her uncle still did not acknowledge Miss Belle as his niece.”

Viv sighed. She had written several plays in which the lives of people like her cousin and his mother had turned out much differently. Those scripts were probably destined to remain fairy tales for centuries to come.

“I miss Quentin,” she said quietly. “The house is finally clean and quiet, and I couldn’t hate it more.

My cousin has driven me mad since the moment I arrived on this shore to take care of both him and his ailing mother.

Nonetheless, since that first hug, we’ve never been apart…

until now. It’s been three days, but it feels like three decades. ”

Jacob nodded with obvious empathy. “Family is like that. Every time one of my siblings moves out, it’s like I have to learn what ‘home’ means all over again. But don’t worry. This isn’t permanent. We’ll find Quentin and bring him home where he belongs.”

“Please do so swiftly,” she said with feeling.

“I shall do my very best.” He hesitated. “How did you do that trick yesterday?”

She reached under her chair to scratch Rufus’s head. “What trick?”

“When you looked at us and knew everything about us. How could you possibly know Marjorie was specifically painting a portrait of one of her brothers, for example?”

“Ah.”

She nodded. Not just any brother. Jacob Wynchester, specifically.

Three disparate flecks of paint on Marjorie’s clothing and person had led Viv to that conclusion.

There was a bit of green the exact color of the Wynchesters’ lawn, though that only indicated the painting was likely to be or to contain a landscape scene.

The other two smudges were both brown: One, the exact hue of Jacob’s gorgeous skin.

The other, a perfect match to his beautiful eyes.

If Viv were forced to guess, she would daresay the portrait was of Jacob outside, likely with his animals.

But she would not say so. When she’d voiced her initial conclusions, she hadn’t known the portrait was meant to be a secret.

Perhaps the painting was a surprise, and Viv had almost ruined it.

Now that she knew, she would not break Marjorie’s confidence, given it hadn’t been granted to Viv to begin with.

“I might have been wrong,” she said, though anyone who knew her well would know this was a lie. Viv was rarely if ever wrong, and even less likely to admit it.

Jacob didn’t particularly look as though he swallowed this explanation, but he did not press further. He glanced over her shoulder at the sideboard against the wall. Then his eyes traveled higher, to the long wooden shelf containing Viv’s most prized possessions. “Are those your books?”

“Most of them,” she said with pride. “A few are borrowed from a lending library and need to be returned.”

“Novels? Poetry?”

“The books I own are novels I enjoy rereading. The items from the lending library tend to be biographies, history tomes, travel guides, or manuals on various fields of study.”

His brows raised. “How many fields do you study?”

“As many as necessary to pen whichever play I’m currently writing, with as much verisimilitude as I can reasonably convey.” She paused. “Are you disappointed I am a plebeian who does not read poetry?”

He grinned at her. “Relieved, more like. Please tell me you’ll be the one person who doesn’t constantly opine about what I should do with my poems.”

“I can’t promise that ,” she said with a smile. “I do love telling people what to do.”

He gestured at the letter she’d been writing. “Is that what you’re doing now?”

She shook her head. “I was, but this is personal correspondence. I am friends with a handful of playwrights throughout England, and it is my turn to contribute to our monthly meeting.”

His forehead creased. “You meet… on paper?”

“We each write a letter, explaining what we’ve accomplished, and what our plans are, as well as responding to the same from the four others.

Once a month, I receive a packet containing the current letters.

I replace my old letter with a new one and send all five to the next in the circle.

That way, we each only have to write our news once, and we’re always the first to know the latest happenings of the person before us in the list.”

“You sound like very good friends.”