Josephine helped her sit up. “Are you feeling somewhat better?”
“I can’t believe I just swooned.” Just like one of her heroines. She groaned.
“The best of us do,” Josephine said brightly. “It can happen. Particularly when…but say. Stay for supper, yes? I daresay you will feel even better once you’ve had a bite or two to eat. You will see, it will improve your constitution tremendously.”
The mere thought of food made her feel nauseous.
Anyhow, how could she eat when she’d just discovered that Peregrine had published the wrong book?
“You do not appear pleased at the publication,” Josephine said. “I would be over the moon if that had been my book.”
“Yes, normally I am, but this one is not the one—” She clapped her hand over her mouth and gazed at Josephine with wide, horrified eyes. She’d just admitted that she was Mrs Selina Sable!
A satisfied smile spread across Josephine’s face. “I knew it. No need to look so distraught, Mrs Sable! I have known forquite some time that you must be that wonderful, highly talented author. And what tremendous fortune that I am to be not only acquainted, no, but best friends with her!” She clasped both hands in hers and beamed at her.
Viola blinked, bewildered. “But when did you realise?”
“At our second meeting. You knew things about these books that none of us, save the author, would know. That suspicion intensified the more often we met. Sometimes you even use exactly the same phrases when you speak.” She nodded with satisfaction.
“I do?” Viola wasn’t sure she liked being told that she spoke exactly like her heroines.
“Oh yes! But never mind all that.” She pulled her eyebrows together. “What worried you so much that it had you swooning? The book is quite brilliant.”
She might as well tell her now that the cat was out of the bag. “It is the wrong story. I never intended to publish this one. It is far too scandalous.”
“The wrong one? Is that truly so terrible? Because this one is wonderful. It will have all those stuffy people sputtering and complaining about it outwardly, then secretly reading it in their own dark little chambers.” She giggled.
Viola felt ill. “It is a disaster.”
Josephine tutted. “It is not. Well, maybe. A little.” She patted her hand. “Not everyone will figure out that the demon lover, Count Morvino, is in reality Fane.”
Viola sat up with a squeal. “You already figured that out?”
“Well, naturally. You gave Count Morvino a blue eye and a green one. That is rather obvious, you know. There are not many tall, dark, strikingly handsome men with Roman noses, a tongue as sharp as a blade, and a blue and a green eye.”
Viola hid her face in her hands and groaned. “He will kill me.”
“He won’t. But never fear. And if people realise, so what? No one will know his wife is in reality Selina Sable. And I promise with my life that I won’t breathe a word to anyone.”
Viola could only pray that this was the case. She smiled wanly at Josephine.
Josephine helped her up. “But come. Let us have some supper now. You will see, as soon as you have eaten a bite, you will feel so much better.”
Josephine was right, for her stomach suddenly growled something fierce.
“You appear very fatigued still,” Josephine said after the footman served them plates piled with food. “No amount of rest seems to make it better, correct?”
“Correct,” Viola said, carefully biting into a delicious portion of cottage pie. “I could sleep the entire day. No amount of sleep appears to make me feel fresher.”
“And you seem uncommonly hungry, too,” Josephine observed. “All the food in the world doesn’t seem to satisfy that craving. Am I right?”
“Absolutely. It is as if my stomach has transformed into a bottomless hole. And I find the oddest combinations of tastes rather interesting.”
“Like pickled gherkins with vanilla custard. That is my particular craving.”
Viola lowered her fork. “Yes! Precisely! There is nothing more delicious in the world. Or even better, I have the oddest craving lately for mock turtle soup, but with a real turtle in it, with lemon tart, but eaten together.” She meditated on it. “Dipped into the soup might be the tastiest.”
Josephine nodded, rubbing her swollen baby belly with a knowing smile. “I understand perfectly. I have found that gooseberry vinegar satisfies some of the craving, too. Does Fane know?”
