Viola beamed at her. Finally, someone who understood.
“Surely Wollstonecraft will bestow her blessings on you, and whatever it is you are writing shall be a success. Amelie, stay on this path if you please and don’t climb that tree!” She turned back to Viola. “What was I saying? Oh yes. Her daughter, Mary Shelley, it turns out, has had a very successful writing career.”
“Indeed!” Viola’s eyes lit up. “Do you write as well?”
“I used to. Before I married.”
“You stopped?”
“My husband is in politics.” Lady Penworthy shrugged, smiling ruefully. “It wouldn’t do.”
Viola drew a sharp breath.
“Amelie! Do not lick that headstone!” Lady Penworthy pulled her daughter away from a decrepit tombstone overgrown with moss and ivy. “But such is the fate of a politician’s wife,” she continued cheerfully. “I have resigned myself to it and found other, more interesting pastimes.”
Viola’s fingernails cut into her leather journal.
“Pray tell me,” Lady Penworthy continued as they strolled down the path, following the child who had ambled on ahead, “do you read? Surely you must. What is it that you like to read? Do you, maybe, possibly, also happen to enjoy the same literature as I…” She hesitated. “Since you enjoy visiting places such as these.” She waved a gloved hand.
“Next to Mary Shelley, you mean? Only female writers. They are few and far between. Roche, Dacre, Radcliffe and…”
“Selina Sable,” they said simultaneously.
They paused and stared at each other.
Lady Penworthy clasped her hands together and laughed, delighted. “What joy! I have found a soulmate at a place like this!” She gripped Viola’s hands. “You must come and visit me. We must have tea together and discuss books.” She cast a furtive glance over her shoulder. “I have formed a club, you see. A secret club. Sir William, my husband, is not to know about it. He would disapprove. He fears scandal, you understand. The gathering is only for women. We get together every Thursday afternoon and discuss books. Of a certain kind.” She pressed Viola’s hand. “My husband thinks we are knitting for the parish. But,” she giggled like a schoolgirl, “we are not. We discuss—dare I say it? Somewhat naughty books.” She giggled again. “Like Selina Sable’s. Hers are the most delightfully naughty of all.”
“Indeed.” Viola swallowed.
“You will come. Oh, you must come! Will you not? Do promise you will. It would be such a pleasure.”
Oh dear. She would have to meet a group of women she did not know and discuss her own books. They would take her stories apart and criticise her writing without knowing the author was sitting amongst them the entire time. For any author, that was the stuff nightmares were made of.
Viola beamed at her. “It would be atremendouspleasure.”
That afternoon,she finally pulled herself together and visited Cousin Georgiana. Georgiana must have been wondering what had happened to her after her hasty departure from Almack’s, and Viola needed a suitable excuse.
Cousin Georgiana swallowed the fib with no qualms at all. Viola had told her she was staying with an elderly friend near Grosvenor Square’, which was an entirely accurate approximation, for Bird Street was nearby. Her friend was very old and very ill and did not wish to receive visitors. Her house was therefore closed, which meant that Viola could not receive any visitors. This arrangement suited her perfectly.
Georgiana accepted that gracefully and without question. Concluding that Viola must be quite glad to leave the townhouse and her ailing friend, she dragged her to Pall Mall and Bond Street to do some shopping. Lily, alas, was ill and did not join them.
Viola came along somewhat unwillingly but changed her mind when they’d drifted into St James’s Street and she saw the bookshops and a lovely stationer’s shop filled with notebooks, quills, paper, and other good things.
Viola stood in front of the window display, clasping her hands in rapture. This was where she would spend theremaining morning, she told Georgiana, who, good-naturedly, went along with her.
“By all means. I need to buy some stationery myself,” she said, and pushed the door with the tingling bell open.
Viola was in paradise. Her eyes scanned the display counters filled with books, notebooks, pocketbooks, travel books, and memorandum books. It smelled of parchment, leather, and ink.
She inhaled it. That was her second favourite kind of smell. Her number one favourite was the dry, brisk scent of bergamot and musk, with a touch of neroli, woody beneath it all, and decidedly masculine. It belonged to one person, and one person alone.
Her eyes stopped at a brown calf leather notebook with a flap, tied with leather ribbons.
She gasped.
There it was.
Her notebook! The one he’d given her at Westwood Hall. The one she’d filled all too quickly and then been unable to find another with which to replace it. She’d scoured the shops in Edinburgh and Inverness, to no avail.
