Page 33 of A Waltz on the Wild Side (The Wild Wynchesters #6)

When Jacob awoke the next morning at dawn, he still felt as though he were living a dream. He’d read to his poetry group! He had confessed his nom de plume! Some had been happy for him, and some had been furious, but the world had not ended. If anything, the day seemed brighter than ever.

In high spirits, he cared for his animals in record time, bathed, and checked the clock. Still two and a half hours before he and his polecats were expected on the morning’s first mission.

Normally, Jacob would have filled the time by scribbling in his poetry journal. But his nerves were still springing against his skin too much to allow him to sit alone in quiet contemplation.

He felt like celebrating. Like dancing. Like flying with his wings spread wide.

And he owed this new sensation to a single person. The one whose extremely annoying unsolicited opinions had driven him to push past his discomfort and risk being his true self, in front of witnesses, at least for a few moments.

Very well, his family had also been begging Jacob for years to share his poetry. But they didn’t fully understand what it was like to be someone like him in a profession like this.

Vivian more than understood. She lived it.

She breathed it. She fought against it tooth and nail every single day, never once flagging, much less conceding defeat.

Vivian shared her words and her identity with pride.

Damn the consequences, and to the devil with anyone who tried to keep her in the shadows.

Jacob hurried to the kitchen to pack a basket. He didn’t know what time she tended to rise, but he hoped to catch her before she broke her fast so that they could do so together.

He also hoped to smooth things over from their last argument. She’d called him a coward hiding behind anonymity. And she’d accused him of becoming as pampered and careless as the selfsame spoiled lords he chafed against.

As much as it galled him to admit it, she had not been entirely wrong.

He rode a horse to her home because it was faster. No need to ring for a carriage when he could fetch a mount himself. Though it did make an awkward ride, with the basket balancing on his lap and his hat clutched in his fist because the wind kept flinging it from his head.

After tying his horse to a post, Jacob paused outside Vivian’s door for a full minute to smooth the new wrinkles from his clothing and set his hat at a rakish angle.

This gave him time to notice a small green leaf poking out from the thin crevice between the door and its jamb.

He frowned. Only the edge was visible, and even that at ankle-height.

Despite being low to the ground and almost out of sight, it did not seem a place a leaf would naturally find itself.

Which was why, when Vivian opened the door to welcome him in, Jacob’s first words weren’t Good morning as he had planned, but rather, “Why do you keep a leaf stuck in the crack of your door?”

“Habit,” she replied without hesitation, as though his was a perfectly ordinary greeting. “It’s to let me know if anyone has entered—or attempted to breach—my private space. In this case, I’m hoping to see if Quentin returns while I’m asleep or away.”

In this case. And her explanation made sense. But she’d said habit . Who else had Vivian hoped—or worried—would breach her private space? Jacob’s protective hackles rose.

“What’s in the basket?” she asked. “If it’s a badger, I must warn you, Rufus does not play well with others.”

“It’s not for Rufus,” he said. “It’s for you. For us. Something to break our fast, if you haven’t done so already.”

She looked at the basket as though his words made no sense.

It was at this point that Jacob realized he had indeed packed a receptacle capable of comfortably housing an entire family of wild badgers. Vivian could break her fast for the next three weeks with the contents of this basket.

“A light snack,” he said, leaning into her perception of him as coddled, and lacking awareness of how common folk lived. “A pre-breakfast, as one does. Something small to tide us over until the lazy servant wenches finally cook up something worth—”

She rolled her eyes and took the basket from him. “Sit down and stop ruining this for me.”

He sat. In the chair across from the attack badger. “Ruining what, exactly? You didn’t even know I’d be coming to call.”

Unless she’d somehow guessed that, too? Vivian was disturbingly perceptive.

“Whatever you brought, I intend to enjoy with gusto,” she informed him. “And I hope you’re not too hungry, because I haven’t decided if I’ll share. Aside from biscuits with your siblings, this is one of the few meals I’ve had in England that I didn’t have to cook myself.”

His heart twisted in empathy. And perhaps a little guilt. The circumstances of his birth were unlikely to be much better than hers, but Jacob’s luck had changed dramatically for the better while he was still young.

When Baron Vanderbean had first adopted six unhappy orphans, the wide-eyed children had looked at that gargantuan house and their heaping portions of food the same way Vivian was eyeing the picnic basket now.

