Page 31 of A Waltz on the Wild Side (The Wild Wynchesters #6)

Jacob stood in the open doorway of the barn, deep in conversation with Marjorie.

Now that she and Adrian were home from their art studio, they’d promised to look after his water shrews while Jacob attended his poetry meeting.

He’d been training the baby shrews to respond to different whistled tones, which Adrian could replicate almost perfectly.

“All right,” said Jacob as he deposited two shrews into each of their arms. “They’re unlikely to bite, and don’t worry if they lick you. Their venomous saliva only kills small mammals.”

Marjorie looked at the baby shrews in her arms doubtfully. “I’m small.”

“You’ll be fine,” Jacob assured her. “The important thing to remember is—”

“Ha!” shouted Kuni, followed by a resounding thwack .

Jacob glanced out toward the garden to see his sister-in-law engaged in one of her dagger-throwing sessions.

Occasionally Graham joined her, when he felt like looking comically incompetent.

Kuni’s daggers could hit the bull’s-eye of a target from a dizzying distance.

None of the other siblings bothered to try.

“About the robbery,” Marjorie said. “The mistress has a point. We cannot rule out Mrs. Olivebury. An elaborate revenge plot does show a certain sense of style.”

“She had means, motive, and opportunity,” agreed Adrian. “If she stumbled across that portrait unexpectedly… Hell hath no fury, et cetera.”

“Look!” Kuni yelled. “I can hit the middle throwing backward over my shoulder!”

They looked.

Which was how Jacob saw the rear door to the house swing open and Vivian step out, just as Kuni was letting fly with a new round of daggers twenty yards away—well out of Vivian’s line of sight.

Jacob opened his mouth to shout Vivian’s name but only got as far as the initial Vvv sound when the first dagger sailed past Vivian’s cheek nearly close enough to pierce her ear.

That is, the dagger would have sailed past her cheek.

Without pausing, Vivian snatched the handle out of thin air, sliced open the wax seal on the letter she was holding, then sent the dagger flying on in the original direction it had been heading.

The blade hit the bull’s-eye with a clink of metal-on-metal as Vivian’s blade knocked Kuni’s previous dagger off the target.

“Um,” said Marjorie. “What?”

“She’s the Wynchesteriest of us all,” breathed Adrian in stupefaction.

“And she doesn’t even like Wynchesters,” Marjorie added.

“We’re growing on her,” Jacob assured his sister once he regained his breath. “And possibly a bad influence.”

“Did I hit it?” called Kuni as she spun back around to check the target.

“No,” Jacob answered in disbelief. “Vivian did.”

“Does she even realize she hit it?” asked Marjorie in wonder.

“Kuni!” Vivian yelled, the breeze fluttering her freshly opened letter in her face as she cupped her hands to her mouth. “Do you prefer whipstitch or French hems?”

“Are those foodstuffs or new dances?” Kuni called back, baffled.

Vivian held the letter over her eyes to block out the sun as she looked Kuni up and down. She nodded to herself, then turned to jog back inside the house.

Kuni shrugged, as if having already forgotten the encounter, then let loose with a fresh throwing knife toward the target. Another bull’s-eye—right next to Vivian’s.

Jacob’s heart might never return to normal.

“Am I the only one who has no idea what just happened?” asked Marjorie.

“I never know what’s happening,” said Adrian.

Jacob glanced at his pocket watch. If he didn’t hurry, he was going to be late for his poetry meeting. “Kuni, don’t kill me! I’m crossing the garden.”

He jogged across the wide grass to the house. Vivian was in the sitting room, calmly answering her correspondence.

“How the devil did you do that?” Jacob blurted out.

“Hm?” she murmured without looking up.

“You grabbed a knife from the air and hit a bull’s-eye without looking!”

She held up an unfolded sheet of paper. “I needed to open my letter.”

“But you…” he stammered. “We have letter openers! There was no need put yourself in harm’s way—”

“Kuni can hit targets without looking at them,” said Tommy. “Why shouldn’t Vivian?”

Jacob goggled at his sister. Kuni was a Balcovian warrior who had been trained in armed combat since she could toddle. Vivian was an unpublished playwright who wrote rude comments to idiots in the newspaper.

“Kuni relies on her muscles’ instinctive memory, gleaned from thousands or millions of past throws,” said Philippa. “I imagine Vivian uses mathematics.”

“Mathematics,” Jacob repeated.

