“Then it is their loss,” she said firmly. “I shall never compromise my integrity. Only a coward hides behind a false name.”
He did not look appeased by this response. Viv didn’t care. No man would ever again tell her what to do.
“If you’re finished here, either go and look for my cousin, or worry about your own writing career. I’m sure you have poems to rhyme, or whatever it is you do.”
“I work on cases or with my animals,” he answered. “My poetry muse does not visit me nearly as often as I might like.”
She goggled at him. “Your poetry muse?”
“Inspiration,” he clarified. “Not an actual person.”
“I understood you the first time,” she bit out.
Good God, the Wynchesters were outside of enough. Handsome or not, she could not stand entitled men like Jacob who had never known a true day’s work, much less a lifetime of it.
“Only the most privileged of people have muses. The rest of us have to work, regardless of whether the whim strikes. Has your chambermaid ever said ‘Dear me, I cannot possibly empty any chamber pots today, I did not awaken inspired enough to bother’?”
He did not rise to her bait. “And the sideboard… Those are your plays?”
She let out her breath and tried to recover her calm. “Some are passion projects. Some were written because a theater manager or aficionado specifically said, ‘I wish we had more of this sort of thing.’ And a few are just silly, inspired by the less credible queries sent in to my column.”
“So you do respond to inspiration,” he murmured.
She glared at him.
He grinned back. “Show me one? I’d love to see the difference between an audience-demanded play and a script bringing some featherbrain’s letter to life.”
“Not as mad as you might think,” she said as she crossed to the sideboard. “Just the other day, the newspaper reported a bizarre robbery that had unfolded almost word-for-word the way I’d written it. Not that anyone should have had the pleasure of reading that manuscript.”
“Not even Quentin?”
“He doesn’t have much time for reading. He does handle all my post, ensuring my answers are sent to the paper, and my scripts shipped to appropriate venues. The silly ones don’t go anywhere. Usually. He seems to have misplaced the one about the burglary.”
Jacob pushed to his feet and joined her. “It’s missing?”
“Quentin occasionally mishandles the post.” She made an exasperated expression. “He gets distracted, particularly by his antics with his friends. Or arguments with me. He might even have thought he was being extra efficient, just to please me. When I finish writing each script, I tie it up and tuck the original letter behind the twine to remind me why I’d written it.”
“I don’t understand. Where would he have sent it?”
“Back to the paper, which is where all my real responses go,” Viv answered grimly. “The clerk would have forwarded the pages to the question-writer, along with their original letter.”
“Wait. What burglary? You cannot mean the robbery of Mr. Olivebury, the politician?”
She nodded grimly. “None other.”
“My siblings were discussing that incident at the breakfast table. Wasn’t there something odd about the manner in which it occurred?”
“Only creative use of balloons, shepherd’s pie, and a whooper swan. Just like I wrote it.”
He snorted. “No wonder they think we did it.”
She frowned. “Who thinks that?”
“The local magistrate, apparently. Which means now we’ve got to solve the Olivebury robbery, on top of everything else, before it derails all of our other cases. You’re saying you wrote a similar crime in your play?”
“The same crime. To the letter. The thief performed each stage direction brilliantly. I suppose it could have been worse. At least he only received that play, and not the ones about abduction and blackmail.”
Jacob looked startled. “May I see those?”