But after twenty years—or possibly over the course of those first several months—excess had ceased to be astonishing and started to become part of ordinary life.

“Well?” he asked. “Aren’t you going to eat your gift?”

Vivian’s eyes sparkled. “Watch me.”

She gathered the papers cluttering the small table into a pile and carried them to the sideboard with all the other stacks of paper. After passing a cleaning rag over the surface of the table, she opened the lid to the picnic basket and began removing its contents.

“Milk… tea… coffee… lemonade… chocolate… a bottle of wine?”

“I wouldn’t presume to limit your morning libations,” he murmured.

“Apples… pears… nectarines… grapes… mulberries… figs… honey… marmalade… a full loaf of still-warm bread, and a dozen toasted slices?”

“Fruit is good for you,” he protested. “Bats like it. And bread is delicious.”

“We’ve also got pork chops… sausages… cheese… boiled eggs… and what looks like three pies?”

“Tommy and Chloe both would disown me if I packed a picnic without pies. If you don’t want one, I’ll—”

“Oh, I want them.” Vivian placed silverware and two plates on the table, then began to pile hers high. “Don’t talk to me until I’ve licked my plate.”

He smiled to himself and reached for the bread and marmalade.

Her reaction had been all that he could have hoped for. She’d accepted his presence without question, granting a peaceful ceasefire to their prior argument.

Jacob would not have been surprised to receive the opposite reaction. He had fully expected Vivian to be nosy and pushy and demand to know whatever it was that he wasn’t ready to tell her. Instead, she seemed content to wait until he was comfortable—which might be never.

“There.” She shoved her empty plate away from her. “That was—oh, blast.”

The plate banged into her spoon and sent it flying to the floor.

Jacob started to move his chair back in order to retrieve the fallen piece of silverware for her.

“No, no.” She waved a hand. “That’s what badgers are for. Rufus? Spoon.”

Rufus lifted his black-and-white-striped snout from the scrap of carpet he’d been resting on and peered around the kitchen as if waking slowly.

Obediently, he yawned, hobbled forth while occasionally stretching a rear leg, scooped up the lost spoon in his mouth, and delivered it to Vivian’s waiting hand.

“You’re bamming me,” said Jacob. “You trained a wild badger to fetch fallen silverware?”

“No,” Vivian answered. “I trained him to fetch pencils, which is far more practical. Rufus was bright enough to extrapolate from there.” She scratched behind the badger’s ears. He wiggled his arse and sat on her feet. She stroked his back. “Who’s a crafty little beast? Is it you, Rufus? Is it you?”

Jacob suspected the clever one was Vivian. She was as flashy and competent and confident as his siblings, and she wasn’t even a Wynchester. If Vivian had been Sir Gareth Jallow, she’d have told the world by now.

Instead, she remained frustratingly unpublished. Jacob wondered how many of her plays would have sold in a blink if she’d submitted them as Sir Vivian Henry instead of “Miss.” Probably all of them. Vivian might be more famous than Jallow by now… if she’d given in instead of fighting back.

Which one of them had made the right choice? Was there a right choice? Because of their individual decisions, the rich one got richer, and the poor one stayed poor. Regardless of merit.

Life definitely wasn’t fair.

Jacob couldn’t help but suffer another pang of guilt.

Financially, he could have afforded to stick to her morals.

If he never earned a single penny as a poet, his quality of life would not change.

Whereas if anyone had bothered to pay Vivian a fraction of what she was worth, she wouldn’t be performing multiple jobs and still living off her cousin’s mercy.

“Please,” he said. “Allow me to help clean the dishes.”

“Is this a dream?” She clutched her chest, then pinched her arm. “Will I awaken in a few moments to my usual life of an empty pantry and a pile of housework?”

“Don’t celebrate yet,” he warned her. “I’ve never washed proper dishes.”

She frowned at his word choice. “What does that mean? You previously washed improper dishes? Makeshift items no one could reasonably mistake for plates and bowls? Or that you’ve never taken a cloth to a piece of porcelain in your life?”

“Yes,” he answered, then changed the subject. “I didn’t mean to interrupt whatever you were doing when I arrived. Were you working on a new play?”

“Answering advice letters,” she said with a rueful sigh. “They’re the only people willing to pay me for my words. Unfortunately, that only buys paper, pencils, and postage.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “You mentioned Quentin has a trust…”