“Then I take it you’re a believer,” said Sebastian.
“A believer?”
“In Shakespeare.”
“As…what?…a diety?”
He shook his head on a laugh. Oh, the things Delilah said. “As a writer.”
“You’ll have to explain.”
“There are rumblings that Shakespeare as we know him is a fraud.”
“How so?”
“That he was an actor and man of business who took credit for others’ words.” He spread his hands wide. “Or that time has given him credit due others without anyone’s say-so.”
“And the reasoning behind these theories?”
Sebastian shrugged. “Two things. The sheer quantity of the work found in the folios published after his death. There is simply so much of it, and he didn’t live to be all that aged. As an actor and man of business, where would he have found the time?”
Delilah appeared entirely unmoved. “And the other theory?”
“He was lowborn. Some feel that only a gentleman could’ve written those lines.”
Delilah snorted. “Shakespeare can’t win, can he?”
“How so?” asked Sebastian, interested in her perspective.
“Either multiple men wrote the works attributed to him, or if a single man did, it could’ve only been a highborn, Eton-educated aristocrat.”
“A Harrovian might be an acceptable possibility,” he said, dry.
She cut him a curious glance. “What do you think?”
Sebastian allowed a few footsteps to fall behind them while he gathered his thoughts. “It’s in the expression of the deepest, darkest motivators of humanity that we find the heart of Shakespeare,” he said. “And I’ve yet to meet a highborn, Eton- or Harrow-educated aristocratic male capable of expressing humanity’s deepest, darkest motivators beyond belly or cock.”
A delighted laugh escaped Delilah. “Yourself included?”
“Possibly.”
Her smile remained wide even as her eyes narrowed. “So,you—aduke—believe a lowborn man to have been one of the greatest writers in history?”
Sebastian nodded. “I do. As a patron to many sorts of artists, I’ve observed those gifted by the muse at close quarters, and I happen to know she doesn’t give a sod about one’s birthright. She strikes and gifts where she wills.”
Delilah cast a surprised glance his way. “How very poetic, Your Grace. Have you been struck by a fever?”
“Erm, no.”
“I’ve never heard you speak so.”
And she liked it.
That was what he heard in her voice. Still… “To be fair, Delilah, we hardly conversed before a few weeks ago.”
She nodded pensively. “Our conversings were conducted more in the mode of guerilla skirmishes.”
A dry laugh sounded through his nose. She wasn’t wrong.
