Ethan Penn-Leith may not set her blood to singing, but he knew his way around poetry. Yet when she asked him how he conceived his touching metaphors, Ethan had chuckled and made a joke about communing with the Goddess of Inspiration and listening to her dedicated Muse.
Viola had laughed, assuming it to be a jest, but the whole did leave her somewhat puzzled.
In her experience, writing was more hard work than meditation and lightning bolts of genius. Perhaps this was why Ethan had been struggling to write his next book of poetry. He was waiting for divine intervention to bestow the words upon him.
Malcolm certainly didn’t need any heavenly assistance. He spoke of life and death as though the subjects were always with him, ready to be lifted out and examined.
Regardless, one thing she did know—
She absolutely did not wish to marry Ethan Penn-Leith.
There.
She had admitted it to herself.
Ethan Penn-Leith, she had realized, was rather like a Claude glass.
About five years past, she and her father had taken a small trip to Weymouth to celebrate the publication of her second novel. They had walked the seashore and driven their gig up the coast to Abbotsbury to see the ruins of the ancient abbey there. Viola brought her mother’s Claude glass along—a black convex mirror set in a mother-of-pearl case. The Claude mirror cleverly reduced an entire landscape into one image—flattening contrast, enhancing color, and rendering the whole more beautiful than it looked to the eye. It was a favorite tool among artists and travelers alike.
Viola had spent the trip with her back to sights, preferring instead to view them reflected in the Claude glass.
Ethan Penn-Leith was similar, in a sense.
Viola liked the idea of him, the reflection of what she thought him to be. But when faced directly with Ethan, the view just wasn’t the same.
He simply felt like so much surface.
And, consequently, her heart held nothing beyond a sisterly, writerly sort of affection for him.
She suspected that Ethan probablydidhold unplumbed depths—wells of sagacity that he himself had yet to unearth.
But for her part, she simply had no desire to go foraging further.
Unfortunately, this knowledge left her in a bit of a muddle.
She had traveled to Scotland to meet Ethan.
Her father, the Duke of Kendall, and an entourage of aristocrats had plotted it.
The entire village of Fettermill was practically pushing them through the church doors to be pronounced man and wife before the vicar—
Scratch that—
If theLondon Tattlerwas to be believed, the whole of Queen and country wished Viola and Ethan to marry.
Perhaps even Ethan himself anticipated they would wed.
And now Kendall was coming in person to ensure their courtship met its proclaimed end.
Her lungs hitched painfully as she contemplated all the eyes, literal and figurative, turned expectantly her way.
Oh, heavens.
She rested her forehead on her hands, massaging her temples.
How could she extricate herself at this point?
Until Ethan said or did something to indicate he wished for a more formal courtship—like ask her father for permission to pay his attentions to her, for example—it wasn’t as if Viola could preemptively tell him,Oh, by the way, I don’t wish to marry you.
