“Don’t read it,” he said impulsively. “Life’s too short for—”
“‘Shards of piety stabbing from each disappointed glance’?”
“Shards ofpity,” 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 wouldputmy 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.”
“Youdidn’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 forweeks?”
“It wasn’t personal,” he protested. “Technically, I’ve been lying toeveryone’sfaces… 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—”
“Ishouldbe 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’mnot 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.