Philippa nodded. “It’s theoretically possible to hit a target every time. All you have to do is take into consideration the weight, dimensions, and balance of the blade and its handle… the distance to and material of the target… the humidity and any associated wind resistance—”

“In less than a second?” Jacob demanded. “Instant calculations in the blink of an eye?”

“Just because you can’t do sums doesn’t mean Vivian can’t,” Tommy murmured.

The other three filed into the room from outside, Marjorie and Adrian with their arms full of wriggling shrews, and Kuni with a pile of razor-sharp daggers.

“Write faster,” Kuni told Vivian. “You’ve got to come back outside to throw daggers with me before I have to leave for Kensington.”

As much as Jacob wanted to watch over Vivian, he took advantage of his family’s distraction to edge toward the door. Perhaps tonight, for the first time in years, no one would needle him about—

“Are you going to read your poetry to your friends?” Philippa asked.

He sighed. “No. Stop asking.”

“Jacob says the only way he’d consider sharing his work is anonymously,” Vivian murmured.

He sent her a repressive glance. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“If another identity makes you feel more comfortable in your own skin, then you should use it,” said Tommy. “But if any disguise makes you feel worse, you should take it off right away.”

Marjorie touched Jacob’s shoulder. “Consider just for a moment how it might feel to have others appreciate your efforts.”

Jacob grimaced. He didn’t have to wonder what having avid readers might be like. He was England’s most celebrated reclusive poet… and no one knew it. Not his publisher, not the Dreamers Guild poetry group, and not even his own family.

Vivian followed him to the front door. “Don’t be a coward.”

He whirled to face her. “ What did you just say?”

“You’re so used to being Wynchester royalty, you’ve forgotten what reality is like for everyone else,” she shot back unapologetically. “It’s easy for you lot to take chances with other people’s lives. Have you considered taking a risk of your own?”

He clenched his teeth. As it happened, he did imagine unveiling the truth. Often. Of shouting out to the world “Sir Gareth Jallow is Jacob Wynchester!”

And then what? Most likely, he wouldn’t even be believed. Not by the Dreamers Guild, and definitely not by the world at large.

“You?” the public would sneer. “You’re not a ‘sir’ anything. What makes you think your words are worth reading?”

“It’s not that simple,” he ground out.

Vivian folded her arms beneath her bosom.

“I know what it’s like to struggle and be smacked down, day after day, year after year, in harsher conditions than you’ve ever known.

I almost died clawing my way to where I am today, and I’ll be damned if some theater director’s letter of rejection crushes my spirit now.

What are you so afraid of? That some other aspiring poet dislikes your verse? Grow up.”

Fury lanced through him. At her many erroneous assumptions… and at the ways in which her assumptions weren’t all that erroneous.

Yes, at first he hadn’t been certain of a positive public reaction. Not until multiple volumes and reprints started flying off the shelves. England loved a mirage. Jacob Wynchester wished they loved him .

He knew as well as Tommy did that sometimes it was the disguise that garnered respect, not the person inside the costume.

Revealing his real identity didn’t mean Jacob would automatically inherit Jallow’s fame and adulation.

Admitting the truth might be the quickest way to ruin everything for them both.

“It’s complicated,” he said through gritted teeth.

“It’s not complicated,” said Vivian. “I have such conversations ten times a day. ‘How do you do, I’m Vivian Henry, here’s something I wrote.’”

“You write those words on paper,” he said dismissively, hoping she would interpret his refusal as incapacitating shyness. “It’s not the same as in person.”

She looked amused. “Do you think I fail to knock on every theater’s door in London every time I have a new script ready?”

Jacob had tried that tactic, too. In the beginning, and as recently as last year. Publishers laughed in his face without reading a single word of his work, if they bothered opening the door to him at all.

A decade of relentless rejection was what had spawned the “reclusive” Jallow to begin with. The lowest title (giving Jallow elevated status, yet keeping him somewhat humble) plus the inference of white skin (see: title) and an aspirational life of privilege (same).

Jacob was both thrilled that his scheme had worked, and disgusted to think his words were only considered valuable if written by a wealthy white man with a title.

He stared at Vivian. “If you know you’re a talented playwright, yet receive nothing but rejection, then you ought to be more understanding about my position.”

“Oh, I understand your position,” she replied.

“Since the moment you became prince of this palace, you’ve had anything you could desire delivered to you on a silver platter.

Not only aren’t you accustomed to hearing ‘no,’ you’re not willing to try.

You don’t know what it’s like to fail. A man without obstacles is champion of nothing. ”

He stalked outside and slammed the door without responding.

The hinges immediately reopened behind him.