Six months later
Late summer, 1821
Miss Athwart. I say, Miss Athwart.”
But Miss Seraphina Athwart, head proprietress of the Quayside Circulating Library on the idyllic seaside resort the Isle of Synne, hardly heard the increasingly annoyed voice at her elbow, far too caught up in the story she was hastily scribbling. It was highly unusual that she allowed herself to get caught up in her writing in such a public place. No, she had a strict—albeit silent—rule that any work she put into her secret alter ego, that of the mysterious authoress S. L. Keys, was to be kept starkly separate from her public persona. It was a secret even her beloved sisters did not know; that even her dear friends had never guessed at.
However, last night’s dream, which had her once again reliving the worst moments of her life, had demanded sheput it on paper immediately. Perhaps she should simply try to forget, as anyone else would have done. But writing it down, seeing it in simple black and white, was almost like lancing an infection, purging her of the poisonous memories.
But the telling of that story would have to wait. Phineas, her red-crowned parrot, nipped ever so gently at her ear, making her aware that she was needed.
“What is it, darling? Oh! Mrs. Juniper.” Seraphina started upon seeing the woman peering so intently at her. Hastily turning over the papers she had been scribbling on, praying the nosy woman had not snuck a peek at her writing, she straightened and pasted a stiff smile to her lips.
“Forgive me,” she continued, adjusting her spectacles. “I’m afraid I was quite immersed in my work. How can I help you today?”
But the woman was not to be soothed so easily. She pursed her lips, glaring at Seraphina. “I pay good money for my subscription to your establishment, Miss Athwart,” she said, looking Seraphina up and down as if she were a cockroach—well, more up than down, as Seraphina quite towered over most of the women on Synne, and a fair number of the men as well. “I even make certain to encourage any of our customers who come through the Master-at-Arms Inn to patronize your premises. And so I expect to not be so rudely ignored.”
Hot anger sizzled along Seraphina’s skin. But she had not spent years controlling her more unwelcome emotions for nothing. She would certainly not let some insulting, self-important woman draw out her ire.
She smiled tightly and inclined her head. “Again, my apologies, Mrs. Juniper. It was horribly disrespectful of me and shan’t happen again. Now, then, what can I assist you with?”
The woman, having no recourse but to back off in the wake of Seraphina’s politeness—no matter how couched her words had been in disdain—narrowed her eyes. “I am hoping to borrow the latest Walter Scott. I trust you have a copy available?”
Seraphina nodded. “Kenilworth? Yes, we should have a copy for you, Mrs. Juniper. Please have a seat in the reading room and I shall check on that right away.”
“I haven’t the time to wait.” The woman sniffed, adjusting her bonnet, a hideously loud confection of straw and ribbons and feathers that rivaled Phineas for gaudiness. “You shall bring it round to the Master-at-Arms when you’ve located it. At no extra charge,” she added pointedly, giving Seraphina a stern look. “And don’t think to foist this particular chore off on one of your sisters. You were the one to insult me, and you shall be the one to make it right.”
So saying, she sniffed again and flounced toward the door.
“I’ll locate the book for you, Seraphina,” her youngest sister, Elspeth, said, rounding the counter as Mrs. Juniper stalked out to Admiralty Row and out of sight. “I don’t know why the woman couldn’t wait for me to be done with Miss Swan. She could see you were busy. By the way, what were you working so diligently on? I’ve never seen you so distracted.”
“Nothing,” Seraphina hastened to say, gathering up the loose pages lest her curious sister take a closer look at them. Of course, her sisters would be ecstatic were they to learn she was the one penning the popular gothic romances that had everyone clamoring for the monthlyGaia Review and Repository.
But she could not have them wondering at the contentsof her stories, realizing that there was more than fiction to them. Her sisters already knew that the year she had been away from them had not been spent traveling, as their father had claimed. If they read her work they would begin to understand where she had truly been, someplace so horrible that she had never been able to give voice to it except in her secretive writings.
She cleared her throat, putting those particular thoughts from her mind. “The reason Mrs. Juniper insisted on me helping her is because she despises me,” she continued, folding her papers several times over and stuffing them in the pocket at her waist. “She does not think well of a self-made woman who has no need for a man or children.”
Elspeth laughed as she thumbed through the list of their stock of titles. “Then she must not think well of Millicent and myself either, for we are right there with you.”
Seraphina smiled down at the bent bright auburn head of her youngest sister, ever industrious and good-natured. “Ah, but you both have the good fortune of being quite sweet and cheerful. No one could despise either one of you, dearest. I, on the other hand, am very much set in my grouchy, grumbly ways.”
Elspeth looked up with a gentle smile. “That is because she does not know you as we do.”
At once Seraphina’s light mood vanished. “Perhaps,” she murmured quietly as, having found what she had been looking for, Elspeth hurried away. But then, even Elspeth and Millicent did not know Seraphina completely. They did not know the dark secrets in her heart, the cloud of fear and grief that hung over her head, ready to rain down on her at a moment’s notice, the horrible memories that were like manacles.
Subconsciously she rubbed her wrist under the long sleeve of her gown, even as she told herself that there was nothing there. She pressed her lips tight. And there never would be, ever again.
Phineas, however, must have sensed her distress. He gave a low whistle, pressing his head to Seraphina’s cheek.
“It’s all right, darling,” she murmured, reaching up to scratch the back of his neck. His feathers had regrown for the most part, but even after all these years she could still feel the bald spots beneath the bright green-and-red plumage. Proof of a stress that was not completely eradicated, no matter the years that had passed and the love she had given to him.
Much like herself, she supposed. No matter how far behind her she left that most horrible time, there truly was no escaping from it, not completely. “Which is why we are such a perfect pair,” she murmured to the parrot. “Isn’t that right, you handsome thing?”
“Keep the heid,” Phineas squawked, tilting his head to eye her closely, not fazed in the least by her flattery.
“You are very right, darling,” she soothed. “I shall calm myself right away. But we’d best hide these away in my room lest we are found out. And then we shall have a lovely walk down to the Master-at-Arms and concentrate on getting some much-needed sun and fresh air and not on the fact that we are forced to do the bidding of that horrid Mrs. Juniper.”
A short time later Seraphina was in possession of the requested book and stepping forth from the Quayside into the late-summer sun. Despite the early hour the pavement was packed with all manner of holiday-goers, the looming end to the busy summer season prompting a barrage oflast-minute shopping on Synne’s main thoroughfare before the visitors headed back to their respective lives.
