Page 50 of A Waltz on the Wild Side (The Wild Wynchesters #6)
As much as Viv yearned to bang on the publisher’s door until the scornful apprentice reappeared so she could brain him with her boot, a stint in gaol for assaulting an Englishman would not improve her circumstances or Jacob’s.
So she gnashed her teeth, clenched her fists, and furiously scripted a satisfying alternate ending in her head as they rode together to the Wynchester residence.
Viv : Do you know who you’ve disrespected?
Publisher : [in dawning horror] Sir Gareth Jallow?
Viv : Mr. Jacob Wynchester!
Spontaneous flock of Demeraran chickens : [pecks holes in every sheet of paper and gums up every printing press with rivers of chicken shite]
Outwardly, Jacob voiced no anger or even mentioned what had happened. A casual onlooker might have thought him unbothered—or at least worn down to apathy after a lifetime of worse incidents—but Viv was close enough to feel the stiffness in his spine and the tightly coiled tautness of his muscles.
If that hateful wretch had only known whom he was speaking to!
Of course, having to be a prize-winning poet of nationwide fame in order to be treated like a human was just as heinous.
If the bar for acceptance was so high that even Sir Gareth had doors slammed in his face, how could anyone else have the ghost of a chance?
As Jacob handed Viv down from the horse, a suspicion formed.
“When you arranged for my play to be performed, what specifically did you say about the playwright?”
“That you are very talented and that they would be fools not to host your debut.”
“You said that about Miss Vivian Henry?” she asked as she followed him up to the house. “Or ‘V. Henry,’ scribe of undisclosed sex who will be assumed to be masculine?”
“I praised Miss Vivian Henry.”
And the theater manager had said yes?
“What else did you say about me?” she insisted. “Do they know—”
“I did not lie,” he replied evenly. “If your question is whether I preemptively described you as a formerly enslaved immigrant Black female maid-of-all-work and advice columnist from Demerara, the answer is no, those topics didn’t come up.
In the interest of expediency, I refrained from unnecessarily volunteering an overabundance of irrelevant details. ”
“Who I am is very relevant,” Viv said. “It’s a play about equality and suffrage. I’m uniquely qualified to depict the reality of—”
Jacob spun around on the front step.
“At the time, I wanted them to say yes ,” he burst out.
“If you prefer, I can dash off a letter right now detailing all the ways you are not the sort of person those in power usually lend a public stage to, and that they ought to rethink their decision. At which point, he will cancel the whole thing. Is that what you want?”
“No,” she admitted in a small voice.
Without Jacob’s aid—and a few crucial omissions—Viv wouldn’t have this opportunity at all, and she knew it. Her stage debut might not be unfolding the way it did in her dreams, but she was intelligent enough to know that now that it was done, the only path was forward.
“All I wanted was to give you a chance,” Jacob said tightly.
“I know,” she said. “You took a risk mentioning my gender at all. The female playwrights who do exist do not much resemble me.”
“Your gender is not the risk. Suffrage is. The subject matter of your play may endanger the theater’s future.
Ordinary civilians are being massacred on the street for wanting the right to vote.
Participating in this performance may be seen as the equivalent of taking up arms against the government and the aristocracy. ”
That was true, too. Putting on a pro-suffrage play written by a playwright of any color or sex would be wildly polemic, to say the least. The theater manager wasn’t doing a simple favor in the name of nepotism. He was committing an act of sedition.
This one-night performance could very well alienate the wealthier half of the clientele. The manager could be ruined, and his entire theater forced to close permanently, all because a few stage actors had dared to repeat words Viv had written.
Her play had more than potential. It had power .
All thanks to Jacob using his own privilege, and measuring how far he could push on the first step. He’d given her a three-hour show. It was up to her to make the most of it.
Mr. Randall opened the front door. “Welcome home. There are cinnamon-raisin cakes in the oven.”
Viv appreciated the innocuous new subject to latch on to. She realized she and Jacob had been standing on the front step arguing for several minutes. The butler must have waited for a lull in the debate rather than awkwardly interrupt them.
“Whatever you’re paying him, it isn’t enough,” she murmured to Jacob.
“I gave the entire household a raise in salary last week.”
“And we’re always open to more.” Mr. Randall winked at Viv. “You’re welcome here any time, Miss Henry.”
She grinned at him.
“Shall I ring for those cakes?” the butler asked.
“I don’t have time for a biscuit,” said Jacob. “I have to get Hippogriff and Zeus to Elizabeth and Stephen.”
