Just then, the butler entered with yet another tray of letters. “They keep coming, sir.” He apologised and set the tray in front of him.
Sebastian took the mail and sorted it into three piles.
“Why are you doing that?” She waved a hand at the three piles.
“One pile is for my secretary to answer, one which I’ll respond to myself, and the third is personal.”
“My letters, no doubt, ended up in the first pile.”Mr Fane desires no further correspondence on this subject…
The words hurt now as much as they did then. That day, he’d utterly destroyed her with his words.
His eyes were intense. “Not at all. I distinctly recall having an entirely separate pile for those.” He paused. “I’d called it the Lola-pile. Except your letters were so few I could hardly count them on one hand.”
She choked on her tea and coughed.
He got up. “Take them to the study,” he told the butler, then pulled out his pocket watch. “I’ll be off to Parliament afterwards. I wish you a good day.” With a curt nod in her direction, he left.
Viola remained behind, glumly digesting what she’d learned.
One. They were to continue with their sham marriage. She would do her best to play the dotty spinster in public, and he would ignore her whenever they met.
So far, so good.
Two. She was inadvertently married to an immensely successful, important, brilliant, popular politician who had much on the line with the upcoming election.
Three. She was a liability to her husband.
And because of that, she had complete power over him. More than she would have liked.
She jumped up and paced the room, wringing her hands.
For if the public ever discovered that Lady Viola Fane, wife of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, was, in truth, Mrs Selina Sable, writer of lurid romances...
She drew a shaky breath.
She could destroy him.
Utterly.
Chapter Nine
Viola decided to go ghost-hunting.
It was a most reasonable thing to do, given her situation, considering she had lost all ability to concentrate and couldn’t write a single word, let alone a coherent sentence. She’d been staring for two hours straight at a blank sheet of paper. She’d tried sitting at the breakfast table, under the breakfast table, on the breakfast table. On the fauteuil in the drawing room (Sebastian was right, it was too short and uncomfortable to sleep on), in front of the fireplace with a fire, in front of the fireplace without a fire. At the desk in the study. In the end, she returned to her bed, the place where she usually wrote best.
But not today. Her thoughts kept returning to Sebastian, and how he’d slept there, right next to her.
The entire night.
She wondered where he would sleep tonight.
And what he was doing now.
Whether he was holding a speech in the Commons.
And what he looked like when he held one of his brilliant, lethal speeches.
They called him The Slayer, Mainwaring had said.
