Page 46 of A Waltz on the Wild Side (The Wild Wynchesters #6)

The response was both better and worse than Jacob had hoped for.

On the one hand, she’d practically given him the script for planning a perfect night.

On the other hand, her instructions were clear to wait until the woman was ready to be courted, which meant there was nothing Jacob could do for now.

When would Vivian welcome a suitor? Not until after her cousin had returned safely, that much was obvious. But after that? Not until her career was riding high, she’d said, but there was no guarantee when that day would come either. Especially if she wouldn’t let him help.

Er, interfere.

Jacob would wait as long as it took, but he’d rather do so at Vivian’s side, as her partner, rather than as an afterthought somewhere in the shadows behind her.

A knock sounded on the barn door.

He fumbled to fold the letter and tuck it safely out of sight in his waistcoat pocket before his family could burst in with more commentary on Sir Gareth Jallow.

But when he opened the door, Vivian was on the other side.

Warmth suffused Jacob’s body. The mere sight of her made him so happy, he had to tamp down the urge to grin like a loon. “Back from the Faircliffes already?”

“Parliament started. Chloe talked me into watching part of the session from a ghastly hole in the attic, and I barely escaped with my sanity intact.” Vivian stepped inside the barn. “What are you doing?”

“I was about to feed the snakes. They’re calmer when they have full bellies.”

“Poisonous snakes?”

“Not all of them.” At her crestfallen expression, he added wryly, “Hoping to attack me with them for meddling in your career, unsolicited?”

“It would have a certain poetic justice,” she replied.

She was teasing.

He hoped.

“I really am sorry,” he began again.

“And I really am trying to forgive you,” she interrupted. “You need to understand that my frustration stems from more than one thoughtless act. I was born a possession . For two long decades, I didn’t have the right to live a life I wanted.”

He was horrified. “I don’t think of you as—”

“You and your family have a long history of not thinking at all. You’re so busy saving the day for the client du jour , there’s no room in your brains or your lives to consider everyone else in the periphery. Starry-eyed people like Quentin try to be just like you, and we see how that went.”

“That’s…” True.

“As for my career,” she continued, “you Wynchesters are so enamored with your heroic personas that you swept in to wreak destruction without pausing to ask or to even wonder what it was that I wanted.”

“I shouldn’t have had to wonder,” he admitted. “You told me, out loud, time and again. I didn’t listen.”

“Exactly.” Her lip trembled. “I may be your client, but please remember that the case is rescuing Quentin, not overruling my free will. If we’re to be friends after this is over—”

He took her hands. “I hope to be more than friends.”

“Then you have to accept me as a whole human, not as a project. To your eyes, I might have been taking the long way, but it was my path to take.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I really am sorry.”

“I accept your apology.” She paused. “We’ll drop the topic now that we’ve discussed it, but please understand…

If my autonomy is trampled again, I shall not keep having this same argument with you.

I’d rather forge a new path than entrust my heart to someone who doesn’t care enough to listen to me. ”

“That’s fair,” he agreed. “And I vow to be fairer in the future as well. I can’t promise to be perfect, but I can swear that I value your dreams and goals and brain, and will never be so carelessly highhanded again.

You should have the right to live your life as you please, not in the manner someone else imposes on you. ”

“Thank you,” she said softly. “I wish everyone had that luxury.”

“I’ll fight for that, too,” he promised. “And as for lads like your cousin, I wondered if we might—” Jacob cut off mid-thought when he glimpsed the edge of a book tucked beneath her arm. “Don’t tell me you’re part of my family’s secret poetry cabal, too!”

“Their what?” Vivian stared at him, then seemed to recall the leather volume nestled in her armpit. “Oh, you mean this? It’s the latest collection by—”

“Jallow, yes, I have eyes. But why are you carrying it around? I thought you didn’t even read that drivel.”

“I hadn’t, until today. On my way here, I passed three different bookshops with lines out the door as long as the Serpentine. All eagerly waiting to get their hands on this book.”

“You stood in one of those queues?” he asked in disbelief.

“I didn’t have to,” she admitted. “I told Philippa I was curious to know what all the fuss was about, and she said she’d ordered more than enough for her entire reading circle, and she would be happy to give one of the extras to me.”

“Of course she did,” Jacob muttered. Philippa had probably ordered enough copies to replace every cobblestone in London with a copy of Jallow’s poems.

Perhaps the contents would be improved with a few hoof marks and horse droppings.

“Don’t read it,” he said impulsively. “Life’s too short for—”

“‘Shards of piety stabbing from each disappointed glance’?”

“Shards of pity ,” he corrected automatically, then wished he hadn’t. Someone who hated Jallow as much as he claimed to would not already have memorized lines that were published for the first time mere hours ago.

“I cannot believe you!” She shoved his chest so hard he stumbled backward.

“What—”

She held up the book and shook it. “Did you lie about being a fan, or about who wrote this?”

“I… No… Wait.” What had even made her suspect the truth? Curse her ability to glance at someone and know everything about them! After the conversation they’d just had, he certainly couldn’t lie to her face. “Both? I said it was complicated.”

“Of all the pudding-headed…” She looked down at the book, then up at him. “Why would you hide this?”

“I…”

“Why wouldn’t you want your name on the title page?”

