Page 18 of A Waltz on the Wild Side (The Wild Wynchesters #6)

No matter how hard Viv tried, she was never good enough for the world around her. Including the cousin who was her only other family alive. He shared a surname with her and wished he didn’t.

Marjorie leaned forward. “Did your row have anything to do with your plays?”

“Or him dressing in a way you didn’t approve of?” added Tommy. “Or falling in love with the wrong person?”

“No,” Viv answered. “Though you’ve got the wrong idea about what sort of love affair would most disrupt my life. I’ve spent a decade being Quentin’s caretaker. Once he reaches his majority, he won’t need me anymore.”

“Won’t that give you more time to work on your plays?”

“It would, if I had a table to write on. My newspaper money barely covers stationery. It’s not enough for food and rent.”

“Quentin would kick you out?” Kuni said in surprise.

“If he marries, he’ll want and deserve privacy.

Even if he’s willing to house a spinster cousin post-wedding, if Quentin takes a childbearing wife, the only place for a nursery is my small bedchamber.

Before, he needed me. Soon, he’ll need me gone.

I’m caught in-between. But I would happily move out tomorrow if it meant Quentin could come home today. ”

Tommy nodded her understanding. “Your fears are about what you are going to do with your life, not how Quentin wants to live his.”

“As long as he’s happy and safe,” Viv confirmed.

“On my Aunt Kamia’s deathbed, I swore to protect Quentin from harm.

Which includes out of gaol and out of the hospital, but also to protect him from his own poor decision-making.

He has neither deep pockets nor lofty connections, and therefore should not comport himself as though he were invincible.

And he ought to remember once in a while that I am only human, too.

These are old arguments. But the words we threw at each other this time cut a little deeper. ”

“We’ll find him,” Jacob promised, his brown eyes full of empathy. “We’re doing everything we can.”

“Are you?” she asked softly. She wanted to believe him. But if his claims were true, then why was Quentin still missing?

“Based on the intelligence we’ve been able to gather,” Graham began.

Viv listened as he summarized the facts of Quentin’s disappearance, and the steps the collective had taken to uncover his whereabouts.

As the Wynchesters talked, Viv jotted notes in her latest writing journal.

She always carried around a script in progress, so she could scratch out a few lines of dialogue while waiting for water to boil, or while waiting for it to be her turn at the market.

Everything around her was potential fodder for a future play.

This was no exception. The Wynchesters were practically a Drury Lane production in their own right. The lengths they had gone to in the hunt for Quentin were astonishing. They’d actually paid boatmen to search the canal tunnels and sent several scouts all the way to the Chislehurst chalk caves!

London’s finest Bow Street Runners wished they had half the influence and reach of the motley family in this room.

Viv was forced to admit she might once again have underestimated them.

“I spent his entire life showing by example that if you want something bad enough, you must put in any time, effort, or sacrifice necessary. So I suppose I have only myself to blame for his good-hearted, wrongheaded behavior. Quentin would rather prove himself dangerously than let me ruin his dreams.”

“Could he defend himself against violence?” Kuni asked.

“He… has had a few fencing lessons,” was the most charitable way Viv could answer that question. “Quentin has had tutors in every topic or skill imaginable. Which is only possible because he grows bored by the third or fourth attempt and thus moves on to the next item on the list.”

Which was what Viv had previously been afraid of. That Quentin, in his desperation, would attempt brave acts of heroics so far outside his capabilities that he would injure himself irrevocably—or worse.

The mysterious Newt, and Quentin’s possible connection to the Olivebury robbery, were pieces she could not yet fit into the puzzle.

Jacob seemed to sense the fear and frustration warring within her. “Please don’t panic unless there is reason to. I’m sure your cousin is unhurt.”

“You can’t know that.”

“You’re right,” he agreed. “I can’t know that. It’s what I’m choosing to believe until facts indicate otherwise. There’s been no sign of him at any hospital, morgue, or prison. I’ve learned one’s attitude can help keep unproductive worries at bay. I suggest you practice some optimism as well.”

“I didn’t ask for your advice,” she snapped.

He looked at her.

Her face heated. All right, that was rich, coming from her. Viv spent 90 percent of her day doling out advice to others. She ought to be able to take a little in return.

The truth was, the worry had abated. Everything was topsy-turvy not because Jacob and his family were overbearing and intolerable, but because they were kind and made her feel safe, despite the unanswered questions.

