Page 5 of A Waltz on the Wild Side (The Wild Wynchesters #6)

His face fell, anger replacing his hopefulness. “Then I wish you would meet them all. I’m sure they’d change your mind if you got to know them.”

“No one has ever changed my mind,” she snapped, “and the first to do so certainly won’t be the dangerously irresponsible Wynchesters. Speaking of dangerously irresponsible, do you know how illegal it is to impersonate a peer of the realm?”

“Balcovian peer,” he reminded her. “Not British. It’s not this jurisdiction, not that England respects Balcovia anyway. Their royalty hasn’t been invited back since the day the Queen of Balcovia and her retinue argued for abolition of slavery throughout all the British territories.”

“Well, I don’t want you deported , either,” Viv said dryly.

“My club suspects Baron Vanderbean isn’t even real,” Quentin protested. “I can’t be prosecuted for impersonating a peer that doesn’t exist.”

“I’m not so certain.” Viv sighed. “For heaven’s sake, why are you so taken by that family?”

“Because they’re wonderful. You don’t have to be born into their ranks, like the aristocracy. Parentage doesn’t matter. The Wynchesters aren’t blood related. They’re a family because they decided to be.”

“I appreciate their diverse backgrounds and their varied appearances and capabilities,” Viv allowed.

“But that doesn’t make it safe for ordinary people to emulate them.

Their privileged status isn’t replicable by the masses.

They got lucky. They were adopted by the right aristocrat. People like us, on the other hand…”

“People like us,” Quentin repeated dreamily, his eggs forgotten. “Can you imagine? You and I might not have influence or power today, but if we were Wynchesters…”

“You and I?” She set down her fork. “Quentin, look in a mirror. We are not the same. You are a man, and I am a woman. Your light skin grants you access to most environments, whereas my Black skin is the first thing anyone notices about me. That is, until I open my mouth and they hear my accent. You were born here in England—”

“But, Viv, don’t you see that all those qualities would make you a perfect Wynchester?”

“You must be joking. They’re self-important miscreants who flout society and break laws whenever it suits them, and they have the money to get away with it. Their hypocritical self-righteousness makes it even worse.”

“You’re just jealous—”

“I don’t begrudge them their privilege,” Viv snapped. “I think we should all have the same rights.”

“Well, we don’t. And I’m not going to sit around waiting for it.” Quentin shoved back his chair.

“Equality isn’t something you’re going to find under a rock. Some people are born into wealth or the aristocracy. The Wynchesters were fortunate enough to be adopted into it. Whereas we—”

“Speak for yourself.” He shot up from the table. “ I was born to an aristocrat, and all it got me was a quarterly pittance from a man who never bothered to meet me face-to-face. Forgive me if I prefer to follow the example of the people daring to challenge the status quo.”

“You’re going to follow their example right into a death sentence,” she said desperately.

His eyes flashed. “You’re being dramatic. I’d say it’s because you’re a dramatist, but that looks like it’s just a dream. Maybe you’re holding me back because you can’t get ahead.”

She gasped at the vicious words—but couldn’t deny a grain of truth might hide within them. She was aware that she sometimes still treated him as though he were in short pants. Was that in part because once Quentin fully became an adult, he’d take a wife and Viv would be shown out?

“I’m just asking you to consider potential consequences,” she said quietly. “The Wynchesters do what they want because they can . The law is lethal to those without their advantages.”

“Well, I have advantages, too. You told me to stop wasting my trust funds by changing tutors and hobbies every month. If I now have a purpose in life I want to spend my time and money on—”

“Oh, I agree, time and money certainly are advantages not everyone has. Look at me, for example! Whilst you’re out running around, I don’t have time to leave this kitchen, much less the house.”

“You’re not the one paying for it, are you? I’m the one keeping a roof over our heads.”

“And I’m the one who constantly has to patch it! If one of your hobbies could be ‘helping with dishes’ or you took some tutoring on ‘cleaning up after yourself’—”

“You know what, Miss Know-All? Why don’t you save your sack of endless know-all opinions for the misguided fools who explicitly ask you for them?”

He stalked from the kitchen and through the front door.

She hurried after him. “Quentin, wait!”

He didn’t wait.

She sprinted to his side. When she tried to kiss his cheek, Quentin ducked out of range and jogged away from her down the busy street without looking back.

“Be back home by suppertime,” she called out.

