“Our conversations,” I supply. “I have told you all about myself. From that very first breakfast. I feel you understand me—and I feel I am beginning to understand you.”
She reaches over and takes the book from my hands.
“A Lady’s Valet,” she says. “I do not know this volume.”
“It is quite diverting. Although not yet as exciting as some.”
“What else did you buy?”
I show her the other volumes—one very filthy volume with actual pictures; a book that professes to be the confessions of a depraved Spanish priest; and a volume focusing on the sexual career of Casanova with choice engravings.
“Have you ever thought of writing one?” she asks.
“A novel?”
“Yes.”
“An erotic novel?”
She looks at me wryly.
“Yes.”
“No,” I say honestly. “I haven’t.”
“I believe you would be good at it.”
In the past, I daydreamed about writing novels.
I imagined penning novels anonymously so my father would never know. Whenever I attempted a start, it seemed too dangerous—my imagination started to run in untoward directions. Ravishing heroines and daring knaves and kisses that fired the blood…and, well, things that I wasn’t brave enough to pen. I never made it past a page or two.
“I thought of it long ago. Once or twice. But…”
“But what?”
I feel myself color. She laughs.
“Writing made you feel too wanton.”
I nod.
“Well, perhaps for me you could try.”
“If it would please you.”
“It would. That way you might not have given up your profession for nothing.”
“Annabelle,” I scold, taking her hands. “I haven’t given up my profession. I am merely taking a break from it. And I did so for the best thing that has ever happened to me—marrying you. But I will make you a bargain.”
She raises her eyebrows.
“I will try and write something erotic, for your eyes only—if you tell me a bit more of yourself.”
“What of myself?”
“Anything—as I said, I want to feel closer to you. I do have a topic specifically, but it does not have to be that.”
Her eyes narrow in suspicion.
