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Chapter Seventeen

Pomona stood in the tiny office. Its window faced over the square. She leaned over the desk toward the panes. Below, a footman was strapping a case to the back of the glossy new carriage that had been delivered while they were away. The two matched pairs of horses drawing it pranced in their traces. West strode across the pavement and leapt inside. A footman shut the door behind him. The footman who’d been securing the case slapped the back of the carriage to indicate that it was ready to depart.

The coachman snapped the reins and commanded the horses to jog on. The carriage clattered away. One moment it was there, and the next it was turning the corner of the square.

The edge of the desk was digging into the front of her thighs. She straightened, still clutching the wrapped manuscript to her chest. The front door boomed shut.

West was gone.

It had taken everything in her to face him coolly on the stair. Now her heart was pounding and she felt sick. She forced herself to set the manuscript on the desk, untie the string, remove the wrapping paper, and straighten the stack of pages neatly in the center of the rickety, old-fashioned little desk where some previous duchess had sat to answer invitations. Everything was tidy. Everything was prepared and ready for her to get to work.

She sat down, folded her arms on the desk, put her face in them, and tried to breathe.

It ought to have been a relief that he was gone, considering that they’d just spent a five-week journey barely speaking to each other. But she hadn’t expected this. He hadn’t told her about his trip in advance. And she’d been shocked by the cold way that he’d spoken to her on the stair. “There are a number of outstanding matters at Castle March that I must address.”

He’d seemed not to know what to say to her. He’d scarcely been able to look her in the eye.

Was he really going to Shropshire? Not for anything would she have stooped to ask him that. And anyway, it didn’t matter. What was plain was that—no matter where he was going—he couldn’t get away from her quickly enough.

She hadn’t cried in Venice. She hadn’t cried on the journey back. But now hot tears began to roll down the sides of her nose and soak her sleeves. Everything was ruined. Was it her fault? If she’d told him about the book, he wouldn’t have snooped. And then none of this would have happened. Only… she still wouldn’t be able to trust him. It just would have taken longer to find that out.

She forced herself to sit up. She had a choice. She could keep crying. Instead of editing her book, she could stare into space feeling sick and being unable to concentrate. She could go lie down, and cry in bed.

Or she could seize the lifeline that Mr. Wynde had just thrown her. Which meant working to do as he’d asked. And that left no time to cry over West.

It seemed unnatural, cold, and hard-hearted to switch off her feelings. But she’d worked too hard for this to give up now. If she finished these revisions in time, she would have four hundred pounds. And four hundred pounds meant that no matter what anyone else said, she wouldn’t have to live with a man who broke his promises and who snooped through her work.

All she needed was the four hundred pounds, and she could do almost anything.

She blew her nose and took a deep breath. She sorted through her quills and trimmed the nib of her favorite one. She turned the first pages of her manuscript and found Mr. Wynde’s first set of comments. She took another deep breath, read them over, and began to work.

Hours later, the shadow cast by the window frame had crept across the room to the opposite wall. She straightened in the hard chair, rubbed her sore neck, and stood. Her fingers were cramped and ink-stained. Stray phrases were still echoing in her head. Words rearranged themselves into more elegant sentences than the ones that were already on the page. She thought of something that Violetta ought to say, and sat down again to add it.

The next day was the same. So was the day after. A letter arrived from Lady Theodosia, who was making a long visit to an old friend in the country. She was surprised to hear that Pomona was back in England so soon, and wondered whether all was well.

Pomona decided not to say anything about West and her plans to set up her own establishment until her great aunt had returned to London and she could explain everything. Four hundred pounds. That was an argument that anyone would find it difficult to refute.

As hard as she'd worked in Venice, now she was working even harder. The small but growing stack of edited pages encouraged her onward. She read another notation from Mr. Wynde. Her quill slashed a line of ink through a sentence that he’d marked as awkward. Carefully, she wrote a better version. She told herself that she would think about West when she was finished. If she ever did finish. The work seemed endless. But she felt a growing sense of pride in her own ability to focus... in her ability to strive to do good work even when she was questioning almost everything else in her life.

And then somehow, just before her deadline, the work was done. She read the last several chapters over again, certain that she must have overlooked something, but found nothing.

She returned the manuscript to the Thetis Press offices. “Excellent.” A beaming Mr. Wynde handed her a sheet of paper in elegant copperplate script. “A bank draft, Mrs. Brown. And now, let us look forward to the success of The Specter of Venice.”

Four hundred pounds. She’d done it. The number of times that she would have to return to the dreary gloom of March House was now a finite one. In the not-too-distant future, she would find a pleasant cottage somewhere and begin to establish her own life… alone, but at least at peace. Yet instead of feeling triumphant, she was simply exhausted and sad.

When the carriage turned the corner of the square, she saw a smart landau standing before the front door. It must be Lady Theodosia. Suddenly she wanted to sob with relief. Lady Theodosia would be able to tell her if she were doing the right thing. She would know just what to do! She could manage anything. And Pomona could go to stay with her, so she wouldn’t be so alone—just until she could make her own arrangements.

They drew up before the door, but no footman appeared. What could be wrong? Was Lady Theodosia... well? Pomona hurried to the front door and stepped through it, only to find herself face to face with… an unknown man’s knees?

The man was standing on a ladder. She couldn’t see the rest of him. Of course, this was not entirely unprecedented at March House. But when she edged past him into the entrance hall, she found that she was walking upon… a thick canvas drop cloth? She hadn't been told that there was to be work on the front hall. "Hello?"

There was no answer. A sobbing housemaid darted through the hall and disappeared. Another man was setting up another ladder against the opposite wall.

A loud voice approached from the corridor that led to the dining room. “It is actually worse than I was told! I should never have believed it if I had not seen it for myself!”

It was not Lady Theodosia. It was Lady Alford, accompanied by a fashionably-dressed man who was holding a… measuring tape?

“Mother?”