He didn’t answer.

“You might beat me at cards this time!”

He didn’t slow. Soon, he was around the corner and out of sight.

She reentered the house, then slumped against the front door with a sigh. He would be home by supper. He always was. They would play cards. She might even let him win.

Quentin was ignoring her out of spite, just to hurt her—and it was working.

She felt awful.

But not nearly as bad as Viv felt ten hours later, when Quentin’s dinner congealed on his untouched plate. Her hurt feelings bubbled into irritation. Expecting her to cook for him and then not even showing up to eat it was incredibly inconsiderate.

She cleaned the dishes and the kitchen, then retook her seat with a deck of cards.

Although Viv was dying to finish the book she’d started, she didn’t want Quentin’s arrival home to interrupt a pivotal plot moment, and risk him seeing even the tiniest flash of frustration in her face.

She wanted to make up with her cousin, not make the situation worse.

What she needed was a distraction. Work was always the solution, and there was an unanswered pile of correspondence waiting for her.

She strode to the waist-high cabinet lining one wall of the kitchen. The narrow sideboard on top was never used to hold food, but rather as a repository for Viv’s endless stacks of paper.

There were piles for everything: advice column letters to be answered, replies to be posted, plays to be sent to theater managers, drafts in progress, silly scenes she’d dashed out using the wilder anonymous advice questions as inspiration, letters from her playwright friends, and retired scripts that hadn’t found a home anywhere and now lived in a dusty corner of the sideboard.

She carried her pen and ink to the kitchen table and set about crafting replies to her correspondence.

A yipping dog… a bothersome sister-in-law…

a quarrel over an inheritance… a husband who’d placed an embargo on new bonnets…

a wife who had suffered several difficult pregnancies and did not wish to keep bearing children…

a valet who butted heads with the butler…

a governess whose unruly charges wouldn’t sit still for lessons…

a petulant individual who wished to know the best way to incapacitate his enemies without being caught…

“Not this oatcake again,” Viv muttered, shaking her head.

It sounded like the same man or woman who kept asking for advice on blackmail and kidnapping and robbery.

Though Viv turned the outlandish scenarios into scripts, she’d never responded to the letter-writer himself.

The farthing she lost out on by not answering was worth the peace of mind of not becoming involved.

She couldn’t even imagine why the enthusiast kept sending such scenarios.

Soon, she supposed, they would tire of being ignored and move on to pester someone else.

Viv forced herself not to watch the time until she composed answers to all the legitimate questions. There—twenty-three responses. One answer shy of earning two full shillings.

She eyed the vanquish-my-enemies letter. No, absolutely not. Engaging with an unstable individual would be irresponsible. She’d turn the missed opportunity into a comedic script. Much better than encouraging the fan to send in even more of his disturbing scenarios.

After tying a string on the pile of responses to be sent to the newsletter office, Viv carried the enemy-quashing letter over to the sideboard to join the other unanswered letters and their respective scripts.

Naturally, she couldn’t find the proper pile. Quentin had clearly been meddling in her paperwork again. One more argument to look forward to. Her stomach twisted at the thought.

All right, the work was done. She could check the clock.

Midnight. And still no sign of Quentin.

Her heart sank. It wasn’t unusual for him to disappear all day long with his friends. But this was the first time he’d missed supper and their standing evening game of cards.

He was clearly doing this for attention. To prove some kind of point. Hours ago, Viv had been ready to beg forgiveness. But now it was Quentin who would need to atone for making her worry on purpose.

It was a tantrum, wasn’t it?

As the minutes ticked into hours, it became increasingly unlikely that Viv would be able to keep the anger from her face when her cousin finally deigned to return home from his precious club that mattered more than his cousin.

Except that didn’t sound like Quentin at all.

The few bites of supper she’d managed to swallow were now burbling with acid in her gut. Was he all right? Horrific scenarios crossed her mind with lightning speed. Anything could happen to an idealistic lad like him.

Quentin was fine, she reassured herself. This was nothing more than her overactive imagination at play.

So she shuffled the deck and played yet another solitary hand of patience while she waited.

And waited.

When Quentin finally showed his face, she would give him an earful—and then cross her arms and await a much-deserved apology for worrying her. And then they would have a long chat about how they could both be better cousins to the other.

But when she woke up bleary-eyed at dawn, with a bent jack of spades stuck to her cheek…

Quentin was still gone.