“Shall I go with you?” Viv asked.
His deep brown eyes warmed, and he offered her his arm without hesitation.
Zeus turned out to be an enormous mastiff who weighed twice as much as Viv. Nonetheless, he seemed to think he was a tiny lapdog.
Jacob grinned at her from the opposite side of the carriage as they navigated the narrow dirt roads. “Zeus likes you! You still have all your limbs. Well done.”
“He’s drooling a puddle into my skirts,” she said repressively, the severity of which was ruined by the fact that she hadn’t yet stopped petting him. Every time she scratched behind the mastiff’s ears, his tongue lolled out of his mouth and he whacked Jacob in the legs with his strong beige tail.
“Remember,” Jacob said as the carriage pulled up at an overgrown field across from a busy warehouse. “We’re not to stay. We’re only to ensure the animals are in place—”
“I remember,” Viv said. “It was a fifteen-minute carriage ride, and you explained the plan in great detail. Hippogriff will fly home on his own, and Elizabeth will handle Zeus.”
“Whatever you do,” he added, “don’t go anywhere near Stephen. Or go anywhere Stephen might have also gone. Around him, cushions might be filled with poison darts and the floor might turn to lava.”
She gave the mastiff another scratch. “Will Zeus be safe?”
“He’ll be the only one left standing,” Jacob promised. “Stephen won’t even need his machines.”
“Then why go through the trouble of sneaking them in and installing them?”
“Panache.” Jacob gave a dramatic shudder. “You should see what he wants to do to my barn.”
She snorted. “You would never let him anywhere near your—”
“There’s the sign!” He pointed at a thin column of green smoke rising from the opposite side of the roof.
“How did they turn smoke green ?” Viv asked in awe.
“Stephen and his devices,” Jacob said with a fond shake of his head. “Having a mad genius in the family can be quite useful.”
“What do we do?”
“We? Nothing. It’s Zeus and Hippogriff’s battle now.” He flung open the carriage door and released the hawk into the sky.
Zeus bounded out onto the field. Hippogriff soared up, dove straight through the green smoke, and disappeared. For a dog the size of a pony, Zeus was surprisingly silent as he tore off over the tall grass and leapt through an open ground-floor window.
“Good Lord,” Viv breathed. “I cannot imagine the havoc that dog is wreaking right now.”
“Stephen and Elizabeth are causing even more,” Jacob said confidently as he gave the signal for the driver to turn the carriage back toward town.
Viv expected Jacob to gaze out the window at whatever chaos they might glimpse as they drove away. Instead, he laced his hands behind his neck and stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankle.
He looked positively delicious. Viv, on the other hand, was a wrinkled mess of drool and dog hair. It was a good thing she’d told him there’d be no more courting until her cousin had been rescued, or she’d be tempted to take a page from Zeus’s book and leap onto Jacob’s lap.
Disheveled or not, he’d probably still let her.
He was dangerous like that.
“So,” he said. “In the mood for a cinnamon-raisin cake?”
Her stomach growled. Or maybe those were the butterflies in her belly. Could imaginary butterflies growl? Jacob could probably teach them to. The safest thing to do was to stay away, and not distract him from finding Quentin.
But once her cousin was home, all bets were off. She dared Jacob to lounge nonchalantly in front of her then and see what happened!
He raised his eyebrows seductively. “If cinnamon-raisin is not to your liking, I can offer you—”
“The Duke of Faircliffe,” she blurted out.
Jacob blinked. “Not what I had in mind.”
“He—Chloe—invited me back to help with their speeches. His Grace’s speeches. I have three pages of notes in my reticule that I could send by post, but they’re expecting me to discuss each point in person—”
“All right, all right.” Jacob’s expression was amused, rather than irritated. He slid the panel to inform the driver of the new destination. “When you’re done helping, have them send you wherever you need to go in one of their carriages.”
“I can walk home,” she said.
“I know you can. But you shouldn’t have to when your feet are tired from all the walking you already did today. If you’re shy about ordering a duke about, I’ll send this carriage back to you as soon as I arrive home.”
This idea cheered Viv up immensely. “I can order a duke around?”
“Faircliffe responds appropriately to reasonable requests. And unreasonable ones, if his wife or child is asking. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for Chloe and Dorian.”
“What about you? Do you want children someday?” Viv bit her tongue as soon as the question was out. No courting meant more than no kisses. It meant no asking questions that betrayed her hope for marital compatibility in the future.
Jacob took a long moment to consider the question before replying.