Vivian folded her arms beneath her bosom. “I know what it’s like to struggle and be smacked down, day after day, year after year, in harsher conditions than you’ve ever known. I almostdiedclawing my way to where I am today, and I’ll be damned if some theater director’s letter of rejection crushes my spirit now. What are you so afraid of? That some other aspiring poet dislikes your verse? Grow up.”
Fury lanced through him. At her many erroneous assumptions… and at the ways in which her assumptions weren’t all that erroneous.
Yes, at first he hadn’t been certain of a positive public reaction. Not until multiple volumes and reprints started flying off the shelves. England loved a mirage. Jacob Wynchester wished they lovedhim.
He knew as well as Tommy did that sometimes it was the disguise that garnered respect, not the person inside the costume. Revealing his real identity didn’t mean Jacob would automatically inheritJallow’s fame and adulation. Admitting the truth might be the quickest way to ruin everything for them both.
“It’s complicated,” he said through gritted teeth.
“It’s not complicated,” said Vivian. “I have such conversations ten times a day. ‘How do you do, I’m Vivian Henry, here’s something I wrote.’”
“You write those words on paper,” he said dismissively, hoping she would interpret his refusal as incapacitating shyness. “It’s not the same as in person.”
She looked amused. “Do you think I fail to knock on every theater’s door in London every time I have a new script ready?”
Jacob had tried that tactic, too. In the beginning, and as recently as last year. Publishers laughed in his face without reading a single word of his work, if they bothered opening the door to him at all.
A decade of relentless rejection was what had spawned the “reclusive” Jallow to begin with. The lowest title (giving Jallow elevated status, yet keeping him somewhat humble) plus the inference of white skin (see: title) and an aspirational life of privilege (same).
Jacob was both thrilled that his scheme had worked, and disgusted to think his words were only considered valuable if written by a wealthy white man with a title.
He stared at Vivian. “If you know you’re a talented playwright, yet receive nothing but rejection, then you ought to be more understanding about my position.”
“Oh, I understand your position,” she replied. “Since the moment you became prince of this palace, you’ve had anything you could desire delivered to you on a silver platter. Not only aren’t you accustomed to hearing ‘no,’ you’re not willing to try. You don’t know what it’sliketo fail. A man without obstacles is champion of nothing.”
He stalked outside and slammed the door without responding.
The hinges immediately reopened behind him.
“Try to fail tonight as spectacularly as you are able,” she called out. “Your talent is worth the risk.You’reworth it. No matter what any naysayers opine. You can’t conquer your fears if you don’t face them!”
He swung himself into the carriage and slammed that door, too.
Communicating with publishers exclusively via post—and ignoring the public altogether—made Sir Gareth Jallow all the more believable as an eccentric artist. Rumors abounded that the poet was old or sickly or disabled, housebound and irascible. The public loved him all the more for it. Sir Gareth was a triumph. An inspiration.
No rumors whatsoever indicated Jallow might be thirty-two-year-old Jacob Wynchester, scribbling on an old notebook inside a barn. Nor would such an unveiling be greeted with applause.
If he somehow convinced the public at large that he was the man behind the magic, they would not thank him for pulling the wool from their eyes. Breathless respect for Sir Gareth would not extend to Jacob Wynchester.
Vivian didn’t understand that the only way for him to have success was by never allowing anyone to peek behind the curtain.
And he did have success! Loads of it. What had once seemed an eye-watering inheritance from his adoptive father, Baron Vanderbean, now looked like a pittance. Sir Gareth Jallow was a household name.
Granted, it wasn’tJacob’sname, but wasn’t success its own reward, no matter how it came about?
Soon, the carriage pulled up at the meeting site for the Dreamers Guild. A privileged location. Jacob rubbed his face as he trudged up the walkway to the home of the second-most famous poet in England.
His colleagues believed Jacob to be luckless but hopeful, and filled every conversation with well-meaning but useless advice on which type of parchment or ink to use to catch a publisher’s eye, or which popular poets it would behoove him to study.
Which inevitably led to them rhapsodizing over his fictional persona. Unlike Jacob, Sir Gareth was a genius! A treasure! More influential than Shakespeare! It was exhilarating and infuriating and embarrassing.
A man without obstacles is champion of nothing, echoed Vivian’s voice in his ears.Try to fail tonight as spectacularly as you are able. You’re worth it.
Tonight, the first half hour of the meeting was devoted to speculation that Percy Bysshe Shelley would return to London to perform a reading at Vauxhall Gardens. Although the others spoke dreamily about addressing a crowd of ten thousand, the reality of being rejected by an audience that large made Jacob want to burrow into a hole with his field voles. Though he’d once dreamed of being the star of a show, he now preferred remaining safe in the shadows.
“Who wants to read first?” asked the group’s host.
Jacob didn’t raise his hand.