That one was easier to answer. “No one would put my name on the cover. Being militant with your morals is all well and good for you, but if I wanted to see my words in print in my lifetime… Sometimes you have to work within the system, not against it.”

Her lip curled. “So you pretend to be a wealthy, titled, white man?”

“You do if you want to hear ‘yes,’” he said defensively. “Let me Ask Vivian: Would I have had more luck pretending to be an orphaned Black female immigrant from Demerara?”

“This book isn’t luck. It’s false pretenses. It’s—”

“—selling thousands of copies before breakfast. You might not like my methods, but you cannot claim that I didn’t win the game.”

“ You didn’t win at all. Sir Gareth Jallow is the one who—” She gasped and held the book away from her as though it had taken on a horrendous odor. “Is your nom de plume the fictional artiste whose nepotism I should thank for getting my play staged on Drury Lane?”

“Um.” He cast about for a response capable of diffusing the situation. “You said we were done with that topic.”

“You lied to my face about that, too?” She shook the book at him. “You’ve been lying to me for weeks ?”

“It wasn’t personal,” he protested. “Technically, I’ve been lying to everyone’s faces… and eyes… and reading spectacles. For the past five years. Long before I met you.”

She hurled the book at his face.

He caught it reflexively, then tossed it onto a pile of hay.

“Look,” he began, though he suspected no man who had ever led off with that word had ever successfully won their argument against a woman. “I bent the rules, but you cannot play righteous. You don’t want the rules to apply to you, either. You just break them differently.”

She huffed. “I never—”

“Really? You insist on being fully and openly yourself, even when you know that way lies rejection. If it’s only for men, you’re first in line, petticoat and all.

Only for white people? There you are anyway, beautiful Black skin on display.

Something offered only for the privileged few or the educated elite?

There’s Vivian, insisting on being given the same consideration—”

“I should be given the same consideration as anyone else!”

“Of course you should. We both should. But I chose to wear the sheep suit, whilst you keep trying to waltz into the herd as a wolf.”

“No. I reject your metaphor. I’m not the dangerous one. They are the wolves and I am the sheep. They may respect you whilst you hide in your wolf-suit, but a lamb like me? They’d happily eat me alive. As for you…”

He braced himself.

She glowered at him. “You’re a capital fool.”

“We’ve established that,” he muttered.

“And an exceptional poet.”

He blinked. “What?”

She strode to the block of hay and swiped up the book of poetry. “I only read the first twenty pages, and already I cannot believe I ever let you so much as glance at my scripts. You must think I’m the most amateurish—”

“ What ? Vivian, I’ve literally never read anything so entertaining or emotional or witty—”

“Have you read anything by Sir Gareth? Because that man can write.” She stabbed her finger in the center of the leather cover. “It should be your name here, Jacob. You did this. You deserve the praise.”

His throat no longer seemed to work.

“These are your words,” she said softly, pressing the book into his hands. “You deserve the fame.”

His fingers clutched the volume. “Wouldn’t you take pride in your plays being produced all over England, even if the public believed them to be written by Lady Whipplesnout?”

“No,” she said simply. “I’m proud of what I’ve written, even if it never leaves my kitchen. I don’t want some fictional Lady Whipplesnout to achieve fame and fortune. It means nothing if no one knows it’s me. If the page doesn’t bear my name, it’s not my achievement.”

“I disagree.” He gestured around the barn.

“Every rehabilitated animal who leaves here able to survive is an achievement, though no evidence of my involvement is left behind. There’s just as much poetry in the flap of a no-longer-broken wing as there is in the pages of this book.

This barn is my theater, and these animals the only audience I need. ”

“Bollocks,” she said. “Everyone dreams of bowing in the footlights to the thundering of applause.”

“Maybe you do. I’ve tried that. It isn’t for me.”

“How do you know? A pseudonym isn’t the same as—”

“One of my first memories is stumbling in a tent crowded with onlookers. I forgot my line. They pelted me with whatever was in their hands, and roared with glee at how wretched I looked dripping with rubbish. I’ve never forgotten the sound of their laughter.”

Vivian looked appalled. “Where on earth—”

“The same circus where I met Graham. He grew up there, too, though he became a talented acrobat and the star of the show. The circus manager said I wasn’t interesting enough to scare up a single farthing.

He relegated me to the animal tent so that paying customers wouldn’t have to look at me.

Told me I belonged in a barn because I wasn’t better than an animal myself. ”

“Oh, Jacob. Of course you’re better than…”

He gestured around them. “Better than who and where I am?”

“Better than a cruel, greedy circus manager,” she said firmly. “There’s nothing wrong with loving animals or working in a barn. There’s nothing wrong with Jacob Wynchester, animal trainer and poet extraordinaire. You don’t belong in the shadows.”

“I like the shadows.”

“You’re scared of the light, which is different. You’re talented, Jacob. Truly the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met. It hurts my heart to be the sole keeper of that knowledge. I want the world to know how marvelous you are.”

Her compliments made his throat feel tight, so he pushed them away. Along with the realization that those old dreams hadn’t died after all. He did want to stand on center stage, and hear the audience applaud for him. Not for his brother. Not for a nom de plume.

Ordinary Jacob Wynchester. Who was maybe a little bit extraordinary after all.

You can’t conquer your fears if you don’t face them , Vivian had once said.

For her, maybe he would try.