Viv hadn’t been able to rely on anyone but herself for so long that life felt like crossing the ocean in a rowboat without oars.

She’d spent her days paddling her bare hands as hard as she could without getting anywhere.

Now that a larger vessel of friendly forces had tossed out a life buoy, she wasn’t sure she knew how to float in these waters.

“With no evidence of injury or arrest, and with no public sightings in several days, we must consider the possibility that Quentin has gone into hiding for his own reasons.”

“Such as to punish me because he was angry with me.” Viv’s shoulders were tight and her stomach sour. “He’d had enough.”

“Actually,” Tommy said, “Jacob’s referring to Olivebury’s robbery. We don’t know why Quentin would have masterminded such an escapade—”

“My cousin did no such thing!”

“We have to consider every possibility.”

“He accidentally returned the script to the question-writer—”

“—who could have been Quentin in the first place. He might have sent those letters himself, to disguise the fact that he was the one in need of such stratagems.”

“Quentin would never manipulate me like that.”

“He’s manipulated you into doing everything else for him.”

“No,” Viv said frostily. “He’s family, and family helps each other. I would think a Wynchester could understand that, of all people.”

“An exciting caper would be an adventure,” Jacob pointed out. “You said he liked those. Plus, if he’s the mastermind behind the Olivebury burglary—”

“I would be the mastermind,” Viv muttered. “They’re my scripts.”

“—then that means he’s fine . And he’s hiding from you because he knows by now you’ve figured out what happened to your missing plays.”

Viv’s fingers curled into fists. She wanted to believe her cousin was safe almost as much as she wanted to slap Jacob for doubting her cousin’s integrity.

“It wasn’t Quentin’s handwriting,” she said triumphantly. “I was his first and only governess and have had many occasions to glimpse his penmanship since.”

“Quentin’s, maybe,” he agreed. “But what about his secret club? By your own description, he has a lot of young, impressionable, risk-taking friends. Am I leaping to conclusions by assuming you to be unfamiliar with their handwriting? Or his co-conspirator Newt, whom you don’t know anything about at all? ”

An excellent point. Viv hated him for it. She increased her scowl.

“If one of his friends is behind the robbery, it was without my cousin’s knowledge. Not only wouldn’t he risk the hangman for something so stupid, Quentin would never use my fiction as an instruction manual, and implicate us both. He knows the risks.”

“But we’ll still have to rule it out empirically,” said Tommy.

The problem was, Viv was warring with herself as much as with the Wynchesters. Given the rebellions in her own youth, charging full steam ahead in pursuit of adventure was unquestionably in Quentin’s blood.

As much as she didn’t wish to believe him or his secret society foolish enough to rob an aristocrat, she wouldn’t put it past him if her cousin believed he was doing a bad thing for good reasons—just like his infamous, lawbreaking idols.

And Quentin would know better than to come home after pulling a stunt like that.

“Maybe he did fall in love and elope to Scotland,” Viv muttered. “Or tag along on some harebrained holiday to Antwerp.”

She’d still kill him, but these were much better options than him being in danger—or gaol.

“Enough speculating,” Elizabeth said. “Let’s solve the robbery. That should lead us to Quentin.”

“Do we know what was taken from Olivebury yet?” Marjorie asked.

Graham shook his head. “By all accounts, he refuses to disclose the missing item or items.”

“Have you considered interviewing one of the servants?” Viv suggested.

The entire family looked amused. She bristled.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Jacob said quickly. “But believe me, it has occurred to Graham to interview everyone Olivebury has ever come in contact with. Graham has journals containing detailed accounts of the private lives of half the population of London.”

“I have notes on everyone of note,” his brother agreed with a laugh.

Teeth clenched, she arched a brow. “Everyone who matters, eh? Do you keep a book about my cousin?”

Graham had the grace to look chagrined.

“No? Well, I do. Allow me to help flesh out your library.” Viv fished in her satchel, then slapped her Quentin journal into Graham’s hand.

“He didn’t mean…” Jacob said quietly.

“I know exactly what you all meant,” she replied bitterly.

Kuni cleared her throat. “If the stolen object isn’t visibly apparent to staff, that means the thief took something Olivebury hoped to keep hidden.”

Graham nodded. “Whatever the item, it hasn’t turned up yet, openly or underground. The moment it does, I’ll be the first to know.”