Granted,everythingabout dining at Hawthorn was unnerving—from the lavishly-gilded mirrors on each wall to the eight footmen in starched livery standing at attention behind her dining room chair.
Even the fish on her plate—the trout’s glassy eyeballs jiggling in their jelly casing—disconcerted her. Viola had a strong aversion to aspic. It felt unnatural to suspend an entire fish in gelatin, hovering in midair, fixed and unmoving.
Much, she supposed, as her life at present—
Frozen. Caught in a net. Onlysomeof which was of her own making.
“I hear the Queen herself has given her seal of approval to a match between Miss Brodure and Mr. Penn-Leith,” Lady Whipple said, poking at her own fish with a fork. Her ladyship had been in residence at Hawthorn—seeing to the duke’s household and acting as hostess—for as long as Viola had lived in Westacre. “Lady Portman said as much at the Duchess of Buccleuch’s soiree, and as Her Majesty’s Lady of the Bedchamber, Lady Portman would certainly know.”
TheQueenwas in on this plot, too?!
Viola pressed a hand against her stomach, her lungs spasming.
What was she to do?
Truly, she should have foreseen this. The broadsheetslovedEthan Penn-Leith—the sweeping romanticism of his poetry, the handsome virility of his person. The papers regularly printed a lithograph portrait of him—a large man in a great kilt, square-jawed with tousled curls, a glint of humor in his eyes.
Was it any wonder the Scot was so celebrated?
Was it any wonder her own fingers had penned Polly Pettifer’s tribute to him?
Any woman with a beating pulse would wish to know him better . . . herself included, obviously. To count him a friend and perhaps—slowly, over time—see if something more might evolve.
But befriending a gentleman was a far cry from matrimony, no matter how much Kendall and Lady Whipple tried to equate the two.
Moreover, there was still one rather large obstacle . . . well, another obstacle in addition to Viola having never met Mr. Penn-Leith, ascertained their suitability as a couple, determined his interest in herself as a prospective wife . . .
She placed a hand on her rambling thoughts.
Swallowing, Viola lifted her eyes from the trout. “You do not c-consider my age to be an impediment, Lady Whipple?”
Her ladyship frowned, reaching for her wine. “Whyever should it be, Miss Brodure?”
Viola barely stifled a (somewhat) hysterical laugh.
Because at thirty years of age, I passed the gates into spinsterhood an eon ago, she nearly replied.
But, of course, did not.
Because . . . shyness.
Her bashful tongue had always hampered her ability to converse with the opposite sex. As a younger woman, just the thought of speaking with a gentleman had sent Viola into a full-blown asthma attack. Even now, when faced with a man she admired, words caught in her mouth and her asthmatic lungs rebelled.
Viola Brodure had never quite blossomed into a prize-winning rose. In fact, some might describe her as the most wallflowerish wallflower who had ever wallflowered.
But after the upheaval of those days spent with Eloise last summer, Viola had realized that she needed to not only take risks in her writing but in her personal life as well.
And so in an effort to no longer liveadjacentto life, she had put her admiration of Mr. Penn-Leith into the mouth of one of her characters.
And if Mr. Penn-Leith replied to her indirect compliments, Viola had reasoned, then she could respond back. From there, a dialogue could ensue—a comfortable,writtencommunication of ideas between like-minded people.
That had been her sole intention—to secure a pen pal. A charming, literary Scottish pen pal whose dashing appearance regularly caused even London’s finest roses to swoon, but still . . .
ThenPolly Pettiferhad become a runaway success; it was already onto its second printing.
And in light of the novel’s popularity and Mr. Penn-Leith’s fame, a London gossip rag had seized on Viola’s homage to him and constructed a narrative—
Viola Brodure and Ethan Penn-Leith were destined to fall in love and marry.
